Subject: I Think Therefore I Am Fri May 15, 2009 6:52 pm
Ok folks... help me out with this philosophy stuff:
So... I guess the whole "I think therefore I am" thingy, is supposed to represent the ONLY thing we (or maybe just I) actually know.
I'm aware that that contention is hotly debated, however... I'm not even sure I really grasp the fundamental argument in the first place. I know it has something to do with us not being able to trust our senses (we don't know if we're in The Matrix, if we're a brain in a tank, or if some super mean demon is frakking with our senses just to be a jerk). Could someone please elucidate that argument for me? Why can't our senses validate the existence of the world perceived by said senses? Is it like a circular argument or something?
Number of posts: 1202 Location: Boston, MA Registration date: 2008-04-02
Subject: Re: I Think Therefore I Am Sat May 16, 2009 1:03 am
RoR wrote:
Could someone please elucidate that argument for me? Why can't our senses validate the existence of the world perceived by said senses? Is it like a circular argument or something?
We can't validate the world around us using our senses, because our senses can be wrong. You can smell something that's not really there. You can see an object and think it's another object entirely. And Descartes' demon was an example of this writ large. In the best case our senses are just a little flawed, and subject to our interpretations, but in the worst case they are completely fabricated by some demon / hallucination / matrix.
Descartes' "cogito ergo sum" is his assertion that, even if everything he's experiencing is nonsense, he at least knows that he's experiencing something, and therefore that there has to be some non-illusory person who is actually experiencing all of that.
He goes off the rails from there on. I don't think he was wrong, exactly, but Descartes didn't have a very sophisticated concept of what that self might actually be.
Number of posts: 5647 Location: Amsterdam, the Netherlands Registration date: 2007-07-21
Subject: Re: I Think Therefore I Am Sat May 16, 2009 3:54 am
our senses can validate our theories about the world in the sense that I can put forward a hypothesis based on perception and cognition, and then test that hypothesis by making predictions, by doing observations through other means (instruments), by techniques for processing data (e.g. Bayes' nets), by seeing how well the hypothesis fits with other hypotheses etc. etc. That's what we do in real life, those are our epistemic practices, and they're fallible in the sense that we may end up abandoning beliefs, or even techniques etc. in the wake of later practices and results, and so on. But they're pretty good as far as they go.
Doubting the existence of the external world is not an epistemic practice, it is something we have trouble making sense of. We can do so by way of analogy with the source situation being having been deceived or mistaken about certain of our observations or practices, and the target situation being cognition and perception in general. But the analogy fails to become much more than some odd word play because there are no (epistemic or other) practices associated with this kind of skepticism. It is not clear what it would mean for our senses to be invalidated as a whole.
And I don't see why in the same vein radical skepticisim would not apply equally well (or equally poorly) to the existence of the self itself
Number of posts: 281 Registration date: 2008-12-04
Subject: Re: I Think Therefore I Am Sun May 17, 2009 3:40 am
Okay so my view of it is that cogito ergo sum is valid, but that it is also necessarily true that there must exist some sort of external reality. If there was no external reality then there would be nothing for the self to perceive. You could say that the self generates an illusion of reality; but for this illusion to be perceived as separate from the self, it must in some sense actually be separate from the self, if the self is defined as the conscious perceiver who may or may not be deceived. Thus there cannot exist a conscious perception without both a perceiver and something to be perceived that is in some way separate from the perceiver.
Note: I don't mean self in the single continuos sense... I actually think the thread about "the self," relates quite nicely to this discussion.
Conrad wrote:
It is not clear what it would mean for our senses to be invalidated as a whole.
Is this sort of saying that were we ever to find out we're in a "matrix" type situation, our senses would necessarily be partially accurate? or am I misunderstanding?
Number of posts: 899 Registration date: 2007-08-16
Subject: Re: I Think Therefore I Am Sun May 17, 2009 4:16 am
T.E.M. wrote:
Okay so my view of it is that cogito ergo sum is valid, but that it is also necessarily true that there must exist some sort of external reality. If there was no external reality then there would be nothing for the self to perceive. You could say that the self generates an illusion of reality; but for this illusion to be perceived as separate from the self, it must in some sense actually be separate from the self, if the self is defined as the conscious perceiver who may or may not be deceived. Thus there cannot exist a conscious perception without both a perceiver and something to be perceived that is in some way separate from the perceiver.
Note: I don't mean self in the single continuos sense... I actually think the thread about "the self," relates quite nicely to this discussion.
Conrad wrote:
It is not clear what it would mean for our senses to be invalidated as a whole.
Is this sort of saying that were we ever to find out we're in a "matrix" type situation, our senses would necessarily be partially accurate? or am I misunderstanding?
Recent neurological research suggests that people with phantom limb pain, apotemnophilia, tinnitis, hearing voices, etc. have an encroachment of brain mapping ( ref the Wilder homunculous) into areas where there is no sensory or objective correlative.
But consider also--we don't "see" as much as we interpret what we see: the eye maps the image onto a curved surface, turns it upside down and projects it back. But of course we pretty much agree what things look like out there.
Does anybody know how/why our vision evolved this way?
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Subject: Re: I Think Therefore I Am Sun May 17, 2009 5:13 am
Stewart wrote:
Descartes didn't have a very sophisticated concept of what that self might actually be.
That's a question ("What is 'the self'?") I'm interested in right now.
I certainly love to hear your thoughts on the subject.
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Subject: Re: I Think Therefore I Am Sun May 17, 2009 5:21 am
T.E.M. wrote:
Okay so my view of it is that cogito ergo sum is valid, but that it is also necessarily true that there must exist some sort of external reality. If there was no external reality then there would be nothing for the self to perceive. You could say that the self generates an illusion of reality; but for this illusion to be perceived as separate from the self, it must in some sense actually be separate from the self, if the self is defined as the conscious perceiver who may or may not be deceived. Thus there cannot exist a conscious perception without both a perceiver and something to be perceived that is in some way separate from the perceiver.
Note: I don't mean self in the single continuos sense... I actually think the thread about "the self," relates quite nicely to this discussion.
I suppose it could be argued that drawing a distinction between the self and everything else would represent a false dichotomy. That's the sort of argument a lot of Eastern religions seem to make. I would like to hear someone make a clear and organized case for that perspective (without all the vague, airy fairy mystical padding).
Arthur Rimbaud was famous for his statement, "I is another" (apparently meaning that he and any external entity are ultimately one and the same somehow).
I always had a problem with Ayn Rand's application of the identity principal to reality itself. I could be misinterpreting her, but it seems that when she says, "A is A", she is claiming that "The reality we perceive is what it appears to be". However, that does not follow (logically) from the idea that "reality is what it is".
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Subject: Re: I Think Therefore I Am Sun May 17, 2009 5:29 am
Have you guys ever seen this seen this scene from Dark Star?
"How do you know that the evidence your sensory apparatus reveals to you is correct?"
Number of posts: 281 Registration date: 2008-12-04
Subject: Re: I Think Therefore I Am Sun May 17, 2009 5:59 pm
ReIgNoFrAdNeSs wrote:
I suppose it could be argued that drawing a distinction between the self and everything else would represent a false dichotomy. That's the sort of argument a lot of Eastern religions seem to make. I would like to hear someone make a clear and organized case for that perspective (without all the vague, airy fairy mystical padding).
Arthur Rimbaud was famous for his statement, "I is another" (apparently meaning that he and any external entity are ultimately one and the same somehow).
I think the view that all of your perceptions are unified (or have the potential to be unified) isn't wrong, but it doesn't necessarily follow from this that the things themselves are. Of course, the things themselves can never be perceived by you, so in a sense that would be irrelevant, but in another sense not so.
Quote:
I always had a problem with Ayn Rand's application of the identity principal to reality itself. I could be misinterpreting her, but it seems that when she says, "A is A", she is claiming that "The reality we perceive is what it appears to be". However, that does not follow (logically) from the idea that "reality is what it is".
I have a problem with this view too. I don't think it's true that you are necessarily perceiving things correctly. In fact, I think things can only be perceived "correctly" with regard to certain criteria. I just think there necessarily is something you are perceiving.
There is no truly objective perception, but there are objective ways of evaluating subjective perceptions.
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Subject: Re: I Think Therefore I Am Wed Aug 12, 2009 5:00 am
I would recommend reading 'The Meditations' by Descartes himself and make up your own mind what you think he's saying. Then it might be worth coming back to discuss it more?
