@Manuel @frank @Paine @Janus @Srap Tasmaner

By the 28th paragraph of meditation 3, there only remains the possibility that the idea of the “infinite, eternal, unchangeable, independent” (etc.) is beyond his ability to doubt.

“my perception of the infinite, i.e. God, is in some way prior to my perception of the finite, i.e. myself. Whenever I know that I doubt something or want something, I understand that I lack something and am therefore not wholly perfect.” (Emphasis added)

I find the crux here in the throwaway feeling of “lacking” something, as he was shaken at the beginning to find himself capable of being wrong when he thought he was fine; misinformed, or betrayed by society’s habitual opinions and practices. He takes this “lack” as a problem to be solved completely before proceeding, rather than part of our human condition to be addressed going forward in each case.

The “some way” in which the infinite (perfect) is “prior to” the perception of the finite (let’s say, human fallibility) is our desire for certainty. We set it as a pre-requisite and impose that criteria over our ordinary standards and workings of our practices. We want perfection to bridge our finite, limited knowledge and condition (apart from others) rather than be personally responsible for responding to the other and trusting the shared history of our lives together into our unknown future.

@Manuel @frank @Paine @Janus @Srap Tasmaner

In the 13th paragraph of the third meditation, Descartes now moves on to question the impulse that there are others and other things than himself, and stumbles first on being unsure whether the things he judges are correct. Instead of accepting the fact that sometimes we are wrong or are interested in different aspects of the world, his desire to maintain the possibility of certainty forces him to turn our human condition into a theoretical problem and metaphysically split the uncertainty of our “idea” from a perfect “reality”.

To maintain control, he inserts between them that the world is (more) perfect because it is the “cause” of our (limited) idea, and thus why our idea may or may not “resemble” or represent the perfect external world.

“If I find that some idea of mine has so much representative reality that I am sure the same reality doesn’t reside in me, either straightforwardly or in a higher form, and hence that I myself can’t be the cause of the idea, then, because everything must have some cause, it will necessarily follow that I am not alone in the world: there exists some other thing that is the cause of that idea.”

I take it he is arguing that there cannot be anything in the world unless he is certain he is not the cause because it is “so much” or of a “higher form”. This “cause” could just be the unexamined criteria and conditions of our culture for our ordinary practices, which are our interests in the world coalesced as the different aspects, versions, or “senses” (“uses” Wittgenstein will also say) of our practices (as in his example of the sun). And the necessity of Descartes’ “cause” (its “must”) could be that there is a certain “must” to meet these criteria for a practice to be judged to be what it is, but he is fixated again on certainty and so “eventually one must come back to an idea whose cause isn’t an idea, and this cause must be a kind of archetype containing intrinsically all the reality or perfection that the idea contains only representatively.” He not only attributes this perfection outside his self but outside the world, to avoid accepting its failings, errors, mistakes, limitations, confusions, etc.

@frank @Paine @Janus @Srap Tasmaner

“Nature has apparently taught me to think that [ I can imagine an object correctly ]... When I say ‘Nature taught me to think this’, all I mean is that I have a spontaneous impulse to believe it, not that I am shown its truth by some natural light. There is a great difference between those.”

I agree with him on the innateness claim, as I just don't see an alternative, unless we attribute cognition to the world. — Manuel

Consider that our “spontaneous impulse” is to believe our judgments, which are based on the criteria and conditions that we are inculcated with, which are natural for us, as if part of our “nature” (they are how our world functions, its “cognition”), but we are not normally conscious of the workings of our judgments, not until we shine some light on them, say, by reflection.

“Things that are revealed by the natural light – for example, that if I am doubting then I exist – are not open to any doubt, because no other faculty that might show them to be false could be as trustworthy as the natural light. My natural impulses, however, have no such privilege: I have often come to think that they had pushed me the wrong way on moral questions, and I don’t see any reason to trust them in other things.”

And here we are back at the beginning, where he felt betrayed that he was wrong about something (now—as in most cases with philosophy—with a moral question) and feels he cannot rely on our “natural impulses”, our unexamined judgements, which is where philosophy starts, when we don’t know our way about and turn to reflect. Except in Descartes’ abstraction, there is no particular situation, no point of disagreement or loss as to what to do about a particular case, in a context, at a time. So he just takes his disappointment with the moral realm (where we may or may not agree) and doubts everything. So far that has actually led to uncover by reflection the criteria and conditions which are “trustworthy as the natural light”, but there remains his anxiety that God may still be deceiving us. “I can never be quite certain.”

I’ve only gotten to the 10th paragraph of the 3rd meditation. I’ll keep going and see if I find it.

@Janus @Srap Tasmaner @Manuel @frank

I don't understand how reference to "the activities, practices, judgments, etc. which are ingrained into us, unreflected upon" relates to the use of the "I" in Descartes' speech. — Paine

You’d have to show me where in the Descartes. My quote you are commenting after is in response to Descartes paragraph starting “Among my ideas, some seem to be innate”, but I do not see him making the point about our self (“I”) as above.

—Edit: I see now what you might be getting at. When I say “society” or “cultural” or “conformity” they are a catch-all which includes our lives over thousands of years which have attuned into what I am describing as “the activities, practices, judgments, etc. which are ingrained into us, unreflected upon", which I am reading Descartes to echo. But I will leave my original response below.—

If you are responding to my interpretation of his assertion of his self, I would not say it is connected to my interpretation of Descartes describing thought as a list of activities (in the 2nd Med.) other than I take thought, not as a given, continually-occurring brain activity (like talking to yourself, or, as you say “something that is always there”) which some take that he then notices and concludes that, because of our self-awareness, he must be something, but that, as he says, “while” he is asserting something—which I take as a sense of what “thinking” is, as an activity, in this case, asserting (what I argue is in relation to our culture)—then he is manifesting his self, thus: “I think. I am.”, to be understood as “[[b]while[/b]] I think [i.e., assert myself], I am [me].” I realize now that asserting yourself is not just in aversion to society or culture but can also be to be with society, as an act of, say, accepting expectations as your own duty, to define one’s self. Thank you for the opportunity to clarify.

I have the same doubts about how this relates to Wittgenstein in the comment that I raised before and encounter a new one when you mention 'Theology as Grammer" — Paine

I don’t think it is appropriate here to get into a side argument about what Wittgenstein is doing, instead of just focusing on what I take Descartes to be doing in the spirit of a non-metaphysical inquiry as Wittgenstein did. That said, I take this reference to be to this comment:

By speaking of an ‘indescribable part of myself which cannot be pictured by the imagination', it seems to me that Descartes is pointing at something that is always there but is not understood. In the Third Meditation, Descartes says he needs the existence of God to find grounds for its relation to all of his activities. That seems the opposite approach of Wittgenstein, who describes our use of language to show what it is for us. — Paine

It would be easier if you spelled a few things out for me. I’m not sure where/if Descartes does make the claim about needing God; I do take Wittgenstein as going through examples to show something, but I take that as, partly, that there is different grammar for each example so not just one way the world (thus language) works, so I don’t know what you mean that he is showing “what it is for us”—is “it” language? Language is different for us than God?—And then how is what you take as Descartes’ need for God related to what you are taking Wittgenstein to show us? That Descartes needs certainty (perfection) to communicate where “for us”, i.e., “our use of language” is different? And, as I don’t understand Wittgenstein’s theology as grammar quote, I don’t know what you are saying about that.

Consider the different way thinking is being observed by the two philosophers. At the very least, would you not acknowledge a difference between the "I" that observes the thinking activity as an immediate event by Descartes and something like this from Wittgenstein?: — Paine

Again, it would be much easier if you told me what you take the difference to be, or at least what the “something like this” illustrates about the way Wittgenstein views thinking (though only to illuminate the Descartes). From what I think I understand, I take “the thinking activity as an immediate event” just to be self-awareness, and not “thinking”, and that Descartes’ description of thinking as an activity is more like Wittgenstein’s understanding of thinking (thus why animals can do it, PI #25, in the sense of, e.g., problem-solving; or that we can do it, in the sense of considering (getting a new pen), without talking to ourselves #327-332).

@Paine @Janus @Srap Tasmaner @Manuel

I continue, into the 2nd meditation, to assert that “perceiving” and “perception” is not a natural brain process that needs to be explained, but the activity of coming to consciously understand the ordinary criteria and conditions that something “consists of”, thus, when Descartes says “whatever I perceive very clearly and distinctly is true” I take it that, when we are able to clearly and distinctly uncover the criteria and conditions of something, we understand how something is deemed to be “true”; what set of characteristics (criteria) it is logically necessary to conform or align with or be consistent or faithful to; what “truth” is (consists of) in this instance.

Edit: “my understanding of what a thing is, what truth is, and what thought is, derive purely from my own nature, which means that it is innate”

To say that: how something will be deemed true, such as a royal succession or an apology; what makes up a “thought”—thoughtful, thought out; or tells what is essential to us about a “thing”—what kind of object anything is, Wittgenstein will say, PI #373, which is revealed by what he terms “grammar”: the terms of the possibilities of something, Id. #90. (As an aside, he just after characterizes this connection as “Theology as Grammar”, which I have never been able to figure out.)—to say that these “understandings” are innate, arise from my own nature, is to point to something within us, that we are born with, or into, as are Plato’s forms. My answer to this are the activities, practices, judgments, etc. which are ingrained into us, unreflected upon—what we would consider “natural”—as a member of a culture.

I am not making claims about what you are calling our “ordinary perception”, which I take as our habitual unexamined lives. I disagree that science or “philosophy” (as you see it) are “more reflexive and considerate” than the examination of our regular criteria for judgment about identity, completion, exemptions, etc. Drawing out the standards and conditions of what something “consists in”, as Descartes says, examines and describes what we do rather than creating explanations (and abilities or processes) that fit our desire for certainty (which I argue is the birth of the metaphysical).

When I claim that Descartes’ “perceiving” is not a natural ability or brain process but is more like an activity, I mean like an analysis, an effort that we are in the habit of doing but that we can, nevertheless, reflect upon, be “puzzled by”. When I say like pointing or negotiating, I mean in the sense of a learned behavior, like “seeing” (which is like recognizing, identifying) compared to the faculty of vision. The “tremendous amount of stuff… going on behind the most trivial acts” is the history of human life and our growing up and being indoctrinated into these cultural activities. You learn (even if simply following others’ lead) how to “point”, how to “see”, how to “perceive”, as you learn how to apologize, thank, and promise, all together as the habits that Descartes is trying to pick apart, because we can reflect on our behavior and uncover the conditions and criteria that make up our practices.

@frank @Paine @Janus @Srap Tasmaner

You can attempt to do an epistemological take, without the metaphysics and argue, that in "vulgar" (or ordinary) life, many of these objects are confused and unclear, but when we go into a scientific/philosophical perspective, our ideas of these objects become clearer and more distinct. — Manuel

I’m using “ordinary” in its sense of: not special, not as: unexamined; it is in contrast to creating clarity by abstraction from any context or regular criteria and requiring only the certainty of logic or science. But we are just as capable of precision and rigorous analysis of our ordinary criteria as a “philosophical” perspective. The wish for philosophy to have science-like conclusions is to cover for, or hide from, our messy, vulgar lives and so sets aside “people” and creates the metaphysical, whether it’s the mind or “advanced brain processes”. Descartes is actually saying that our first impression from our senses, say vision, is not as clear as when we uncover the criteria and conditions for, say, the activity of seeing—the inferences we make, the reasons that matter to us for doing it.

without a mind, perception alone amounts for very little. — Manuel

I am claiming that—although it seems natural to assume—perceiving here is not a natural ability or brain function, but an activity like pointing, or negotiating (which is a critical differentiation, not terminological), and that “perception” is seeing what something “consists” of, it’s conditions and criteria, as Descartes did with the wax.

the mind/brain is the organ we use to judge and identify things, while adding the qualifier that it is people that judge and think, and not minds, — Manuel

The brain allows for vision, which gives us information; but we are trained (or pick up how) to identify objects ( say, apart from identifying colors)—to use criteria to judge a goldfinch from a robin, a rock from a turtle. Think of making an error in identifying an object; now did you judge wrong, or did your “brain” make a mistake? And what really is it to “identify things”? We don’t always identify things. We don’t need to. So there are certain conditions, contexts, where we only can be “identifying things”. Looking for the right cereal box? Trying to determine the genus of a new species? Do I take an apple as an apple? Every time?

giving an epistemological reading of his account can be fruitful” — Manuel

I’m not limiting my claims to epistemology; Descartes is discussing ontology (what is and is not, and how), existentialism (the creation of a self), ethics (creation of a better self). I’m just reading him as not giving metaphysical answers.

@Manuel@Janus@frank@Paine@Srap Tasmaner

“But although my perception of [the ball of wax] seemed to be a case of vision and touch and imagination, it isn’t so and it never was. Rather, it is purely a perception by the mind alone – formerly an imperfect and confused one, but now clear and distinct because I am now concentrating carefully on what the wax consists in…”

Well, attempting a non-metaphysical reading here will require some imagination and leniency. Some might say I am inserting what I want into the text, or stretching what is obviously not the case. But if there is the possibility that Descartes’ terms need not necessarily be read as metaphysical, then isn’t that the imposition of a framework (even by Descartes), and in the face of textual evidence of an alternative?

I take Descartes as recognizing that the history of identifying objects, finding characteristics, following the extension of possibilities, etc., in short, our whole lives of interwoven activities, are the conditions for “perceiving” this as a ball of wax; that the wax does not “consist“ as a body (object) but in these non-sensory, non-physical criteria and conditions.

Yes, he calls it “perception by the mind alone”, however, we can still say in a sense we only realize and “see”—as an activity apart from the brain’s sensory vision—this as a ball of wax by the ordinary criteria we judge “makes up” or matter to us about a ball of wax, or a thing to throw at someone, or an adhesive for a poster to a wall, etc. and not “perception” as a mental process like vision or requiring “mind” to be an object, rather than our (and our shared) means of judgment and identification.

“When the wax is in front of us, we say that we see it, not that we judge it to be there from its colour or shape; and this might make me think that knowledge of the wax comes from what the eye sees rather than from the perception of the mind alone. But this is clearly wrong, as the following example shows. If I look out of the window and see men crossing the square, as I have just done, I say that I see the men themselves, just as I say that I see the wax; yet do I see any more than hats and coats that could conceal robots? I judge that they are men.” Emphasis added.

And here is the example that makes it clear that “seeing” and “judging” are activities and not sensations or another faculty wherein we recognize an “object” or an essence or thing-in-itself (the “themselves”). As in the Theatetus, having something be visible to us does not equate to our knowledge of “it”. Austin cleverly makes this point by showing the ordinary ways in which we could be mistaken in applying our criteria to judge a case from seeing hats and coats.

And the fear of not being certain crops up again in the precipice he imagines in not having any metaphysical “themselves” (itself) taking it as far as the fantasy that we judge that the other is not human, or, less cataclysmically, not to be considered, not worth empathy for their pain (rather than certain knowledge). But he is realizing that our ordinary criteria for judgment are enough without metaphysical abstraction, thus that we can conclude these are people from only hats and coats.

Is that line [between asking and pressuring] particularly clear? Isn't this exactly the sort of thing people very often disagree about? — Srap Tasmaner

We are, of course far afield here, but, that people can disagree about it, does not mean that they ordinarily (“very often”) do, nor that the conditions and criteria are not there to make explicit (the grounds for inteligibility, rationality) in relation to the context of this particular case we draw out as necessary to show the confusion or what makes this an exception.

([the conditions] "Allowing"??? [for requesting]) — Srap Tasmaner

Allowing is here in the sense of the opportunity for. To ask for something meaningfully, the situation has to be appropriate. The conditions would be like the Kantian categorical requirements (except for each activity).

And sure we can use language lazily if we like, but beating a nail in with a screwdriver doesn’t make it a hammer. — Antony Nickles

But this is odd. It takes considerable effort for Descartes to achieve the degree of abstraction he does in his reasoning, to extract himself from everyday ways of thinking. Doesn't look like laziness. — Srap Tasmaner

My point was not to define the motivation, but to carry the point that generalizing can be useful, or thoughtless, etc. In Descartes case, as I have discussed, it is the result of his desire for certainty.

Recognizing that the screwdriver will do is not laziness, here, but insight, achieved by abstracting, and by flouting the rules about how tools ought to be used. — Srap Tasmaner

The insight is not “achieved by abstracting”—which is the removal from context and the associated ordinary criteria in place of a generalization, to which we then can impose our desire for certainty projecting an “ought” that we can achieve if we just follow predetermined “rules”—but from the “possibilities” of tools, including their open-endedness to solve problems, which comes from familiarity, thus why carpentry is an apprenticeship and not mostly explicit knowledge.

To attempt to get back on track, my claim here is that Descartes’ focus on the possibilities of thinking as various activities tells us more, and creates a clearer framework, than the abstraction of “thinking” as a process of a metaphysical self (brain, mind), which he avoids in—among other evidence I have discussed—acknowledging that he only “exists” as apart from the pull of society, while thinking. If that is unclear, I have walked through the text above in multiple posts.

Affirming or doubting are acts with very specific criteria done in particular situations, just like asking, or thanking.
— Antony Nickles

How specific? Is there not more than one way of asking? Of thanking? Of affirming or doubting? Are there not specific sorts of specificity? How finely must we chop experience before the spectre of generality has been sufficiently warded off? — Srap Tasmaner

If generalizing haunts us, it’s in connection with removing anything specific to something’s ordinary context, such as “experience”. Used without there being anything extraordinary, it looses its ability to differentiate that is a hallmark of its being brought up. Your history may give you a different perspective, as might undergoing something distinctive (no one will ask about your experience of breakfast, unless you, say, went to a new Dim Sum restaurant), but general experience is categorically unremarkable, unless you have your head in a book.

And, as any lawyer knows, speaking generally may be more appropriate than detailing every instance, but just because I can plead, cajole, call in a favor, etc. and call them all “asking” doesn’t make the conditions allowing for a request to be any less specific nor the criteria for judging the line where it becomes pressuring any less clear. And sure we can use language lazily if we like, but beating a nail in with a screwdriver doesn’t make it a hammer.

@frank @Manuel @Janus

The "always there" I pointed to refers to the "thinking thing" being there when we pay attention to it. — Paine

What I should have said was that it is not an ordinary “thing” (given, constant, observable), and that the characteristics (criteria) of this “thinking” type of thing are not those of an object. It only exists “while” we are thinking, and is feared to go away if we stop. “I exist—that is certain. But for how long? For as long as I am thinking. For it could be that were I totally to cease from thinking, I should totally cease to exist.”

I think Descartes is asking us to accept that the self is a thing despite not being imaginable or described the way other things are. — Paine

I don’t see evidence of that request and interpreting what I do see that way is jumping to a conclusion. Descartes wants to have a certain constant self, but is honest enough to stop short of assuming that.

Seeing the act of thinking as a list of activities does not reflect the problem of description that I commented upon upthread. By speaking of an 'indescribable part of myself which cannot be pictured by the imagination', it seems to me that Descartes is pointing at something that is always there but is not understood. — Paine

Or we could take what he says on its face as stating a fact. Cottingham’s translation is “But I still can’t help thinking that bodies – of which I form mental images and which the senses investigate – are much more clearly known to me than is this puzzling ‘I’ that can’t be pictured in the imagination.” The self cannot be pictured because it is not a body. He is saying it is “indescribable” and “puzzling” not to spur us to try harder to, say, solve the puzzle of describing it, but to say categorically it is not a thing to be described because it is not a thing (“that is always there”). It is not conversely a thing that is not here, something incorporeal. We could say the self is mythical. We are a work in progress (or not), but not a given constant. We are an open question. It is puzzling because it is not how we would reflexively picture it (want to have it be in order for it to be known, and with certainty), that we are still on the way to a new way of thinking of ourselves.

So Descartes has identified himself as “a thinking thing”. But @Paine’s concern is legitimate; if I am to say thinking is not our inner dialogue nor awareness, then what is it? Descartes will ask the same thing:

“A thing that thinks. What is that? A thing that…
doubts almost everything,
understands some things,
affirms this one thing – namely, that I exist and think,
denies everything else,
wants to know more,
refuses to be deceived,
imagines many things involuntarily, and
is aware of others that seem to come from the senses?
…These activities are all aspects of my thinking, and are all inseparable from myself.
…what is called ‘sensing’ is strictly just this seeming, and when ‘sensing’ is understood in this restricted sense of the word it too is simply thinking.” 2nd Meditation (bold added)

I have broken the text to line up the “activities” to show the similarity to Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations:

“… the speaking of language is part of an activity…
Review the multiplicity… in the following examples, and in others:
Giving orders, and obeying them—
Describing the appearance of an object, or giving its measurements-
Constructing an object from a description (a drawing)—
Reporting an event—
Speculating about an event—…
Forming and testing a hypothesis—
Presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams—
Making up a story; and reading it—
Play-acting—
Singing catches—
Guessing riddles—
Making a joke; telling it—
Solving a problem in practical arithmetic—
Translating from one language into another—
Asking, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying.” Philosophical Investigations, #23 (bold added)

Wittgenstein will show that whether these activities are being done or not is not equated with an intention or other “mental process” but that we simply judge if the movement or action has met the criteria or standards for each thing and then we would say it is that activity.

So, for Descartes, thinking consists of the activities “doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wants, refuses, and also imagines and senses.” These are not metaphysical processes in our head that we picture like our inner dialogue or our attention to this or the other, or some brain function. Affirming or doubting are acts with very specific criteria done in particular situations, just like asking, or thanking.

That continuity of thinking [that “thinking” is our internal dialogue and/or awareness] is clearly central to the meditation and a source of concern. I don't understand what you mean by saying it is "separate from his internal dialogue or awareness." I think Descartes is linking those activities together. — Paine

Yes, that is the assumption of the bulk of the interpretation of the Meditations, but Descartes has not clearly parsed out exactly what he is referring to (lumping it all together in a sense). Also, in looking at it as categorically open, the characteristics he is attributing to it allow for what I am suggesting, and there is clearly evidence in the text. As well as what I’ve mentioned so far, he is concerned that “what he is calling thinking” might stop and then he would cease to “exist”, not the other way around (that he would, what, die? (or whatever the opposite of metaphysically “existing” is) and thus stop talking to himself; not very profound of him).

I think I am attempting to claim that it is unnecessary to restrict Descartes to simply painting a metaphysical world of “existence”, “mind”, and “thinking” (despite his lack of care not to appear so). I believe he is more relevant than to be saddled with that legacy. We could take him to be describing the criteria for what we would judge as “thinking” as individuation from society or investigating rigorously or the like, as Wittgenstein or the later Heidegger will see it as (which may or may not interest @Banno). This possibility, of course, remains to be seen, but I have at least found it fruitful and justified so far.

“[ T ]hought! This is the one thing that can’t be separated from me. I am, I exist – that is certain. But for how long? For as long as I am thinking. But perhaps no longer than that; for it might be that if I stopped thinking I would stop existing; …Still, I am a real, existing thing. What kind of a thing? I have answered that: a thinking thing.”

It is noteworthy that one of his criteria is trying to “separate” things from himself, and so not just about doubt and certainty, but wanting a kind of inseparableness, as if it wouldn’t be taken away, or lost. And so he has shunned the world (and his own body), as it were, first, before it fails him.

But he is afraid he will only exist for now, while he is thinking; as if he is not always thinking, that it is a particular act, separate from his internal dialogue or awareness. And, if he stops, he will slide back into the pull of habit and conformity and fail to exist apart from everyone else.

Imagining that his internal dialogue is caused by something (certain), and being assured of the certainty of his self by his ability to convince himself that nothing is certain, he continues:

“let [the Deceiver] deceive me all he can, he will never bring it about that I am nothing while I think I am something. So… I conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, must be true whenever I assert it or think it.”

I think it is important to ask what the role is of “the deceiver”. Such a specific choice of words; when I am “deceived” it is because I was going along thinking I was fine (right in my knowledge of the truth), sure and certain of myself, when the rug is pulled out from under me and it turns out I was mistaken, but more than that, that I was wrong all along, had been asleep, thus I am angry enough to point a finger outward, not that I had simply failed to examine what I “assent” to with sufficient deliberateness, but that I was told I was right, as if the wool was pulled over my eyes, trained into our culture and its common criteria and opinions. And I feel betrayed, that what I believed in was nothing, that I was gaslit and feel a little insane as if someone stole something important from me, because my opinions are my identity, so maybe I am nothing.

But Descartes claims “I am something”; he “asserts” his existence. Without any standard, or basis, or justification; in the face of the betrayal of society, in defiance to it. Later, alluding to this, Emerson in Self Reliance will say “Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say 'I think,' 'I am'” (After saying, “Whence, then, this worship of the past? The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul.”) He will call “conformity” what Descartes says is “the habit of confidently assenting”. Descartes continues “My old familiar opinions keep coming back, and against my will they capture my belief. It is as though they had a right to a place in my belief-system as a result of long occupation and the law of custom.” His “assertion” is not a statement that can be (true or) false; it is “true” whenever he asserts it (“while I think I am”). It is not true because it conforms to a state of affairs or is right; it is the act of the legitimate authority, the one with the right that was “as though they had”, but which is his. Thus the self is not a given continuous thing, but an act.

…you cannot be incorrect that you seem to sense something… is really what Descartes means when he says that we can doubt, but that we cannot doubt that we are doubting (or think or feel, but not doubt that we are thinking or feeling). — Janus

I don’t think I’ve got to the part where he says that yet.

Pain and other sensations such as pleasure are unique in this context. If I feel pain or pleasure, it makes no sense to say that I doubt that I am feeling pain or pleasure; what could it even mean to say I doubt that I am feeling some sensation that I am feeling? — Janus

Touché; you have me there (I take this as similar to Wittgenstein’s remarks). But there is also not a context where it is meaningful to say that I am “certain” that I am in pain (unless someone else thought I was making more of something), and it is for this certainty that Descartes is searching (math-like knowledge, not just, resolved or really sure).

I am not really saying that our sensations are certain; since they are not propositional, they are neither certain nor uncertain, they are merely sensations, although what we infer on the basis of them can be certain or uncertain. — Janus

Well this distinction seems to matter. So we can be unaware of our sensations, but, if aware, not doubt them, yet be wrong about sensing something (or in denial), but not certain (other than that we do sense something), then it is our judgment which could be correct or certain. But I see or feel something but I don’t know what it is; sometimes we call this being tricked by our senses, other times because of inexperience.

Well, I’ll continue on (if there is nothing else @frank?) As discussed previously, in Para. 2 of the Second Meditations Descartes accepts that nothing is certain, not our sensations. nor being awake; that everything is “fiction” and “illusion” (rather than accept how we ordinarily judge the correctness of our senses, or the different criteria for the judgments involving our sensations). Though some will continue to try to find a way in which our sensations or bodies are certain (@Janus), that could not avail us anyway, as there is no connection between how our senses (or any of science) could be the basis for true or certain customs and opinions anyway, which is the point of the Meditations. Descartes pushes forward in search of something that cannot be doubted, that is perfectly certain.

Taking Descartes’ advice that it is a placeholder—that we should “call [it] what [we] will”—I’ll skip over bringing up God and phrase what he says as a MacGuffin (as if it doesn’t matter what it is): “Isn’t there [something that] gives me the thoughts I am now having? But why do I think this, since I might myself be the author of these thoughts?” (@Paine might have an answer for this why.)

Setting aside for the moment his assumption (premise), taken generally, that there is a cause for my internal dialogue (outside or inside), he says “But then doesn’t it follow that I am, at least, something?” (interestingly, on par with that “something”—the cause—as it were: created in the “image” of God). When he says “doesn’t it follow” it makes me think of the necessity of a logical argument; this “follow” is a must with the force of certainty he is looking for: there is a cause; it can be internal; the thing that I am is that cause.

There is not only that logical necessity, but he takes his ability to secure doubt about everything as something certain. “So what remains true? Perhaps just the one fact that nothing is certain!” And his skeptical conviction becomes another basis of the self. ”if I convinced myself of something then I certainly existed.” And the conclusion is usually taken to be that I exist, but the point is clearly the “certainty” which I can have about this; put differently, he does not start to prove the existence of the self, but to “prove” anything, to be certain in any regard. He has merely retreated to here.

I don't think this [ that Descartes is demonizing the inherent fallibility of our human condition ] captures the significance of Descartes using the motif of an evil demon during his experiment upon himself. In a time when people were executed for witchcraft, demanding that a 'good' god would not deliberately deceive us separates the realm of the created from the problem of sin. — Paine

I take you as saying that Descartes is creating the role of the deceiver so that it won’t be thought he is speaking ill of God (if God was claimed to be the deceiver). And so, perhaps, our sin (doubt, uncertainty) does not blemish the perfection of God’s creation. I would add that the original sin is not deception but knowledge, it being thought to make us aware of, and able to address, everything in the world. But I also see the political point you are making about skirting the line between analyzing the theological-philosophical history without being accused of heresy.

We cannot be wrong about consciously feeling pain. — Janus

And you say I must be right if I am conscious, which I take as not just conscious in the sense that I am awake, but “conscious of”, in that I am aware of the pain, which is a kind of knowing. But we can be suffering and not know it (be unaware), such as when we are in denial, but it is clear to our friends, or when I am cold but I focus on something else.

But it is exactly the feeling that we cannot be wrong—here importantly in the sense that I must know, and know with certainty (the version of know as: correctly)—that is why sensation was picked first by Descartes as foundational. And pain is the traditional example because of its stark, vibrant, seeming self-evidence; as: if I don’t know my pain, what do I know?

People tie themselves in knots with theories about the science of sensation and the brain, but, here, for Descartes, the actual mechanics and logic of sensation do not matter because it does not meet his requirement for certainty. I can either be incorrect that I sense something (“You’re not shot this time!” Or “It’s just a mirage!”) or mistaken in my judgment of what I sense (“You’re not angry, you’re jealous.” or “Whew, that felt like a spider!”), but, ultimately, I can deceive myself, be mistaken, or uncertain, and that will not do for Descartes as a foundation for our opinions. And, regardless, the doubt of our connection to the outside world (in the example of dreaming) eclipses what we feel or don’t or whether we are correct about it.

The issue I am highlighting is that it's not clear senses alone give us any knowledge, without an intellectual component… the problem is in the way we judge what the senses "say"… provide "data", which is only such because of the intellect, otherwise, senses seem to lack mind.

It is in this specific context that senses are "sparks", as we will see when we get to Descartes observation about what literally hits the eye, as opposed to what we immediately interpret. — Manuel

Ah, I see. Or, I am unfamiliar enough with all that to retract characterizing your use of the word, nor to offer much help on what happens between sensation and anything else (although Wittgenstein does say we go too far in trying to get between our sensations and our expression of them, PI #245). I can only say that Descartes at this point appears to believe they do not fulfill the requirement he has set: to preclude doubt. If I would predict his next step, it would be that the separation of sensation from that-which-could-be-deceived (“intellect”) would only be to maintain the integrity of our senses while controlling the framework by which we are deceived, to structure our failing.

In other words, in the Theatetus Socrates first postulated that our senses gave us the criteria (measure) for knowledge, but abandoned that picture simply because our senses can be wrong, or not generalizable from person to person. Of course it remains to be seen how and thus why we need to posit an “intellect” rather than training our expression of, say, being cold, to language.

He is looking for a foundation in order to have the certainty he needs to conquer doubt. — Antony Nickles

I don't think so. — Fooloso4

Well you seem to think you understand what I’m trying to say and just flatly disagree. I’d leave it at that, however,

Descartes is a careful writer. He is a central figure in Western philosophy. He did not gain that reputation by getting lost. If someone is lost it is not him. — Fooloso4

this is uncalled for in this kind of forum. If you want to believe Descartes or Plato or Kant never made a mistake, feel free, but there is no cause to mock me. I will accept an apology if you care to discuss any other subject.

Is anything found that does not come, ultimately, from the senses? — Janus

Descartes skips over all our practices to ask whether we can trust our senses not because they are the birth (spark @Manuel says) of everything—imagine apologizing, or justice—but because we imagine we can’t be wrong about them. We think: If I am in pain, I must know it, and know it without a doubt. But we can repress it, and even to where it doesn’t register (now imagine anger, remorse, prurient curiosity—will we say we can’t be unaware now?) But the point is not that we can doubt it, but that he is looking around for something to hold that place.

You seem to be arguing that we should not take what he says literally, but you go on to object to the idea that there is a rhetorical aspect. — Fooloso4

Literally was the wrong word. When I said we should not read him simply at face-value, I meant we should not just take him to be making explicit everything we can learn.

Why does he need certainty? Because, as I also said, he is looking to established a foundation. — Fooloso4

He is looking for a foundation in order to have the certainty he needs to conquer doubt. You’re assuming he’s a reliable narrator. What he’s telling you he’s doing is not the whole picture.

we are to understand him, we should not begin by rejecting what he sets out to do. — Fooloso4

But surely to understand a philosopher is not just to get to the point where we understand the words and the sentences and can follow along with what they say? I am not rejecting what he sets out to do; I’m analyzing how he gets lost along the way because of what he wants from it.

I’ll let you move the discussion forward at your leisure Frank, as it is your thread. It does appear we
may have not worked out all the issues brought up in the first part.

It is a meditation, not a crisis of doubt. He has waited to do this meditation until he was able to set aside the time to withdraw from the practical concerns of daily life. It is in that sense a practice of abstraction. — Fooloso4

If we take philosophy literally and at face value, we are not putting it in contrast to the rest of the tradition, nor questioning why he has chosen this method, why he needs certainty.

The fact that Descartes “withdraws from the practical concerns of daily life” is not only the cause of the abstraction, it is motivated by the desire for abstraction, to be apart from our human life, its uncertainty. However, in doing so, we no longer have our ordinary concerns, so we can impose the criteria for whatever concerns us most, which is to be certain.

We seem to be bound by habits of belief, so that even if you decided to doubt everything you know, you'd find yourself "pulled back into the old ways." — frank

Descartes tendency is to “slide back into my old opinions” just as Hume’s doubt would recede when he went to the bar, because we do have a “memory” (as Socrates would say) of our shard lives and judgments. I would argue that without those there is no action, no meaning, no concerns, no way to have a self, at all.

I think you have mistaken a rhetorical device for something existential. — Fooloso4

What we are told is not the only important part of philosophy. Philosophy is not about undeveloped summaries or condensed conclusions. We, like Descartes, must ask more of the text. So I do not take anything as “rhetorical” but take it seriously enough to attribute reasons for everything, implications, assumptions, motivations, blind spots, frameworks, analogies, etc. But these are not my guesses or just reading more (putting more) into a text; I supply evidence for these lines of implication. I offer you to see for yourself, or offer other answers to these open questions, other reasons for why he said this or that, said it this way or that.

The Second Meditation:

“I feel like someone who is suddenly dropped into a deep whirlpool that tumbles him around so that he can neither stand on the bottom nor swim to the top.”

Emerson starts his essay Experience lost “[ i ] n a series of which we do not know the extremes, and believe that it has none.” They are in surroundings with no form and no way to orient. The analogy is apt because Descartes has no specific subject, and so no context from where to start. The abstraction leads to a general response without the criteria of an ordinary circumstance, and so grasps for the criteria of perfection.

“I will suppose, then, that everything I see is fictitious. I will believe that my memory tells me nothing but lies. I have no senses. Body, shape, extension, movement and place are illusions.”

He goes on to create the picture that our human faculties are the problem: that our sight creates fiction, our memory lies, and our sensations are illusions. Framing it on ordinary terms like dream, illusion, fiction, and lies gives us understandable ways of making it right: to awaken (pay attention), find what is not fake, sort out the facts, and authenticate. Unfortunately, Descartes, and everyone thereafter, takes the judgment of what the solution needs to be away from these ordinary contexts, and so postulates consciousness, reality, factual basis, and truth vs falsity (rather than mistake).

Well, he does posit a demon but I do not think he is demonizing our fallibility — Fooloso4

This seems to be splitting hairs. I think we can agree he’s not actually claiming there’s a demon. I welcome your reading, but I am claiming he is externalizing that he is demonized (afraid), that his ability to have a clear path through our culture and customs is fraught. He is afraid that we are unable to tell right from wrong; that the human condition is unfounded.

but he does not argue that this is reason for panic or a vortex of irrationality. Quite the opposite, it is reason to find something indubitable and build on that foundation. — Fooloso4

He is anxious that he might turn out to be wrong (“I was struck by how many false things I had believed”) or that he is not aware of, explicitly, the opinions he “confidently assents to”, that “keep coming back… as though they had a right to a place in my belief-system”—our ordinary beliefs. The reason to find a foundation is the fear, the lack of confidence, the unease of possibly being wrong.

he does have a very strong optimistic streak so far as the extent of human reason can go in attaining knowledge. — Manuel

The thing about Descartes, even Socrates, is that they do put the cart before the horse in wanting a specific type of knowledge (to solve our doubts) even before they get started, but in searching they do find a method that advances our ability to dig into a subject, even if they don’t get things right, or are barking up the wrong tree (such as imagining if we get clear about our sensations we will solve our moral dilemmas).

The crux of what I see is that Descartes is demonizing the inherent fallibility of our human condition.

I sometimes think that others go wrong even when they think they have the most perfect knowledge; — Descartes, First Meditation

Even in the best case scenario, even when required to be “perfect”, knowledge—predetermined, non-contextual, hoping to predict the right thing to do (“ought”)—is flawed in Descartes assessment.

But the less powerful they make my original cause, the more likely it is that I am so imperfect as to be deceived all the time – because deception and error seem to be imperfections. — Descartes, First Meditation

But we regularly fail, make mistakes, don’t assess the situation (act thoughtlessly) or do so not taking into account the other, etc. None of this is reason for panic or a vortex of irrationality. The possibility of error in our actions does not lead to the conclusion that all our efforts are hopeless. And not just “wrong” but seemingly for no reason, randomly, as if it could happen at any time without our being able to see it coming (thus, maliciously). This is the motivation of the desire to have the predictability and stability of science or math or our direct sensations, so that we can just follow the moral rules and never be wrong or judged.

there are some propositions which seem impossible to doubt without claiming insanity. How can I doubt that these are my hands? — frank

This is the bottom of a very long fall, so it seems absurd; and people take philosophy as esoteric, unpractical, and academic because they associate it with taking this worry seriously. But, as I said, it starts with the fear that we could be deceived in our cultural assumptions and societal norms. Another way to see this is that we might not know how to go on together at some point, that we might be judged wrong despite following orders, that the words we say might betray us. We are scared and anxious of, as it were, the future: uncertain, unpredictable outcomes.

Socrates will say that contradictory ideas “clash with each other in our soul” and Theatetus says that he “wonders immensely what these things are, and really sometimes I feel dizzy when I look at them.” Socrates says this “wonder” is the “origin of philosophy”. Descartes will also feel “dizzy” at the realization that there is no foundation whatsoever, not even as to whether I am awake. But the concern is for certainty in our opinions and customs, which are what he really wants to get straight about. We want knowledge to be as certain as the hands in front of our face; we don’t doubt our hands, we doubt that knowledge will save us at all.

Antony, what would you conclude the object of his project is? — frank

Of course we’re just getting started, so conclusions are premature.

Is [Descartes’ object] to withhold assigning truth to anything that isn't certain in the way the conclusion of a mathematical proof is? Or is he putting aside his certainty for the sake of reexamining foundations? — frank

I will say that I think he started wanting to investigate what is normally unexamined; the hidden judgments and assumptions of our society (as he says, the “law of custom and habitual opinions”), as most of philosophy attempts to reflect on—ourselves embedded in our culture. But he floats away from an actual inquiry of instances of practices in the situations in which they happen, into an abstracted world encompassing every claim in every context. He jumps “straight for the basic principles on which all my former beliefs rested.” Plato makes the same mistake early on in the Theatetus when he skips over examples of knowing things to look for what knowledge is “itself” and then moves to theories of knowledge in the abstract, universally, like math.

Descartes’ skipping over our ordinary examples of knowledge to try to be certain about something more “foundational” is not because “going through them one by one… would take forever”. He is worried about being deceived about our major concerns of custom and opinion, the “many false things [he] had believed”, like morality, politics—the things we are more uncertain about. It is fear that makes him want to start with something he seemingly can’t not know, his senses and his awareness of himself.

It might help to examine the assumptions and conclusions he makes as he goes along.

“ I should also withhold it from ones that are not completely certain and indubitable.”

His criteria to assent to a truth is certainty and absence of doubt. Of course his ideal is a mathematical certainty. Wittgenstein later will show that this requirement is why philosophy overlooks our ordinary criteria for every different thing we do.

“the visions that come in sleep are like paintings: they must have been made as copies of real things; so at least these general kinds of things – eyes, head, hands and the body as a whole – must be real and not imaginary.”

He begins to account for our doubt by taking our most direct, best-case scenario, sensations, and concluding that we must make “copies”, which can then be mistaken, without undermining the possibility of something certain, which he creates and abstracts as what is “real” (as Plato did with the Forms). Which leads to a picture such as:

much of what we call reality is human projection based on our limited perspective. From this 'dimly lit' vantage point I generally hold that I (or any of us) don't have enough information or wisdom to make reliable judgements about the nature of reality. — Tom Storm

“yet clearly I sometimes am deceived.”

So in contrast, everything else is subject to doubt, or, to put it another way, possible failure, mistakes, error, thoughtlessness, hurt, tragedy, etc. As well, it is framed in a way that someone is deceiving him; in a sense, either God or himself. As if it weren’t a regular occurrence, but malicious, intentional, out of the ordinary.

“On their view [that God does not exist], then, I am a product of fate or chance or a long chain of causes and effects.”

He tries to give up on the idea of an “all-powerful” God, but, rather than accept uncertainty in the world, he assumes there are other forces of which I am the “perfect” product.

“I don’t reach this conclusion [that doubt can be raised about anything] in a flippant or casual manner, but on the basis of powerful and well thought-out reasons.”

I think most interesting is there is a sort of admission that this desire for certainty is driving the form of his answers; that it is “powerful”, like a basic human need, but he takes it as a validation or badge of honor rather than as a unexamined forced criteria.

“But if I go on viewing them in that light I shall never get out of the habit of confidently assenting to [the law of custom and habitual opinions].”

Again, almost as a throwaway sentence, he reveals something more interesting. It is the habitual assent that he is actually trying to throw off, and he makes the assumption that these are errors and uncertainties, to which the contrast is perfection, truth, and certainty, rather than conscious assent, or it’s opposite, what Emerson calls aversion, or Thoreau would call dissent. He warns against “laziness” and to be “on guard” against the “pull” of conformity. That we will need courage to shake ourselves awake (say in the metaphorical sense of: unconscious assent to the social contract) and that there is some violence and struggle that we must throw ourselves into. Hegel will refer to this “darkness” as the “dark path” in the Phenomenology of Spirit, when we begin to take apart our dichotomies.

However, perhaps because he views dissent as crossing the rule of the church, he needs to be absolutely certain (to “counter-balance the weight of old opinion”) before defying the authority of the status quo (why he is in a sense “hiding”, as @Fooloso4 points out, his defiance). So maybe this is not just an epistemological treatise, but, hidden within, a political one.

“However far I go in my distrustful attitude, no actual harm will come of it, because my project won’t affect how I act, but only how I go about acquiring knowledge.”

I just want to point to Socrates discussion in the Meno of knowledge and action (virtue) as well as Wittgenstein’s uncovering that the desire for knowledge creates the excuse for our responsibility to act, or react to the other’s claim upon us. That, no, there may be harm in Descartes’ attitude.

The quote says “you’ll soon realise that other members of your species possess conscious selves like yours.” You are resorting to cherry picking and omitting parts of the quote to try and contort it to fit your argument regarding a desire for uniqueness. — Luke

Well, if you don’t think writing can be paraphrased and drawn out at all it’s gonna be tough to do philosophy. If you think I’ve got it wrong, what do you think he is saying?

“You’ll come to believe, as never before, in your own singular significance. What’s more, it will not just be you. For you’ll soon realise that other members of your species possess conscious selves like yours.”

And when I say that, I’m not asking what you take from it, but to answer the open questions, such as: what do I believe? and how is it the same thing as before, only now more? What is it that could be mine, but yet also something others can have (“my own”)? And what will “not just be you”? That which I believe in? That I will not just believe in something that is mine, I will believe in something that is theirs? If so, what and how do I and they possess it? How is mine mine and theirs theirs but they are alike? How is theirs “like” mine?

The rest of the quote counters your claims:

You’ll come to believe, as never before, in your own singular significance. What’s more, it will not just be you. For you’ll soon realise that other members of your species possess conscious selves like yours.

This does not reflect a desire for uniqueness. — Luke

The implication of the sentence is that you also (along with me) will be unique, and I will respect that more: “You’ll come to believe… in your own singular significance. What’s more, it will not just be you [that you will come to believe is singularly significant]. For you’ll soon realize that other[ s are singularly significant too]. (Emphasis and paraphrasing mine.]

I don't see where you find that in the premises of the article, unless you are talking about the premises created within the history of philosophy that brought about the hard problem. — Luke

Yes, I am claiming that the article is working on (assuming) a certain framework that, yes, is trying to answer or overcome the conclusions of philosophical skepticism.

The article does not mention anything about a "desire for uniqueness" of the individual phenomenal self. — Luke

He does say: “With this marvelous new phenomenon at the core of your being, you’ll start to matter to yourself in a new and deeper way. You’ll come to believe, as never before, in your own singular significance”.

I wanted to say the same thing with “unique” as he is with “singular significance” though I take it as a fantasy created by our desire rather than a given state. I think I’ve made that as clear as I can.

What I take to be the main crux of the article is that the combination of different qualia create a sense of personhood; create me, my conscious self.

The example of blindsight demonstrates one aspect of this; that, although the person functions as a sighted person, without the qualia of sight, it doesn’t feel to them that those sighted functions belong to them. It was instead just some qualia-less physical processing that the person was unaware of, like their liver function.

If the same applied to all qualia, then there would be no sense of personhood. — Luke

I’ll let it go after this because I agree my point is not a critique of the crux of the article (rather, I would say, of its premises). We are all aware (or unaware), sense the world (or are numb to it), feel anger and sadness (or repress it), but what I sense and feel is not unable to be possessed by others, for them to “have” them. We are interested, traumatized, exalted—me by one thing, you by something different, remembering different things, perhaps differently, but not always different.

But it is no mistake that the “sense of personhood” is a “sense”. We want the criteria for a self to be continuous, specific, knowable, so we take as evidence the one thing we feel we cannot not know, awareness of sensation—this self-evident pain I am pierced with, undeniably, unavoidably—and add to that our desire for uniqueness (and control) and you have the individual phenomenal self, backwards engineered from, coincidently, the criteria for truth that philosophy has desired from the beginning.

You aren’t really aware of your feelings or sensations? — Luke

The trick is right in the space between feeling something, being aware of it (rather than suppressing it) and just before the jump to the conclusion that we have “consciousness”, more than “are conscious of”: as if it were pointed out, or we’re embarrassed into acknowledging it, or are touching something with a purpose, or suddenly notice the faint yet unmistakeable smell of bleach, or can’t seem to reach our grief. Part of it is the sense that these feelings, thoughts, sensations, must be “ours”, as if no one has ever been this heartbroken before; the fear that they are trivial, that the other can feel the same; as if I won’t “have” anything. Part of it is having the security that there is something of mine that I cannot be separated from, that knowing myself is at my fingertips (ugh), that, as you say, this at least is “given”.

Back to Humprey: “…what would be missing from your life if you lacked phenomenal consciousness? If you had blindsight, blind-touch, blind-hearing, blind-everything? Pace Fodor, I’m sure there’s an obvious answer, and it’s the one we touched on when discussing blindsight. It’s that what would be missing would be nothing less than you, your conscious self… imagine if you were to lack qualia of any kind at all, and to find that none of your sensory experience was owned by you? I’m sure your self would disappear.”

The stakes are certainly very high. As Descartes found, if we rely on anything else to build our sense of self, it can be taken away. Only if we “own” what is special about me (keep it inside) can I be ensured that my culture won’t minimize me, that others’ won’t define what is acceptable for me to be, that my actions won’t be judged to include implications I had not thought about, that I won’t just be identified by my suffering. As Wittgenstein’s nemesis says: “But surely another person can't have THIS pain!” (PI, #253) as if “this” were to mean: the same pain, the identical (unique) pain, when it is merely true because there are two bodies; this body and that one. In our case, he would put it that there is a difference in the criteria for the ownership of a self.

The section you quoted does not support your claim that the author’s goal is to “prove” that we each have an undeniable, given self. The fact that we have phenomenal consciousness is simply a given. — Luke

.

What I should have said is the need to explain or have knowledge of the purpose of “phenomenal consciousness” is to desire to solidify it, make it certain, understandable, important. To make it “factual”, say, as we feel the theory of evolution is.

I realize this is not the point of the article; I’m just trying to put its philosophical descriptions and claims in the context of the greater sphere of analytical philosophy. I’m saying that the assumption that we have “consciousness” is a misconception based on a desire to be certain that we matter. This, of course, is a broader discussion. I can let it be for another time.

”I am claiming that there is a reason he is imagining a “subjective experience”, the evidence being that he says it. That he wants it to be “explained” by a “mechanism” is not me “reading intentions”, it is the implications of his getting to his reason from those means.
— Antony Nickles

…this is actually terrible writing. Writing should narrow in on a point so the reader has clarity. — Philosophim

I am narrowly focused on his point that knowledge of the self will make us matter, and I am trying to show how the desire to matter creates the need for the certainty. Maybe I can help with something you’re not clear on.

He is right to use the terms and points he is so that even a reader not well versed in philosophy can understand his point. — Philosophim

But he does bring up Descartes; he does imagine these findings have philosophical import. Just because he doesn’t get into the place his claims stake in the history of philosophy doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be subject to its critique.

His lack of exploring Locke is not an intention we can fairly make. — Philosophim

I’m not saying there is a fault in not discussing Locke. I thought you might understand my point better in reviewing my response to Manuel’s bringing up Locke.

Critique his main conclusions, the idea of solving the hard problem. If he chooses to sprinkle meaning behind it, why is that relevant to his main point at all? It sounds like you're more upset with where you think this can go than with his immediate idea. — Philosophim

I’m not worried “where… this can go”. I’m saying it got started from a hidden desire and a misconception. Sometimes philosophy can’t be done so close in; this is how someone objecting to skepticism gets stuck trying to prove it wrong.

I feel your reading intentions into the article that are not being insinuated. I would re-read it once more. This is proposing a mechanism to explain how the subjective experience occurs within the brain. That's the crux and really nothing more. — Philosophim

I am claiming that there is a reason he is imagining a “subjective experience”, the evidence being that he says it. That he wants it to be “explained” by a “mechanism” is not me “reading intentions”, it is the implications of his getting to his reason from those means. The idea that there is “nothing more” is skipping over how this is set up from the history of philosophy. The “problem” is assumed without considering whether it is framed correctly (see post re Locke above).