Descartes famous epiphany "Cogito, ergo sum" stands as the end result of his titanic struggle against the ancient and unanswered query of the sceptic - How do you know what you claim to know? How do you know you are not being deceived? Descartes threw away all of his beliefs in order to peel away the deceptions and arrived at the very bedrock of his web of beliefs. The basic belief that he exists as a thinking being which cannot be doubted, for in order to doubt it there must be a thinking being that exists in order to doubt.

I think, therefore I am.

But, did he really answered the sceptic who stands guard at the gates of the Citadel? There have been all sorts of holes poked into that statement throughout the history of philosophy since, like - If only thinking beings exist, then rocks and other inanimate material does not exist. The thinker that falls asleep no longer exists until they wake up and think again. And so on. Still, it was an epic and monumental task to arrive at something, anything, that could beat the sceptic on their own turf.

Let me next switch gears for a moment and talk about the Sorites Paradox - the Argument of the Heap. In this paradox (usually associated with the philosophy of language and as a measure of the vagueness of terms and of the nature of language itself) the usual presentation of it is as follows:
You are beholding a heap of sand piled as high as your waist.
You take one grain of sand away.
Do you still have pile of sand?
(repeat until you have 1 grain of sand left - how can 1 grain be considered a "heap" or "pile"?)

One can of course build the argument the same way by counting up - 1 grain of sand is not a heap, nor is 2, but eventually there is enough sand to call it a "heap", and so forth.

When applying the paradox to language we can see that it measures the vagueness of terms and their exact meanings (or lack thereof). It uncovers in our thinking the way we describe our world through language and if/when language creates a mental construct which is then held as a representative example of X within the world. If I can apply the Sorites against a pile of sand in order to show that a "pile" of sand actually does not exist (however X number of sand grains in very close proximity at a certain time can exist), then I can also apply that sort of reasoning to descriptions such as "house", or "job", or "world", or even an "I".

Can you go through your typical day with a sort of "Sorites Spectacles" and see the differences between what can "exist" and what cannot "exist" with these glasses on? Similar to Wittgenstein's "Beetle in a Box" scenario with language, when we look at a "house" and communicate about a "house" there can be disagreement on what a "house" is versus what is being perceived. Mentally, we each have a different conception of a "typical" house. Visually/physically if we remove one room from the house with a wrecking ball we still have a house - and repeat until we no longer have any walls or a roof. At what point does the "house" exist or no longer exist?

Perhaps a bit unimportant, as the differences may revolve around minor adustments to definitions and so forth, but can there be instances where the heap completely changes the way the world can even be regarded either linguistically or cognitively? If a "house" can be re-arranged to the basic bundle of properties such as "A collection of atoms arranged in a certain way at the same time and endures in such a way that it alters and maintains different atmospheric conditions within the open spaces of its boundaries than what occurs outside the boundaries." In short, "house" is a convenient designator for that concept, a shortened description that is meant to cross the boundaries and constraints to another mind in order to communicate. (I realize that even the description "collection of atoms....etc" can have the Sorites applied to each of its elements as well and with various outcomes, but you get the drift).

Enter the Buddha, who states in "The Path" of the Dhammapada the following:
All created things are impermanent.
All the elements of Being are Non-Self.
He relates his version of "folk psychology" in which he outlines the skandhas which are the shifting and impermanent bundle of elements whose aggregate is called a personality, or "Self". For the Buddha - the "self", or "I", does not exist as his enlightenment contained the revelation that we are naught but a constantly changing collection of body parts, thoughts, emotions, perceptions, and sensations in a certain place and at a certain time and each element as well as the ever-changing aggregate endure only for a limited time. When taken together with the statement in the Dhammapada "All the elements of Being are Non-Self" we can see that the the Buddha denies the reality of "I" as it is set or bundle of properties only. It moves the concept of a self from a monolithic, concrete structure to the interaction of elements and actions which are not "self" or "I".

In short, the Buddha appears to have preceded Eubulides of Miletus in the invention of the Sorites by almost a century and that Buddhism in general (as a philosophy) seems to have taken the Sorites approach even further to the point of a sort of metaphysical litmus test of what can and what does not exist in an ontological way as well as what is and what is not a "convenient designator" as far as linguistic description goes. I note the word "appears" here with an earmark - we know that so much knowledge has been lost that we have no idea if Greek thought on the matter also took a similar approach. (At least I don't know as I am not an expert on pre-Socratic philosophers)

In Buddhist metaphysical philosophy, "Emptiness", or denial of the intrinsic reality or nature of things, is the same application of tearing apart all elements of a "thing" to search for its "thing-ness" and coming up empty, so to speak. Buddhist emptiness denies any essence, or nature, or intrinsic reality of things in the world. So, along with the "self", Buddhism denies true existence to just about anything and everything.

So, let me bring this back around to Descartes. If we rest assured that "I think, therefore I am" then our base is once again knocked out from underneath us as we have uncovered, thanks to the Buddha and Eubulides, that within that statement lies a hidden premise which appears to be false - that there is in fact an "I" that thinks. "I" is a shortened description of the collection of elements (whose relations constantly shift and change and come into and go out of existence as time passes) which is then represented with "I". Thinking is only one element of what is considered "I". Can my thinking happen without my form? Can my thinking happen without a perception or sensation or referent to start the thought? Does one only exist when one thinks? And what does "think" break down into for its elements?

Only one of those elements of "I" is brought to bear in Descartes epiphany - thinking and thought. Really what Descartes could only have said was "Thought, therefore thinking is." or "Thinking, therefore Thought is". I suspect that it would not allay the suspicion that, if there is a thinking being called "I", then how can I know I am not just a single, momentary thought that masquerades as a "being" for the briefest of moment that it takes for the thought to occur?

Minor quibble and variation? Maybe. But does that mean that the Buddha and the progeny of his philosophy actually answered the sceptics with an unassailable tenet that can withstand the same scrutiny which has felled Descartes answer? Was Eubulides on the path to "Enlightenment" as would have been recognized by the Buddha? According to Seneca, the Heap Paradox wasn't even worth bothering with, but to the Buddha and his schools of philosophy, it was the first thing to engage in when looking for reality.

I would also ask this - when applied to the existence or "emptiness" of self, does the Sorites (or Buddhist Emptiness) realign and better define what it means to be a consciousness? Can a thought be aware of itself? When does a "heap" of thoughts become a consciousness? I suspect, as the Buddha did and taught, that consciousness and self is the set of relations of elements that shifts and changes over the short duration in which they are able to relate. And as I go through my day with my new perception of my own consciousness as this bundle of perceptions, thoughts, etc., instead of a unified and concrete "I", does that mean that the bundle of elements ("I") that interacts with and relates to another bundle ("You"), that once again the elements that are "consciousness" has shifted so that "consciousness that is I and/or you" must also include both bundles of elements since they are now interacting? In other words, does it support some sort of constrained "interacting-collective consciousness"? It also seems to deny panpsychism as the "skandhas" are not self, but within specific relations of skandhas, there can be the properties of a state which can be shortened to the designator word "consciousness".

There was a great article by a blogger that seems to have captured the next part of this line of thinking as it concerns a "relation of elements" to be called a "thing"
here but you can also find a similar approach in scientific thinking at The Edge under Max Tegmark's "Substrate Independence" article.

That's it. All I got for today. Appreciate any feedback or thoughts. Thanks for reading!