Nevertheless,psychoanalisys practices demonstrate grounding procedures for establishing "I"(In the absence of Descartes' style methods)
I would bring you Felix Guattari with
his theory of machinic unconsciousness. But even without referring to Guattari, in my personal life I've never met anybody thinking independently in cogito's manner. So, who or what is the source and
the reason of "thinking I"? We are no more as terminals in complicated machinic assemblages!

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When you say "thought exists a priori," what do you mean? I suspect from your usage that you do not know what a priori means - can you clarify?

There are a couple of meanings one might apply to a priori and I had expected the context to infer the particular meaning. In the litteral sense, a priori means 'comes before': 'thought exists/comes before the thinking' would perhaps be more clear. The mind does not generate thought but rather experiences thought or engages with it.

There is then the Kantian notion of 'a priori knowledge', knowledge that is independent of all experience. I am considering that knowledge is synonymous with, or at least a derivation of 'thought'. If so, then a priori 'thought' is the source of knowledge a priori or otherwise. I see no great distinction between Shopenhauer's notion of 'will', Kants notion of 'a priori knowledge', or Freud's notion of subconscious instinctual imperatives, but all appear to be contingent upon being antecedant to or coming before the 'thinking I'.

Your Phil Prof might well have written 'No thought no mind' , rather than his assertion 'No mind no thought'

I do not belive that 'thought' is manufactured in the mind (this is simplistic and appealing yet it makes little sense, for reasons alluded to throughout this discussion) rather it (thought) exists as a priori knowledge in both the Kantian and the literal sense.

M

Absolutely NOT. From where did you pull the chain of assumption that leads you come up with the notion that the "I" is the cause and 'thought' the effect? — Marcus de Brun

Well what else would you call it. The thoughts are caused by something which is thinking, and I normally call this thing "I". Don't you?

If thought exists apriori the 'I' cannot function as its causation. — Marcus de Brun

I don't see why not. The conclusion that "I" is the cause of the thoughts is a posteriori, but this doesn't mean that the thoughts, which are produced by the thing called I, are not a priori.

You then insist upon the uninvited and unqualified imposition of TIME upon thought, vis the assumption that a cause 'causes' its associated 'effect'. This too is another enormous assumption that is dealt with to some degree by Hume. — Marcus de Brun

Doesn't the thought have to be about something, or it isn't a thought at all? So why wouldn't the thought be about "where did I come from"? You know that "thought" is the past tense of "think", so the thought must have come from an act of thinking which is in the past. That's logical isn't it? And don't thoughts naturally tend toward making conclusions? So if there was an act of thinking, isn't it necessary to assume that there was something engaged in this act, or else it wouldn't be an act at all? Why not call this thing "I"?

The real job of criticizing a thinker comes only after you've taken on and worked at his thinking - made it yours, at least to some degree. — tim wood

Yes, yes, you've read a book and now you're a all about reading Descartes sensitively. But Descartes largely muddled his way through his own understanding of the Cogito, and gives inconsistent readings of it all through his works. As Jaakko Hintikka rightly points out ("Cogito, Ergo Sum: Inference or Performance?", in Hintikka, Knowledge and the Known), Descartes frequently vacillates between understanding the Cogito as either an inference or as a performative, leaning on one and then the other depending on the argument he's dealing with. The fact remains that Descartes tried to leverage cogito ergo sum in order to get to sum res cogitans, and that this move was and remains totally bogus, no matter how generous one in is reading our eponymous Frenchman.

I think therefore I am — Marcus de Brun

What's wrong with the argument? It's impossible to doubt the existence of a thinker if thought is taking place. To doubt would require a doubter.

What's wrong with the argument? It's impossible to doubt the existence of a thinker if thought is taking place. To doubt would require a doubter. — TheMadFool

This is the point or thrust of the current conversation. Does doubt require the doubter? Is thought dependent upon/come after the thinker? Is it 'generated/manufactured by the thinker?

These are all essentially the same question in the sense that the endogenous manufacture of thought is presumed in the affirmative and is undermined in the negative. The positive affirmation is precious in that it is essential to the fixed firm and somewhat essential belief in an autonomous self. Hence it is rigidly adhered to.

Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Spinoza, and to a greater or lesser extent; deductive reasoning and empiricism have all answered a general 'No' to this question. I am not going to list specific quotations to support this assertion but would welcome any evidence to the contrary. In other words if you feel that Nietzsche Spinoza or Schopenhauer were in fact supporters of the Cartesian and general notion of endogenous thought manufacture, I would ask you to offer some evidence. This might facilitate the dialogue to move forward into this 'new' space, rather than backwards over the same ground.

The 'No' represents an entirely NEW direction for Western Philosophy, a view of the cosmos that Spinoza somewhat formalized in his Ethics. Ultimately a priori thought or knowledge (even in the Kantian sense) requires a deterministic view of the Universe. One cannot freely manufacture ones thought if thought is antecedent to the I. It is more complex and requires more presumption upon presumption to proceed with the 'thinking I', than to explore the simpler and more logical path requiring exogenous thought and a subsequently determined Universe.

Recently Gravity, has been found to be a 'wave'. Why must thought be imprisoned within the selfish and primitive notion of a self. If we can set it free from the self it might be examined with a little bit of scientific accuracy rather than the usual selfish and ultimately religious palaver.

My principal reason for beginning this discussion is the fact that recent developments in QM bring us to the point of questioning whether the Universe is determined or not determined.

I suspect that determinism is in essence quite simply another formulation of THE cardinal criticism of the Cogito: vis determinism mandates an antecedence of all thought and sequential behaviors, but not all aspects of thought.

"I" do not think that a negation of the cogito negates a self, and I do not think that determinism lacks the potential for certain freedoms. However I do think that QM mandates a new departure for philosophy if we could only get our proverbial A into G, and stop going over the same ground over and over again.....

M

Perhaps we mean different things by ''I''. Surely one cannot doubt the existence or reality of thought when thinking. Descartes is smarter than me and it's unlikely that he would've overshot his conclusions. In short I think Descartes meant I=thought and nothing else and that can't be doubted at all.

So if there was an act of thinking, isn't it necessary to assume that there was something engaged in this act, or else it wouldn't be an act at all? Why not call this thing "I"? Of course it is impossible to doubt the existence of somebody thinking, and we can even call it “I”. The question is the degree of dependence of this process. How is it determined and conditioned?? “Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present”

There seems to be, here, a failure to understand what Descartes wrote, and a failure to understand what it means that he wrote it. As to what he wrote, it's hard to understand how any reader could fail to grasp it: it's in your face.

Cogito, ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. It does not read, "thinking, therefore am-ing." It reads instead I, repeat I, --, therefore I, repeat I, --. On what ground does anyone dock this phrase of its "I"?

Does anyone need the machinery of this expression explained to them? Anyone? All right, we're all agreed we understand it. What then is the question? Is there something about the expression that's wrong? Someone claims that the connection of the I to the thinking is not legitimate, not established, not proved. Of course it is; it's right there in the first word, cogito. For the umpteenth time, I think. And of course the point is that due to the quality of the particular thought, my thinking of it cannot be doubted.

But where does the "I" come from? To ask this question is to step apart from the argument of the cogito. It is a whole other question that leads to a whole other argument that the cogito has nothing to do with. We'll do two things with this question, first, provide our own answer, and second, make a guess as where the I comes from in the cogito.

In my opinion a thought is founded on/in the being that has that thought. Some want to call this being an I - but what does it matter what it's called? The idea is that the thought has to be embodied somehow, or it isn't anything at all. Those who argue otherwise, that it need not be embodied in any way at all, have a difficult row to hoe.

As to Descartes, I imagine that 1) he was concerned about his being, and his being's being fooled by an evil demon, and not about thinking in itself. And 2) that he simply presupposed the connection, and that likely the presupposition that a thought needed a thinker was an absolute presupposition of his thinking. As such, in terms of Descartes' thinking, it's not a question of whether his absolute presuppositions are true or false, rather that they're presupposed, and be efficacious in being presupposed.

Now, anyone who likes can ask if thought exists absent a thinker. But it's an argument to be made away from Descartes' cogito because it has nothing to do with it. A conclusive argument being made, which I think impossible, then one can revisit the cogito and see what if any relevance it has.

There are a couple of meanings one might apply to a priori and I had expected the context to infer the particular meaning. In the litteral sense, a priori means 'comes before': 'thought exists/comes before the thinking' would perhaps be more clear. The mind does not generate thought but rather experiences thought or engages with it. — Marcus de Brun

You seem to mix notions of temporal and logical priority with empiricism - and unsupported assertion. This, from the internet:
"The terms "a priori" and "a posteriori" are used primarily to denote the foundations upon which a proposition is known. A given proposition is knowable a priori if it can be known independent of any experience.., whereas a proposition that is knowable a posteriori is known on the basis of experience. For example, the proposition that all bachelors are unmarried is a priori, and the proposition that it is raining outside now is a posteriori," (https://www.iep.utm.edu/apriori/).

If the mind does not "generate" thought - whatever that means - then what does? Or is it "ungenerated"?

Recently Gravity, has been found to be a 'wave'.
My principal reason for beginning this discussion is the fact that recent developments in QM bring us to the point of questioning whether the Universe is determined or not determined. — Marcus de Brun

Gravity has "been found" to be a lot of things. I'm not even sure what the latest is. Is it a field? But most folks realize these are merely attempts in language to relate something difficult to understand to something not quite so difficult to understand. Very few people suppose for example, that gravity is a force, or a wave, or a field. There's a Youtube video of Feynman lecturing on just this.

As to QM, keep in its proper area of application. What, for example, is the QM understanding of a table? My guess is that whatever a table is, it isn't as part of any explanation in QM.

Not sure what decartes meant, but Nietzsche took issue with the idea that the 'rational I' (or the conscious I), was the cause of our thoughts. Maybe that's not what Decartes meant, but it was a common view among philosophers i guess, given the emphasis they put on reason.

He wouldn't have a problem with thoughts necessarily being embodied, with a view that includes the whole body in the 'I'. In fact, that was part of his thesis, that the body influenced thoughts... in contrast with mind-body dualism where reason and thoughts sprang from this pure place untainted by the body.

As Deleuze and Gvattari wrote, Descartes’s cogito is self-sufficient set of philosophical concepts.

"To start with, the preceding analysis must be confirmed by taking the example of one of the best-known signed philosophical concepts, that of the Cartesian cogito, Descartes's I: a concept of self. This concept has three components- doubting, thinking, and being (although this does not mean that every concept must be triple). The complete statement of the concept qua multiplicity is "I think 'therefore' I am" or, more completely, "Myself who doubts, I think, I am, I am a thinking thing." According to Descartes the cogito is the always-renewed event of thought. The concept condenses at the point I, which passes through all the components and in which I' (doubting), I" (thinking), and I'" (being) coincide. As intensive ordinates the compo- nents are arranged in zones of neighborhood or indiscernibil- ity that produce passages from one to the other and constitute their inseparability. The first zone is between doubting and thinking (myself who doubts, I cannot doubt that I think), and the second is between thinking and being (in order to think it is necessary to be). The components are presented here as verbs, but this is not a rule. It is sufficient that there are variations. In fact, doubt includes moments that are not the species of a genus but the phases of a variation: perceptual, scientific, obsessional doubt (every concept therefore has a phase space, although not in the same way as in science). The same goes for modes of thought-feeling, imagining, having ideas-and also for types of being, thing, or substance-infinite being, finite thinking being, extended being. It is noteworthy that in the last case the concept of self retains only the second phase of being and excludes the rest."

It is not a matter of attacking cogito due to ignorance or desire to voice a superficial opinion, but just a quest about ourselves: can we still apply Descartes way of self-affirmation? According to Deleuze and Gvattari, philosophical concepts are immersed into the plane of immanence. If the plane of Descartes time has changed, all his perfectly designed cogito does not work anymore.

The way of Descartes was not safe and comfortable walk through different modi of I. As Derrida pointed out: "The act of Cogito is no longer a question of objective, representative knowledge -
there is a value and a meaning of Cogito, as of existence, which escapes the alternative of a determined madness or a determined reason...I philosophize only in terror, but in the confessed terror
of going mad.The confession is simultaneously, at its present moment, oblivion and unveiling, protection and expose."

but just a quest about ourselves: can we still apply Descartes way of self-affirmation? — Number2018

Of course you can! I doubt if most people will.

And it wasn't about self-affirmation. What I think it was about was the effort - still being made - to somehow describe-realize the world in language, and then to lever the language into verifying the world. In my opinion, language will never realize the world; at best it merely describes aspects of it - to be sure, sometimes accurately.

Descartes used two tricks: 1) the undoubtable cogito to establish the ground for his own certain being, and 2) his idea of perfection, through which, on the assumption that his imperfect being could not be the source of any idea of perfection, he argued the existence of a perfect God who is the author. One can ask, though, how it is that Decartes knew he possessed an idea of perfection. After all, wouldn't it be an imperfect idea?

What Descartes was about, apparently, was making a better and safer world. If he could just restore God as perfect (again), and use that perfection as a ground on which to secure science, then science could be set to the task of controlling the world to create a better one.

I doubt if he expected the consequences: that the powers of God were transferred to people. And that God, being omnipotent, has no need of any perfection, something He makes manifest every day.

What Descartes was about, apparently, was making a better and safer world. If he could just restore God as perfect (again), and use that perfection as a ground on which to secure science, then science could be set to the task of controlling the world to create a better one."
I think that Descartes was about the self-existence, self- affirmation. First of all he was concerned in establishing a new, independent way of being. His interlocutors were God and Demon, and himself. He went through the void, and finally founded a new kind of existence. Nowadays our interlocutors are AI and different machiinic instances, and nobody doubts in his/her "thinking I". The nature of self-establishment has changed dramatically, and as Derrida pointed out there are new, different kinds of Cogito.

Well, no one else has jumped in. This kind of thinking falls into a class I'll call the that's-what-I-get-out-of-it-so-that-must-be-all-there-is-to-it school of understanding. The trouble arises when there is actually more to it then you've got. May I suggest It-cannot-be-that-simple-there-must-be-more-to-it-(and-I-shall-not-rest-until-I-find-out-what-it-is). Whether this latter is practical or not, it is at the least more modest, and a modesty that both points in the right direction and facilitates moving that way.

Of course! But what can we say new about Descartes'Cogito after intensive discussions of greatest thinkers of 20- s century! - by the way, most of them were French, as Descartes himselve. As Derrida pointed out, it is practically impossible to understand Descartes intentions and motivations.

First, how is it possible to say something new about anything Descartes wrote without first knowing what he wrote and what it meant? Corollary: once Descartes is reasonably well-understood, whence comes the need to say anything new about it? If it's truly new, then it's not Descartes. Yes?

Second, understanding Descartes "intentions and motivations" is it seems to me a means to the end of understanding his writings. Of course it can be an end in itself, but for what purpose other than for understanding the texts, or mere history of the person?

Third, if you're taking direction from Derrida, then please don't mind if I bring my own compass. If Derrida points out that something is practically impossible to understand, I'm tempted t read that as his saying a) that it's very hard to overthrow, or b) that he can't pry anything loose from it. Is there a brief citation from Derrida (or anyone else) you can reference that would shed light on the specific nature of their befuddlement?

Sorry, I do not have my computer with me now, so I can not bring the exact quote. I meant the famous discussion between Derrida and Foucault about Cogito. You are right about reading Descartes's texts - but how many people are reading them? But even when we read them, isn't our understanding is distorted by the changed Language as whole? Our language is absolutely different from Descartes's one. ( Exept for the meaning of single simple words) I think ( from my own reading of Descartes) as well as from what Derrida, Foucault and Deleuse wrote about Descartes's Cogito - they used his texted for their own powerful
theories and interpretations.