"I think therefore I am", if parsed as "p⊃q", is not a tautology, is invalid, and need not, at least on that account, be accepted as 100% certain — Banno
Now what I have asked is for someone to present the structure of the argument. If you have indeed done so, then I've missed it. — Banno
Whatever thinks, exists.
I think.
I exist.
The first premise is an intuition, the conclusion is not, because it very clearly derives from the premises (inference). We start with a universal, then to a particular, then the exclusion of the middle term. — Lionino
To doubt some statement is to take other statements as undoubted — Banno
Which is valid. But this just says that if some individual has a property, then there is an individual. It works not just for thinking but for being pink. For all x, if x is pink then there is something that is pink. This seems not to capture the quality of the Cogito. — Banno
And all the philosophers who think that Descartes meant a different 'therefore' suffer the same ontological absence. — Bylaw
Oh, well, in the cogito they all think it means 'so I can conclude' or 'so it must be the case that'. And why, well, the idea is that because if you are doing something, you need to exist, it's built in. It is not, dear Jesus, well you also Flannel Jesus, saying that thinking causes existence. It is not saying that if we have thinking, then later we will have existing. It's not saying that. I find it miraculous that this even needs to be said. The chronology is in the though process of the philosopher thinking about thinking and existence.Do a lot of other philosophers think that? What do they think "therefore" means? — flannel jesus
It is not saying that if we have thinking, then later we will have existing. It's not saying that. — Bylaw
If it didn't mean that, then it would mean that Descartes' conclusion included the idea that one could think while not existing, at least for a moment - if it was chronological or causal
the left of the cogito causing that which is on the right in the cogito. — Bylaw
I think I communicated poorly. Sometimes when I'm being ironic or start ironic I end up saying things I do not intend.yeah of course, I misunderstood your previous post. — flannel jesus
Yes. Instead of saying Hey, that's isn't as self-evident as it seems it'd beYeah, which would make it VERY puzzling why philosophers as a group like the cogito very much. Obviously it doesn't mean that - if it did, that would be the FIRST counter argument you hear against it when you look for what people think about it - rather than some obscure counter you've only ever heard once in your life, from a guy who thinks fallacies are valid deductions. — flannel jesus
So, this can create some ambiguity if one just focuses on the single sentence without the context — Bylaw
Pages 20 to 30 of this very thread would blow your mind.I find it miraculous that this even needs to be said. — Bylaw
I don't NEED to be 100% certain of cogito. I would be content being 99.99...% certain of cogito (or less, if there was a reason to be less) — flannel jesus
Therefore, the 'I am' part of the cogito, in my view, relates to him existing, but specifically in the form that he perceives of himself — Beverley
If you allow the "I" to take a more amorphous form, "I think therefore I am" could be interpreted more like "there is thought, therefore there is something" - and the word "I" fits in there not as a silly defined ego but just as the experiential reason for why the thinker knows "there is thought".
You, whatever "you" might refer to, knows there is thought because you're experiencing thoughts. — flannel jesus
He was applying skepticism as deeply as he could. — flannel jesus
of he's an evil demon, then he IS — flannel jesus
I'm not sure how much demons have to do with his thought process for the cogito anyway. Seems unrelated to me. — flannel jesus
I think that when he says, 'I think therefore I am" he imagines himself to be as he perceives himself, and ordinary person. — Beverley
He never wrote anything about that, so I have no idea how he feels about that idea. I think the "I" in "I think therefore I am" is a lot more amorphous than that, it's not referencing any thing in particular. He's not confirming he's a human, or a mammal, or has a brain - he's only confirming 2 things, the existence of his thoughts, and his own existence. — flannel jesus
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