There is a reason 90% of all people 10 years old or more think “I think therefore I am” is a stupid argument. It’s not because of the logic; it’s because what it is trying to argue is so obvious. Everyone already knows “I am” - and they rightly think that if you needed a proof to conclude you exist you might be an idiot.

If you think the cogito illogical and doesn’t show anything at all, you miss the point, just as, if you think the cogito doesn’t show how the obvious is an important philosophical observation, you miss the point. Those focused here on whether the cogito statement is valid or sound are not addressing what the statement is trying to say (which is obvious to a 10 yr old).

There are a lot of people talking past each other here, from two different directions.

Addressing the logical statement is a worthy exercise in logical analytics. But you can never conclude “I am” is not something. I am already is. That I am is as prior as it is immediately present; it need not be a conclusion for it to already be proven.

This is why it is hard to make a logical proof out of the observation, the recognition, the thought, “I am”. We are taking a real, visceral, present moment, a simple obvious moment like reading these words right now, as I am here writing these words “words” right now, this very second where “I am” needs no explanation, a moment like this, and then we are trying to make a formulaic logical expression to re-capture this moment and codify a logical explanation on top of it. This is obviously difficult to do, and maybe “I think therefore I am” doesn’t quite recapture it.

Don’t mislead yourself, if you are misleading, then you are. This is both obvious, and once known, once conceptualized as “I am”, an example of the certain knowledge science seeks.

"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

Because there is an unstated premise (many depending on how deep you wanna go). Not a big deal.

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

You have:

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

I will restate this syllogism at the end of the post to reply to something else.

To doubt some statement is to take other statements as undoubted — Banno

Like the law of non-contradiction. There was no such thing as dialetheias back in Descartes' times, and many would say that there is still no such thing as dialetheias. As I said, Descartes uses hyperbolic doubt, not unbounded doubt. He makes the point here:



Descartes was interested in proving whether something exists, not proving whether LEM comes from LNC or LNC comes from LEM.

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

Let's say pink then.
U(x)(Px ⊃ ∃(y)(x=y))
U(x)(Tx ⊃ ∃(y)(x=y))
These two arguments are identical in form but different in content, the difference in content being the statement that x instantiates the property of thinking or of being pink. The crux is that we may doubt that anything is pink, but we cannot doubt that we think, because when we doubt that we doubt, we are doubting, and doubting is a type of thinking — and that is self-evident aka clear and distinct.

P1 Everything that is pink exists.
P2 I am pink (whatever that means).
C I exist.

A1 Everything that thinks exists.
A2 I think.
B I exist.

P1 and A1 are evidently true, as you have agreed. C and B follow from their premises, however P2 may be objected, A2 may not, ever.

P1 and A1 are evidently true, as you have agreed — Lionino

He agreed with A1?

Very well put. Logic helps us clear ambiguities in our language, language being a vehicle for thought. I will say that language does not exhaust thought. Although we need language to express truth, language's failure to convey some thoughts does not mean that those thoughts are not important or perhaps fundational.

He agreed with A1? — flannel jesus

It seems like it:

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. — Banno

I see. Last time I asked him if he thinks that one needs to exist in order to think, he said "I don't know". Given that, I'm not sure I would interpret that other quote in the way you are. Maybe, though.

I've been thinking about the issue, or, at least, there's seems to be thinking occuring, but I don't exist, so I've decided not to participate any more in the discussion, given that ontological 'I' can't.

I mean, seriously, who am 'I' to weigh in and say that 'therefore' does not mean 'which causes' in the cogito if I don't exist.

And all the philosophers who think that Descartes meant a different 'therefore' suffer the same ontological absence. I am suffering this absence, but I am not.

And all the philosophers who think that Descartes meant a different 'therefore' suffer the same ontological absence. — Bylaw

Do a lot of other philosophers think that? What do they think "therefore" means?

Do a lot of other philosophers think that? What do they think "therefore" means? — flannel jesus

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.

And I do not mean the cogito is right because it says this. I just find it miraculous that it is contentious what was intended by donc/therefore.

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.

And you just ain't gonna find anybody, including Descartes saying that's what he was saying.

We could, of course, skip the middleman (in this case) of Descartes and forget donc, forget therefore and just ask each other do you think that one mus exist if one is thinking. Or to put it the other way. Could something that does not exist think? That's what D decided was self-evidently not the case.

For me to tricky part is what exists, not so much that existing/thinking is going on.

It is not saying that if we have thinking, then later we will have existing. It's not saying that. — Bylaw

yeah of course, I misunderstood your previous post.

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

Yeah, 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.

yeah of course, I misunderstood your previous post. — flannel jesus

I think I communicated poorly. Sometimes when I'm being ironic or start ironic I end up saying things I do not intend.

Yeah, 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

Yes. Instead of saying Hey, that's isn't as self-evident as it seems it'd be
Hey, how the hell did he think that was self-evident at all?

In philosophy it might well be worth exploring and Idealists, at least some of them might be saying that in some way. But it's not what Descartes was saying.

Yeah, I think it's safe to say that anybody who cares to *try* to figure out what cogito ergo sum is saying would eventually come to understand that it doesn't mean "First I think, then later on thinking causes me to exist." That's absurdly far from a natural interpretation.

To be fair, 'therefore' is a tricky word with a few different uses. And both the English and French versions of the cogito are very concise: the French extremely so. So, this can create some ambiguity if one just focuses on the single sentence without the context, especially for non-native speakers.

I can definitely see why a non-native speaker reading "A therefore B" would initially think that must mean "A causes B" - but that non-native speaker would be easy to steer in the right direction, if you just show them some examples and how it's used in logic. A non native speaker would generally have some amount of humility about their understanding of another language, and be willing to learn.

So, this can create some ambiguity if one just focuses on the single sentence without the context — Bylaw

Which is the person's fault to try to interpret a view without having read at the very least the chapter in which the view is contained. Realistically, to really understand Cartesian epistemology you don't need much, perhaps the Discourse would be enough, but the metaphysics, which is relevant for the epistemology, can only be well understood after reading the Meditations, the Principles, and the Objections, at least.

I find it miraculous that this even needs to be said. — Bylaw

Pages 20 to 30 of this very thread would blow your mind.

Pages 20 to 30 of this very thread would blow your mind. — Lionino

I avoided parts of this thread to prevent that.

Before I make another comment, I may have missed some of the new comments (It's hard to keep up with you all! You all have a lot to say about this!) so I hope I am not totally repeating what has been said before.

I have a question: for Descartes, what do you think he thought 'existing' meant exactly?

For me, and people may disagree with this (if so, id be interested to know your views and why) I would say that Descartes wanted proof that the world, and he himself, were as he perceived them. (basically, the usual, everyday world we know and... love-- unless we are having a bad day)

As an aside here, I'd like to point out that I don't think it is such a wild thing to assume that most people, including myself, do actually believe that the world is as we perceive it.

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

My point here is I think that this is no different to most, if not all, of us... excluding the 'strangest' of people who believe the world is being secretly run by aliens with glowing eyes and antennas on their heads! Most people do not need to be 100 percent sure because most of us are fairly certain things are as we know them to be. (I am not having a go at you here by the way, flannel jesus. From what I can tell--and it can sometimes be hard to tell when you only have messages on a forum to go by-- you seem like a fair and reasonable person. I try to be so too.)

However, the whole point, I believe, was that Descartes wanted absolute certainty that the world was not totally different than how he perceived it, such as, he wanted to be sure that he was not living an illusion and the world was not really like The Matrix, or something like that. (My imagination could make up hundreds of different weird and wonderful scenarios of what the world 'could' be like without us knowing it. I do not believe them, but still, it 'could' be like that.) But because I believe Descartes would not have been satisfied with discovering what the world/he 'may' be like--because he wanted to know FOR SURE--and the fact that he thought the cogito was enough to give him that certainty, because of this, I think that is why people are contesting it-- at least those who believe that there is no such thing as absolute certainty. However, the problem that seems to occur from his point of view is that, while a skeptic has at their disposal pretty much anything they can imagine to throw doubt on him, he has limited himself to absolute certainty because he wanted to find something to rely on absolutely that skepticism couldn't throw doubt on. (Okay, so I know some people believe the Cogito did this, and some do not, but anyway...)

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 (like a 'normal' every day person) I'm probably going to regret asking this but... does anyone else disagree with this? Oh and also, it would be good to hear from those who agree with it too.

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

This isn't an uncommon criticism, and I definitely have time for it.

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 clearly 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.

I would say that Descartes wanted proof that the world, and he himself, were as he perceived them — Beverley

That is not what Descartes wanted. If you want to know "why" you have to read what he wrote.

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

I get what you're saying, but why do you think he did the meditations in the first place? What was he trying to achieve? What was he trying to find out? Do you think he was only trying to find proof that he was just a bunch of thoughts? Or some undefined form with a bunch of thoughts? Would have have minded what that 'form' was? Would have have not wanted to know? For example, if he was an evil demon with a bunch of thoughts, wouldn't he have wanted to know? Or would he have just been happy knowing that he existed in any form, evil demon or grotesque monster included, with a bunch of thoughts?

He was applying skepticism as deeply as he could, to strip his beliefs down to the last undeniable belief. "I know the world exist" - do you really? How? Do you know it can't be an illusion. "No, I guess not, I guess I don't know that. How about, I know other minds exist" - do you really? How do you know that? "Yeah I guess you're right. I know thought exists, because I'm experiencing thoughts. Therefore I know I exist. Even if I try to doubt I exist, or that I think, doubting itself is a thought, and requires existence."

I feel like if someone wants to follow Descartes process, but maybe they want to reject the ego, the "I", part of it, they can rephrase it in a way that makes sense without the ego, which is what I was trying to do in my previous post.

He was applying skepticism as deeply as he could. — flannel jesus

Maybe he simply couldn't apply it as deeply as considering the possibility that he himself could be the evil demon (and who could blame him? Who wants to face the thought that they could be an evil demon?)

if he's an evil demon, then he IS

Also, I didn't mean to type the word silly above. Typo. I've changed it to "clearly".

of he's an evil demon, then he IS — flannel jesus

Don't you think he would want to know if he was or wasn't?

Don't you think he would want to know if he was or wasn't? — Beverley

No because that is not the point. Later in his metaphysics he refutes (or so he thinks) the existence of an evil demon.

the conclusion of the cogito is "Therefore I am." I'm just saying, if he's an evil demon, that conclusion is still left true.

I'm not sure how much demons have to do with his thought process for the cogito anyway. Seems unrelated to me.

I'm not sure how much demons have to do with his thought process for the cogito anyway. Seems unrelated to me. — flannel jesus

It seems related because it is an example of how much i believe he would want to know. I think that when he says, 'I think therefore I am" he imagines himself to be as he perceives himself, and ordinary person. If someone said to him, "How do you know you are not an evil demon?" I think he would want to prove otherwise.

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. Maybe he's a mammal with a brain, maybe he's a demon - these things are debatable - but either way, he thinks and he is.

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

This is true. But I am pretty sure that he would want to know if he was a demon or not, for example. I think anyone would. (I know i would!)

And without knowing, wouldn't he be living in an illusion like the one he was trying to prove that he wasn't?

Ok. Well I hope you can find out if you are.