:meh:

pgs 224-226 where he follows B. Williams and G.C Lichtenberg

"Descartes, famously, made such a claim. When he asked if there was anything that he could not
doubt, his answer was that he could not doubt his own existence. This was revealed in the very act of doubting. And, besides assuming that every thought must have a thinker, Descartes assumed that a thinker must be a Pure Ego, or spiritual substance. A Cartesian Pure Ego is the clearest case of a separately existing entity, distinct from the brain and body.(19)

Lichtenberg claimed that, in what he thought to be most certain, Descartes went astray. He should not have claimed that a thinker must be a separately existing entity. His famous Cogito did not justify this belief. He should not have claimed, ‘I think, therefore I am’. Though this is true, it is misleading. Descartes could have claimed instead, ‘It is thought: thinking is going on’. Or he could have claimed, ‘This is a thought, therefore at least one thought is being thought’.20

Because we ascribe thoughts to thinkers, we can truly claim that thinkers exist. But we cannot deduce, from the content of our experiences, that a thinker is a separately existing entity. And, as Lichtenberg suggests, because we are not separately existing entities, we could fully describe our thoughts without claiming that they have thinkers. We could fully describe our experiences, and the connections between them, without claiming that they are had by a subject of experiences. We could give what I call an impersonal description."

I can send you a pdf if you;d like? :nerd:

This has the uncomfortable result that one ceases to exist when not doing philosophy, or at least when one is asleep. — Banno

From the Second Meditation:

But what then am I? A thing that thinks. What is that? A thing that doubts, understands,
affirms, denies, is willing, is unwilling, and also imagines and has sensory perceptions.

It is not that thinking or doing philosophy is a necessary condition for existing, it is that existing is a necessary condition for thinking is this broad sense of the term.

Cogito ergo sum, more correctly translated as "I am thinking, therefore I exist" is from the Discourse, not the Meditations.

This conclusion follows from:

But immediately afterwards I noted that, while I was trying to think of all things being false in this
way, it was necessarily the case that I, who was thinking them, had to be something; and observing this truth: I am thinking, therefore I exist.

(Part 4)

Doubting is for Descartes a deliberate methodological exercise.

I decided to pretend that everything that had ever entered my mind was no more true than the illusions of my dreams ...

(Part 4)

Obviously, to doubt is very different from pretending to doubt.

In the Meditations he deliberately secludes himself in order to find some reason to doubt whatever can be doubted. The picture of Descartes as a solitary figure does not tell the whole story. He traveled extensively.

More important, as with all of us, his temperament and character was not simply a matter of choice. There are many factoring influencing who we are and what we desire. He took his motto from Ovid:

Bene qui latuit, bene vixit". He who has kept himself well hidden, has lived well.

He had good reason to hide. By calling everything into doubt he called the authority of the Church into doubt, and gives that authority to the thinking person.

I agree with your defense of Descartes.

But I wonder if Descartes is the target? Not really, I don't think. More people inspired by Descartes in a certain way?

Maybe not tho. What you think about that?

It is not that thinking or doing philosophy is a necessary condition for existing, it is that existing is a necessary condition for thinking is this broad sense of the term. — Fooloso4

Are you engaged in exegesis, or advocacy? Sure, Descartes' ideas made sense for Descartes. but do you agree with them?

But I wonder if Descartes is the target? — Moliere

Isn't the target here more the method to be adopted in doing philosophy?

Roughly, is philosophy to be public or private?

It's sometimes mentioned that Augustine anticipated Descartes by centuries:

But who will doubt that he lives, remembers, understands, wills, thinks, knows, and judges? For even if he doubts, he lives. If he doubts where his doubs come from, he remembers. If he doubts, he understands that he doubts. If he doubts, he wants to be certain. If he doubts, he thinks. If he doubts, he knows that he does not know. If he doubts, he judges that he ougth not rashly to give assent. So whoever acquires a doubt from any source ought not to doubt any of these things whose non-existence would mean that he could not entertain doubt about anything. — Augustine, On the Trinity 10.10.14 quoted in Richard Sorabji Self, 2006, p.219

I think the commonly-held view, that this entails solipsism, is unnecessary: I don't think that by it, either Augustine or Descartes believed that only one's own existence is apodictic, although that is the way it often seems to have been taken, including by Midgley. The point was, by doubting everything that he had hitherto taken for granted (the suspension of judgement, epochē) to arrive at an indubitable fact - which is that he must exist, in order to doubt (or affirm) anything (as Augustine also says). There is thought, therefore a thinking subject.

I see the major flaw with Descartes' reasoning as positing 'a thinking thing' (res cogitans) thereby objectifying or reifying the thinker or subject (to reify is exactly 'to make a thing of'). Husserl says in Crisis of the European Sciences that

Descartes does not make clear to himself that the ego, his ego deprived of its worldly characteristics through the epochē, in whose functioning cogitationes the world has all the ontic meaning it can ever have for him, cannot possibly turn up as a subject matter in the world, since everything that is of the world derives its meanings precisely from these functions - including, then, ...the ego in the usual sense. — Crisis of the European Sciences, p82

This is what I believe leads to the 'ghost in the machine' criticism of Ryle and others - the 'thinking thing' conceived literally as a kind of ectoplasmic substance. This is the problem of 'objectification' which becomes a major theme in modern philosophy and the criticism of it by phenomenologists such as Husserl.

Again, refer to Parfit treating this exact issue as you all are treating it:

Because we ascribe thoughts to thinkers, we can truly claim that thinkers exist. But we cannot deduce, from the content of our experiences, that a thinker is a separately existing entity. And, as Lichtenberg suggests, because we are not separately existing entities, we could fully describe our thoughts without claiming that they have thinkers. We could fully describe our experiences, and the connections between them, without claiming that they are had by a subject of experiences. We could give what I call an impersonal description." — Parfit, Reasons and Persons Sec. III

Isn't the target here more the method to be adopted in doing philosophy?

Roughly, is philosophy to be public or private? — Banno

I agree with that.

Interesting that the text she wrote was forced private until now... tho unfortunate.

I believe philosophy ought be public. However we get that to be the case.

I think my reaction is mostly based from an "OK I agree but I'm an anarchist and you don't seem to understand I'm saying", but also...it was 70-ish years ago, I can't blame her.

She's a philosopher everyone ought to read.

"We could give what I call an impersonal description" ~ Parfit, Reasons and Persons Sec. III;894990" — AmadeusD

Wouldn't that be 'a view from nowhere'? An idealised objectivity?

I don't think it's either from my reading of that chapter.

It seems that what Parfit is trying to do is simply point out that there are thoughts, without ascribing them to any one thinker. There obvious is a thinker, but this confirmation of thought doesn't also confirm identity for 'the thinker'. I did only read this in the last two days, so I might be way off. It accepts the subjective, while only confirming the objective (that there is a thought - to whom it belongs, or from whom it comes is only a necessary implication).

I see what you're getting at, and have entertained much of the same kind of idea. But recall in the original Latin, the phrase is 'cogito ergo sum', where 'Cogito' is in the first person, i.e. 'I think' but as Latin is an inflected language, the 'I' is implied rather than articulated.

Ironically, perhaps, I'm aware of a book on the interface between Buddhism and psychoanalysis called 'Thoughts without a Thinker', Mark Epstein (though haven't read it). Buddhist philosophy is known for its 'no-self' doctrine, i.e. there is no permanent or separate self which exists apart from the flow of experiences. That seems congruent with this claim:

Because we ascribe thoughts to thinkers, we can truly claim that thinkers exist. But we cannot deduce, from the content of our experiences, that a thinker is a separately existing entity. — Parfit, Reasons and Persons Sec. III

(However, the denial that there is an agent or subject is also rejected by Buddhism, see this reference.)

I think the issue all revolves around objectification. To say what something is, is to identify it, which requires that it exists as an object to a subject. (It's an apple! a tree! a chair!) But the subject who thinks is never an object as such. Which is why I say that Descartes' error is not in the basic intuition of being, but in the 'objectification' of the thinking subject as 'res cogitans', a thinking thing. (I think this kind of analysis is made much more explicit in Buddhism. As it happens, I did an MA thesis on the subject in Buddhist Studies. )

That seems congruent with this claim: — Wayfarer

INterestingly, Parfit was well aware of Buddhist thinking on this. Appendix J of this book, Reasons & Persons, is called 'Buddah's View'. I'm not there yet, though, so i have nothing to offer i'm sorry.

the 'I' is implied rather than articulated. — Wayfarer

Right, that makes sense. Perhaps this folk were on to something in the end.

Which is why I say that Descartes' error is not in the basic intuition of being, but in the 'objectification' of the thinking subject as 'res cogitans', a thinking thing — Wayfarer

This strikes me as insightful. Explains probably why I, currently, am a basically a hard reductionist about personal identity. I believe this is where Parfit is taking me, also. Identity is not what matters, it is the relation between

flow of experiences — Wayfarer

in each instance, constituting what Parfit calls Relation R that matters in life. Seems reasonable.

I've been meaning to look at Parfit but, you know, too many books.... :fear:

It was clear that we [the women students] were all more interested in understanding this deeply puzzling world than in putting each other down.
— Midgley
But I thought that there was nothing fundamentally different between men and women? Strange — Lionino

I read this as about a specific group of women students in a specific situation. In that situation, I can well imagine that mutual support was more important for them than any internal struggle for power. But I can see that one could read it as a generalization. In which case, it would be odd.

The kind of self-awareness where one admits the mistake but does not seem to care about committing the mistake always stroke me as, also, strange. — Lionino

It depends how important you think the mistake is.

Mary Midgely's comment about the way women don't put each other down
— Jack Cummins
Is laughably wrong. — AmadeusD

Quite so. Women are human beings as well and the temptation to put (some) other people down is, it seems, part of the human condition.

I think this is a mistake. I think it is a mistake that leaves us, necessarily, in a hopeless loop of arguing with anyone who disagrees with one end of the spectrum (biology v culture) because there is no possibility of extricating them. I think we can. The charge that any observations are culturally-bound seems wrong to me on many levels. — AmadeusD

You are right. I agree that there is a spectrum involved, and in many cases there may well be agreement about how to apply the distinction. I wouldn't say that either biology or culture necessarily limit us - after all, they are both capable of change and development as life goes on. But I do think that they are where we start from.

I'm unmarried and so don't have a real insight into what she's saying.
— Moliere
No objection from me. We all have mothers after all. — unenlightened

One could dismiss all such arguments as simply ad hominem. But that seems unfair.
There's an interesting - even important - difficulty here. We are all familiar with the empiricist appeal to experience and accept the idea that at least some experience is universal and therefore a sound basis for philosophy. But Midgley plausibly cites a experience that is not universal (but is, as she says, typical) as having universal significance. So she must believe that people who have not had that experience can understand it sufficiently for her to make her point. That's the point of her description it. I don't think she is wrong about that.
It's just as well that she expands the scope of her appeal to something (parenting, marriage) that can be seen as common to both men and women, though still not universal.
The difficulty here is that, by parity of argument, one cannot invalidate the experiences of those who live solitary lives or practice solitary reflection. So we end up with having to see both solitary and communal thinkers as possible models and perhaps a pragmatic view of them.

It's a puzzle. That's all I'm saying.

I get along with the conclusion, though. And with the opening -- I don't think philosophy is an exercise in proving myself correct or the other person wrong or some such. — Moliere

Yes. Philosophy is much more interesting if one avoid getting trapped into those exercises. But it can be difficult to prevent it happening.

Misogyny will carry a thread only so far, but perhaps too far to drag it back to something more interesting. — Banno

I didn't mean to provoke a discussion of misogyny as such. I am interested in the questions of philosophical method that her argument about Descartes raises.

I think the issue all revolves around objectification. — Wayfarer

Yes. But I get worried that perhaps talk of the flow or experience suggests an objectification of experience, which leads to another set of problems. It is extremely difficult to distinguish the grammatical (in the traditional sense) and logical senses of "object" from a philosophical sense - "medium sized dry goods".

PS. By a logical sense of object, I mean "to be is to be the value of a variable".

My take is that Descartes, qua 'the first modern', introduces the individual as the arbiter of reality. It's not co-incidental that he is categorised with Newton and Galileo as one of the harbingers of modernity. It's the introduction of our modern subject-object consciousness and 'the reign of quantity' which is fundamental to liberal individualism.

It's a puzzle. That's all I'm saying. — Ludwig V

It is a puzzle because for a few centuries one experience has been taught as if it were the only experience that had meaning. to hear that there is another experience seems shocking, and to notice that it has been the experience of half of humanity all this time and has been studiously ignored and denigrated as 'illogical', is such wilful blindness and illogicality that it undermines the rationalist position from start to finish.
That's how I put the pieces together, anyway.

fundamental to liberal individualism. — Wayfarer

Yes, quite so. But, without wanting to write the book, I would want to high-light Martin Luther as a critical figure in that change, and add that quantification is, perhaps not coincidentally, also a foundation of capitalism. (Money, rather than humans, as the measure of all things.)
And then there's the dubious relationship between individualism and authoritarianism.

it undermines the rationalist position from start to finish. — unenlightened

Yes. At least, it undermines that rationalist position. I would hate to think that it undermines all attempts to articulate ideas rationally - though I agree that many people have taken it that way.

I read this as about a specific group of women students in a specific situation. — Ludwig V

That the specific group in that specific situation were all women while there being plenty of men around seem to suggest that the specific situation is caused by a difference between men and women, otherwise, shouldn't we expect at least one man in the group too?

I would hate to think that it undermines all attempts to articulate ideas rationally - though I agree that many people have taken it that way. — Ludwig V

I wouldn't take it that way, but I would take it as undermining any attempt to claim that the male of the species is more rational than the female, and any position that relies on that thesis.

That the specific group in that specific situation were all women while there being plenty of men around seem to suggest that the specific situation is caused by a difference between men and women, otherwise, shouldn't we expect at least one man in the group too? — Lionino

You are right. In the first place, the colleges which were and are the primary scene of social interaction among students in that university were segregated by sex/gender - either all the students (and academic staff) were male or all were female. In the second place, both men and women regarded each other as significantly different and relations between men and women were socially regulated and controlled in ways that relations between men and men and between women and women were not. Thirdly, women students were a minority whose right to be there was still tolerated rather than accepted, which makes mutual solidarity more likely. Finally, much of their time there was during WW2, so many of the men who might have been there were otherwise engaged.

I wouldn't take it that way, but I would take it as undermining any attempt to claim that the male of the species is more rational than the female, and any position that relies on that thesis. — unenlightened

Well, yes. Of course.

Are you engaged in exegesis, or advocacy? Sure, Descartes' ideas made sense for Descartes. but do you agree with them? — Banno

Descartes wrote under conditions of persecution that constrained him in ways that do not apply to contemporary thinkers in places where free speech is the norm. We should not overlook the role Descartes played in freeing the mind, and not just his mind, from the tyranny of the Church and Scholasticism.

Roughly, is philosophy to be public or private? — Banno

Philosophy was for Descartes public, and not limited to the society of his time.

And I conceive such hopes for the future that if, among the purely human occupations, there is one that is really good and important, I venture to believe that it is the one that I have chosen.

(Discourse, Part One)

His method, as the title of the work states, is the method of correctly conducting one's reason and seeking truth in the sciences. More specifically, it is a method of experiments and observations.

From the thread Descartes Reading Group:

Although Descartes isolates himself in his room for a short period of time, as a thinking thing he is not isolated. As a thinking thing he is connected to thinking itself, that is to say, to what is thought not just by him but other thinking beings before and after him. The nature of thinking is something we do together, a joint project, something that occurs between human beings. The thinking self is not just the individual but thinking itself, which is by its nature public.

The nature of thinking is not limited by the span of a lifetime. For thinking itself time is not moment to moment. It is a collaborative effort across time periods. Descartes was not primarily concerned with the past, however, but rather the present and future. More specifically, with his project for the perfectibility of man, which takes place over lifetimes.

Thinking for Descartes is not fundamentally contemplative or meditative but constructive. Thus he sought foundations on which to build. Although a lot of attention is paid to his epistemology it was groundwork for a science that would change the course of nature.

Absolutely. I chose this in my first batch of Phil books (i ordered about 12 at once) before starting Uni because I assumed I would never get to it otherwise. I've found that many, many post-grads and MPhil-holders have this on their shelf, but have not got through it.

Low and behold, my first two assignments are partially based around it. A few sections are readings for the paper hehe. And on that note, I found out I got an A for my first writing assignment last night. Nice.

It's sometimes mentioned that Augustine anticipated Descartes by centuries: — Wayfarer

Descartes talks about that in a letter to Colvius:

“Vous m’avez obligé de m’avertir du passage de saint Augustin, auquel mon Je pense, donc je suis a quelque rapport; je l’ay esté lire aujourd’huy en la Biblioteque de cette Ville, et je trouve veritablement qu’il s’en sert pour prouver la certitude de nostre estre, et en suite pour faire voir qu’il y a en nous quelque image de La Trinité, en ce que nous sommes, nous sçavons que nous sommes, et nous aymons cét estre et cette science qui est en nous; au lieu que je m’en sers pour faire connoistre que ce moy, qui pense, est une substance immaterielle, et qui n’a rien de corporel; qui sont deux choses fort differentes. Et c’est une chose qui de soy est si simple et si naturelle à inferer, qu’on est, de ce qu’on doute, qu’elle auroit pû tomber sous la plume de qui que ce soit; mais je ne laisse pas d’estre bien aise d’avoir rencontré avec saint Augustin, quand ce ne seroit que pour fermer la bouche aux petits esprits qui ont tasché de regabeler sur ce principe.”

Philosophy was for Descartes public... — Fooloso4

From were we are now, it was not public enough. Wittgenstein and others have shown us how the enterprise of doing philosophy emanates from our place in a human community. It is a game played by people, plural.

A look around the forums shows folk looking for first principles in ethics, ontology, epistemology; firm ground on which to stand, Aristotle's stoa. But of course that very search already has a beginning; it takes place in the stoa of our discussions, our language games and our way of living.

Midgley is recognising this, explicating it in the particularly obvious case of Descartes, and asking for a broader recognition of the place of philosophy in our day to day encounters.

:clap: :party:

Thanks! Interesting, although I had to call on Google Translate as I'm not fluent in French

You obliged me to warn me of the passage from Saint Augustine, to which my "I think, therefore I am" [has] some connection; I read it today in the Library of this City, and I truly find that he uses it to prove the certainty of our being, and subsequently to show that there is some image in us of the Trinity, in what we are, we know that we are, and we love this being and this knowledge which is in us; instead I use it to make it known that this self, which thinks, is an immaterial substance*, and which has nothing corporeal; which are two very different things. And it is something which in itself is so simple and so natural to infer, that we are, from what we doubt, whether it could have fallen under the pen of anyone; but I am still very happy to have met with Saint Augustine, even if it was only to shut the mouths of the little minds who have tried to rethink this principle.

*As noted previously, I think 'immaterial subject' conveys the gist better than 'immaterial substance' or 'immaterial thing' which I feel is oxymoronic. This anomaly comes from the translation of the Greek 'ouisia' into the Latin 'substantia' and then the English 'substance'.

Many years ago I read the Teachings of Ramana Maharishi, who was an Advaita sage (died 1960). Throughout his teachings, he makes a connection between the Self (ātman) of Vedanta and the 'I AM THAT I AM' of the Bible. According to Vedanta, this 'I AM' is the 'cosmic self', from which individual beings become alienated through attachment to the physical senses and body. (His website is here.)

It is a game played by people, plural. — Banno

Descartes wrote of, to and for a community of people past present and future. A community of philosophers and thinkers . But also for humans of lesser talents. His provisional morality, from the Discourse, is about living in the world with people.His idea of the perfection of the will is not simply about one's own advantage but for the good of others, the good of the human community.

Descartes, whose work extents to physics, medicine, and optics did far more for the welfare of man than Midgley. Where the ancients had no choice but to accept may things that were beyond their power to change, the modern philosophers were on the forefront of the mastery of nature. Philosophy was no longer about the problem of how to live but to solve problems by changing the conditions of life.

No philosophy, Descartes included, is without problems, but Midgley is wrong when he says that other people's existence had to be inferred. If blame is to be assigned much if it falls on Midgley and others who have misunderstood and misrepresent Descartes.

Is it possible to be too preoccupied with defending Descartes to see Midgley's point? I doubt that Midgley would have disagreed with your account of Descartes.

The most we seem to be able to conclude from more sophisticated parsings of "I doubt" is that "something doubts", and not what that something is. — Banno

Perhaps "this body doubts"?

*As noted previously, I think 'immaterial subject' conveys the gist better than 'immaterial substance' or 'immaterial thing' which I feel is oxymoronic. — Wayfarer

I'm inclined to agree with you. But, on the face of it, that wouldn't be the gist of Descartes' argument. He is quite explicit:-

As to those other things, of which the Idea of a body is made up, as extension, figure, place and motion, they are not formally in me, seeing I am only a thinking thing; yet seeing they are only certain modes of substance, and I my self also am a substance, they may seem to be in me eminently.

But then, there is the passage that is sometimes adduced in this context: -

Now there is nothing that this my Nature teaches me more expresly then that I have a Body, Which is not Well when I feel Pain, that this Body wants Meat or Drink When I am Hungry or Dry, &c. And therefore I ought not to Doubt but that these things are True. And by this sense of Pain, Hunger, Thirst, &c. My Nature tells[98] me that I am not in my Body, as a Mariner is in his Ship, but that I am most nighly conjoyn’d thereto, and as it were Blended therewith; so that I with It make up one thing;

Descartes Meditation VI

So his position is a bit more complicated than the simplified version that is usually considered in the literature. (And I do not know how to represent it more accurately.)

Descartes wrote of, to and for a community of people past present and future — Fooloso4

Descartes Meditation III
Yes, that's part of Midgley's point, which bears on the question what we are to make of his method of doubt, or methodical doubt, and the model of philosophical method that he portrays in the Meditations. If we pay attention to the real life hinterland of the text, we find that the presentation is much more complex than it seems to be.
He seems to invite us to join him in a real life journey. But he doesn't really think that such scepticism is true. It is something like a thought experiment, an academic exercise. But it also has the deadly serious aim of a religious retreat; it is a fantasy of hell, from which he will, ultimately, rescue us. (Just as the priest terrifies us with the image of hell and then presents Jesus as our heroic rescuer) It certainly isn't a sober presentation of reality. Our problem is that we aren't rescued by his rescue. so we really need to understand the significance of the Pyrrhonian scepticism that he takes us into.
(It is instructive here to remember Hume's discussion of Pyrrhonian scepticism and his recommendation of a month in the country as a cure for it. Like Descartes, he was labelled a sceptic, but, on closer inspection, was nothing of the kind.)