This has the uncomfortable result that one ceases to exist when not doing philosophy, or at least when one is asleep. — Banno
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.
(Part 4)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)I decided to pretend that everything that had ever entered my mind was no more true than the illusions of my dreams ...
Bene qui latuit, bene vixit". He who has kept himself well hidden, has lived well.
Are you engaged in exegesis, or advocacy? Sure, Descartes' ideas made sense for Descartes. but do you agree with them?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
Isn't the target here more the method to be adopted in doing philosophy?But I wonder if Descartes is the target? — Moliere
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
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
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
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
That seems congruent with this claim: — Wayfarer
the 'I' is implied rather than articulated. — Wayfarer
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
flow of experiences — Wayfarer
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.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
It depends how important you think the mistake is.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
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.Mary Midgely's comment about the way women don't put each other down
— Jack Cummins
Is laughably wrong. — 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 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
One could dismiss all such arguments as simply ad hominem. But that seems unfair.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
Yes. Philosophy is much more interesting if one avoid getting trapped into those exercises. But it can be difficult to prevent it happening.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
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.Misogyny will carry a thread only so far, but perhaps too far to drag it back to something more interesting. — Banno
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".I think the issue all revolves around objectification. — Wayfarer
It's a puzzle. That's all I'm saying. — Ludwig V
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.)fundamental to liberal individualism. — Wayfarer
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.it undermines the rationalist position from start to finish. — unenlightened
I read this as about a specific group of women students in a specific situation. — Ludwig V
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
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
Well, yes. Of course.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
Are you engaged in exegesis, or advocacy? Sure, Descartes' ideas made sense for Descartes. but do you agree with them? — Banno
Roughly, is philosophy to be public or private? — Banno
(Discourse, Part One)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.
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.
It's sometimes mentioned that Augustine anticipated Descartes by centuries: — Wayfarer
“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.”
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.Philosophy was for Descartes public... — Fooloso4
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.
It is a game played by people, plural. — Banno
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 noted previously, I think 'immaterial subject' conveys the gist better than 'immaterial substance' or 'immaterial thing' which I feel is oxymoronic. — Wayfarer
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.
Descartes Meditation VINow 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 IIIDescartes wrote of, to and for a community of people past present and future — Fooloso4
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.