So Descartes has identified himself as “a thinking thing”. But @Paine’s concern is legitimate; if I am to say thinking is not our inner dialogue nor awareness, then what is it? Descartes will ask the same thing:

“A thing that thinks. What is that? A thing that…
doubts almost everything,
understands some things,
affirms this one thing – namely, that I exist and think,
denies everything else,
wants to know more,
refuses to be deceived,
imagines many things involuntarily, and
is aware of others that seem to come from the senses?
…These activities are all aspects of my thinking, and are all inseparable from myself.
…what is called ‘sensing’ is strictly just this seeming, and when ‘sensing’ is understood in this restricted sense of the word it too is simply thinking.” 2nd Meditation (bold added)

I have broken the text to line up the “activities” to show the similarity to Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations:

“… the speaking of language is part of an activity…
Review the multiplicity… in the following examples, and in others:
Giving orders, and obeying them—
Describing the appearance of an object, or giving its measurements-
Constructing an object from a description (a drawing)—
Reporting an event—
Speculating about an event—…
Forming and testing a hypothesis—
Presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams—
Making up a story; and reading it—
Play-acting—
Singing catches—
Guessing riddles—
Making a joke; telling it—
Solving a problem in practical arithmetic—
Translating from one language into another—
Asking, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying.” Philosophical Investigations, #23 (bold added)

Wittgenstein will show that whether these activities are being done or not is not equated with an intention or other “mental process” but that we simply judge if the movement or action has met the criteria or standards for each thing and then we would say it is that activity.

So, for Descartes, thinking consists of the activities “doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wants, refuses, and also imagines and senses.” These are not metaphysical processes in our head that we picture like our inner dialogue or our attention to this or the other, or some brain function. Affirming or doubting are acts with very specific criteria done in particular situations, just like asking, or thanking.

That continuity of thinking [that “thinking” is our internal dialogue and/or awareness] is clearly central to the meditation and a source of concern. I don't understand what you mean by saying it is "separate from his internal dialogue or awareness." I think Descartes is linking those activities together. — Paine

Yes, that is the assumption of the bulk of the interpretation of the Meditations, but Descartes has not clearly parsed out exactly what he is referring to (lumping it all together in a sense). Also, in looking at it as categorically open, the characteristics he is attributing to it allow for what I am suggesting, and there is clearly evidence in the text. As well as what I’ve mentioned so far, he is concerned that “what he is calling thinking” might stop and then he would cease to “exist”, not the other way around (that he would, what, die? (or whatever the opposite of metaphysically “existing” is) and thus stop talking to himself; not very profound of him).

I think I am attempting to claim that it is unnecessary to restrict Descartes to simply painting a metaphysical world of “existence”, “mind”, and “thinking” (despite his lack of care not to appear so). I believe he is more relevant than to be saddled with that legacy. We could take him to be describing the criteria for what we would judge as “thinking” as individuation from society or investigating rigorously or the like, as Wittgenstein or the later Heidegger will see it as (which may or may not interest @Banno). This possibility, of course, remains to be seen, but I have at least found it fruitful and justified so far.

“[ T ]hought! This is the one thing that can’t be separated from me. I am, I exist – that is certain. But for how long? For as long as I am thinking. But perhaps no longer than that; for it might be that if I stopped thinking I would stop existing; …Still, I am a real, existing thing. What kind of a thing? I have answered that: a thinking thing.”

It is noteworthy that one of his criteria is trying to “separate” things from himself, and so not just about doubt and certainty, but wanting a kind of inseparableness, as if it wouldn’t be taken away, or lost. And so he has shunned the world (and his own body), as it were, first, before it fails him.

But he is afraid he will only exist for now, while he is thinking; as if he is not always thinking, that it is a particular act, separate from his internal dialogue or awareness. And, if he stops, he will slide back into the pull of habit and conformity and fail to exist apart from everyone else.

Imagining that his internal dialogue is caused by something (certain), and being assured of the certainty of his self by his ability to convince himself that nothing is certain, he continues:

“let [the Deceiver] deceive me all he can, he will never bring it about that I am nothing while I think I am something. So… I conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, must be true whenever I assert it or think it.”

I think it is important to ask what the role is of “the deceiver”. Such a specific choice of words; when I am “deceived” it is because I was going along thinking I was fine (right in my knowledge of the truth), sure and certain of myself, when the rug is pulled out from under me and it turns out I was mistaken, but more than that, that I was wrong all along, had been asleep, thus I am angry enough to point a finger outward, not that I had simply failed to examine what I “assent” to with sufficient deliberateness, but that I was told I was right, as if the wool was pulled over my eyes, trained into our culture and its common criteria and opinions. And I feel betrayed, that what I believed in was nothing, that I was gaslit and feel a little insane as if someone stole something important from me, because my opinions are my identity, so maybe I am nothing.

But Descartes claims “I am something”; he “asserts” his existence. Without any standard, or basis, or justification; in the face of the betrayal of society, in defiance to it. Later, alluding to this, Emerson in Self Reliance will say “Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say 'I think,' 'I am'” (After saying, “Whence, then, this worship of the past? The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul.”) He will call “conformity” what Descartes says is “the habit of confidently assenting”. Descartes continues “My old familiar opinions keep coming back, and against my will they capture my belief. It is as though they had a right to a place in my belief-system as a result of long occupation and the law of custom.” His “assertion” is not a statement that can be (true or) false; it is “true” whenever he asserts it (“while I think I am”). It is not true because it conforms to a state of affairs or is right; it is the act of the legitimate authority, the one with the right that was “as though they had”, but which is his. Thus the self is not a given continuous thing, but an act.

…you cannot be incorrect that you seem to sense something… is really what Descartes means when he says that we can doubt, but that we cannot doubt that we are doubting (or think or feel, but not doubt that we are thinking or feeling). — Janus

I don’t think I’ve got to the part where he says that yet.

Pain and other sensations such as pleasure are unique in this context. If I feel pain or pleasure, it makes no sense to say that I doubt that I am feeling pain or pleasure; what could it even mean to say I doubt that I am feeling some sensation that I am feeling? — Janus

Touché; you have me there (I take this as similar to Wittgenstein’s remarks). But there is also not a context where it is meaningful to say that I am “certain” that I am in pain (unless someone else thought I was making more of something), and it is for this certainty that Descartes is searching (math-like knowledge, not just, resolved or really sure).

I am not really saying that our sensations are certain; since they are not propositional, they are neither certain nor uncertain, they are merely sensations, although what we infer on the basis of them can be certain or uncertain. — Janus

Well this distinction seems to matter. So we can be unaware of our sensations, but, if aware, not doubt them, yet be wrong about sensing something (or in denial), but not certain (other than that we do sense something), then it is our judgment which could be correct or certain. But I see or feel something but I don’t know what it is; sometimes we call this being tricked by our senses, other times because of inexperience.

Well, I’ll continue on (if there is nothing else @frank?) As discussed previously, in Para. 2 of the Second Meditations Descartes accepts that nothing is certain, not our sensations. nor being awake; that everything is “fiction” and “illusion” (rather than accept how we ordinarily judge the correctness of our senses, or the different criteria for the judgments involving our sensations). Though some will continue to try to find a way in which our sensations or bodies are certain (@Janus), that could not avail us anyway, as there is no connection between how our senses (or any of science) could be the basis for true or certain customs and opinions anyway, which is the point of the Meditations. Descartes pushes forward in search of something that cannot be doubted, that is perfectly certain.

Taking Descartes’ advice that it is a placeholder—that we should “call [it] what [we] will”—I’ll skip over bringing up God and phrase what he says as a MacGuffin (as if it doesn’t matter what it is): “Isn’t there [something that] gives me the thoughts I am now having? But why do I think this, since I might myself be the author of these thoughts?” (@Paine might have an answer for this why.)

Setting aside for the moment his assumption (premise), taken generally, that there is a cause for my internal dialogue (outside or inside), he says “But then doesn’t it follow that I am, at least, something?” (interestingly, on par with that “something”—the cause—as it were: created in the “image” of God). When he says “doesn’t it follow” it makes me think of the necessity of a logical argument; this “follow” is a must with the force of certainty he is looking for: there is a cause; it can be internal; the thing that I am is that cause.

There is not only that logical necessity, but he takes his ability to secure doubt about everything as something certain. “So what remains true? Perhaps just the one fact that nothing is certain!” And his skeptical conviction becomes another basis of the self. ”if I convinced myself of something then I certainly existed.” And the conclusion is usually taken to be that I exist, but the point is clearly the “certainty” which I can have about this; put differently, he does not start to prove the existence of the self, but to “prove” anything, to be certain in any regard. He has merely retreated to here.

I don't think this [ that Descartes is demonizing the inherent fallibility of our human condition ] captures the significance of Descartes using the motif of an evil demon during his experiment upon himself. In a time when people were executed for witchcraft, demanding that a 'good' god would not deliberately deceive us separates the realm of the created from the problem of sin. — Paine

I take you as saying that Descartes is creating the role of the deceiver so that it won’t be thought he is speaking ill of God (if God was claimed to be the deceiver). And so, perhaps, our sin (doubt, uncertainty) does not blemish the perfection of God’s creation. I would add that the original sin is not deception but knowledge, it being thought to make us aware of, and able to address, everything in the world. But I also see the political point you are making about skirting the line between analyzing the theological-philosophical history without being accused of heresy.

We cannot be wrong about consciously feeling pain. — Janus

And you say I must be right if I am conscious, which I take as not just conscious in the sense that I am awake, but “conscious of”, in that I am aware of the pain, which is a kind of knowing. But we can be suffering and not know it (be unaware), such as when we are in denial, but it is clear to our friends, or when I am cold but I focus on something else.

But it is exactly the feeling that we cannot be wrong—here importantly in the sense that I must know, and know with certainty (the version of know as: correctly)—that is why sensation was picked first by Descartes as foundational. And pain is the traditional example because of its stark, vibrant, seeming self-evidence; as: if I don’t know my pain, what do I know?

People tie themselves in knots with theories about the science of sensation and the brain, but, here, for Descartes, the actual mechanics and logic of sensation do not matter because it does not meet his requirement for certainty. I can either be incorrect that I sense something (“You’re not shot this time!” Or “It’s just a mirage!”) or mistaken in my judgment of what I sense (“You’re not angry, you’re jealous.” or “Whew, that felt like a spider!”), but, ultimately, I can deceive myself, be mistaken, or uncertain, and that will not do for Descartes as a foundation for our opinions. And, regardless, the doubt of our connection to the outside world (in the example of dreaming) eclipses what we feel or don’t or whether we are correct about it.

The issue I am highlighting is that it's not clear senses alone give us any knowledge, without an intellectual component… the problem is in the way we judge what the senses "say"… provide "data", which is only such because of the intellect, otherwise, senses seem to lack mind.

It is in this specific context that senses are "sparks", as we will see when we get to Descartes observation about what literally hits the eye, as opposed to what we immediately interpret. — Manuel

Ah, I see. Or, I am unfamiliar enough with all that to retract characterizing your use of the word, nor to offer much help on what happens between sensation and anything else (although Wittgenstein does say we go too far in trying to get between our sensations and our expression of them, PI #245). I can only say that Descartes at this point appears to believe they do not fulfill the requirement he has set: to preclude doubt. If I would predict his next step, it would be that the separation of sensation from that-which-could-be-deceived (“intellect”) would only be to maintain the integrity of our senses while controlling the framework by which we are deceived, to structure our failing.

In other words, in the Theatetus Socrates first postulated that our senses gave us the criteria (measure) for knowledge, but abandoned that picture simply because our senses can be wrong, or not generalizable from person to person. Of course it remains to be seen how and thus why we need to posit an “intellect” rather than training our expression of, say, being cold, to language.

He is looking for a foundation in order to have the certainty he needs to conquer doubt. — Antony Nickles

I don't think so. — Fooloso4

Well you seem to think you understand what I’m trying to say and just flatly disagree. I’d leave it at that, however,

Descartes is a careful writer. He is a central figure in Western philosophy. He did not gain that reputation by getting lost. If someone is lost it is not him. — Fooloso4

this is uncalled for in this kind of forum. If you want to believe Descartes or Plato or Kant never made a mistake, feel free, but there is no cause to mock me. I will accept an apology if you care to discuss any other subject.

Is anything found that does not come, ultimately, from the senses? — Janus

Descartes skips over all our practices to ask whether we can trust our senses not because they are the birth (spark @Manuel says) of everything—imagine apologizing, or justice—but because we imagine we can’t be wrong about them. We think: If I am in pain, I must know it, and know it without a doubt. But we can repress it, and even to where it doesn’t register (now imagine anger, remorse, prurient curiosity—will we say we can’t be unaware now?) But the point is not that we can doubt it, but that he is looking around for something to hold that place.

You seem to be arguing that we should not take what he says literally, but you go on to object to the idea that there is a rhetorical aspect. — Fooloso4

Literally was the wrong word. When I said we should not read him simply at face-value, I meant we should not just take him to be making explicit everything we can learn.

Why does he need certainty? Because, as I also said, he is looking to established a foundation. — Fooloso4

He is looking for a foundation in order to have the certainty he needs to conquer doubt. You’re assuming he’s a reliable narrator. What he’s telling you he’s doing is not the whole picture.

we are to understand him, we should not begin by rejecting what he sets out to do. — Fooloso4

But surely to understand a philosopher is not just to get to the point where we understand the words and the sentences and can follow along with what they say? I am not rejecting what he sets out to do; I’m analyzing how he gets lost along the way because of what he wants from it.

I’ll let you move the discussion forward at your leisure Frank, as it is your thread. It does appear we
may have not worked out all the issues brought up in the first part.

It is a meditation, not a crisis of doubt. He has waited to do this meditation until he was able to set aside the time to withdraw from the practical concerns of daily life. It is in that sense a practice of abstraction. — Fooloso4

If we take philosophy literally and at face value, we are not putting it in contrast to the rest of the tradition, nor questioning why he has chosen this method, why he needs certainty.

The fact that Descartes “withdraws from the practical concerns of daily life” is not only the cause of the abstraction, it is motivated by the desire for abstraction, to be apart from our human life, its uncertainty. However, in doing so, we no longer have our ordinary concerns, so we can impose the criteria for whatever concerns us most, which is to be certain.

We seem to be bound by habits of belief, so that even if you decided to doubt everything you know, you'd find yourself "pulled back into the old ways." — frank

Descartes tendency is to “slide back into my old opinions” just as Hume’s doubt would recede when he went to the bar, because we do have a “memory” (as Socrates would say) of our shard lives and judgments. I would argue that without those there is no action, no meaning, no concerns, no way to have a self, at all.

I think you have mistaken a rhetorical device for something existential. — Fooloso4

What we are told is not the only important part of philosophy. Philosophy is not about undeveloped summaries or condensed conclusions. We, like Descartes, must ask more of the text. So I do not take anything as “rhetorical” but take it seriously enough to attribute reasons for everything, implications, assumptions, motivations, blind spots, frameworks, analogies, etc. But these are not my guesses or just reading more (putting more) into a text; I supply evidence for these lines of implication. I offer you to see for yourself, or offer other answers to these open questions, other reasons for why he said this or that, said it this way or that.

The Second Meditation:

“I feel like someone who is suddenly dropped into a deep whirlpool that tumbles him around so that he can neither stand on the bottom nor swim to the top.”

Emerson starts his essay Experience lost “[ i ] n a series of which we do not know the extremes, and believe that it has none.” They are in surroundings with no form and no way to orient. The analogy is apt because Descartes has no specific subject, and so no context from where to start. The abstraction leads to a general response without the criteria of an ordinary circumstance, and so grasps for the criteria of perfection.

“I will suppose, then, that everything I see is fictitious. I will believe that my memory tells me nothing but lies. I have no senses. Body, shape, extension, movement and place are illusions.”

He goes on to create the picture that our human faculties are the problem: that our sight creates fiction, our memory lies, and our sensations are illusions. Framing it on ordinary terms like dream, illusion, fiction, and lies gives us understandable ways of making it right: to awaken (pay attention), find what is not fake, sort out the facts, and authenticate. Unfortunately, Descartes, and everyone thereafter, takes the judgment of what the solution needs to be away from these ordinary contexts, and so postulates consciousness, reality, factual basis, and truth vs falsity (rather than mistake).

Well, he does posit a demon but I do not think he is demonizing our fallibility — Fooloso4

This seems to be splitting hairs. I think we can agree he’s not actually claiming there’s a demon. I welcome your reading, but I am claiming he is externalizing that he is demonized (afraid), that his ability to have a clear path through our culture and customs is fraught. He is afraid that we are unable to tell right from wrong; that the human condition is unfounded.

but he does not argue that this is reason for panic or a vortex of irrationality. Quite the opposite, it is reason to find something indubitable and build on that foundation. — Fooloso4

He is anxious that he might turn out to be wrong (“I was struck by how many false things I had believed”) or that he is not aware of, explicitly, the opinions he “confidently assents to”, that “keep coming back… as though they had a right to a place in my belief-system”—our ordinary beliefs. The reason to find a foundation is the fear, the lack of confidence, the unease of possibly being wrong.

he does have a very strong optimistic streak so far as the extent of human reason can go in attaining knowledge. — Manuel

The thing about Descartes, even Socrates, is that they do put the cart before the horse in wanting a specific type of knowledge (to solve our doubts) even before they get started, but in searching they do find a method that advances our ability to dig into a subject, even if they don’t get things right, or are barking up the wrong tree (such as imagining if we get clear about our sensations we will solve our moral dilemmas).

The crux of what I see is that Descartes is demonizing the inherent fallibility of our human condition.

I sometimes think that others go wrong even when they think they have the most perfect knowledge; — Descartes, First Meditation

Even in the best case scenario, even when required to be “perfect”, knowledge—predetermined, non-contextual, hoping to predict the right thing to do (“ought”)—is flawed in Descartes assessment.

But the less powerful they make my original cause, the more likely it is that I am so imperfect as to be deceived all the time – because deception and error seem to be imperfections. — Descartes, First Meditation

But we regularly fail, make mistakes, don’t assess the situation (act thoughtlessly) or do so not taking into account the other, etc. None of this is reason for panic or a vortex of irrationality. The possibility of error in our actions does not lead to the conclusion that all our efforts are hopeless. And not just “wrong” but seemingly for no reason, randomly, as if it could happen at any time without our being able to see it coming (thus, maliciously). This is the motivation of the desire to have the predictability and stability of science or math or our direct sensations, so that we can just follow the moral rules and never be wrong or judged.

there are some propositions which seem impossible to doubt without claiming insanity. How can I doubt that these are my hands? — frank

This is the bottom of a very long fall, so it seems absurd; and people take philosophy as esoteric, unpractical, and academic because they associate it with taking this worry seriously. But, as I said, it starts with the fear that we could be deceived in our cultural assumptions and societal norms. Another way to see this is that we might not know how to go on together at some point, that we might be judged wrong despite following orders, that the words we say might betray us. We are scared and anxious of, as it were, the future: uncertain, unpredictable outcomes.

Socrates will say that contradictory ideas “clash with each other in our soul” and Theatetus says that he “wonders immensely what these things are, and really sometimes I feel dizzy when I look at them.” Socrates says this “wonder” is the “origin of philosophy”. Descartes will also feel “dizzy” at the realization that there is no foundation whatsoever, not even as to whether I am awake. But the concern is for certainty in our opinions and customs, which are what he really wants to get straight about. We want knowledge to be as certain as the hands in front of our face; we don’t doubt our hands, we doubt that knowledge will save us at all.

Antony, what would you conclude the object of his project is? — frank

Of course we’re just getting started, so conclusions are premature.

Is [Descartes’ object] to withhold assigning truth to anything that isn't certain in the way the conclusion of a mathematical proof is? Or is he putting aside his certainty for the sake of reexamining foundations? — frank

I will say that I think he started wanting to investigate what is normally unexamined; the hidden judgments and assumptions of our society (as he says, the “law of custom and habitual opinions”), as most of philosophy attempts to reflect on—ourselves embedded in our culture. But he floats away from an actual inquiry of instances of practices in the situations in which they happen, into an abstracted world encompassing every claim in every context. He jumps “straight for the basic principles on which all my former beliefs rested.” Plato makes the same mistake early on in the Theatetus when he skips over examples of knowing things to look for what knowledge is “itself” and then moves to theories of knowledge in the abstract, universally, like math.

Descartes’ skipping over our ordinary examples of knowledge to try to be certain about something more “foundational” is not because “going through them one by one… would take forever”. He is worried about being deceived about our major concerns of custom and opinion, the “many false things [he] had believed”, like morality, politics—the things we are more uncertain about. It is fear that makes him want to start with something he seemingly can’t not know, his senses and his awareness of himself.

It might help to examine the assumptions and conclusions he makes as he goes along.

“ I should also withhold it from ones that are not completely certain and indubitable.”

His criteria to assent to a truth is certainty and absence of doubt. Of course his ideal is a mathematical certainty. Wittgenstein later will show that this requirement is why philosophy overlooks our ordinary criteria for every different thing we do.

“the visions that come in sleep are like paintings: they must have been made as copies of real things; so at least these general kinds of things – eyes, head, hands and the body as a whole – must be real and not imaginary.”

He begins to account for our doubt by taking our most direct, best-case scenario, sensations, and concluding that we must make “copies”, which can then be mistaken, without undermining the possibility of something certain, which he creates and abstracts as what is “real” (as Plato did with the Forms). Which leads to a picture such as:

much of what we call reality is human projection based on our limited perspective. From this 'dimly lit' vantage point I generally hold that I (or any of us) don't have enough information or wisdom to make reliable judgements about the nature of reality. — Tom Storm

“yet clearly I sometimes am deceived.”

So in contrast, everything else is subject to doubt, or, to put it another way, possible failure, mistakes, error, thoughtlessness, hurt, tragedy, etc. As well, it is framed in a way that someone is deceiving him; in a sense, either God or himself. As if it weren’t a regular occurrence, but malicious, intentional, out of the ordinary.

“On their view [that God does not exist], then, I am a product of fate or chance or a long chain of causes and effects.”

He tries to give up on the idea of an “all-powerful” God, but, rather than accept uncertainty in the world, he assumes there are other forces of which I am the “perfect” product.

“I don’t reach this conclusion [that doubt can be raised about anything] in a flippant or casual manner, but on the basis of powerful and well thought-out reasons.”

I think most interesting is there is a sort of admission that this desire for certainty is driving the form of his answers; that it is “powerful”, like a basic human need, but he takes it as a validation or badge of honor rather than as a unexamined forced criteria.

“But if I go on viewing them in that light I shall never get out of the habit of confidently assenting to [the law of custom and habitual opinions].”

Again, almost as a throwaway sentence, he reveals something more interesting. It is the habitual assent that he is actually trying to throw off, and he makes the assumption that these are errors and uncertainties, to which the contrast is perfection, truth, and certainty, rather than conscious assent, or it’s opposite, what Emerson calls aversion, or Thoreau would call dissent. He warns against “laziness” and to be “on guard” against the “pull” of conformity. That we will need courage to shake ourselves awake (say in the metaphorical sense of: unconscious assent to the social contract) and that there is some violence and struggle that we must throw ourselves into. Hegel will refer to this “darkness” as the “dark path” in the Phenomenology of Spirit, when we begin to take apart our dichotomies.

However, perhaps because he views dissent as crossing the rule of the church, he needs to be absolutely certain (to “counter-balance the weight of old opinion”) before defying the authority of the status quo (why he is in a sense “hiding”, as @Fooloso4 points out, his defiance). So maybe this is not just an epistemological treatise, but, hidden within, a political one.

“However far I go in my distrustful attitude, no actual harm will come of it, because my project won’t affect how I act, but only how I go about acquiring knowledge.”

I just want to point to Socrates discussion in the Meno of knowledge and action (virtue) as well as Wittgenstein’s uncovering that the desire for knowledge creates the excuse for our responsibility to act, or react to the other’s claim upon us. That, no, there may be harm in Descartes’ attitude.

The quote says “you’ll soon realise that other members of your species possess conscious selves like yours.” You are resorting to cherry picking and omitting parts of the quote to try and contort it to fit your argument regarding a desire for uniqueness. — Luke

Well, if you don’t think writing can be paraphrased and drawn out at all it’s gonna be tough to do philosophy. If you think I’ve got it wrong, what do you think he is saying?

“You’ll come to believe, as never before, in your own singular significance. What’s more, it will not just be you. For you’ll soon realise that other members of your species possess conscious selves like yours.”

And when I say that, I’m not asking what you take from it, but to answer the open questions, such as: what do I believe? and how is it the same thing as before, only now more? What is it that could be mine, but yet also something others can have (“my own”)? And what will “not just be you”? That which I believe in? That I will not just believe in something that is mine, I will believe in something that is theirs? If so, what and how do I and they possess it? How is mine mine and theirs theirs but they are alike? How is theirs “like” mine?

The rest of the quote counters your claims:

You’ll come to believe, as never before, in your own singular significance. What’s more, it will not just be you. For you’ll soon realise that other members of your species possess conscious selves like yours.

This does not reflect a desire for uniqueness. — Luke

The implication of the sentence is that you also (along with me) will be unique, and I will respect that more: “You’ll come to believe… in your own singular significance. What’s more, it will not just be you [that you will come to believe is singularly significant]. For you’ll soon realize that other[ s are singularly significant too]. (Emphasis and paraphrasing mine.]

I don't see where you find that in the premises of the article, unless you are talking about the premises created within the history of philosophy that brought about the hard problem. — Luke

Yes, I am claiming that the article is working on (assuming) a certain framework that, yes, is trying to answer or overcome the conclusions of philosophical skepticism.

The article does not mention anything about a "desire for uniqueness" of the individual phenomenal self. — Luke

He does say: “With this marvelous new phenomenon at the core of your being, you’ll start to matter to yourself in a new and deeper way. You’ll come to believe, as never before, in your own singular significance”.

I wanted to say the same thing with “unique” as he is with “singular significance” though I take it as a fantasy created by our desire rather than a given state. I think I’ve made that as clear as I can.

What I take to be the main crux of the article is that the combination of different qualia create a sense of personhood; create me, my conscious self.

The example of blindsight demonstrates one aspect of this; that, although the person functions as a sighted person, without the qualia of sight, it doesn’t feel to them that those sighted functions belong to them. It was instead just some qualia-less physical processing that the person was unaware of, like their liver function.

If the same applied to all qualia, then there would be no sense of personhood. — Luke

I’ll let it go after this because I agree my point is not a critique of the crux of the article (rather, I would say, of its premises). We are all aware (or unaware), sense the world (or are numb to it), feel anger and sadness (or repress it), but what I sense and feel is not unable to be possessed by others, for them to “have” them. We are interested, traumatized, exalted—me by one thing, you by something different, remembering different things, perhaps differently, but not always different.

But it is no mistake that the “sense of personhood” is a “sense”. We want the criteria for a self to be continuous, specific, knowable, so we take as evidence the one thing we feel we cannot not know, awareness of sensation—this self-evident pain I am pierced with, undeniably, unavoidably—and add to that our desire for uniqueness (and control) and you have the individual phenomenal self, backwards engineered from, coincidently, the criteria for truth that philosophy has desired from the beginning.

You aren’t really aware of your feelings or sensations? — Luke

The trick is right in the space between feeling something, being aware of it (rather than suppressing it) and just before the jump to the conclusion that we have “consciousness”, more than “are conscious of”: as if it were pointed out, or we’re embarrassed into acknowledging it, or are touching something with a purpose, or suddenly notice the faint yet unmistakeable smell of bleach, or can’t seem to reach our grief. Part of it is the sense that these feelings, thoughts, sensations, must be “ours”, as if no one has ever been this heartbroken before; the fear that they are trivial, that the other can feel the same; as if I won’t “have” anything. Part of it is having the security that there is something of mine that I cannot be separated from, that knowing myself is at my fingertips (ugh), that, as you say, this at least is “given”.

Back to Humprey: “…what would be missing from your life if you lacked phenomenal consciousness? If you had blindsight, blind-touch, blind-hearing, blind-everything? Pace Fodor, I’m sure there’s an obvious answer, and it’s the one we touched on when discussing blindsight. It’s that what would be missing would be nothing less than you, your conscious self… imagine if you were to lack qualia of any kind at all, and to find that none of your sensory experience was owned by you? I’m sure your self would disappear.”

The stakes are certainly very high. As Descartes found, if we rely on anything else to build our sense of self, it can be taken away. Only if we “own” what is special about me (keep it inside) can I be ensured that my culture won’t minimize me, that others’ won’t define what is acceptable for me to be, that my actions won’t be judged to include implications I had not thought about, that I won’t just be identified by my suffering. As Wittgenstein’s nemesis says: “But surely another person can't have THIS pain!” (PI, #253) as if “this” were to mean: the same pain, the identical (unique) pain, when it is merely true because there are two bodies; this body and that one. In our case, he would put it that there is a difference in the criteria for the ownership of a self.

The section you quoted does not support your claim that the author’s goal is to “prove” that we each have an undeniable, given self. The fact that we have phenomenal consciousness is simply a given. — Luke

.

What I should have said is the need to explain or have knowledge of the purpose of “phenomenal consciousness” is to desire to solidify it, make it certain, understandable, important. To make it “factual”, say, as we feel the theory of evolution is.

I realize this is not the point of the article; I’m just trying to put its philosophical descriptions and claims in the context of the greater sphere of analytical philosophy. I’m saying that the assumption that we have “consciousness” is a misconception based on a desire to be certain that we matter. This, of course, is a broader discussion. I can let it be for another time.

”I am claiming that there is a reason he is imagining a “subjective experience”, the evidence being that he says it. That he wants it to be “explained” by a “mechanism” is not me “reading intentions”, it is the implications of his getting to his reason from those means.
— Antony Nickles

…this is actually terrible writing. Writing should narrow in on a point so the reader has clarity. — Philosophim

I am narrowly focused on his point that knowledge of the self will make us matter, and I am trying to show how the desire to matter creates the need for the certainty. Maybe I can help with something you’re not clear on.

He is right to use the terms and points he is so that even a reader not well versed in philosophy can understand his point. — Philosophim

But he does bring up Descartes; he does imagine these findings have philosophical import. Just because he doesn’t get into the place his claims stake in the history of philosophy doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be subject to its critique.

His lack of exploring Locke is not an intention we can fairly make. — Philosophim

I’m not saying there is a fault in not discussing Locke. I thought you might understand my point better in reviewing my response to Manuel’s bringing up Locke.

Critique his main conclusions, the idea of solving the hard problem. If he chooses to sprinkle meaning behind it, why is that relevant to his main point at all? It sounds like you're more upset with where you think this can go than with his immediate idea. — Philosophim

I’m not worried “where… this can go”. I’m saying it got started from a hidden desire and a misconception. Sometimes philosophy can’t be done so close in; this is how someone objecting to skepticism gets stuck trying to prove it wrong.

I feel your reading intentions into the article that are not being insinuated. I would re-read it once more. This is proposing a mechanism to explain how the subjective experience occurs within the brain. That's the crux and really nothing more. — Philosophim

I am claiming that there is a reason he is imagining a “subjective experience”, the evidence being that he says it. That he wants it to be “explained” by a “mechanism” is not me “reading intentions”, it is the implications of his getting to his reason from those means. The idea that there is “nothing more” is skipping over how this is set up from the history of philosophy. The “problem” is assumed without considering whether it is framed correctly (see post re Locke above).

"We have the ideas of matter and thinking, but possibly shall never be able to know whether any mere material being thinks or no; it being impossible for us… to discover, by the contemplation of our own ideas… a power to perceive and think. — Manuel, quoting Locke

Humphrey, and many others, take this as a statement of a problem, seeing only that Locke (and Descartes) found it “impossible” because he was merely working from the “contemplation of [their] own ideas”. The feeling is that now, with science or some other intellectual solution, we can “discovery” and “know” the “power to perceive and think”. The “discovery” is, however, that it is impossible to know.

The sneaky part is the first step (as Wittgenstein will say, PI, #308). What Locke wants is knowledge of the other (and ourselves), which is to say, certainty, justified, immutable. What he is saying, despite his hopeful qualifications, is a statement of fact. We will never be certain the other is thinking, because, as Wittgenstein sees, the criteria of thinking is not knowledge—not everything is thought. The other may be quoting, brainwashed, serving platitudes, or just plain making stuff up. The answer is not one of “knowing” it is working to find out what the other is trying to point out in the context we’re in (being drawn in Heidegger will say), given the intelligible possibilities, or to make them intelligible. To trust that they are individuating themselves, until it is clear they are not. We must “contemplate” the other as other, treat them as someone who is seeing something different.

Thus, there is no “power” to discover, no continuous “thought” or special, ever-present “perception” leading to a “consciousness”; something always there and yours alone. We want others (and ourselves) to be able to be always thinking, everything said be “intended”, so that we can simply take their words on their face, take ours as clear without being responsible for them further, because they come from “our consciousness” which is the desire for something foundational.

Why are we using science to attempt to back up our “feeling” of having a “personal” sense” — Antony Nickles

Are we? — Luke

Well the article starts with a study; there’s neuroscience behind it attempting to understand “consciousness”; and the whole point is making a problem out of the “body”, which is able to be empirically studied, related to the idea of a persons’s individuality, pictured as their “consciousness”. Which hair are you trying to split?

Why is the feeling “mysterious”? — Antony Nickles

Because the hard problem of consciousness is a mystery in need of an explanation. — Luke

This is circular. The question was meant to spur the thought that we (philosophers) have created a “problem”, manufactured the philosophical idea of “consciousness” for a purpose we are not examining; that, philosophically, this is old ground, even the attempt to bring it certainty (Descartes, Positivism, etc.).

Ah. It’s this “mattering” and “significance” that we wanted all along
— Antony Nickles

No, it's an answer to the hard problem that we wanted all along. — Luke

Again, here is the quote at the end where he reveals what he wanted and admits why he wanted.

“With this marvelous new phenomenon [the “phenomenal self”] at the core of your being, you’ll start to matter to yourself in a new and deeper way. You’ll come to believe, as never before, in your own singular significance.”

The quote is a conclusion unattached to his entire derivation for the purpose of justifying this “self”. And he is telling you his motivation. Maybe we are confusing his motivation with your own; I submit he is admitting something more self-reflective and honest which is typical of this project. You seem to be just expressing your opinion without explaining why you want “an answer”.

He goes on to say that if it could be proved that we each have a given, undeniable “self”... — Antony Nickles

Where does he say this? — Luke

“So, think back to the transformation that must have taken place when your ancestors first woke up to the experience of sensations imbued with qualia, and – out of nothing – the phenomenal self appeared… ‘I feel, therefore I am.’”

He feels he’s solved the skepticism of the foundational self (rewording Descartes) by implying that there is something special about my sensations (which are a given). It’s the point of the whole article.

that we would treat each other better, which implies we could wash our hands of having to see others as human — Antony Nickles

If we treated each other better, then "we could wash our hands of having to see others as human"?? — Luke

No, not if we treated each other better—?? I said “if it could be proved… we each have a… self”, as we wants. Basically, he's saying if we had knowledge of the other (before acting), then we would be moral. Hello Socrates, Kant, yada, yada. Not a new idea, but not one that pans out (ask Dostoyevsky, Nietszche, Wittgenstein). This is a philosophical misconception turned into a scientific or intellectually theoretical problem.

And just saying no it’s not isn’t an argument, it’s just a contradiction.

The article draws a conclusion from a patient who can find objects in the range of an eye that is blind. Whatever the mechanics of that, Humphrey takes it that there is a difference between sensation and perception—there’s sight, then there’s “the mysterious feel… [of] our subjective, personal sense of interacting with stimuli”—he calls it the “somethingness of seeing”, and this is the underpinning for our having “consciousness”.

Why are we using science to attempt to back up our “feeling” of having a “personal” sense? Why is the feeling “mysterious”?

“With this marvellous new phenomenon [the “phenomenal self”] at the core of your being, you’ll start to matter to yourself in a new and deeper way. You’ll come to believe, as never before, in your own singular significance.”

Ah. It’s this “mattering” and “significance” that we wanted all along, and all the rest is to justify that (that I begin being special)—are we just going to finish the job Descartes started? He goes on to say that if it could be proved that we each have a given, undeniable “self” that we would treat each other better, which implies we could wash our hands of having to see others as human, having to treat them, as Wittgenstein would say, as having a soul (p 178), and the inevitability that sometimes we do not.

I'm not debating that. I said ''IF the hard-problem is real..." — Eugen

You’re right, I missed that. What I’m claiming is that, in response to #1, there is not a problem of consciousness at all, hard or otherwise. Science isn’t missing something, though nor should it imagine it is solving what is a philosophically mis-conceptualized issue. Where philosophy used to need to catch up to the discoveries of science, now science needs to stop thinking in the terms of 16th century philosophy.

even after we have explained the functional, dynamical, and structural properties of the conscious mind, we can still meaningfully ask the question, Why is it conscious? — Alkis Piskas, quoting the interwebs

I would suggest that we have not examined how asking this question is meaningful. In what context? Why or when is there a further issue? Why do we need more?

I (and Wittgenstein) would claim that the formation of the picture of “consciousness” is manufactured to have something to solve in order to have certainty in ourselves and in relation to others. It is not physical things (sensations, feelings, etc.) that make up who “we” are; our having them is not special. You have a headache; hey, I do to. Yours is throbbing behind your left ear; wow, me too—that’s crazy that we have the same headache. Our relation to others (identifying pain, having the same experience, etc.) is not based on our biology, it’s a function of living with each other through the history of our human condition.

[Information theory] seems like a potential way across the objective/subjective gap — Count Timothy von Icarus

This “gap” is not the difference between individual experience and generalized certainty; I am separate from you. My knowledge of you has a limit (you may be faking, hiding, lying)—there is a real truth to the fears of skepticism. So it’s not knowledge we lack (from science or otherwise). I can’t be sure (know!,) that you are in pain, because the way it works is I react to your pain, I respond to or ignore it. Our feeling that we want something more is not a riddle, it comes from a need for control.

I'm trying to relate your comment with the OP. I can't. — Eugen

I am saying there is not a “problem of consciousness” in coming at the other end, which is to say we create the fantasy of the “subjective experience”; that consciousness is a construct to gain theoretical certainty. We make it an intellectual puzzle because we can’t handle our actual human condition of separation from others (and “ourselves”).

The mystery here is not the basis for consciousness, it’s the framing of consciousness itself. We want “consciousness” to be a thing so we can feel that I am something specific and unique, instead of just individual (my body, not your body). We are conscious if we are aware; or awake. We do not need the certainty of tying ourselves to something “hard” to differentiate ourselves from others or expectations. If we do not, we, in a sense, aren’t an individual; I don’t exist as me (apart from anyone else I follow or mimic or quote, etc.).

I think without a clear, precise conception (or theory) of "consciousness", saying "isn't consciousness" doesn't actually say anything; ergo, at best, the so-called "hard problem" is underdetermined. — 180 Proof

Yes, we want “a clear, precise” concept of consciousness because it has been abstracted from its ordinary contexts in order to stand in the place of Descartes “I” and the doubt of our existence. “Undermining” is halfway there; I’m asking we consider not only why we want a “hard” solution, but why we need to have a fixed “me” as it were, our “consciousness”. You have an experience, say, a majestic fleeting moment of a sunset, maybe even something you can’t express in words; we want the picture of our entire human condition to be based on this occurrence (we always have our experience) so that we are by nature, as a given, unique and that that specialness dictates, for example: “our” meaning the things we say, our “subjectivity”, or being inscrutable to you, or that our expression is ensured, our actions always “intended” by us.

If truth is not an axiom that can be applied universally then are such truth statements as the first one in this OP useless? — invicta

You are assuming a few things, though understandably. Your measure of “useful” is based on the success science has had, which, as you say, is due to the certainty, predictability, consistency, etc. of its method (that it does not matter who does the scientific method).

Philosophy (that not peeled off historically as science) does not have this luxury of mathematical certainty, but judging whether its truths are “useful” is the desire to make philosophy be science, to require certainty, to avoid our part in our human truths. That we accept them and stand behind them, not in the sense of an opinion, but such, for example, that philosophy is not meant to explain, but to describe what you then might see for yourself, and in reaching to see and think in a way more than just certain knowledge, we change and become a better version of ourselves.

So are philosophical truths dependent on context? You won’t get far outside of the non-contextual abstract universalized pre-determined fixation philosophy has without considering how context plays a part in how we have truth-value despite not being analogous to mathematical criteria.

What other philosophy books did you read besides the textbooks during your undergraduate studies and why you read them? — Largo

I studied Ordinary Language Philosophy, but that would be hard to find a focus on. Most notably, it includes Plato, J.L. Austin, Wittgenstein, and Stanley Cavell (most recently).

I have a suggestion. Before you register, go to the actual school bookstore, and they should have all the books for each class grouped together. Read the first five or so pages of the start (not the introduction or the preface) of each book for every class you could take. Focus on which makes you react to it with your own ideas (as in reading you should make note of those first). Sign up for whichever courses have the books that interested you the most. Good luck.

Sure, if you want to be more precise, you can say that we put together what comes to us when we externalize to others what we say, or when we are attempting to get the other person to see what we are trying to say, as I am doing know, replying to what you said. — Manuel

This is a more precise description of the same picture I’m saying is only an occurrence (that we decide what to say), not a universal generalization that can explain or figure out “language use”; I’m saying there is no “answer”. Most of the time nothing definite “comes to us”; we, as with your examples, just want to apologize, or you want to convince me, or I have to say something polite, or we are responding, in situations where we can’t know how it will turn out—so we turn it into something we can control; but we don’t “have in mind” what we say; there’s nothing that specific or unique about us. Communication is much more slipshod and vague and prone to failure than imagining something definite in you, or that happens in some definite way, instead of as many ways as there are things to do with words. I’m saying that the desire for that certainty, that systematizing, that general explanation, is a wish to avoid cleaning up our own mess, or wanting to ensure what “we mean” beforehand, but that desire creates the goose-chase after a solution.

It's not always there beforehand. — Banno

Yes, and what we want to be there is in order for us to avoid our having to stand there ourselves (afterwards); to be responsible for the implications of what we said, to answer for being intelligible further, to be held against our own words. Cavell does a reading of Emerson’s essay Fate as a discussion of freewill, and I think it’s there where he has one picture the occurrence of starting a sentence and then realizing that, there, then (in that situation), there is only one way to finish it, of it being out of our control even when we are conscious and careful and choosing our words. I’m a twin, and people ask if we finish each others sentences, but what is happening is that I am starting a sentence that doesn’t need to be finished, by anyone. You “know what the other person is thinking” a lot of the time, it’s just rude to interrupt.

…it's not the development of a concept but the interaction with the world that counts…. And so more generally for… concepts [other than counting]. They are better thought of not as things but of acts. And I take it that this is what underpins "Don't look to meaning, but to use". Hence,
[as he said] “Understanding that concept is just being able to do that stuff. Including talking.”
— Banno — Banno

I agree that a concept (in Wittgenstein’s sense) is better imagined as an accomplishment (an act of its kind) and not an idea (mental, owned process), and so thinking, knowing, intending, are more like pointing, apologizing, and counting—we judge them based on the criteria that matters to us about them, “that count” as Banno says.

I would make clear that the end to grab onto is not thus that “we” then are “actors” (as a universal or even general rule). We are not now to simply shift to the picture that we control or do these acts or practices. This is not the same game just with a different explanation—the jig is up. We do not “use” words as a different explanation than that we “mean” them (not even in moving from picturing that we express a meaning we have inside us). This casual or individuated explanation still relies on a process (internal or external) that remains the mystery that we imagine we simply need to understand to be certain about communication. (Wittgenstein is merely saying that if you want to know what “I know” means here, look at which of the finite number of versions, or “senses”—a better word he employs than the easily misunderstood “use”—of that word is happening in this context. For example: of the different possibilities of “use”, his, in the PI, is the version of “use” as in “which sense”, which version in the conceptual category. Whew.)

So the picture is not that we are, somehow: intending, thinking, talking, etc. The point is that judging whether these have occurred is not a matter of knowing a brain process or language structure, but: differentiating what is deemed “a thought” from merely quoting, or speaking in platitudes; and intention is what we ask you about when you do something weird; and talking is different than shouting or singing. ALL the rest of it [okay, most of all the rest] is based on the desire to create a problem to fix so we can be sure about us squirrelly humans—Forms, quaila, analytic, factual, real, innate, etc. (or we want to bar ourselves from the possibility of fixing anything).

when we vocalize, we put together these [internal word] fragments into a coherent whole that another native speaker will understand what we are saying. I suspect that the initial babbling of infants offers a clue of the language faculty growing to maturity. — Manuel

We rarely “put together” most of what comes to us unless we are on a first date or creating a speech, much less can use that as a universal description. (The desire though is that we could control what we mean by what we say, even more than we “always” put it together.) The hoped-for picture here is that there is something (thought, meaning, intention, etc.) that we convey or at least that goes into language (or in this instance is in language systematically). However, for example, when Wittgenstein talks about “expression”, it is to point to the moment at which we are responsible for what we have said—speaking “externally” to this extent only; not to infer it is from something internal. We can also say we speak in expressions; that our words are judged (have importance, are meaningful) by the criteria for threatening, entreating, explaining, describing, etc. But it is not some “we” that do these or cause them to happen. As I have said in my last post, you are individually responsible for what you say, but it is not otherwise special in your having said it.

Chomsky's, supposition seems to be that since most of our language use is the little voice in your head, then the source and prime example of language use must be that little voice. But isn't it entirely possible that the little voice is a sort of back-construction, the internalisation, as it were, of our external language? — Banno

More than that maybe even. Is talking to yourself “necessary”? Don’t we sometimes want to not listen to ourselves? Despite our internal ramblings, or, more likely, in giving them too much attention, don’t we nevertheless speak thoughtlessly?

Words may change, but Kripke's Causal Theory of Reference illustrates the importance of the Performative Act Of Naming in Language in ensuring the stability of language, whereby the reference of a linguistic expression, what it designates in the world, is fixed by an act of “initial baptism”. — RussellA

Again, the desire to have all of language work like the very limited process of naming objects—to imagine all words referring to an object, even “meaning” or something “real”—is because we want logical necessity and predictability. If nothing else, Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations started with that picture of language and goes on to show that not only does most of language work entirely differently (each concept having its on criteria) but that language was taken out of individual case-by-case contexts by philosophy to ensure certainty, and that it is not the structure of language that is essential but our lives; that what we ordinarily say in a given context is simply a means of seeing what matters to us about our lives; and is the tool to take us out of our fixation (“bewitchment”) of an abstract solution to our failures and limitations.