• The Cogito
    I agree, but do not think it prima facie. I think all the stuff about God is nothing more than a rhetorical defense to avoid the fate of Galileo. Descartes took his motto from Ovid:Fooloso4

    I think your interpretation likely. It makes sense of why he didn't publish The World, after all.

    And I thank you for saying my reading isn't prima facie -- I only want to focus on how, by the text's surface at least, we can conclude God exists. At least necessarily, though I don't know how much Descartes' notion of God -- like Leibniz's -- is really "orthodox" either.


    For my part here I think modern existentialism, from Husserl on, has taken from Descartes' notion of the cogito and attempted other things.

    I'm a bit mired in a confusion of where I'm going with this, though....
  • Why ought one do that which is good?
    Why should one do that which is good? No, I don't think that good is synonymous with, "something one ought to do". For example, most people would agree that selling all your worldly possessions and donating the money to charity is something that would be good. However, that doesn't mean that one is obligated to do so. Please input into this conversation with your own takes.Hyper

    A good conundrum for myself.

    Why should one, in the general sense, do good is much harder for me to answer than why the good is attractive.

    For one tempted by the good there is no "Why do what is good?" -- it's a light that brings moths in to burn them up.

    No one is obligated by anything in the existential sense -- we are all free to choose.

    But you do what is good because that's what you do (at least, as long as it helps others -- there's a darker side to this that hurts others, but that's not what I mean by the good)
  • The Cogito
    Contrary to Descartes' claim, it comes from a lack or want, from a need or desire to improve, to have or be without defect.

    With regard to the perfectibility of man, perfect comes from the possibility of avoiding error by limiting what I will to what I know.
    Fooloso4

    M'kay; I can go with what you say.

    Do you agree with my prima facie reading of the Meditations? That Descartes claims to deduce knowledge of God's existence on the basis of the foundation of certainty he finds in the Cogito?
  • The Cogito
    Assuming an infinite time then Descartes could be the source of perfection. However, at the moment that Descartes is writing his argument he surely is not perfect-- the method of doubt is attractive because Descartes knows he has been in error before. In that moment where else would you say the idea of perfection comes from?
  • Degrees of reality
    When I was still at school, I had the peculiar idea that if I suddenly swapped consciousness with the person walking towards me, AND I also instantly was connected to his or her memories at that moment, then there'd be no way of knowing what had happened. Rather peculiar thing to think, I grant, but at the time it seemed significant. Something about the universality of the experience of 'I'.Wayfarer

    I think that'd count as a higher reality -- some kind of metaphysical structure which connects all the individual minds.

    This isn't to say I endorse that, but it'd make sense of the idea: We could wrap the theory up as an explanation for connection between physically disparate minds.
  • Degrees of reality
    Trouble with identity again. The argument against reincarnation seems applicable here - in what sense was the person in the Irish Cottage the same as jgill? If all they shared was 'I AM', how do we conclude that they are the same?Banno

    Taking up the transcendental lens:

    We could conclude the 'I AM' is the same because they referred to the same 'I' who was 'AM'ing.
  • TPF Philosophy Competition/Activity 2025 ?
    But in terms of the setup my thought is to mostly copy it exactly because it seems to be working.
  • TPF Philosophy Competition/Activity 2025 ?
    If people who voted to participate writing want a topic then this is a good thread for it to be proposed in.

    I'm hesitant to restrict it to a topic out front because of how little participation there's been in the past with respect to writing essays. So I'd want to keep it as open as possible to allow people with different interests to submit, unless the participants really want to focus in on a particular topic.
  • TPF Philosophy Competition/Activity 2025 ?
    Given that this is the first day in which the idea has been taken seriously as"a thing" I'm good with keeping it as simple as our stupidity can contain.

    But there's time for thinking of guidelines along the way in this thread. I wouldn't post the announcement until at least February to ensure we don't conflict with the literary activity.
  • TPF Philosophy Competition/Activity 2025 ?
    Sweet. :) Sounds like you'd be a good contributor then. It just took some time for the idea to "catch on"
  • TPF Philosophy Competition/Activity 2025 ?
    Yes, though I haven't thought about what rules to have. I'm so far willing to administer things, I don't know if I have good ideas for rules. (unsurprisingly, I rather dislike rules)

    Oh yeah. "Rigor" doesn't matter, I think, insofar that there's no rejection due to rigor. It's at least a creative excercise so you don't have to appeal to what a literal journal wants. Else, as you say, why not submit it there?

    I like the idea of a less rigorous and creative philosophical display -- guesses, hints, attempts, and fun sound like an uncommon niche we could fill.
  • Degrees of reality
    Heh. Fair.

    What?! My wonderings are off-topic? Never! :D

    Good and interesting thread either way. I'm enjoying it.
  • TPF Philosophy Competition/Activity 2025 ?


    I was thinking after the literary activity is concluded we could put up an announcement somewhere that submissions are due by the 1st of June, then I'd post them up into a separate sub-forum like the literary activity does on the 2nd of June, and go from there.



    Cool. That sounds super easy. Thanks!
  • TPF Philosophy Competition/Activity 2025 ?
    Cool, thanks. I'll have to learn pastebin for thems who want shortcode.

    Never used it before, but I believe you when you say it's easy to learn. I'm famliar enough with computers to figure it out, and will reach out if I can't.

    I was thinking June-July, cuz May is end-of-school-year chaos for lots of people.
  • TPF Philosophy Competition/Activity 2025 ?


    Sounds good. PM's work. Probably better to keep it "in house" in terms of servers etc. So I see it working like this:

    If someone PM's me their essay then I'll copy-paste it into a .txt document on my hard drive without the name of the person, in the hopes that I'll forget over time when I post it come the summer. Then on the designated date I'll post the essays with their titles (or number them if they have no titles) and we'll go from there.
  • TPF Philosophy Competition/Activity 2025 ?
    In terms of running things -- like anonymizing authors and posting submissions and intaking submissions -- I'm fine with taking over those tasks. How exactly do you do it @Jamal for the literary activity? Set up an email for submissions and then post them after a set date?
  • Cosmology & evolution: theism vs deism vs accidentalism
    Hrm.

    Sounds like you're one of those blasphemous philosophers....
  • TPF Philosophy Competition/Activity 2025 ?
    Heh. Thanks. I looked for the blushing emoticon but didn't see it.
  • TPF Philosophy Competition/Activity 2025 ?
    Sure!

    That gets along with the notion that philosophy should be concerned with the ideas themselves rather than who says them.
  • TPF Philosophy Competition/Activity 2025 ?
    I think feedback alone is enough, with maybe a thread after the fact where people share why they thought this or that essay was better, but it's not strictly a competition.

    Odd that this is relevant, and weird to quote myself, but in response to @Janus question "Why doesn't the Nobel offer a philosophy prize?""

    There is one, we're just still arguing over who has won it and what you get for winning and what it means to win in the first place.

    Also, to ensure no one cheats, it's long been decided since Plato that no money will be given to the winner.
    Moliere
  • Degrees of reality
    (There's a thread over there about non-existent objects, but I haven't looked at it. ― No, there's two of them.)Srap Tasmaner

    :D

    Well, that takes down my theory. Is it really less real if we already have two threads discussing the curiosity?

    Sometimes workbooks for children have a kind of puzzle in them, where you're given a little group of pictures and are told to put them in order to make a story. They often rely on thermodynamics ― you're supposed to know that broken pieces of a vase don't rise from the ground (defying gravity as well) and assemble themselves into a vase on the table.

    Let's call the world where that sort of thing doesn't happen "the real world." If you tend to tell yourself and others stories where that sort of thing does happen, then I'd be tempted to say your world is "less real" than mine. And insofar as people's beliefs are real, or at least a useful way of categorizing their behavior, and insofar as their behavior has consequences in the real world, I'd be tempted to say that people are capable of increasing or decreasing the reality of situations they are involved in. (It's like the response to "facts are theory-laden": let's make sure our theories are fact-laden.)
    Srap Tasmaner

    But this is a better rendition.

    I'm thinking now that it's not beliefs relative to states of affairs, as categories, that admits of degrees of reality.

    But rather beliefs, relative to one another with respect to reality that admits of degrees of reality. Which makes some sense to me -- I have true and false beliefs, and beliefs which implicate sets of beliefs, and the beliefs which implicate sets of beliefs which have more true statements are the beliefs with "more reality".

    Almost literally.
    I also have in mind the sort of thing you can see in Peter Jackson's film Heavenly Creatures, where the characters begin to slip back and forth between the real world and their own fantasy world. We all do a bit of this, and it seems quite natural to put how much we do it on a scale. Mistaking a windmill on the horizon for a grain elevator is one thing; mistaking it for a dragon is another. At least grain elevators are real, and windmills and grain elevators are both members of "rural towers". But dragons ...Srap Tasmaner

    And I agree with you that this phenomena is related but different. I wanted to wait until I watched the movie before responding, hence my tardiness.

    The slip between fantasy and reality seems to make sense of reality as degrees -- are we playing a part in our imaginative game together right now, or are we talking about the bills?
  • TPF Philosophy Competition/Activity 2025 ?
    Yes, this is what I meant.

    If anyone puts forth the effort then they can know that at least one person will read and comment.
  • TPF Philosophy Competition/Activity 2025 ?
    I clicked "Maybe", but probably should have said "Yes" -- if there are essays then I'd participate as a reader.
  • The Cogito
    See how the argument guarantees knowledge of God, and yet that knowledge depends on faith in the first place?NotAristotle

    Yeah... I just don't think that's the argument Descartes is making.

    I'm insistent that he's not appealing to faith at all, but rather is deducing that God exists from the thought experiment.

    It's because we live in the time after we've killed God that this inference is seen as implausible, rather than because the argument is obviously fallacious.

    Husserl and Frege seem quite similar to me, re psychologism. They both reject the idea that thoughts can only be said to be “caused,” rather than explained or justified. One of the things I see Husserl doing is to separate the fact that thought-terms describe mental/psychological phenomena from the further fact (as he saw it) that phenomena like judgments and syllogisms are also normative. Similarly, a number is not to be understood as a “presentation,” a thought that occurs to me or you. Husserl says, “The number Five is not my own or anyone else’s counting of five, it is also not my presentation or anyone else’s presentation of five.” Frege’s emphasis, as far as I know (I don’t know his work deeply), was more on what we’d call the analytic quality of logical truths. But the point is similar: The psychological origin of subjective (synthetic) and objective (analytic) truths may be the same – they’re all thoughts – but it’s the way we demonstrate them that shows the difference. So, “the psychological is to be distinguished sharply from the logical, as the subjective is from the objective.” (Foundations of Arithmetic)J

    Cool. I'm going to include Sartre in that broad range because while he begins to drift into psychology he does so explicitly and he doesn't start there. I think it's safe to say that his philosophy, at least, is not depending upon a psychology or reducing phenomenology to psychological terms even though -- due to the Cogito's centrality -- psychology must be addressed.
  • The Cogito
    If you're distinguishing between faith and knowledge, you'll have to define those terms. If we accept that knowledge requires a justified true belief, it would seem that the distinction between faith and knowledge would somehow hinge on the justification element. Those who believe in God based upon faith do not admit to having no justification for their faith, but they might use personal conviction, religious text, mystical feeling, or even pragmatic reasons to justify that faith. Some might even suggest an empirical basis (as in their experience of reality leads them to believe there must be a God), so that question is somewhat complicated.

    That's not to say there are not differences between the justificaitons used by the faithful and those who are not of faith, but it's difficult to say one "knows" something and the other doesn't. What I think those who question those of faith really are attacking is the "truth" element, meaning they simply think there is no God and there is no way you can "know" something that isn't true. So, if you say Descartes knows there is God, then you are saying there is a God because to know something means it must be true.

    My main point here isn't to suggest that Descartes made an intentional argument proving God by arguing that failure to accept God led to an incoherent solipsitic position. I just think that by working backwards and seeing what Descartes required to avoid solipsism you can come to the conclusion that God is necessary for Descartes to avoid that.

    I do see the similarities with Kant's approach, but I also see the differences. With Kant, as it pertains to time, he argued that you could not begin to understand something without placing it in time. That is, an object outside of time is meaningless.

    With Descartes, there is an private language argument problem that can suggest a complete incoherence to solipsism. https://iep.utm.edu/solipsis/#:~:text=The%20Incoherence%20of%20Solipsism,-With%20the%20belief&text=As%20a%20theory%2C%20it%20is,his%20solipsistic%20thoughts%20at%20all . What this would mean is that if God is necessary to avoid solipsism and solipsism is incoherent, then you need God to avoid incoherence.

    Whether you want to go down that road, I don't know. I'm not necessarily arguing that a godless universe would result in a complete inability to understand anything, but, even if I did, I still see a distinction between that sort of incoherence and the one Kant references when he says time is imposed on objects and therefore a necessary element of the understanding.

    This whole argument here has expanded as I've thought about it, so maybe there is a good argument that human understanding is impossible without God if one follows Descartes' reasoning. This wouldn't mean there is God. It would just mean you can't know anything without God.
    Hanover

    I'd put it that faith is outside of the frame of discussion, but not opposed. We can have faith in something we know and in something we do not know, and the inferences of Descartes and Kant aren't appealing to faith. That is, I would not be inclined to put it in opposition to knowledge, and I don't think Descartes or Kant would at least either.

    Faith is centrally important to Sartre's metaphysics since he's trying to given the metaphysical frame which explains how it is possible for us to end up in good or bad faith, and Sartre frequently makes references to knowledge -- so they're not opposed there either, though also "faith" in Sartre isn't the same as our everyday notion of "faith", since it's the kind of faith an atheist has (and has no choice in participating with -- it's either good or bad faith)


    Given that I think I'd put faith to one side of justification -- the faithful may accept different sorts of justifications from the unfaithful (though my suspicion is that's not quite right -- it's probably how the justifications are used rather than the kind of justifications), but justification isn't the basis on which I'd separate faith from knowledge. I'm tempted to say they are orthogonal to one another such that different views of either can be made coherent.



    I've been thinking about a response for too long to wait, but I'm still not sure how to tie this back to the cogito. (Of course, that's not your fault -- the original question has been answered, I'm still stuck on how to develop it though.... but I felt I owed you a response)
  • TPF Philosophy Competition/Activity 2025 ?
    I'd read philosophy essays if people submitted them. That's always been the problem before -- essays require more work than posts :D
  • The Cogito


    Yes.

    "...exists", as I'm construcing these thinkers, means...

    Descartes: A first order predicate which can be deduced from the concepts.
    Kant: A predicate without logical significance -- it is only applied to what is given in intuition
    Sartre: Precedes essence, which I gather is that existence is prior to predication; there isn't a logically deductive argument, but neither can we infer the existence of God by ourselves "lacking perfection".

    And being: I think for Descartes and Kant, at least with respect to the phenomenological turn, are using the same notion of Being as Presence. But Sartre takes up Heidegger's terms and analysis/critique of Being as presence -- rather it's an unfolding of the horizon which discloses itself (and in the disclosure usually there is also a closure)

    But whats different between Sartre and Heidegger on Being is that Being is explicitly transphenomenal in Sartre, while I'm not so sure about that in Heidegger (Heidi often gets put into the idealist camp because he's not really clear either way, where Sartre seems to be very clear on the realist/idealist distinction)



    Good question (and I'm wrapping around to the other posters still, but this one looked like an easy answer for me): I'd say that there's a two-stepper that goes on. Initially he's looking for an indubitable proposition and from that inference from "I think therefore I am" he notices that these are clear and distinct ideas.

    But now Method seems to Require Me to Rank all My Thoughts under certain Heads, and to search in Which of them Truth or Falshood properly Consists.

    ...

    I have yet an other Way of inquiring, whether any of those Things (whose Ideas I have within Me) are Really Existent without Me; And that is Thus: As those Ideas are only Modes of Thinking, I acknowledge no Inequality between them, and they all proceed from me in the same Manner. But as one Represents one thing, an other, an other Thing, ’tis Evident there is a Great difference between them. * For without doubt, Those of them which Represent Substances are something More, or (as I may say) have More of Objective Reallity in them, then those that Represent only Modes or Accidents; and again, That by Which I understand a Mighty God, Eternal, Infinite, Omniscient, Omnipotent Creatour of all things besides himself, has certainly in it more Objective Reallity, then Those Ideas by which Finite Substances are Exhibited.

    But Now, it is evident by the Light of Nature that there must be as much at least in the Total efficient Cause, as there is in the Effect of that Cause; For from Whence[37] can the effect have its Reallity, but from the Cause? and how can the Cause give it that Reallity, unless it self have it?

    And from hence it follows, that neither a Thing can be made out of Nothing, Neither a Thing which is more Perfect (that is, Which has in it self more Reallity) proceed from That Which is Less Perfect.

    And this is Clearly True, not only in those Effects whose Actual or Formal Reallity is Consider’d, But in Those Ideas also, Whose Objective Reallity is only Respected; That is to say, for Example of Illustration, it is not only impossible that a stone, Which was not, should now begin to Be, unless it were produced by something, in Which, Whatever goes to the Making a Stone, is either Formally or Virtually; neither can heat be Produced in any Thing, which before was not hot, but by a Thing which is at least of as equal a degree of Perfection as heat is; But also ’tis Impossible that I should have an Idea of Heat, or of a Stone, unless it were put into me by some Cause, in which there is at Least as much Reallity, as I Conceive there is in heat or a Stone.

    .....

    Thus, that if the objective reallity of any of my Ideas be such, that it cannot be in me either formally or eminently, and that therefore I cannot be the cause of that Idea, from hence it necessarily Follows, that I alone do not only exist, but that some other[40] thing, which is cause of that Idea, does exist also.

    But if I can find no such Idea in me, I have no argument to perswade me of the existence of any thing besides my self for I have diligently enquired, and hitherto I could discover no other perswasive.


    .....

    Wherefore there only Remains the Idea of a God, wherein I must consider whether there be not something included, which cannot possibly have its original from me. By the word God, I mean a[44] certain Infinite Substance, Independent, Omniscient, Almighty, by whom both I my self, and every thing else that is (if any thing do Actualy exist) was created. All which Attributes are of such an high nature, that the more attentively I consider them, the less I conceive my self possible to be the Author of these notions.

    From what therefore has been said I must conclude that there is a God;

    Once he infers God must exist the rest is easy. I cut out the bits of meditation to try and get at the heart of the argument (well, the first argument for God. I've read that the 2nd argument is a little different from the first one)

    ***

    Short answer, by my lights, is that the inference "I think, therefore I am" is indubitable in the moment of saying to the point htat even an Evil Demon couldn't deceive me, and so a foundation of certainty is found for knowledge. (Quotes pulled from here)
  • Is Philosophy the "Highest" Discourse?
    There is one, we're just still arguing over who has won it and what you get for winning and what it means to win in the first place.

    Also, to ensure no one cheats, it's long been decided since Plato that no money will be given to the winner.
  • The Cogito
    That’s what I mean by saying that “I think therefore I am” is not the culmination of cogito qua cogito but of the transcendence of itself viz. the externalization of being through the process of “doubting.” Thinking that thinks itself.NotAristotle

    I think, supposing we were to take up Descartes' side in this back-and-forth, Descartes could reply that Sartre has no right to claim externalization on the basis of his methodological doubt. Whether the process of doubting requires time is beside the point from the metaphysical set-up of the method of doubt.

    Which is why I keep coming back to thinking that difference between them is the how they interpret being and "...exists". As well as their overall philosophical goals being very different, since they're in very different times.
  • The Cogito
    Maybe everything is supernatural for Descartes, while Sartre keeps it as an illusion out of distance, focusing on material problemsGregory

    I'd say that neither believe in the supernatural -- and even if we mean "supernatural" in the sense of "outside of nature" Descartes still believes in nature -- res extensa is just as real as res cogitans, and while God may sit outside of nature and we have knowledge of his existence nature still exists.

    And, on the other hand, I believe some would be inclined to call Sartre's notion of being-for-itself, and its radical freedom, a superstition in the modern, scientistic use of that term.

    Though I believe both are doing philosophy in the sense that they're appealing to reason.
  • The Cogito
    Some additional thoughts on why Kant is relevant to the question of the cogito, and at least Sartre.

    The ontological argument is one of the big targets of Kant's epistemology. I'd say the ontological argument Kant criticizes is more Leibniz's version than Descartes, but close enough to count for concepts.

    Broad strokes here but with respect to the cogito the differences that pop out to me for each thinker are:

    Descartes: existence is a genuine predicate of logic.
    Kant: Existence is not a genuine predicate of logic, but is given.
    Sartre: The meaning of being is different from what either Descartes or Kant are talking about, and Existence precedes essence. Descartes' reflection is correct, and there's more apodeictic knowledge that comes with it.

    Interesting to note, at least to me, is how Kant's cogito is de-emphasized from Descartes', which makes a kind of sense since he's trying to protect the belief in the immortality in the soul from scientific knowledge -- limiting knowledge to make room for faith.

    Whereas Sartre has no problem denying such things. Though, simultaneously, isn't coming from a strictly scientific perspective either.
  • The Cogito
    I don't think so. Kierkegaard is the beginning of existentialism. His point was that the the more fully you become lost in the landscape of the intellect, the more disconnected and alienated you'll be from the knowledge that's most direct and intimate: the knowledge of what it feels like to be alive.frank

    Yeah, but Kierkegaard also took up several writing personas to demonstrate a kaleidoscope of thoughts (one I do not claim to understand). Nietzsche wrote a parody of the Bible to expand on original philosophical concepts. These aren't exactly acts of becoming lost in what it feels like to be alive.

    Or, more properly, they are -- but they are also acts of intellect.

    I don't know if you saw my SEP quotes, but Descartes also points to this as what he meant by "cogito": he is talking about awareness, which is only sometimes of ideas.frank

    I've now read them, and am including them here for reference in the conversation -- but I'm not sure what I've said that disagrees with them.

    "Third, the certainty of the cogito depends on being formulated in terms of cogitatio – i.e., my thinking, or awareness/consciousness more generally. Any mode of thinking is sufficient, including doubting, affirming, denying, willing, understanding, imagining, and so on (cf. Med. 2, AT 7:28). My bodily activities, however, are insufficient. For instance, it’s no good to reason that “I exist, since I am walking,” because methodical doubt calls into question the existence of my legs. Maybe I’m just dreaming that I have legs. A simple revision, such as “I exist, since it seems I’m walking,” restores the anti-sceptical potency (cf. Replies 5, AT 7:352; Prin. 1:9)."
    — SEP

    Also:

    "Second, a present tense formulation is essential to the certainty of the cogito. It’s no good to reason that “I existed last Tuesday, since I recall that I was thinking on that day.” For all I know, I’m now merely dreaming about that occasion. Nor does it work to reason that “I’ll continue to exist, since I’m now thinking.” As the meditator remarks, “it could be that were I totally to cease from thinking, I should totally cease to exist” (Med. 2, AT 7:27, CSM 2:18). The privileged certainty of the cogito is grounded in the “manifest contradiction” (AT 7:36, CSM 2:25) of trying to think away my present thinking."
    — SEP
    frank
  • Degrees of reality
    So what's it all about? What sorts of things should we think are more or less real than other things?Srap Tasmaner

    I'll note that I'm inclined to not grant degrees to reality, so I suppose I fit the mold.

    But in trying to think of ways to make sense of it....

    When I dream of something that's happened before while the dream is real it makes sense to me to say that it's less real than the event I experienced. And the memory of the event could likewise be thought of as less real.

    But then, just to head off notions of minds being less real, in this same way I'd say that the answer to a complicated mathematical expression that I'm seeking is more real than my belief when I've made a mistake -- so there could be something to be said for Universals being more real than my opinion, too.
  • The Cogito
    No apology needed, you did nothing wrong. You're good!
  • The Cogito


    I'm just going to state my confusion and see where that takes us instead of trying to rephrase the question:

    I'm tempted by the exegetical hole again -- I want to at least do a side-by-side interpretation with yours.

    I see what you're saying as a reasonable interpretation; and to restate it in my own words to see if I have it right: the ontological argument is thrown in there but given its weakness to persuade those who are not already convinced this indicates that Descartes was relying on God. (At least, that seems like something you could say to excuse why the argument is in the text on reasonable grounds)

    The interpretation I'm relying upon is to treat the Meditations at its face value -- and at its face value we start with doubt and, through the power of Man's Reason alone, find true and certain knowledge of the self, God, and the world.

    So I see Descartes as claiming not faith but knowledge of God's existence -- and this need not even counter faith. Especially at the time scientists and theologians weren't far apart. In a way I'm trying to bring out "the spirit of the times" by focusing on the prima facie meaning to put Descartes in the context of the Enlightenment.

    This I think you'd find amenable because of your reliance on Kant. I see a strong through-line to Kant here where a disagreement is clearly spelled out (though in the abstract).

    But Kant wouldn't say that knowledge requires faith, either. So I'm left wondering how to interpret you with respect to these two interpretations of the prima facie Descartes and Kant.
  • The Cogito


    I don't see anything wrong with saying an experience ends. Some experiences are episodic.

    But I don't think the cogito, even with the structure of temporality -- even though consciousness is being described -- is even at the level of an individuals' experience (at least in the story so far). The structure of reflection is, but the relationship between the general structure of reflection and even a being-for-itself -- which I'd read as still a general category rather than an individual, only more specific than simply being-for-itself -- isn't specified yet. And the individual hasn't even shown up on the scene.

    So I'd say that our personal reflections, while we'll be using them to relate to the phenomenological description, are not themselves yet relevant. They are "too close", as it were.

    Yes, probably. You're kind of stomping all over the existentialism with your intellectual observations, tho.frank

    I'd disagree here. The flow of time is being presented in a manner which is a flow, but the various existential writers are attempting to be very precise about their topics in the exact way that philosophers have always done -- they have their own particular meanings and such, but it's still very intellectual.
  • The Cogito
    And see Frege on psychologism.J

    I'd be interested in hearing more from you on this comment. (I've read some of Husserl's anti-psychologist arguments and found them amenable, but not Frege's)

    To be clear on my end -- by the cogito, even if there is a psychological theory of it, I explicitly mean a philosophical theory. (For some there's no distinction, but for thems that there is one -- pick the philosophy side)
  • The Cogito
    Yes, but it does feel like a "move," and I wasn't suggesting it seriously.J

    Heh. I don't mind things that feel like "moves" -- they all feel like that, really! It's just which move feels right to the reader which chooses what Descartes really meant. :D

    In general I like the skeptical hypotheses, so I'd be open to an argument like that. I'm not fully committed to the notion that there even is a self -- so that would be like a nihilism of the cogito -- but it comes up often enough that I think worth thinking about.

    Good observation. I think that philosophers who are hostile to phenomenology want this liminal place to be a mistake, an inability to be clear about what the topic is. A more sympathetic reading, starting with Husserl, is that the distinction between metaphysics and psychology must be put into doubt as a first step toward a new conception of doing philosophy in the first person.J

    Yeah. I actually like the move, but because some of it is obscure or has multiple interpretations or just isn't mathematical enough to taste it's easier to designate that side of philosophy as meaningless wankers cosplaying as sages while saying nothing but poetic drivel** while the serious logicians clarify what we utilize everyday and so cannot help but be really right -- language and science and the language of science and the logic that governs such talk.

    Though, to be real, it was always about competition over employment. Philosophy isn't given enough budget to fund a whole two different ways of doing it.
    :D

    One example where it does create confusion, though, is what I tried to straighten out with frank, above. He quite reasonably wanted to know why a thought must occur in time, which leads us into the two common meanings of the term "thought." One is psychological, the other metaphysical. And see Frege on psychologism.

    Yeah there's a lot of confusion at first, but I think that's part of what makes it philosophy. Eventually there's a certain clarity even while there are more than one way to interpret the texts.

    What the other side says about the Clear Hard Thinkers is that they are clearly lazy navel gazers because they obsess over language and refuse to learn even 2 different languages**.

    ** Though I roast both because I find that distinction hilarious, and really probably not so relevant now so the roast shouldn't even sting.
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