If language is expression of thought, then every statement and proposition you make must be based on "I think" even if you didn't say it out loud. — Corvus

As you say, when I say "Paris is crowded", this infers that I must think that Paris is crowded.

The problem arises with the word "think".

When I say "I think", does this also infer that I must think that I think?

And if so, what does this metaphysically mean?

Can you say why this next level of reflexivity is needed to make the situation clear? — J

I would put my money on:

p = Pat thinks that the oak tree is shedding its leaves
I think p = Pat thinks about her thought that the oak tree is shedding its leaves

Pat thinks about her thought has two meanings:

Meaning one = linguistic, which makes sense.

Meaning two = metaphysical, which gets philosophical. How can one thought think about another thought?

When I say "I think", does this also infer that I must think that I think?

And if so, what does this metaphysically mean? — RussellA

I don't think you can think about your thinking. Thinking has objects and it is about something. When you say when you think about your thinking, which is already thinking, it sounds vague and meaningless, why one would think about thinking, when one is already thinking. But most of all, I am not sure if thought can think about thinking itself.

Reason can reason about itself because reason has capability of reflection. But does thinking has ability to reflect into itself? The only example of thought thinks about itself could be asking why one is thinking about something. But then at the state, thought becomes reasoning looking for ground for the reason why one was thinking something.

Yes, when you are thinking about your think about something, at that stage, your thinking becomes reasoning, not thinking anymore. I am not sure if this makes sense. Perhaps you could comment on the point?

And if so, what does this metaphysically mean? — RussellA

What do you mean by metaphysically here?

I agree that when you say, "Paris is crowded," you're stating your thought (belief, opinion, judgment) that Paris is crowded. We can make up unusual circumstances when that wouldn't be true, but let's grant that this is generally what's going on.

However, when you say "I think Paris is crowded," you can be saying either of two things. You can be saying, "I find myself thinking the thought, 'Paris is crowded'. Hmm, wonder if that's true." (In which case we'd be more likely to punctuate your statement as "I think, 'Paris is crowded'."). Or you can be saying, "I do in fact think (believe) Paris is crowded." The first instance foregrounds the thought, the fact of thinking; the second focuses on the content of the thought. Both are pretty common usages, I would say. We often report a thought qua thought, as an interesting mental event.

However, when you say "I think Paris is crowded," you can be saying either of two things. — J

The first could be an Illocutionary Act, perhaps "expressive of doubt" (Wikipedia - Illocutionary Act)

The second could be an Illocutionary Force, with the intention that the listener doesn't take their next holiday in Paris.

Both these are linguistic aspects.

Just as a preliminary, I'll lay out Rödl's very stark position:

What is thought cannot be isolated from the act of thinking it; it cannot be understood as the attachment of a force to a content. This may seem hard to accept. — Rödl

Indeed! He goes on to list the benefits that are generally agreed to accrue if we think in terms of force and content:

[The claim is that] We need to distinguish force from content in order to describe disagreement among different subjects. . . . We need to distinguish force from content if we are to represent the progress one makes from asking a question to answering it. . . . Further, the distinction is needed if we are to understand inferences that involve hypothetical judgments. . . . Thus it [would have] great explanatory power. Giving it up is costly. — Rödl

But:

As the force-content distinction makes no sense, it has no explanatory power. There is no cost to abandoning it. — Rödl

So if this is true, Rödl has got to show not merely that the force/content distinction is an incorrect analysis of how propositions work. He also has to make the case that the distinction is literally nonsensical, that there is a deep basic confusion on Frege's part in the way he divides up the conceptual territory involved here.

Why in the world would Rödl think this? He believes that Fregean logic can't make sense of self-conscious thought -- that we need a clearer way to describe what is actually happening when a person thinks.

There can be no Fregean account of first-person thought, no account that provides it with a Fregean thought as its object. — Rödl

And by "Fregean thought," he of course means a proposition. A real cliff-hanger, more to follow . . . I'll let you cool down ! :smile:

Why in the world would Rödl think this? He believes that Fregean logic can't make sense of self-conscious thought — J

But no one in this thread has any real idea why one would hold that thought is necessarily self-conscious, including yourself. :grimace:

It's like if I started a thread which simply assumed that 2+2=5, and then everyone in the thread keeps diving out of the way as the elephant in the room shifts about.

2+2=5, says Kant. Sebastian Rödl agrees with this...

Suppose my friend Pat replied as follows:

“Sorry, but I don’t think 2+2=5.”

Which of these responses do you think would be appropriate to make to Pat?:

1. You've misunderstood. The thesis is not based on empirical observation. It’s not about what you experience; whether you are aware of having such an experience is not decisive either way. Some people are aware of it, some are not. But we’re not relying on personal reports when we claim that 2+2=5.

2. The “2+2” is an experience of 5, and requires 5. When you say you are “not aware of it,” you are mistaken. But you can learn to identify the experience, and thus understand that you have been aware of it all along.

3. The "5" is not experienced at all. It is a condition of thought, a form of thought, in the same way that space and time are conditions of cognition. "5", in Rödl’s sense, is built in to every 2+2, but not as a content that must be experienced.

4. If your report is accurate, then the thesis that "2+2=5" has been proven wrong.

See how crazy that thread is? What makes it crazy? The absence of some argument in favor of the idea that 2+2=5. Outlandish theses must be argued, not indoctrinated.

I see what you're getting at but I meant something a little different. It hinges on the ambiguity of the word "thought". We commonly use the word to mean two distinct things: a mental event occurring at a particular place and time, and the content or import of said event ("proposition," in Fregean terms). Traditionally, the latter is common to any particular instantiations of the "thought" in the first sense.

So we could be talking about the mental event "thought that Paris is crowded" or the proposition "Paris is crowded". We can assert things about a mental event that we couldn't assert about a proposition, including something like, "I had Thought X come into my mind but I don't understand the proposition it states." We couldn't say (and mean it), "I'm asserting X (the proposition) but I don't understand it."

For my part, this issue boils down to what one interprets by the term “thought”.

If one holds that cognizance (a fancier way of saying “awareness”) is in itself a form of thought, then there can be no apprehension of p in the absence of thinking p. — javra

Thinking p requires thinking p. No one disputes this. The question of the OP is whether thinking p requires self-consciously thinking p; whether it requires thinking "I think p."

It is fairly clear that it doesn't, and @J has yet to offer arguments for why it would. The only argument I have seen is an argument from authority from Kant, and yet the Kantians on TPF don't find the thesis in Kant.

The question of the OP is whether thinking p requires self-consciously thinking p; whether it requires thinking "I think p."

It is fairly clear that it doesn't, and J has yet to offer arguments for why it would. The only argument I have seen is an argument from authority from Kant, and yet the Kantians on TPF don't find the thesis in Kant. — Leontiskos

Typically Kantian, and perhaps not an exact iteration, the so-called thesis is in B407-413, concluded as “yielding nothing”, which is tantamount in Kant-speak to representing that which reason is inclined to ask when it doesn’t control itself.

Just sayin’….

What is thought cannot be isolated from the act of thinking it; it cannot be understood as the attachment of a force to a content. — Rödl

He seems to think that the second sentence follows from the first. It's not obvious how.

A thought can be understood as a force and a content. That is demonstrably so.

And what is thought may be isolated from the act of thinking it. Quentin said that Pat thought the Oak was shedding, but it was actually the Elm next to it that was dropping leaves. But if the thought cannot be isolated from the act of thinking, then in thinking that Pat thought the Oak was shedding Quentin would be thinking that the Oak was shedding. But here Quentin thinks the elm is shedding, not the oak.

It might be supposed that one can object that what Quentin thought was not that the oak was shedding, but that Pat thought the oak was shedding. But if we cannot isolate the thought from the act of thinking it, then in thinking that pat thought the oak was shading, Quentin thought the oak was shedding.

Torrid prose. The simple truth behind it is that we can entertain a proposition without thereby accepting, believing, or assenting to it.

Also left open is what is meant by "Fregean logic". I'll go over my own view one more time. Frege might write:

Here, in the Begriffsschrift, "⊢" is an explicit judgement; what follows is known, and the scope of the "⊢" is the whole argument. It would be written now as ⊢∀A∀B(A→(B→A)). But since Frege, the "⊢" has taken on a somewhat different use, as meaning roughly that the formula in question is derivable. Being derivable is not the very same as being known. "⊢" is not commonly read in the Fregean sense of "I know this to be true".

But more worrying for Rödl is that much of logic does not make use of "⊢", but instead uses "⊨" and hence modelling and satisfaction rather that truth.

The danger here for Rödl is that in critiquing Frege he may be critiquing an approach that has been outmoded since Tarski. Satisfaction, not truth, and not assertion, are used in more recent logics.

For my part, this issue boils down to what one interprets by the term “thought”.

If one holds that cognizance (a fancier way of saying “awareness”) is in itself a form of thought, then there can be no apprehension of p in the absence of thinking p. — javra


Thinking p requires thinking p. No one disputes this. The question of the OP is whether thinking p requires self-consciously thinking p; whether it requires thinking "I think p." — Leontiskos

I take most of this thread to be about the befuddlement of language in attempting to articulate that which ontically is or else occurs in regard to at least human cognition.

Going back to the OP:

This follows up on some issues in recent threads about Descartes, Sartre, Kimhi, and the nature of philosophical thought.

The “I think” accompanies all our thoughts, says Kant. Sebastian Rödl, in Self-Consciousness and Objectivity, agrees with this but points out that “this cannot be put by saying that, in every act of thinking, two things are thought: p and I think p.” He calls this a confusion arising from our notation, and suggests, not entirely seriously, that we could devise a more accurate notation “that makes I think internal to p: we may form the letter p by writing, in the shape of a p, the words I think.” He interprets Kant as saying the same thing: for Kant, “the I think is not something thought alongside the thought that it accompanies, but internal to what is thought as such.” — J

@J can correct me on this, but from my own reading of the OP, the primary question was: is the (Cogito-style) actuality of “I think” requisite for all instances of “I think (proposition) p” without exception? And the only way I can find this to apply is if the concept of “thinking” is expanded to include all cognitive processes, very much including cognizance. Otherwise, the stipulation that “I think” as a proposition always accompanies the proposition “I think (proposition) p” is, for my part, utterly absurd: it would entail that for each and every explicitly stated “I think that […]” there would necessarily be implicitly expressed “I think that I think that […]”, which is absurdity—in part because it would allow for if not imply an infinite regress of “I think”.

The semantics of words we use in modern times do not always hold a one-to-one correlation to the semantics of words that were used in the past—even when not translated from other languages. This especially when it comes to the more nuanced interpretation of terms which past philosophers on occasion made use of. This being something that, though maybe obvious, often eludes discussions of what others in the distant past meant to express by the words used.

As to modern semantics, in adding to this :

To answer “I did” and “I think I did” to some question is in no way and at no time equivalent: the first expresses a fact one is confident about regarding what one did, this while the second expresses something along the lines of a best presumption based on one’s best reasoning (i.e., thinking) regarding what one in fact did (presumably about a past deed one does not hold a clear recollection of). The second does not however require doubt of what one thinks is the case, but only allows for certain degrees of uncertainty.

To say, "I'm thinking (i.e., pondering) this is the case" is likewise not equivalent to, "this is the case".

Hence, to say, "I think (i.e., I best judge as a subject that) Paris is crowded" is not equivalent to saying, "Paris is crowded," with the latter, unlike the first, affirming what is to be taken as an objective fact (something that does or else should hold equal weight to all subjects irrespective of their biases).

... All of which would make "I think I think p" translate into "I best reason that I best reason (with a possibly infinite extension of this) that [...]". This being something that arguably is never done by anyone.

the stipulation that “I think” as a proposition always accompanies the proposition “I think (proposition) p” is, for my part, utterly absurd: — javra

Agreed. I resisted including a specifically propositional understanding of the "I think" as one of my suggested retorts to Pat because it seems like a non-starter. I don't believe anyone, from Descartes on, ever meant that.

A more plausible option is that the "I think" is in fact a thought of some kind, even if not a proposition. We're seeing some good reasons on this thread to question even that, though.

To answer “I did” and “I think I did” to some question is in no way and at no time equivalent: the first expresses a fact one is confident about regarding what one did, this while the second expresses something along the lines of a best presumption based on one’s best reasoning (i.e., thinking) regarding what one in fact did (presumably about a past deed one does not hold a clear recollection of). The second does not however require doubt of what one thinks is the case, but only allows for certain degrees of uncertainty. — javra

And notice what happens when we ask whether the doubt being expressed is about the thought or what the thought is about. I can be absolutely certain that, right this minute, I am having the thought "I think I did" concerning some previous action I'm not too sure about. Again, the ambiguity of "thought" as mental event (yep, definitely happening) and "thought" as that thought's intensional content (not too sure).

Typically Kantian, and perhaps not an exact iteration, the so-called thesis is in B407-413, concluded as “yielding nothing”, which is tantamount in Kant-speak to representing that which reason is inclined to ask when it doesn’t control itself. — Mww

Okay, so we have the outlandish thesis of the OP, <Every time p is thought, I think p is thought> (). This thesis is attributed to Kant, but no source or quote in Kant is provided for such a claim (!).

Now outlandish theses need to be interpreted and argued for. If @J is not going to argue for the outlandish thesis, then we need to know either why Rödl thinks such a thing or else where he believes Kant claims such a thing.

You give two options:

the so-called thesis is in B407-413 — Mww

and:

B133, in three separate translations — Mww

Now apparently you are pointing to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, no? Is this edition available online somewhere? Or can we get a quote? And is Rödl thinking of B133 or B407-13?

The OP is treating its outlandish thesis as if it isn't outlandish, and that creates pretty significant problems in an OP. If this were a book club where everyone had already read Rödl's book the OP would presumably make sense to us, but as is it takes far too much for granted.

(The Kimhi thread was very similar, except after a number of us finally looked at the book the outlandish thesis was not helped.)

And notice what happens when we ask whether the doubt being expressed is about the thought or what the thought is about. I can be absolutely certain that, right this minute, I am having the thought "I think I did" concerning some previous action I'm not too sure about. Again, the ambiguity of "thought" as mental event (yep, definitely happening) and "thought" as that thought's intensional content (not too sure). — J

Yes, very much agree. Though I wouldn’t use the word “doubt” to express this but “(psychological) uncertainty” instead:

I find doubt to necessarily be “an uncertainty regarding an already affirmed, or else held, certainty - be it affirmed or else held by oneself in the past or else by someone other”. As one example, this can become very transparent in the two propositions: “the future is uncertain” and “the future is doubtful/dubious”. The first merely and strictly stipulates that future events are not yet determined. The second proposition, however, stipulates either a) that the heretofore upheld reality of the future as a whole might in fact not occur or b) that some heretofore upheld specific set of realities which are to occur in the future might in fact not occur.

So one can be uncertain about the object of one’s thought - e.g., I'm thinking that I left my wallet in the room (this while being fully certain that one’s current thought as process is occurring). And this uncertainty can be maintained without necessarily doubting the given object of one’s thought. As can again be exemplified by some future even one is uncertain about but does not doubt. For example, a person is uncertain of whether they will see a movie latter on in the day but - because they have not previously held the psychological certainty that they would see a movie later on - the person does not come to doubt this future event, even as they are uncertain about it.

To say “I think that […]” is to then express some degree of psychological uncertainty about that which one thinks is the case, but rarely if ever is it to affirm that one doubts that that given which one thinks is the case is in fact actually so.

The semantics of “uncertainty” and “doubt” being an utterly different issue to that of the thread, granted, but I do find interest in it. (A pet peeve of mine: unlike Cartesian skepticism - which is about doubting everything - ancient skepticism was about ubiquitous, and hence radical, (psychological degrees of) uncertainty …with no doubt of this position or of anything else required. This being what in modern parlance can be termed the stance of “fallibilism”. This doubt-independent ancient skepticism being something which the ancient skeptic Cicero for example nicely exemplifies. All this as an apropos regarding the difference between uncertainties and doubts.)

Several folks (@banno, @creativesoul, & others, sorry if I've forgotten) have responded to the OP by affirming that Pat is “right” in her report of her experience. I want to look at that more closely, starting with what exactly it is that she is right about (hence the scare-quotes).

Basically, Pat is telling us that she hasn’t had the experience that she believes she would have to have if it were true that the “I think” accompanies all our thoughts. She believes that experience would be something like an additional thought that says, “I think p,” and that occurs simultaneously or in close proximity to her thought of p. She tells us that this does not characterize her usual experience of thinking.

So, is Pat right about her experience of thinking? There’s certainly no reason to doubt it. Full disclosure: It was quite easy to write Pat’s lines for her because I pretty much share that experience. So I think we ought to say that Pat is right about this.

But I don’t think that’s what some people mean when they say that Pat is right. I think they mean that, because Pat has disconfirmed a particular version of what the “I think” would entail, therefore she is right that the “I think” does not accompany all our thoughts. That was response #4, back in the OP. But note that Pat never actually says this. She starts with a particular interpretation of what the “I think” would be, and (rightly, we’re saying) reports that she hasn’t experienced it. But unless she’s unusually dogmatic (or possibly unversed in philosophy), she wouldn’t go on to say that no other understandings of the “I think” are possible.

Here’s where I think this leaves us. We can accept that Pat’s (putatively accurate*) report rules out the possibility that the ubiquity of the “I think” consists in its being some kind of affirmative, conscious thought that accompanies every one of our mental representations – or even our propositions. But that leaves quite a bit still to explore. Response #4 states, “If your report is accurate, then the thesis that ‛the “I think” accompanies all our thoughts’ has been proven wrong.” But we see that isn’t so. What has been proven wrong is the notion that the “I think” is a subject of experience.

Now let’s compare this to the Kantian perspective. Imagine that a different experimental subject I’ve created :wink: tells us, “Kant claims that time and space are constitutive concepts of the understanding, and form the basis of any possible experience. Well, sorry, but when I experience something, I don’t also have an experience of ‛time’ and an experience of ‛space’. I just experience whatever it is that happens.”

We could reply, “Quite right, time and space are not themselves experiences, they are constitutive of experience. They are the without-which-nothing. When Kant says that they are ubiquitous throughout all possibilities of experience, he doesn’t mean you can discover them as some additional ur-experience.”

I hope the parallel with the “I think” question is clear. Referring back to my original four responses, it looks like #3, which argues basically what I just wrote, is the one we should choose if we want to explain to someone who believes that Pat’s experience justifies #4, why that isn't so.

But I don’t see the issue as settled yet. Are there good reasons for claiming that this transcendental “I think” has any reality at all? We’re not there yet. Maybe, if it isn’t an experience, it’s just a hoax. But I think we’ve made some progress by showing the alleged role of experience in all this a little more clearly.


*And response #2 is available as well, if we want to try to make a case that Pat is mistaken, or misguided, about her experience.

The semantics of “uncertainty” and “doubt” being an utterly different issue to that of the thread, granted, but I do find interest in it. — javra

Me too, thanks for clarifying. On your interpretation, "uncertainty" is definitely the better term for what I was trying to get across.

Me too, thanks for clarifying. — J

:grin: :up:

J can correct me on this, but from my own reading of the OP, the primary question was: is the (Cogito-style) actuality of “I think” requisite for all instances of “I think (proposition) p” without exception? And the only way I can find this to apply is if the concept of “thinking” is expanded to include all cognitive processes, very much including cognizance. Otherwise, the stipulation that “I think” as a proposition always accompanies the proposition “I think (proposition) p” is, for my part, utterly absurd: it would entail that for each and every explicitly stated “I think that […]” there would necessarily be implicitly expressed “I think that I think that […]”, which is absurdity—in part because it would allow for if not imply an infinite regress of “I think”. — javra

That's a good counterargument.

For myself, I don't see the philosophical point of these threads on Kimhi or Rödl where we play this game, "Here is an obscure and unlikely claim. Let's try to defend it. Oh? You don't know what it means? Well, neither do I. Let's also guess at what it means."

On a philosophy forum obscure and unlikely claims need to be elucidated by the author of the OP, usually through primary or secondary texts. It is the responsibility of the author of the OP to elucidate what they mean by their claim, and why the claim has plausibility.

what exactly it is that [Pat] is right about — J

This, I think:

• Pat: "If I interpret your claim at face value, it is false [for these very good reasons]. So the onus is on you to give the words some non-standard meaning in which they are not false. Go for it."

Full disclosure: It was quite easy to write Pat’s lines for her because I pretty much share that experience. So I think we ought to say that Pat is right about this. — J

Yep:

I take it that you are Pat. Maybe you should try writing to Rödl. :grin: — Leontiskos

It's sort of like the teacher gave you a homework assignment, "It seems like Rödl is wrong. Why isn't he?," and now you're asking TPF to help you with your homework assignment. Which is tricky given that no one has read Rödl.

www.gutenberg.org, J. M. D. Meiklejohn, ca1856, searchable but w/o pagination;

https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/u.osu.edu/dist/5/25851/files/2017/09/kant-first-critique-cambridge-1m89prv.pdf, Guyer/Wood, 1998, with pagination, but not searchable.

It is beyond the scope of the thread….not to mention the participants’ interest…..to quote that long B section. Besides, some interpretive liberty may be required, in that the idea contained in the thread OP isn’t given verbatim in the quote, but I think could be dug out of it.

Also, the small one-liner at B133 is only a correction to the initial premise in the OP, having little to do with the p/“p” discussion. Although, and the reason I presented it in the first place, is that if “I think” accompanies all my representations” is true, it makes the argument predicated on thread’s major “…I think accompanies all my thoughts…” critically false, insofar as the author is misrepresented.

Of course, is within his dialectical rights to argue from the major as he stated it, but he shouldn’t have attributed it to the specified author that didn’t actually say it.

Anyway….not that big a deal.

Anyway….not that big a deal. — Mww

I'm sure it isn't, but I hate to get anything wrong. Let me fill out what Rödl says. His footnote for the claim "Kant said: The I think accompanies all my thoughts" reads: "CPR, B 131. More precisely, he [Kant] says that the I think must be able to accompany all my representations, for all my representations must be capable of being thought. This presupposes (what is the starting point of Kant's philosophy and not the kind of thing for which he would undertake to give an argument) that the I think accompanies all my thoughts."

Hmm. Does this respond to your point? I'm not completely clear what's at stake with the distinction between "thought" and "representation" here, but Rödl does seem to be interpreting, rather than innocently paraphrasing. Granted, the difference is blurry when it comes to reading Kant.

www.gutenberg.org, J. M. D. Meiklejohn, ca1856, searchable but w/o pagination; — Mww

Okay, great. That is very helpful. :up:

Of course, ↪J is within his dialectical rights to argue from the major as he stated it, but he shouldn’t have attributed it to the specified author that didn’t actually say it. — Mww

@J is probably taking Rödl at his word when Rödl tells @J that Kant holds the position.

Anyway….not that big a deal. — Mww

Seems highly relevant to me. If the only argument in favor of the OP's thesis is found in Kant, then to Kant we must go.

"CPR, B 131. More precisely, he [Kant] says that the I think must be able to accompany all my representations, for all my representations must be capable of being thought. This presupposes (what is the starting point of Kant's philosophy and not the kind of thing for which he would undertake to give an argument) that the I think accompanies all my thoughts." — J

And here is Kant:

§ 16
On the original-synthetic unity of apperception.

The I think must be able to accompany all my representations; for otherwise something would be represented in me that could not be thought at all, which is as much as to say that the representation would either be impossible or else at least would be nothing for me. That representation that can be given prior to all thinking is called intuition. Thus all manifold of intuition has a necessary relation to the I think in the same subject in which this manifold is to be encountered. But this representation is an act of spontaneity, i.e., it cannot be regarded as belonging to sensibility. I call it the pure apperception, in order to distinguish it from the empirical one, or also the original apperception, since it is that self-consciousness which, because it produces the representation I think, which must be able to accompany all others and which in all consciousness is one and the same, cannot be accompanied by any further representation. I also call its unity the transcendental unity of self-consciousness in order to designate the possibility of a priori cognition from it. For the manifold representations that are given in a certain intuition would not all together be my representations if they did not all together belong to a self-consciousness; i.e., as my representations (even if I am not conscious of them as such) they must yet necessarily be in accord with the condition under which alone they can stand together in a universal self-consciousness, because otherwise they would not throughout belong to me. From this original combination much may be inferred. — Kant, CPR, B131-133 (pp. 246-7)

(It looks to me that Kant is saying that the I think must be able to accompany all my representations. I don't see Rödl's interpretation that <Every time p is thought, I think p is thought>.)

More precisely, he [Kant] says that the I think must be able to accompany all my representations, for all my representations must be capable of being thought. — J

That "must be able" component played a big part in Sartre's Transcendence of the Ego. His arguments are interesting even if one is not sold on swapping "existence" for "essence."

The “I think” accompanies all our thoughts, says Kant. Sebastian Rödl, in Self-Consciousness and Objectivity, agrees with this but points out that “this cannot be put by saying that, in every act of thinking, two things are thought: p and I think p.” He calls this a confusion arising from our notation, and suggests, not entirely seriously, that we could devise a more accurate notation “that makes I think internal to p: we may form the letter p by writing, in the shape of a p, the words I think.” He interprets Kant as saying the same thing: for Kant, “the I think is not something thought alongside the thought that it accompanies, but internal to what is thought as such.” — J

However, this whole thread just glosses over the underlying issue. Kant did not draw the distinction between thought/thinking and thinking about thought/thinking. Rödi just assumes and further reinforces that error.
— creativesoul

No, it's the opposite. Here's what I wrote in the OP, with relevant passages bolded: — J

:worry:

The assumption of Kant's error has nothing to do with the parts you bolded. The mistake was agreeing with an error, and that agreement preceded the portions you drew attention to.

If Kant says that "I think" accompanies all our thoughts, and Sebastian Rödl, in Self-Consciousness and Objectivity, agrees with this but points out that “this cannot be put by saying that, in every act of thinking, two things are thought: p and I think p”, then he's still agreeing that "I think" accompanies all our thoughts. He does not disagree with Kant's failure to draw and maintain the distinction between thought and thinking about thought. <----That is to assume Kant's error. Rather, it's only how to best put this that he's disagreeing with Kant about. <-----That is to reinforce the error. Neglecting to acknowledge, let alone directly address, the problem with the agreement between Kant and Rödi is a textbook case of glossing it over.

I've read at least three other valid objections/refutations of the claim at the heart of this thread. I'll leave mine here for now.

His footnote for the claim "Kant said: The I think accompanies all my thoughts" reads: "CPR, B 131. More precisely, he [Kant] says that the I think must be able to accompany all my representations — J

I don’t consider myself qualified to make footnotes with respect to verbatim text. I’m more inclined to attempt the understanding the text itself. I mean, the dude himself said, “Kant said, more precisely…” at the expense of his own statement’s accuracy.

But he’s got letters after his name and I don’t, so….there ya go.
————-



Good stuff. Thanks.

↪Leontiskos

Good stuff. Thanks. — Mww

I second that!

That there are no thoughts that could not be prefixed by 'I think...' doesn't have any profound implications, does it?

Hey Banno!

I'm not sure I understand what you're asking. Are you assuming that all thoughts could be sensibly prefixed with "I think"?

It looks to me that Kant is saying that the I think must be able to accompany all my representations. I don't see Rödl's interpretation that <Every time p is thought, I think p is thought> — Leontiskos

Is the contention from both Kant and Rödl simply that any thought that <p> is necessarily entertained by a conscious subject? Meaning that the subject is implicit in any thought? Which is aimed at Frege’s contention that the object of thought can be entirely independent of any subject.