Maybe the soul is nothingness

With respect to what?

Lichtenburg.

Do individuals know with certainty that they exist?
Or simply that thoughts exist?

Do individuals know with certainty that they exist? — Tom343

What means "certainty"? By every reasonable standard, of course they do. By unreasonable standards, maybe not. Are you suggesting that people do not know that they exist?

Lichtenburg: Thinking is occurring. — Tom343

Russell said something similar. But as well as thought there is the knowledge that there is thinking. There is focal point that knows there is thought. Who/What is saying 'Thinking is occurring'?

Why presuppose that which has been proven?

Who was right on certainty...Descartes or Lichtenburg?

Wittgenstein.

:smirk:

Ma tha mi mothachail, tha mi ann, eadhon ged a tha mi an-còmhnaidh mothachail, bidh pàirt dhòmhsa an-còmhnaidh a ’cadal. Tha cuid de phàirtean air faire na h-oidhche.

Descartes: I think, therefore I am
Lichtenburg: Thinking is occurring.

George suggested that Rene went 'too far' with the Cogito and that he presupposed that the 'I' exists. Who is right? — Tom343

Neither.
I am consciousness - trumps them both. :cool:

Did you do that on your own or did you translate my comment? :P If that's all you, noice!

It was from a thread I was going to post, but I noticed this. Please translate your comment?

If I’m conscious, I’m there, even though I’m always conscious, part of me always sleeps. Some parts are on the night watch.

:up:

Who was right on certainty...Descartes or Lichtenburg?

Wittgenstein — Banno

:rofl: :up:

Both thoughts and the individual exist. The individual is the collection of thoughts.

I love your post title.

"Who was right on certainty?"

Who ever is right on anything?

Oh look, it's my missing eye!

Lichtenburg, sort of.

All that is truly indubitable is that thinking occurs, or at least, that some kind of cognitive or mental activity occurs. I prefer to use the word "thought" in a more narrow sense than merely any mental activity, so what I would say is all that survives the Cartesian attempt at universal doubt is experience: one cannot doubt that an experience of doubt is being had, and so that some kind of experience is being had.

But I then say that the concept of an experience is inherently a relational one: someone has an experience of something. An experience being had by nobody is an experience not being had at all, and an experience being had of nothing is again an experience not being had at all. This indubitable experience thus immediately gives justification to the notion of both a self, which is whoever the someone having the experience is, and also a world, which is whatever the something being experienced is.

One may yet have no idea what the nature of oneself or the world is, in any detail at all, but one can no more doubt that oneself exists to have an experience than that experience is happening, and more still than that, one cannot doubt that something is being experienced, and whatever that something is, in its entirety, that is what one calls the world. So from the moment we are aware of any experience at all, we can conclude that there is some world or another being experienced, and we can then attend to the particulars of those experiences to suss out the particular nature of that world.

The particular occasions of experience are thus the most fundamentally concrete parts of the world, and everything else that we postulate the existence of, including things as elementary as matter, is some abstraction that's only real inasmuch as postulating its existence helps explain the particular occasions of experience that we have.

Lichtenberg's statement seems like it makes less assumptions at first.
Instead of saying "I think" just say "thought is occurring". I think he is right, thought can occur without a thinker.
But its impossible to be aware of thinking occurring without a personal awareness of it.
I am certain that thinking is happening for ME, because I AM aware of it.

Consider if Lich had said "The mind is certain that thought is occurring."
But that could go further to
"There is an awareness of the mind being certain that thought is occurring"
Can we describe what is happening any more essentially?
Are we justified in calling the awareness self? On the one had, I can see how maybe 'awareness' is less conceptual, more real than an idea of a self. On the other hand, calling awareness an 'it' almost seems to imply that it's like...outside, external...but since it's not somebody elses awareness, in a sense it is not an 'it' because from the point of view of awareness, it is not 'outside'. You can talk about it as an object, but I don't think the personal experience of awarness is like that.

Sorry I want to simplify my position.
Thought occuring doesn't prove self, but it does prove awareness. Whether or not awareness qualifies as being called a self depends on what we mean by self.

Is awareness the only thing necessary to justify the label of self. Or is it just the bare minimum.

If a computer processes data but has no awareness, I'm not sure I would call it a self, probably not. If the computer does have awareness, I think I would call it a self.

....all of which reduces to Descartes’ cogito. So where does that other guy’s “more right on certainty” lay? In “thinking occurs”, which is just about the emptiest expression imaginable. You know...like....grass is. Balls bounce. Up is that way.

What do you think the cogito expression was actually meant to represent?

all of which reduces to Descartes’ cogito — Mww

Not quite. Instead of “I think, therefore I am”, you have “I experience something, therefore I and that something exist”. The having of some experience is what is primary; the existence of someone having that experience does follow immediately, but then so does the existence of something being experienced, and the nature or identity of the experiencer is just an uncertain as the nature or identity of the experienced. We don’t end up in a place where the whole world of experience is dubitable but the self is certain, like Descartes would have it.

We can be certain that an experience is being had by someone, but we as yet have no idea who that someone is; and we equally can be certain that an experience is being had of something, though we have no idea what that something is. All we are certain of is that an experience is happening.

one cannot doubt that an experience of doubt is being had, and so that some kind of experience is being had. — Pfhorrest

Makes sense.

But I then say that the concept of an experience is inherently a relational one: someone has an experience of something. An experience being had by nobody is an experience not being had at all, and an experience being had of nothing is again an experience not being had at all. This indubitable experience thus immediately gives justification to the notion of both a self, which is whoever the someone having the experience is, and also a world, which is whatever the something being experienced is. — Pfhorrest

This sounds rock solid...But, does it necessarily imply duality?
But If duality is not true, I think that would necessarily infer that self and world are not two things, but rather two sides of the same thing, reality. Reality as an appearance in the self's experiece, and reality as awareness of the appearance.
I don't think we are justified in claiming that because we experience something, that that something necessarily exists separate from the appearanace of it within awareness.
I think its necessarily the case that Reality is one thing only, awareness, but can create the th experience of the appearance of duality, without actually creating an objective duality.

Descartes: I think, therefore I am
Lichtenburg: Thinking is occurring.

George suggested that Rene went 'too far' with the Cogito and that he presupposed that the 'I' exists. Who is right? — Tom343

If thinking is occurring then there must be a thinker - that's the Cartesian "I". Descartes's "I" is that which is thinking, nothing more and nothing less.

An experience being had by nobody is an experience not being had at all, and an experience being had of nothing is again an experience not being had at all. — Pfhorrest

That sounds logical but could experiencer, experiencing, and experience... or self, perception, and object perceived...could such division be a delusion of the experiencer or self?

all of which reduces to Descartes’ cogito
— Mww

Not quite. Instead of “I think, therefore I am”, you have “I experience something, therefore I and that something exist”. — Pfhorrest

Because one can think a thing....and it is never the case where a thought isn’t of something....but never experience it, thinking and experiencing must be different. Even if it were insisted that experiencing of thought follows necessarily from the rational activity of thinking, we should see cognizance from perception, which is experience, and cognizance from thought, which is reason, accord with separate and distinct rational faculties, having no logical warrant for being considered congruent consequences.

This is from where my query arises: why did Descartes use the mental activity to prove a abstract reality over and above the standing proof of material objects by means of indubitable experience? There was no need to think in terms of experience because the validity of it was never in question. He had to stay within a system of non-material processing in order to justify the reality of a mind/body dualism, which of course, ended up being both a philosophical paradigm shift and a intellectual clusterfork forever and a day thereafter.

For what it’s worth.....

Yeah, we cannot rule out that the experiencer is the same thing as the experienced: it could be one thing experiencing itself.

Even if it were insisted that experiencing of thought follows necessarily from the rational activity of thinking, we should see cognizance from perception, which is experience, and cognizance from thought, which is reason, accord with separate and distinct rational faculties, having no logical warrant for being considered congruent consequences. — Mww

In the way Descartes uses “thought”, it is entirely possible that all perceptions are merely thoughts: we could just be imagining, dreaming, hallucinating, all the things that we “perceive“.

In a way similar to rebuttals of solipsism, I say that in that case there is no practical difference between the “imagined” world and a “real” world: there are still parts of that whatever-is-being-experienced that are beyond our control or our knowledge, just like a “real” world “would be”, so we need to treat that object of experience the same way we would treat a “real” world... which is to say, treat it as real. The real world just is whatever this stuff I’m experiencing is.

Some of that stuff might be parts of myself (not just my body, but the insides of my mind too), sure, but that’s fine, that just means I myself am part of the world, no surprise there.

But there is no such substratum; there is no 'being' behind doing, effecting, becoming; 'the doer' is merely a fiction added to the deed - the deed is everything. — Freddy Zarathustra