• flannel jesus
    1.8k
    Lovely, I agree with you that you mentioning that outside source IS relevant, because I think that outside sources are relevant pieces of information and evidence when it comes to conversations about standard usage.

    Do you have a link to your outside source? When you link to an outside source, I promise I won't say anything like "Don't lean on the others' shoulders or hide behind their shadows".
  • Corvus
    3.2k
    I don't control what he posts.flannel jesus

    Yeah, no blaming you. It is a bit irritating to see him popping up with most smarmy useless comments with nothing useful or helpful contributions to the discussions when we are trying to clarify the issues in haze.
  • Corvus
    3.2k
    My definition for Therefore is standard definition from any dictionaries on internet. It is nothing special, and nothing obscure.

    Therefore is to mean, as a result of, consequence of.
  • flannel jesus
    1.8k
    Okay, so please link it.
  • Corvus
    3.2k
    Okay, so please link it.flannel jesus

    Please google Therefore for its meaning. It is everywhere. No need for link.
    I swim therefore I am wet is correct. I am wet, therefore I swim, is not correct.
    I drank therefore I am tipsy is correct. I am tipsy, therefore I drank, is not.
  • flannel jesus
    1.8k


    https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/therefore#:~:text=(%C3%B0e%C9%99%CA%B3f%C9%94%CB%90%CA%B3%20),a%20logical%20result%20or%20conclusion.

    You use therefore to introduce a logical result or conclusion.

    So the question is, can you derive a logical result or conclusion, where the *thing you're concluding* preceded, in time, the premises you used to get to that logical result or conclusion?

    I think you can.
  • ENOAH
    843


    Are you certain regarding the certainty of 100% certainty?
  • Fire Ologist
    716
    "Think" doesn't warrant for anything. "Think" means "think".Corvus

    If “think” means “think” then “”think” warrants for the meaning of “think.” So you can’t say think doesn’t warrant for anything.

    No one is saying “I am, therefore I think.”

    It’s like you are using words to try and not have a conversation.

    I agree, the cogito statement can be logically deconstructed and is problematic, or tautology.

    But Descartes wasn’t proving he existed. He wasn’t proving he was thinking. He observed that while trying to prove anything, he was existing, he was seeking proof, he was observing, he was thinking, and he observed he could not doubt any of these showed he was existing.

    He stumbled upon a certain existing thing - namely stumbling.

    It’s an observation one can’t remove from any picture, or better, from any act of picturing. Every time you are proving Flannel wrong or proving you are right, you “are proving.” Simple observation.

    How best to codify it as a logical statement… the saga continues.
  • Bylaw
    559
    Therefore can imply chronology, but it need not and it certainly doesn't there. And it is often used in the sense Descartes meant, and all those who focus on the English version, that we can conclude that GIVEN I think I also am. The am may well come before, but it is a necessary condition, at the very least for thinking.
    And only very rare individuals who have a very fixed reading of therefore think it usually or there means chronology.
    And I doubt there is a single published philosopher who took it in the sense you mean.
    I don't agree with the cogito, but your interpretation of it is incorrect. It's not claiming that thinking causes or leads to existence or is prior to it.
    But if you can find some philosopher discussing it in that way, let us know. They'd still be in a very tiny, tiny minority, but it'd be fascinating.
  • Corvus
    3.2k
    You use therefore to introduce a logical result or conclusion.

    So the question is, can you derive a logical result or conclusion, where the *thing you're concluding* preceded, in time, the premises you used to get to that logical result or conclusion?
    flannel jesus

    You have agreed that Therefore is to mean "result of", "consequence of" here. Result and consequence is clearly chronological and cause-effect nature. Result cannot precede Start. Consequence cannot precede cause.

    And if you claim that some point or idea is wrong, then you must be prepared to provide full answer based on your own factual reasonings and logic for the claim. You cannot just claim some idea or point of someone is wrong, and then say it is wrong because the other folks don't agree with it or some authorities says so. That would make you look like a psychological biased man with emotional problems.
  • flannel jesus
    1.8k
    You cannot just claim some idea or point of someone is wrong, and then say it is wrong because the other folks don't agree with it or some authorities says so.Corvus

    That's how language works. You said yourself that you looked up your definition from "official" sources. Why do you get to decide what's right because what other folks say in official sources, but I don't?

    And the "consequence of" wording can work to. I know B, and as a consequence of knowing this, I also know A. I know B, therefore I know A. That doesn't mean B has to happen before A. Can you think of any examples where "I know B, therefore I know A" makes sense, even though A was true in time chronologically before B? I can.
  • Corvus
    3.2k
    No one is saying “I am, therefore I think.”Fire Ologist
    I do. I am saying it. I think it is a more meaningful statement than "I think, therefore I am."

    Saying "I think, therefore I am." is like saying "I am tipsy, therefore I drank." or "I died, therefore I am living."

    I am therefore I think, is just saying, I exist, therefore I think. Without me existing, I cannot think.
  • Fire Ologist
    716
    Saying "I think, therefore I am." is like saying "I am tipsy, therefore I am drinking."Corvus

    No it’s not.

    The statement is “I think, therefore I am.”

    This is the same statement as “I am thinking, therefore I am.”

    In the alcohol induced version we would have to say “I am drinking, therefore I am.” Or “I am tipsy, therefore I am.”

    You keep missing the point, which is an observation of something existing, namely the observer in the act of observing, or simply “observing” is.
  • Lionino
    2.7k
    It is like saying "I am tipsy, therefore I drank", which is obviously true, while "I am drinking therefore I will be tipsy" is untrue.
  • Corvus
    3.2k
    You keep missing the point, which is an observation of something existing, namely the observer in the act of observing, or simply “observing” is.Fire Ologist

    Observation and thinking are totally different mental operations. You are mixing the two, and it seems the source of your confusion.
  • Lionino
    2.7k
    Anyway, Descartes did not know English, he never went to England, he did not write in English. He wrote in French and Latin. The statements are "je pense donc je suis" and "cogitō ergo sum".
    The Larousse dictionary is clear:

    1. Marque la conclusion d'un raisonnement, la conséquence d'une assertion ; en conséquence, par suite de quoi : J'ignore tout de la question, donc je me tais.
    "Donc" marks a logical conclusion. Je suis is the conclusion of je pense.

    Ergo means the same as donc, Gaffiot 2016:
    2 ergō, (5) conj. de coordination, donc, ainsi donc, par conséquent : Enn. d. Cic. CM 10 ; Cic. Fin. 2, 34, etc. || [avec pléonasme] : ergo igitur Pl. Trin. 756 ; itaque ergo Ter. Eun. 317 ; Liv. 1, 25, 2 ; 3, 31, 5, etc. || [concl. logique] : Cic. Fin. 2, 97 ; 5, 24 ; Læl. 88, etc.; ergo etiam Cic. Nat. 3, 43 ; 3, 51 ; ergo adeo Cic. Leg. 2, 23, donc aussi, donc encore

    You see then it marks conclusion too. From "cogitō" I can conclude that "sum".

    There is in fact a whole debate around the translation to English, and the fact that Latin and French don't separate imperfective present (I am doing) form prefect present (I do) like English does, resulting in "I think therefore I am" when instead it should be "I am thinking therefore I exist".
  • Corvus
    3.2k
    You see then it marks conclusion. From the fact that I think I can conclude that I am.Lionino

    Conclusion is always consequent of the premises. You never conclude something, then list premises afterwards. Or like ByLaw suggested, you can never conclude something at the same time telling the premises. It is a temporal logical impossibility.
  • Corvus
    3.2k
    This is the same statement as “I am thinking, therefore I am.”Fire Ologist

    No publication on Descartes says "I am thinking, therefore I am." That sounds like your imagination.
    It clearly says "I think, therefore I am."
    Here "think" doesn't imply anything else than "think". You claimed also in your previous posts that "think" implies "exist". That is another nonsense. If think implied existence, then Descartes didn't have to say "I exist."

    He could just have said "I think.". Saying anything more than that would be superfluous babble.
    But Descartes weren't that daft. He said "I think, therefore I am." which means that he thinks that "think" doesn't imply "existence".

    Therefore it can be concluded that "I think, therefore I am." is logically unsound, if not false statement.

    You could say it is a valid statement. But false statements can be valid, if you marry them up with the matching premises.
  • flannel jesus
    1.8k
    You never conclude something, then list premises afterwardsCorvus

    You're absolutely right, but they does not mean the fact of the conclusion literally temporarily happened in time before the facts of the premises. Just because you write the premises first does not mean they happened first.

    What is it going to take for you to consider the possibility that this might be right?
  • Corvus
    3.2k
    You're absolutely right, but they does not mean the fact of the conclusion literally temporarily happened in time before the facts of the premises. Just because you write the premises first does not mean they happened firstflannel jesus

    Good point. Do you have some example arguments for that?
  • Corvus
    3.2k
    I had my dinner, therefore I was hungry. :roll:
  • flannel jesus
    1.8k
    "I think therefore I am" is one - but obviously that's a bit flippant.

    A woman's on trial for arranging the murder of her husband, by hiring a hit man. The key piece of evidence for the prosecution is a text she sent 30 minutes after the murder - she sent a text to the murderers phone that said "Good job, he's really dead. I will pay you later"

    The syllogism looks roughly like this:

    She texted him that.
    She would not have texted him that if it wasn't her desire to have her husband murdered.
    Therefore
    We can conclude it was her desire to have her husband murdered.

    The conclusion happens in time before the premise.
  • flannel jesus
    1.8k
    My dog is shitting, therefore she must have eaten something.
  • flannel jesus
    1.8k
    23 and me says I'm 98% Asian, therefore I can conclude my parents were Asian.
  • flannel jesus
    1.8k
    if you know that you only eat when you're hungry, you can absolutely say this is a valid argument.

    I only eat after I become hungry.
    I ate
    Therefore
    I must have become hungry prior to eating.

    If you don't remember being hungry, but you do remember eating, you can use this logic to convince yourself you were in fact hungry.
  • flannel jesus
    1.8k
    "if the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit" - this is a hidden syllogism where the conclusion happened before the premise.

    If he committed the murder, then this glove must fit him.
    He just tried to put on the glove, and it didn't fit.
    Therefore
    He did not commit the murder.
  • flannel jesus
    1.8k
    In short, people make conclusions about the past using information they have in the present all the time. There's nothing unusual about a scenario where a conclusion about the past is drawn from information that we obtained more recently.
  • ENOAH
    843
    In the alcohol induced version we would have to say “I am drinking, therefore I am.” Or “I am tipsy, therefore I am.”Fire Ologist

    I think you are correct. Note the pattern though: I am [doing] therefore I am. Descarte's conclusion is flawed because it was to narrow. What defines us as Real existing beings, is the [x]ing.

    Thinking, specifically, is not the ontological tool he thought it was. It has no special place in any [potential] hierarchy of Being or Reality. On the contrary, it is no less "mundane" "empty" than "painting" or "bicycling."

    Any thought that "I'm bicycling therefore I am" is less persuasive than his cogito, arises as an illusion.

    In fact, I would take it a step further. Thinking is proof of being. But thinking about x-ing does not bring x-ing to a "superior" ontological status, but the contrary. At the instant of thinking about x-ing, "Being" is "once removed," from Being and that Reality is displaced by the thinking.
  • Lionino
    2.7k
    Conclusion is always consequent of the premises. You never conclude something, then list premises afterwards.Corvus

    And the conclusion of "I think" is "I am". :cry:

    No publication on Descartes says "I am thinking, therefore I am." That sounds like your imagination.
    It clearly says "I think, therefore I am."
    Corvus

    Wrong.

    The earliest known translation as "I am thinking, therefore I am" is from 1872 by Charles Porterfield Krauth (The Penn Monthly, Volume 3)
  • Truth Seeker
    692
    As a concept, yes, I am.
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