The "Cogito" Fails to Overcome Cartesian Skepticism

Torin

Well-known member
The cogito appears first in the Discourse on the Method, in French, as je pense, donc je suis. "I am thinking, therefore I exist." The Meditations presents it differently. Descartes writes, "this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me."

I don't think Descartes overcame Cartesian skepticism with this, because Descartes concedes that he could be misled about simple mathematical truths.

From the Discourse on the Method: "since there are men who make mistakes in reasoning, committing logical fallacies concerning the simplest questions in geometry, and because I judged that I was as prone to error as anyone else, I rejected as unsound all the arguments I had previously taken as demonstrative proofs."

From the Meditations: "since I sometimes consider that others go astray in cases where they have the most perfect knowledge, may I not similarly go wrong every time I add two and three or count the sides of a square, or in some even simpler manner, if that is conceivable?"

If you can be wrong about 2+3=5, you can be wrong about the cogito too. Descartes' skepticism is too severe to be rationally addressed, once its appropriateness is granted.
 
The cogito appears first in the Discourse on the Method, in French, as je pense, donc je suis. "I am thinking, therefore I exist." The Meditations presents it differently. Descartes writes, "this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me."

I don't think Descartes overcame Cartesian skepticism with this, because Descartes concedes that he could be misled about simple mathematical truths.

From the Discourse on the Method: "since there are men who make mistakes in reasoning, committing logical fallacies concerning the simplest questions in geometry, and because I judged that I was as prone to error as anyone else, I rejected as unsound all the arguments I had previously taken as demonstrative proofs."

From the Meditations: "since I sometimes consider that others go astray in cases where they have the most perfect knowledge, may I not similarly go wrong every time I add two and three or count the sides of a square, or in some even simpler manner, if that is conceivable?"

If you can be wrong about 2+3=5, you can be wrong about the cogito too. Descartes' skepticism is too severe to be rationally addressed, once its appropriateness is granted.
I don't see how I can be wrong about the cogito. It would require that "I am thinking, but I do not exist" could possibly be true, which just doesn't make sense. In the case of the other conclusions Descartes' treats as doubtable, I don't think we can say quite so readily that they're just intrinsically senseless. In those cases (IIRC) he invokes a diabolos ex machina: 2+3 might not equal five, it might actually be six, but a malevolent djinn cast a spell over me to implant the false equation. Even if that were plausible, though, it assumes there's a "me" to be befuddled by the djinn, so the systematic doubt which invokes the djinn would not have to touch the cogito.

If the djinn isn't part of the argument, and it's simply an extension of "all people can be fooled some of the time," then I think it's very much an over-extension. "There are men who make mistakes in reasoning, committing logical fallacies concerning the simplest questions in geometry" doesn't get us close to "2+3 might equal six" let alone "maybe I don't exist," because "the simplest questions in geometry" are of course immensely complex and sophisticated compared to everyday arithmetic. I've read that crows can add and subtract, but I wouldn't try to teach them Euclid.

But though I'd grant Descartes the cogito, I'd say that if we accepted his general claim that seemingly obvious observations can't be trusted, then the ladder he built to escape from solipsism is made of straw. That ladder -- again, if I'm recalling correctly -- relies on a set of deductions, all of which are more genuinely doubtable than the ones he was doubting at the start, djinn or no djinn. ("If I exist, then I didn't make myself; if I didn't make myself, somebody made me; if somebody made me, he must have a reason for making me... therefore the world of ordinary experience is real, as of course is God.")
 
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Smart man.

The word "rational" is just a shortcut to bypass unproven assumptions.

Could thinking be an illusion?

Anything's possible.
 
[. . .] Could thinking be an illusion?

Anything's possible.
I can't see that. I hold some propositions to be self-evidently nonsensical, and among these are:

1) I am not thinking; I only think I'm thinking, but that's an illusion. Actually, I'm not capable of thinking at all, and

2) I am thinking, but I don't exist.
 
I can't see that. I hold some propositions to be self-evidently nonsensical, and among these are:

1) I am not thinking; I only think I'm thinking, but that's an illusion. Actually, I'm not capable of thinking at all, and

2) I am thinking, but I don't exist.

Sure but realize—this can only be verified by your direct conscious experience of your own reality.

There's no intellectual justification beyond that.
 
Sure but realize—this can only be verified by your direct conscious experience of your own reality.

There's no intellectual justification beyond that.
I don't think you can claim "there's no intellectual justification for the proposition 'There is a real person who is going by the name Komodo on this forum' which would be acceptable to another party," unless by "no intellectual justification" you meant "the proposition could not be proved through a syllogism whose premises were true beyond any possible doubt." Otherwise, there would be all sorts of ways to justify that proposition. (My friends and relatives can see me and talk to me, for example.) If you hold to the "no possible doubt" standard, then it's true you can't prove that proposition, or any proposition. Which I think is a good reason not to use that standard, rather than being a good reason to be in a state of perpetual skepticism.

(I'm having a bit of deja vu here. Have we had this discussion before?)
 
Something similar, yes.

Once we commandeer the word "justify" to no longer mean "prove with certainty" anymore, the discussion seems disingenuous.

No offense is intended by that.
 
Something similar, yes.

Once we commandeer the word "justify" to no longer mean "prove with certainty" anymore, the discussion seems disingenuous.

No offense is intended by that.
This implies that "justified" has always been taken to mean "proven with certainty," which I don't think is the case. People have always talked about "justified suspicion", which obviously doesn't imply certainty. And it's very common usage for guilty verdicts to be called justified if proof was only offered beyond reasonable doubt, or for scientific conclusions to be called justified if they were supported by the weight of evidence, not by geometric proof. So I don't see any commandeering, or sleight of hand redefinition, in talking this way.
 
The cogito appears first in the Discourse on the Method, in French, as je pense, donc je suis. "I am thinking, therefore I exist." The Meditations presents it differently. Descartes writes, "this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me."

I don't think Descartes overcame Cartesian skepticism with this, because Descartes concedes that he could be misled about simple mathematical truths.

From the Discourse on the Method: "since there are men who make mistakes in reasoning, committing logical fallacies concerning the simplest questions in geometry, and because I judged that I was as prone to error as anyone else, I rejected as unsound all the arguments I had previously taken as demonstrative proofs."
Yet he continues to commit the fallacy of Begging the Question when he assumes that he is the one doing the thinking. He doesn't do the thinking any more than he beats his own heart.
 
It should have been "I am, therefore I think"
I'm not so sure that's necessarily the case though. It definitely makes sense as to why he's thinking, but it doesn't necessarily prove that it is he who is doing the thinking or that they're necessarily his thoughts. He just assumes this to be the case.
"Esse" is primary over "cogito", but reversing it made Descartes trapped within himself which lead to all sorts of "interaction" problems...
What sort of "interaction" problems?
 
Thats precisely the point, his first principle starts with thought instead of that which makes thought a reality, namely; existence.



The so called mind-body problem, heck; anything external to the mind is a problem when you start with mind first.
Because that which begins in the mind doesn't actually exist? The mind must struggle to understand what the senses present to it, yet whatever it may understand can never stand under the immediate reality which must always remain fundamental.

One of the first things the mind must create is a sense of self, an identity or persona to present to the objective world. This interface with reality never was, nor ever will be anything but a superfluous or pointlessly redundant abstraction of reality.
 
Because that which begins in the mind doesn't actually exist? The mind must struggle to understand what the senses present to it, yet whatever it may understand can never stand under the immediate reality which must always remain fundamental.
One of the first things the mind must create is a sense of self, an identity or persona to present to the objective world. This interface with reality never was, nor ever will be anything but a superfluous or pointlessly redundant abstraction of reality.

Everything that exists and occurs begins in and with a believing, because outside of a believing mind nothing can be known to exist or occur in reality. So, a believing mind must be fundamental to reality remaining present.
 
You can't. You can't be wrong without being.
Right.

However, I'm not attacking the cogito here, I'm saying it doesn't hold up to Cartesian Skepticism. Cartesian Skepticism is a form of skepticism articulated by Descartes in the Discourse on the Method and the Meditations on First Philosophy.

My argument is based on two observations.

First, Descartes thinks he could be wrong about 2+3=5.

He's wrong about that, but that is what he thinks. You can find evidence that Descartes thinks he could be wrong about 2+3=5 in the text of the Discourse on the Method and the Meditations on First Philosophy. I provided direct quotes from the English translation of Descartes that I have on hand in the OP.

Second, if you could be wrong about 2+3=5, you could be wrong about the cogito too.

But Descartes thinks he can be wrong about 2+3=5, and Descartes thinks he cannot be wrong about the cogito.

So, Descartes is inconsistent.

The suggested response here seems to be: But I can't be wrong (about the cogito, or about anything) without being.

But I can't have two things and three things without having five things, either. So, that does not save Descartes from the internal criticism based on his own Cartesian Skepticism.

There's no argument Descartes can make to undermine 2+3=5 without undermining the cogito too. Two things and three things adding up to anything other than five things is a contradiction, just like an agent thinking without existing is a contradiction. If we are in such bad epistemic shape that we should doubt 2+3=5, we are also in such bad epistemic shape that we should doubt the cogito.
 
I don't exist isn't just a logical contradiction it is also an evidentiary one.
I don't accept the distinction between logical contradictions and evidentiary contradictions. Let's leave that aside for now, though, because it's not that relevant to the discussion and it could create distractions.

3+2= 5 cannot BE wrong but a person could PERCEIVE it as wrong.

I am* cannot be wrong and it cannot be perceived as wrong because perceiving requires being.

does not apply to "you are".
Several things.

First, why can't someone perceive that they don't exist?

In other words, what is the actual distinction between 2+3=5 and that cogito that you're making here, and what is the support for it?

Second, there are people with Cotard Delusion who perceive that they do not exist.

"Cotard's delusion, also known as walking corpse syndrome or Cotard's syndrome, is a rare mental disorder in which the affected person holds the delusional belief that they are dead, do not exist, are putrefying, or have lost their blood or internal organs." (Wikipedia)

Third, there are perfectly sane professional philosophers who perceive that they do not have a self.

"Eliminative materialism (or eliminativism) is the radical claim that our ordinary, common-sense understanding of the mind is deeply wrong and that some or all of the mental states posited by common-sense do not actually exist and have no role to play in a mature science of the mind." (The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

"Many modern philosophers and scientists suggest that this sense of being an 'I' is illusory, or just a simple product of brain activity. Somehow the billions of neurons in your brain work together to produce it, and all of the thoughts and feelings which it incorporates. The philosopher Daniel Dennett speaks of the illusion of the ‘Cartesian theatre,' the sense that there is ‘someone’ looking out at a world ‘out there’, and also watching our own thoughts pass by. In reality, says Dennett, there are only mental processes. There are streams of thoughts, sensations, and perceptions passing through our brains, but there is no central place where all of these phenomena are organised. Similarly, psychologist Susan Blackmore has suggested that the self is just a collection of what she calls ‘memes’—units of cultural information such as ideas, beliefs, and habits. We are born without a self, but slowly, as we are exposed to environmental influences, the self is ‘constructed’ out of the memes we absorb."

Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/out-the-darkness/201311/does-your-self-exist
 
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