Did My Dad Just Refute The Cogito?!?!?!

Date: Monday, 09/Nov/09, 9:44 AM | Message # 1

Heads

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For those of you who don't know, the cogito was proposed by Renee' Descartes and it is the basis of all knowledge. It has long been considered the only thing that we absolutely can know, while everything else is simply strong theory based on our assumption that we have a solidly grounded and firm understanding of reality and that our senses are working properly to objectively assess reality. The cogito is based on this:

holding the possibility of idealism (our senses deceive us. We cannot properly asses reality because we cannot correctly and/or objectively observe it) to be true, we can make only one assessment and that is that while we may be thinking incorrectly, we still know that we are definitely thinking, and by extension, we exist. Here is what my dad proposed last night:

"As to the philosophy of "I think, therefor I am"...have you seen the cartoon of the sleeping man dreaming of an entire civilization who are working frantically to prevent the advance of time on the alarm clock next to his bed? What if you/we are among those people whose existence is likely to end if the alarm is not prevented? What if the truth is....he thinks, therefor we are?"

I still think his ideology could be refuted. For example, if we are just a figment of someone's imagination, we are still having our own thoughts. But I still think this idea may be an intriguing possibility and I want to explore it.

I want to hear your views now.

erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

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Date: Monday, 09/Nov/09, 7:53 PM | Message # 2

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|-; |_| /\/\ |*

erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

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Date: Monday, 09/Nov/09, 8:04 PM | Message # 3

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A better statement that Descartes should have made is "I am something" instead of "I think, therefore I am." Because now days the idea of us even thinking is debated.

We all know that each of our end is near; the question is do we accept the end of our living existence, or do we accept our existence as dead men...

Date: Monday, 09/Nov/09, 9:23 PM | Message # 4

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Quote (I_Guy)

A better statement that Descartes should have made is "I am something" instead of "I think, therefore I am." Because now days the idea of us even thinking is debated.

hmmm.... interesting. why i am something?

erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

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Date: Monday, 09/Nov/09, 10:00 PM | Message # 5

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Quote (Joker13)

jesus christ just shut the fuck up

flipoff

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EmSeeD

Date: Monday, 09/Nov/09, 10:45 PM | Message # 6

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Quote (eboyd)

have you seen the cartoon of the sleeping man dreaming of an entire civilization who are working frantically to prevent the advance of time on the alarm clock next to his bed? What if you/we are among those people whose existence is likely to end if the alarm is not prevented? What if the truth is....he thinks, therefor we are?"

interesting, so is he saying what if there is something else out there bigger than us? like God or something?

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Date: Monday, 09/Nov/09, 11:11 PM | Message # 7

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Quote (EmSeeD)

interesting, so is he saying what if there is something else out there bigger than us? like God or something?

my father believes in God, but that is besides the point. it makes a possibly somewhat sound logical refutation of the cogito. the only purpose of the cogito is to provide a basis for all knowledge and it turns out that even it may not be indestructable. the point of his statement was simply to provide a philosophical statement that makes even the cogito not an absolute fact.

erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

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EmSeeD

Date: Monday, 09/Nov/09, 11:19 PM | Message # 8

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oh okay, while i'm not sure, i still think "i think therefore i am" is correct coz even if what you think is wrong, you're still thinking so you still are right?

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Date: Monday, 09/Nov/09, 11:42 PM | Message # 9

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Quote (EmSeeD)

oh okay, while i'm not sure, i still think "i think therefore i am" is correct coz even if what you think is wrong, you're still thinking so you still are right?

yes, but what if you are only deluded in believing YOU are thinking and it is really just some higher being that is imagining you? imagining you are thinking and so it seems to you that you are thinking? that is the whole idea behind his point. it is kind of weird, but it may work. i truly think that we would still be thinking and therefore existing, but i can't seem to come up with a good logical refutation.

erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

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Date: Tuesday, 10/Nov/09, 6:05 PM | Message # 10

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The argument would be that everything that we experience would hold true in some way. Descartes argues that if we were simply dreaming, everything that we dream will have some minor degree of accuracy because the processes of the brain cannot imagine anything outside of a certain limit. Likewise if we are figments of some other brain (host) of some sort, it would still be imagining only that which it is familiar with (although the combination of the familiarities may be mixed up and the boundaries of what is known may be stretched.)

The point is, if some brain host is imagining us, it can only imagine that which it experiences in its reality within a certain limit. So the reality we think we experience would hold true to a degree by the reality of the brain host (although it may simply be stretched or skewed).

Also why would this brain host imagine us trying to figure out the problem?

We all know that each of our end is near; the question is do we accept the end of our living existence, or do we accept our existence as dead men...

Date: Tuesday, 10/Nov/09, 10:18 PM | Message # 11

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Besides it would be an infinite regress similar to the god problem. We could then wonder if the brain host is also an imagined creation. And as it is more logically sound to assume that instead of an infinitely complex being creating the universe we should assume the universe has always been or began by itself, and similarly we should assume that we are the source of our cognitive processes and nothing else. This avoids the logical problem. And that is what Descartes realized.

Here we have to consider Occam's razor.

We all know that each of our end is near; the question is do we accept the end of our living existence, or do we accept our existence as dead men...

Date: Tuesday, 10/Nov/09, 10:55 PM | Message # 12

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How do we know what a brain can or cannot imagine if we cannot be sure that we are objectively sensing it in order to test it. The laws of science only can be shown to work relative to us sensing their effects.

And btw, using Occam's Razor on this is useless because we are not making assumptions here. This is the one question we have where we have no room for assumptions. We need absolutely 100% hard fact because we are trying to find the basic ideology that we can prove past our standard of "preponderance of evidence". If we can be skeptical of even one aspect of this, then it is untrue and needs to be refined.

So tell me if you agree. If we changed the cogito to "something is thinking, therefore something exists" will it work?

erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

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Date: Wednesday, 11/Nov/09, 1:50 PM | Message # 13

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No because we have no solid evidence for that either. The fact is, we have good reason to believe that we are the source of cognitive activity. Therefore it would be futile to suppose that there is something higher at work because it is simply an infinite regress.

As a side note, Descartes reached his conclusion erroneously anyway, because he incorporated a god into the equation to justify why we can trust our senses.

Additionally, it is almost completely impossible to have a viewpoint that is objective to the universe. We have to consider the evolutionary development of our senses. Who says this clump of matter known as an apple is actually red and round? Well nature has designed a cognitive relation between my brain and my eyes to see it that way. Who knows, to an alien an apple may look like a black fuzzy multidemensional square. It all depends on how nature designs different species to perceive reality. There is no absolute perception of reality, so it is impossible to have a standard for reliable true knowledge. For example, some species of animals can only see black and white or grey tones. So imagine if humans never evolved color vision. It would hold back science significantly. For instance, we would never have been able to harness spectroscopy. So you can imagine the vast array of other senses and characteristics that would supply us with an advantage to better understand the world. We act as if our senses are the end of the line. Of course they're not. This may be part of what is holding us back from unlocking the mysteries of the universe because our biology simply hasn't sufficiently evolved for us to accurately perceive reality to objectively dissect it.

This is why it is essential to understand realmism. We can only perceive objectively that which is in our realm of consciousness, and it will only be reliable within that realm. There are conscious realms beyond our realm but we have no access to them because we are not equipped.

So to be honest, the cogito only works in our realm of consciousness.

The realization of this turns anyone into an absurdist, because any quest for absolute knowledge or awareness is hopeless at this point in time. For this reason, nihilism looms. This makes it difficult to maintain sanity. Embracing our situation and realizing our condition is the only solution. And living under the illusion that we are in control and we make our path and we choose and we are accurate and on and on.

But in the back of our conscience the truth remains.

We all know that each of our end is near; the question is do we accept the end of our living existence, or do we accept our existence as dead men...

Date: Wednesday, 11/Nov/09, 5:41 PM | Message # 14

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so you are saying that there will never be an objective absolute that we can rely on and call a true fact? idk, i beg to differ. i think at some point we may or may not come to a conclusion that is unanimously held and irrefutable (unless of course you are talking to an idiot). i think it is quite obvious to me that something is thinking, whether that something is me or i'm just a concept being thought up by someone else, and therefore, by extension, that something exists. i don't see how anyone can refute that without being completely inept. i'm not arguing whether or not idealism is true, but there is no way to refute it 100%. yes, we can say that we are 99.9999999999999999999999999999999% sure that anyone who takes idealism literally is batshit crazy, which i would say, but it still leaves that .000000000000000000000000000000001% chance that it is true no matter how fucking absurd it sound. i'm just being humble here. all scientists do the same. even Richard Dawkins. that doesn't mean that we cannot make decisions based on our certainty that it isn't true. we are 99.9999% sure that there is no God but that .0001% doesn't stop us from speaking up and letting the world know that a God proably doesn't exist so people should get on with their lives. and rightfully so as well. it is simply extremely unlikely that a god/gods really exist and there is nothing wrong with us expressing that. we have a lot of binds that will be broken if people just realize the truth about this. not that we should force people to stop believing, but we should try to encourage people to think for themselves. if they conclude God, fine, but i guarantee that it will only be a matter of time before the God delusion, like the common flu, will slowly die out. it is just a matter of time, scientific discovery, and of us being outspoken about it. the same goes for idealism, only, luckily, it is not widespread and common practice like religion. although, i feel that once we've gotten past the religious lying stage (ie: no transitional fossils, putting together a petition of "reputable" scientists that feel evolution needs to be re-evaluated, etc.) and we have enough evidence to fill all the gaps that religious folks usually plug God in, the religious folks (which, at that point, there will undoubtedly be significantly less of) will have no other choice but to resort to some form of spiritual idealism to keep their beliefs. i guarantee that they will invent some sort of matrix-like (as in the movie, not matrices) world in order to believe in God because that will be the last gap unaccounted for (and i don't see anyone accounting for it soon but who knows).

sorry for the rant

erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

battle record:

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