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by HasntBeen on November 1st, 2009
I have, but Descartes did not.
He had a good idea, but he missed his own milestone... when he went looking for the most fundamental and indubitable principle on which to base his philosophy, he came up with a tautology: "I think, therefore I am" (cogito ergo sum).
This is a fallacy of presuming the conclusion, as one can determine rather quickly by asking "where did the 'I' in 'I think'" come from? What is it's basis? On what basis can one claim that there is an "I" doing the thinking?
Certainly thoughts are observable... there are thoughts, no question about it. But where is this "I"? What's it made out of? What evidence is there that it exists?
He sort of missed all those questions. When he got to "I think, therefore I am", he dusted off his hands and walked away from doubt, as if the job were suddenly done and the problem solved. The legacy of that rippled through popular philosophy and out into the world, with centuries of students of logic just watching this obvious fallacy float by and never questioning it.
That's not such a tragedy... people believed in "I" before Descartes came along, and they continued after he left. It made no real difference that he came up with this conclusion. But it was a huge missed opportunity -- had he been able to press on with his mission until the "I" had also been deconstructed into its component parts, it's likely he would have invented Buddhism in a Western context, and started a revolution in Western thought that could have made a big difference.
by Phillis - Zacks little sister on November 1st, 2009
I live by it. +5
by Sharona Life is a Tale Told by an Idiot on November 1st, 2009
Absolutely. Question, question, question. How else can you ever have a point of view? I cannot believe how many sheep are on this planet blindly following the dictates of others. We are in an insane asylum.
by Anonymous on November 1st, 2009
Yes. Blind faith gets you nowhere in a real search for truth. +5
by Adz3r0 on November 1st, 2009
Consider as you walk down a street, you have presumptions of safety based of what you know of your surroundings and on what you imagine of your surroundings. Around the unforeseen street corner, there is no pack of wild dogs waiting to tear at your flesh for a meal. There are no gangs of teens shooting out the latest chapter of their ongoing turf war. There's no comet falling from the sky to collide into you. There's no sack of money. That said, every day-to-day interaction we have in our respective environments is contingent on what we presume to know and we presume our knowledge of our surroundings is infallible, even if on a conscious level, we know that the world is fragmented and imperfect. After the planes crashed into our buildings, I've stopped accepting and have begun doubting.
by RosieGHM Jetpacker on November 1st, 2009
That is not true. I don't doubt my love for my son. I seek truth in all things. That is my truth and needs no doubt to prove it/justify it/sanctify it or make it any truer than true! :)
by anonymous on November 1st, 2009
I doubt it.
by CaptainHarley adores his life penguin on November 1st, 2009
Indeed I have, and will continue to do so. We should never fear the truth because we are part of it.
by sm00z on November 1st, 2009
I did that back in my college day and when I think about Descartes, It always reminds me of a question that he once posited.
Is certainty possible?
I believe that certainty is a position that makes us deal with the mundane and practical matters in our existence.
Real certainty is always open to philosophical debate.
by LarryH54 on November 1st, 2009
I have doubted both God AND Science. I wonder how many atheists can say the same?
by Lonely - Rebel - AYPWIP on November 1st, 2009
I am currently at that level
by LEO on December 9th, 2009
huh? yeah right!
by happiness on November 1st, 2009
I have , and always do.
by Anonymous T on November 1st, 2009
Yes. I wouldn't be myself, if I didn't.
.
Though sometimes it's difficult or even
painful to question some things.
Yet others seem to be so completely
"sure" that it's tough for them to even
cross Your mind it might not be so.
by palmagma on November 1st, 2009
Yes, doubt makes for good testing.
And yes, I like the advice: trust but verify.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Nonetheless in all things we need working hypotheses,
expectations, interpretations and/or explanations that
make so much sense to us that we accept them as true
even as far as putting our lives at stake were we wrong.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
e.g. leaping out of a plane with a parachute.
What is a science project hypothesis?
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| 1 person likes this
Who researches the researchers?
by Mister_Bromide on January 7th, 2011
| 1 person likes this
What Does Methodology Mean?
by Answerbag Staff on February 1st, 2011
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what are the first class levers in the human body?
by michelle1969 on December 11th, 2009
| 1 person likes this
What is a hypothesis for a science fair project?
by Answerbag Staff on February 1st, 2011
| 1 person likes this
You're reading "If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things." - Rene Descartes. Have you sought truth to that level?
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Comments
He was alluding to "awareness" . That Awareness is the I. The awareness is stemming from a the source of awareness.
by Sharona Life is a Tale Told by an Idiot on November 1st, 2009
You're covered. +6
by Phillis - Zacks little sister on November 1st, 2009
@Hari: what evidence do you have to support YOUR conclusion? How is it not just an extension of Descartes' mistake?
Your declaration that "awareness is I" is another unsupported proposition. If you want to say "in my dictionary, 'I' equals awareness", that's fine with me. But private dictionaries have a way of confusing the heck out of the discussion. The essence of disciplined thinking starts with establishing the meaning of terms, you can't just flip on a switch at the end of the argument and say "well I meant to say that I equals awareness". Furthermore, where is the evidence that Descartes agreed with that definition?
by HasntBeen on November 1st, 2009
And "hi" to Phillis! I guess I pissed off the Descartes Fan Club. I didn't even know they had a chapter in my town :)
by HasntBeen on November 1st, 2009
Well, it's a big neighborhood :)
by Phillis - Zacks little sister on November 1st, 2009
Love this answer. But isn't it (unintentionally) presumptuous to assume that he "dusted off his hands and walked away from doubt?" Was that the official conclusion?
+6.
by Adz3r0 on November 1st, 2009
He was French so what do you expect. A pompous flourish is all we could expect really.
by Who Is She on November 1st, 2009
lol@Who is she!
@Adz3r0: Descartes' conclusion is famous in Western thought, and rather widely discussed and argued about in philosophical circles. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito_ergo_sum) has a rather rough discussion of it, including a poor-quality summary of the objections posed by others. As far as I know, nobody has ever suggested that Descartes went beyond this level of doubt, his own statements about it are "I cannot find a way to doubt that I exist", but that's another statement which is tautological. He seems to have entirely missed the possibility that "I" is itself some abstraction constructed by the mind.
As I think Hari is hinting, one can solve the problem with a dictionary -- just defining "I" as awareness, perhaps. That's fine in the limited context of a philosophical exercise, but it offers nothing meaningful for daily life and ordinary people, because when you and I say "I" in common speech, we are generally referring to much more than some simple and bare abstract concept of awareness. So redefining the word from its common usage is one way to produce a coherent statement, but it doesn't achieve anything like the power of asking "well, what is this 'I' in the first place?"
Since the point of Descartes 'meditations' was to get to something indubitable, suddenly hitting a point at which you give up on doubt can reasonably be called a "partial success" at best.
By contrast, the Buddha continued beyond that point and doubted the 'I' itself, producing a revolution in how to understand being and reality as a whole. That made a difference to millions of people and rippled through whole cultures, realigning how many people see life. That's the basis of my suggestion that he might have reinvented Buddhism had he not stopped short.
by HasntBeen on November 1st, 2009
Thank you.
by Adz3r0 on November 1st, 2009
Do you know what awarness even is? Why can't you just speak in a few short sentences at a time instead of 20 paragraphs to support one thought? It doesn't make you one whit more credible. The more you ramble the less you are aware. Try reading some Eckhart Tolle. That will save me some time.
by Sharona Life is a Tale Told by an Idiot on November 1st, 2009
Eckhart Tolle's books are much longer than my little essay here.
Yes, I know what awareness is. I spent 5 years in Zen practice just sitting there being aware.
I can speak in short sentences, but it's harder to express what I want to say that way. The confusions and presumptions that prevail in sloppy thinking consist mostly of short ideas which haven't been thought out very well. Philosophy (the pursuit of truth) tries to puncture those, and sometimes that takes some more subtle ideas.
It's not my job to save you time. One way you can save time is by not participating in discussions you don't really care about.
by HasntBeen on November 1st, 2009
◦"I cannot tell you any spiritual truth that deep within you don't know already. All I can do is remind you of what you have forgotten" - Page 6
◦"The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly—you usually don't use it at all. It uses you." - Page 13
◦"all the things that truly matter — beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace — arise from beyond the mind" - Page 14
◦"All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness" - Page 19
◦"Emotion arises at the place where mind and body meet. It is the body's reaction to your mind — or you might say, a reflection of your mind in the body" - Page 20
◦"It wasn't through the mind, through thinking, that the miracle that is life on earth or your body were created and are being sustained" - Page 20
◦"You may not yet be able to bring your unconscious mind activity into awareness as thoughts, but it will always be reflected in the body as an emotion, and of this you can become aware." - Page 22
◦"Love, joy, and peace cannot flourish until you have freed yourself from mind dominance" - Page 24
◦"Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within" - Page 24
◦"Pain is inevitable as long as you are identified with your mind" - Page 25
◦"Nobody’s life is entirely free of pain and sorrow. Isn’t it a question of learning to live with them rather than trying to avoid them?
The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self-created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life.
The writings more than explain WHY he says these statements, but that is for you to read on your own. He is brilliant.
by Sharona Life is a Tale Told by an Idiot on November 1st, 2009
Well I'm glad you found someone you trust to tell you what to think. That's so rare.
Incidentally, most of Tolle's teachings are lifted from some form of Buddhism. I have no problem with the guy, but I bet if you asked him, he would agree with this position about Descartes.
by HasntBeen on November 1st, 2009
As Douglas Hofstadter puts it:
I Am a Strange Loop.
by palmagma on November 1st, 2009
lol.
by HasntBeen on November 1st, 2009
Thanks to all who participated for a fascinating answer and discussion of it. What is schooling for if we can't be taught tautology?
by Jim in a Nautilus COAT on November 1st, 2009