Re: ANNOUNCE: First longer sentence in S7

On Tue, Apr 06, 2004 at 03:21:37PM -0700, Philippe Caquant wrote:

> I'm not a Descartes fan, first of all because he said animals were
> nothing else but machines
Well, I also believe that, but I include humans in "animals" there, so
no speciesist bias is implied by my belief. :)

> I also don't believe that saying "Cogito ergo sum" of "Cogito
> sum" does prove anything.
It doesn't *prove* anything; it's a fundamental basis for empiricism.

> He also decided that everything should be based on evidence (maybe I
> make it a little caricatural, but it's something like that),
That's not a caricature; it's a philosophy, that of empricism. Descartes
was one of the first Natural Philosophers (as they styled themselves),
the forerunners of modern scientists.  Others were Galileo, Newton,
Liebniz . . .

The basis of empiricism is that you take nothing for granted, but build
upon only what you can observe.  "Cogito [ergo] sum" is simply a statement
that it is safe to assume that you exist; otherwise, who would be doing
the observing?   All other assumptions are suspect.  Not necessarily
wrong - after all, DesCartes was not a solipsist - but needing
examination, not to be taken as given.  This philosophy is the basis of
all science, which, given the impressive results, is not something to be
sneered at.

> which is very dubious; it is not evident at all that it's the Earth
> that's going around the Sun, and yet I was told it is so.
Well, in a universe governed by relativity it is equally valid to say
that the Sun orbits the Earth or to say that the Earth orbits the Sun.
That is, the laws of physics and associated math work either way.  But
the math for the other planets is a lot more complicated if you try to
express it in terms of them orbiting the Earth with the Sun, instead of
orbiting the Sun with the Earth.  Anyway, velocity may be relative, but
acceleration isn't, and the Sun is clearly accelerating the Earth more
than the reverse.  But it's not really an either-or proposition;
actually, neither body orbits the other.  Instead, both bodies revolve around
the epicenter of their orbit, which, due to the large difference in masses,
is located beneath the surface of the Sun - but not at its center.  And
the Sun's orbit is affected by the Earth - just in a manner proportional
to the small fraction of its mass represented thereby.

But in any event, we know all of this through observation. Instead of
debating, say, what Scripture tells us about the relative number of ribs
between woman and man, we go out and count how many ribs actual women
and men have!  400 years ago this was a novel idea.

As I indicated earlier, I agree with the rest of your post - thinking
and existing are not equivalent, even in DesCartes' formulation.
The former merely implies the latter.  Not through any causal
relationship; thinking does not cause being.  It's just that only
something which exists can possibly think.

-Mark

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