Re: CHAT Cartesian parataxis (was: ANNOUNCE: First longer sentence in S7)

En réponse à Chris Bates :

>Does I think therefore I am imply cause and effect?
Maybe, maybe not (we're not talking about logic here). My point is that 
Descartes never meant an implication and fought against this interpretation 
all his life.


>Neither of these are cause and effect, but they are implications, and
>equality of the truth of statements ("I think", "I am") necessarily means
>
>I think <==> I am
Except that Descartes didn't talk about the equality of the truth of 
statements, he talked about the equality of the statements themselves. It's 
not a logical equivalence but a lexical equality.


>Therefore "I think therefore I am" comes from "I think, I am" using your
>interpretation. It is only a half statement of what descartes said if he
>meant "I think = I am", but "I think therefore I am" is not false if "I
>think = I am" is true. I don't for that matter agree with it if that was
>what he meant, but I never liked philosophy, and I'm just pointing out
>that he did (indirectly) say "I think therefore I am", if he said "I
>think = I am".
No he didn't, his argument wasn't logical but semantic. More on this later 
in this post.
___________________________________________________________________________
En réponse à Henrik Theiling :


>Ah!  This is exactly the kind of reply I had hoped for!  So *all* the
>versions I've seen are actually, well, wrong, presumably.
You need to see the actual version, because indeed most translations are 
wrong :) .


>If this is a consequence of the first equality, I'd rather think that
>you can simply not say anything about things beyond ego.  Mightbe they
>think, mightbe they are.  But it is no implication that thinking and
>being *are* different (for others).  But only might be, in contrast to
>me.
>
>Or did I miss something again?
No, I just didn't put everything here because this is not the place :)) . I 
did say that I disagreed on the way he handled the rest of his philosophy. 
Indeed, he didn't "prove" the existence of a world besides ego through the 
existence of ego only. To prove the existence of the world, he had to go 
through some length to prove the existence of God (not the Christian one, 
but a perfect being, infinite in every way, which he labels with the name 
"God" for lack of a better label). His method left me unconvinced 
(basically, he started from the fact that he, the ego, existing as a 
thinking being, could think - imagine - a being better than himself, and 
better than that, and even bettter, approaching perfection, until he could 
imagine a perfect, infinite being. No need to be able to *grasp* or 
visualise the concept, as long as the ego is able to define it. And the ego 
can. And then - and that's the bit I disagree with - he goes on arguing 
that actual existence is "more perfect" than virtual existence, and thus 
that his idea of a perfect being needed, by definition, to exist itself, 
and outside of his own imagination. Hence, "God" exists). I personally 
don't feel that actual existence is any better than non-existence outside 
my own thoughts. So his argument fails to impress me. And since his basis 
to prove the existence of a world outside ego is based on the existence of 
this "God", he fails for me to prove it correctly.
____________________________________________________________________________
En réponse à Mark J. Reed :

>But an implication *also* says absolutely nothing about cause and
>effect!  "A implies B" means only that if A is true, then B is true.
>It is not as strong a statement as your equality, since "A implies B"
>does not mean that "B implies A"; it is perfectly possible for B to be
>true and A be false.  It's just not possible for A to be true and B to be
>false.  But by the same token, I don't think Descarte's "ego, sum" is a
>bidirectional equality either.  After all, it is possible to exist without
>thinking;
Not for ego ("I") which is supposed to exist purely because it is thinking. 
Uttering "cogito" *is* manifesting one's own existence, because anything 
else, at that point of the "meditation" (as Descartes calls them) has been 
doubted away.

>  but it is patently impossible to think without existing.
Indeed.
__________________________________________________________________________
En réponse à Mark J. Reed :


>Well, I also believe that, but I include humans in "animals" there, so
>no speciesist bias is implied by my belief. :)
I personally have witnessed the existence of something else than pure 
matter, so my belief that humans (and many animals for that matter) are not 
just complex machines is empiric :))) .


>It doesn't *prove* anything; it's a fundamental basis for empiricism.
Yep. Although Descartes does use this basis to prove other things :) . Just 
read his "Méditations Métaphysiques" :)) .


>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.
Indeed.


>As I indicated earlier, I agree with the rest of your post - thinking
>and existing are not equivalent, even in DesCartes' formulation.
They are not *usually* equivalent. But in the case of EGO, of "I", they 
completely overlap. That's the true meaning of the cogito. Not a statement 
about thinking and existing in general. It's a statement about EGO, about 
"I", and only "I", about "I-self" :))) . All the criticisms I've read 
against the cogito up to now fail to take the context of the cogito into 
account. Read Descartes before criticising out of context. His cogito is 
actual just an obvious statement, but an obvious statement with a lot of 
meaning, when taken in the context of the train of though Descartes has 
been following to come up with it. If you accept his train of thought (and 
you do, since you accept his principle of not taking anything for granted), 
and follow him through it, the "cogito, sum" imposes itself as obvious.

>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.
And since, in the context of the cogito, anything else has been doubted 
away, the "I think", the only thing the "I" cannot doubt, make the "I 
exist" obvious.
_______________________________________________________________________
En réponse à Ray Brown :


>Well, no it doesn't. It was AFAIK, as Mark says, merely meant as a
>starting point. Also "cogito ergo sum" and "cogito, sum" are not the same.
>  The former has explicit implication, the latter is an example of
>parataxis - found in Latin from the earliest period onwards, i.e. it's
>been around for some 3000 years so I guess Descartes knew what he was
>doing even if some others don't. (Sorry for introducing  linguistic notion
>into this thread  ;)
Actually, you're wrong here. And you make a mistake Descartes fought 
against for very long. I read his letters of replies to the criticisms he 
received, some taking the same point you take, and he always emphasises 
that this is misunderstanding his point.

>'cogito, sum' does _not_ mean "'I think' = 'I exist'" which, of course,
>would also necessarily mean "'I exist' = 'I think'".
And that's *exactly* what Descartes meant! But you mustn't read it as "I 
*exist* = I *think*" but as "*I* exist = *I* think". In several of his 
letters, Descartes explains that the statement goes two ways: "I can't 
doubt that I doubt, so I think. For *my* thinking to be possible, I must 
necessarily exist. I think, I exist. So if I exist, what is *my* nature? 
Well, I doubted the possibility that I have a body as unfounded, so my 
nature is not that of a material being. What is it then? Simple. Since I 
can't doubt that I think, I exist as a thinking being, and that's the 
definition of *my* nature. I exist, I think.
Note how I emphasised the *my*. This is what the cogito is about: ego, "I", 
me. Nothing else.

>   The latter is absurd
>and there is no basis for attributing it to Descartes;
There is, just read his letters. I read them. I know what I'm talking 
about. He repeated it quite enough.

>  and interpreting
>'cogito, sum' this way is groundless and shows no linguistic understanding
>of the Latin construction.
No, your interpreting shows no understanding of Descartes. He meant it as I 
described it. He kept repeating it enough that it should be obvious to 
anyone who actually read his meditations as well as the letters he wrote 
about them.

>I have never come across any example of parataxis where it has ever been
>suggested that the relation between the two clauses is one of equality or
>identity. So IMO it is perverse to apply that relation in this case.
Well, you're wrong here. It *is* what Descartes meant.


>A variety of relationships here, I think. As Mark says, 'cogito, sum' does
>not _prove_ anything. It's an empirical basis: "I am thinking; I exist".
You're right of course. However, "I exist" and "I think" *are* taken as 
basis for the rest of his demonstration. So he *did* feel it proved something.


>>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.
>
>Absolutely!
Empiricism is a watered-down version of Cartesianism as Descartes described 
it. According to Descartes, observation and examination cannot be trusted 
at all (that's how he begins his demonstration). You need something else, 
more solid than just observation, to prove the existence of what you're 
observing. But as I explained in the beginning of this post, IMHO opinion 
he fails there.


>Yep. I agree. Descartes' formulation neither says that thinking and being
>are the same thing
Indeed, if you talk about "thinking" and "existing", you are right. 
Descartes never said they were the same thing. What he said is that "*my* 
thinking" and "*my* existing" are the same thing. You need to include the 
agent there for his statement to make sense as he meant it.


>Of course, both he and the rest of us could all be deluded in thinking
>that we are thinking....but then if I'm being deluded, I must exist to be
>deluded. Unless, of course, my delusion is a delusion.......   ;)
Indeed. In his process of doubting everything that that could be doubted, 
Descartes feel upon something he couldn't doubt without doubting his own 
doubting. So he stopped doubting at this point, and went from there to 
build a philosophy exempt from doubt (except that IMHO he failed in doing 
so ;)) ).
________________________________________________________________________
En réponse à Philippe Caquant :

> >
>I can do it. "It thinks through me". Something uses me
>to think. I think that I think, but it's not my own
>thinking, but someone's, or something's else. Nothing
>difficult in that. Or, to be even a little less
>egotist, "the world thinks through me", me being part
>of the Whole and not an individual bag of skin, as I
>believe somebody said (Watts ?)
Except that if you read Descartes, you'd discover that at the point where 
he arrives at the cogito, there is *no* something else, *no* "world". Those 
things may be pure delusions of the ego, of the "I". There is no proof that 
they exist, so they *cannot* be referred to. Read his meditations, to see 
why you statements are meaningless and impossible *at the point* of the 
"cogito". Descartes, at this point, has doubted away the world, anything 
that is not himself, as possible delusions, and at least as unproved when 
it comes to existence. The only thing he has not doubted away is his own 
existence, and the cogito is a statement of the impossibility to doubt it 
away, and that since there's a thinking, and he is the only thing to exist, 
he must be doing that thinking (John is right at this point that Descartes 
assumed that thinking cannot exist without an agent. But I don't really 
think any Buddhist *really* believes of the existence of a thinking without 
agent. I don't think it is humanly possible to do so). So "I think" comes 
through as obvious, as the only thing that makes sense, that is necessarily 
true *at this point of the demonstration*.
_________________________________________________________________________
En réponse à Philippe Caquant :


>I meant that this doesn't prove that "I" exist or that
>"I" think. Maybe there is no "I" at all.
Actually, the point of Descartes is that there *is* necessarily an "I", 
because the "I" cannot be *reasonably* doubted.

>  Anyway, it
>doesn't prove that somebody is thinking or existing
>neither. Remember of Chuang-Tseu who dreamed he was a
>butterfly, and when he woke up, he didn't know any
>more whether he was Chuang-Tseu dreaming he was a
>butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang-Tseu.
Your example is partly incorrect, and doesn't prove your point, since it 
presents Chuang-Tseu with the possibility (among which he doesn't know how 
to choose) of being Chang-Tseu or a butterfly. But in both cases he still 
exists! This doesn't prove that ego can doubt its own existence, just that 
ego can doubt its *nature* (and indeed Descartes did it too, until he found 
something he couldn't doubt about his own nature, and which is expressed in 
the cogito -again ;))) -).

>This is all very desperating. That's why, in
>linguistics, it's better to stick to common sense and
>usage. If you show a dog to 100 people at 99 of them
>tell you it is a dog, so ok, we'll call it a dog, even
>it the 100th person thinks it is a flying alligator.
>And if in another country, 99 people out of 100 tell
>you it is a "perro", then you might infere that dog =
>perro, and perro = dog (they are synonyms). And that
>there are such things as dogs, or perros, in the
>world, even if it is all illusion in the end (a game
>played by your neurones, for ex, or simply a dream).
I completely agree that when it comes to live your life, such thoughts are 
mostly useless :)) . But they do make for an interesting social experiment: 
seeing the amount of possible misinterpretations of the cogito ;)))) . It's 
quite fun, I must say :)) .

Frankly, Descartes was not a great writer, and his Latin was not better 
than his French. I think that's the only reason Cartesianism is so 
thoroughly misunderstood by nearly everyone, and why his "Meditations" have 
always been incorrectly read or translated. But it's true that his vision 
of things is difficult to express through language, since what he tries to 
express in a way that is understandable for everyone is actually a very 
personal and solipsist experience that one has to experience for oneself 
rather than try to understand from reading someone else.

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang. 

Replies