Re: KuJomu - the writing

En réponse à Florian Rivoal <florian@...>:

>
> I will try another contradiction, to see what you or descartes has to
> say about this one. But i will not say he goes to far, or such, but
> indeed that maybe he does not go far enough. To me, what could be wrong
> in "I think, I am" is the "I". Nothing prooves that the thinking is his
> own. Something else could be thinking or this though could just existe
> by itself, and yourself might only be passively receiving this thinking.
> So it would be possible to state "there is a thinking, this thinking (or
> part of it) is known to me. We might, or not, be the same entity".
> Certainly descarte can not doubt the doubting, but i do not see why this
> doubting has to be his own.
Doubting and thinking are actions, not states. As such, they don't have an
existence by themselves, and need a "doer". And since any doer but one have
been doubted away, necessarily the doer of the thinking is the undoubtable
self. This is, for what I've understood Descartes, how he would answer this
critique. I myself don't know how I'd answer to it, and if I'd answer at all.

I agree that apparently, this could be a critique of his thought. But if you
follow Descartes's train of thoughts, you realise that it's only *apparently*.
Since everything has been doubted away, their is only one possible *doer*, the
self. And since the thinking needs a doer to even exist, and since it exists,
the doer must necessarily be the self.

I myself don't know if I should consider that a thinking can exist by itself. I
don't understand how it could. The only possibility is that it would come from
another doer, but this has already been ruled out by reasonable doubt. At this
point of the discussion, there is no other possible doer.

> But from a certain point of view it could be considered similar to what
> descartes says, since this view still invole him self, it still lead to
> proove his own existence. But not necessarly as a thinking being.
Well, it seems to do, since the possibility that he is passive is ruled out by
the absence of anything except the self to do the thinking.

> If you want to get mad, you can also argue than it can be doubted than
> your thinking does not have any mistake. Nothing prooves that what you
> assume to be logical actualy is. Since the idea of solipsims is that any
> thing which can be doubted should be, then descartes should doubt the
> accuracy of his way of thinking, and thus doubt the conclusion.
>
I agree on this, but only about the next meditations. That's actually my main
critique on the rest of his work. But for the first meditation, the critique
doesn't work, because it doesn't provide an alternative. If you doubt
everything (whether this is correct to do or not, the point here is not to deny
the existence of everything but to find something undeniable), you are unable
to deny yourself, and the fact that you deny things, and thus think. There is
no alternative, except the unreasonable one (note the term "unreasonable") to
doubt your own existence. While you can find reasons to doubt everything, you
cannot reasonably doubt your own existence, because if so, then who's doubting?
It cannot be somebody else since they have been doubted away as possible
illusions. And if it's nobody, then how come you're doubting now? Of course,
your existence as a thinking being *is* a postulate, but a postulate which
unlike anything else cannot be doubted without leading to contradiction (when
you follow a *reasonable* train of thoughts). That's why it's taken as it is.

> By the way, could you summ up the next five meditations? I am curious to
> see what what he takes for impossible to doubt, and you think is not.
>
I do that by memory, so it may be a bit inaccurate. The second
meditation "proves" (or claims to prove) the existence of God. Not the God of
Christians or Jews or Muslims or whatever monotheistic religion, but God as the
Perfect. His idea is that coming from the fact that the self exists as a
thinking being, he is going to use his ability to think. And he says that his
ability to think allows him to think (imagine) a being more perfect than he is
(whatever he is). He can even think he brings this perfection to infinity: he
can imagine a being which is perfect in every respect. He goes on saying that
if this being didn't exist, he wouldn't be actually perfect (because for him an
existing being is more perfect than an unexistent one - it's this point I'm
personally doubting -). But he has imagined this being possessing all
perfections, so this being must necessarily exist. If he didn't, he couldn't
imagine it. So his conclusion is that besides himself, there must be at least
one other existing being, and that this being is perfect in every respect,
including existence. And he calls this being God, because that's what it is
actually. Of course, I'm summing it up according to my memory, so it doesn't
look as good as when you read it directly.

The other four meditations are used to define the nature of this *self*
(separate from the body), "prove" its immortality, and then use the existence
of God to prove the existence of the world. Since all those depend on the
existence of this Perfect being, they are of no value to me.

All in all, his philosophy is self-contained and contradiction-free. The only
problem is that his reasons to prove the existence of God are not convincing to
me, and thus this existence comes as a secondary postulate which, although it
should play a minor role, is necessary to prove the existence of anything
besides. In this case, I agree that he didn't take into account that his
thinking can contain mistakes. I disagree with this critique only for the first
meditation, since in this one mistakes can not be made, once you've doubted
away everything (and you cannot say that it's a mistake to doubt everything
away, since in this case it's irrelevant. Whether it's right or wrong to doubt
something, if there is a possible doubt, it must be taken away).

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.