Re: KuJomu - the writing

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

>
> I agee with andreas. our mind may be governed by human reason, but
> nothing tells us that what we consider reasonable is the truth. our way
> of thinking may be biased. We can not imagine how we could not exist and
> be doubting at the same time. But i do not consider that what I can not
> imagine can not be. I may be the limits of our mind, not of reality.
>
What "reality"? It has been doubted away at the point of the discussion? If the
ego doesn't exist, then there is nothing anymore *at all*! If it is so, then
how is this doubting possible? :)

> Descartes ideas do not proove anything. they suggest it can be so. Why?
> because there is one essential thing he did not proove: That reason is
> unfailable. He postulates (without saying it) that any result found
> through reason is true.
No he doesn't. When I said that his "discours de la méthode" is really an
introduction to the Méditations Métaphysiques, I meant it really. The method of
reason he uses in the Méditations has already been discussed and justified in
the Discours (successfully I don't know, since I didn't read this one), as at
least a *valid* way of exploring reality (maybe not the only one, but if done
correctly, its results are as true as we can get). Anyway, his method is not
postulated without saying. He spent a full work on justifying it. Now, you may
disagree with his justifications (I don't know, I didn't read it. I just
remember the bit about it in the prologue of the Meditations), but you cannot
say that he just postulated it.

 I disagree. Any result found through reason is
> reasonable. that's all. Nothing says the world (what ever it is) has to
> comply to reason. So as long as no one has demonstrated reason(good
> luck!),
Well, Descartes claims he has in his Discours (it's not for nothing that it's
called "Discours de la Méthode").

 philosophy can not proove anything (science either, btw), it can
> only suggest what is reasonalbe to think.
>
There is only one thing really wrong in your thinking: you take it that
Descartes tried to prove his own existence, or the existence of the "ego".
You're wrong. It has nothing to do with a demonstration. The existence of
the "ego", the "sum", is *not* the result of a reasonable series of thoughts.
The "sum" *preceeds* any rhetorical justification, and the whole point of
Descartes's first meditation was not to *prove* the "cogito, sum", but to
recognise what's unavoidable: the existence of the ego, not as *consequence* of
something, but as preceeding any consequence. The problem with your discussion
is that you say as much as you want that you may not exist yourself, or even
deny your own existence, the very fact that you utter or even think those
sentences claims your very existence (what sense can you give then to a
sentence which means something but exists only if it's wrong?). It's not a
matter of whether reality follows reason or anything like that (that's a
critique that can be told to Descartes about the rest of his book, but not
about the first meditation). It's not even a matter of whether you can imagine
that you don't exist or not (I know I can, so strange as it may seem :))) . But
I also know that what I imagine then, whether implies the existence of
something else, if not me, or is plain *wrong*). It's a matter that as soon as
you're even simply conscious, you're claiming your very existence to yourself,
whether you want it or not, and there's no honest way to deny it. It's not a
necessary consequence of your thinking, nor even really a cause of it. It's
*there*, whether you like it or not. You can deny it as much as you want, the
simple fact that you deny it wouldn't happen (I don't even say "be possible", I
just say "happen") if you didn't exist. It's not a matter of whether reality
follows reason or not, nor whether you can imagine all that there can be (I
agree with you on that point, but it's an irrelevant one). It's just
unavoidable. More than a fact, a cause or a consequence, it's a *definition*,
an undeniable definition. And what's truth besides an unavoidable and
undeniable definition (undeniable, not in the sense that you cannot deny it,
but in the sense that denying it is just plain *wrong*. As I said, if you don't
exist, you're not denying anything, not because of a reason, but by definition).

Of course, I repeat that the rest of Descartes's philosophy is doubtful and is
full of holes. But the "cogito" is not, not as a consequence of something, not
as a proven fact, but as an unavoidable definition, something which is as near
as truth as you can get.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

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