>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.