Posted on 11/04/2002 7:52:21 AM PST by thinktwice
Descartes was a geometrician. He found only in mathematics and geometry the certainty that he required. Therefore, he used the methods of geometry to think about the world. Now, in geometry, one begins with a search for axioms, simple undeniable truths – for example, the axiom that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. On the foundations of such “self-evident” propositions, whole geometrical systems can be built.
Following his geometrical model, Descartes proceeds to doubt everything – de onmibus dubitandum. He will suspend belief in the knowledge he learned from childhood, all those things “which I allowed myself in youth to be persuaded without having inquired into their truth.” Doubt will be his method, a deliberate strategy for proceeding toward certainty. (Descartes is a doubter not by nature, but by necessity. What he really wants is secure understanding so he can stop doubting.)
Descartes finds that he has no trouble doubting the existence of real objects/events – our senses too easily deceive us. And we can doubt the existence of a supernatural realm of reality – figments and fantasies are too often conjured by our native imaginations. But now his geometrical model pays off: in trying to doubt everything, he discovers something that he can’t doubt. What he can’t doubt is that he is doubting. Obviously, I exist if I doubt that I exist. My doubt that I exist proves that I exist, for I have to exist to be able to doubt. Therefore I can’t doubt that I exist. Hence, there is at least one fact in the universe that is beyond doubt. “I am, I exist is necessarily true each time that I pronounce it, or that I mentally conceive it.
Descartes thus becomes the author of the most famous phrase in Western philosophy: Cognito ergo sum, or, in his original French, Je pense, donc je suis. – I think, therefore I exist. With roots in St. Augustine, this is certainly one of the catchiest ideas yet created by the human mind.
No more games, please.
Including objectivism. : )
The best way to assess Ayn Rand and to basically understand Objectivism is to read her speech to the 1974 West Point graduating class. The speech is titled "Philosophy, Who Needs it?", it is the first essay in a paperback of the same name, and it deals with the influence that philosophy has on every individual's life.
West Point people liked the speech so much that they asked for and received permission to use it as chapter one in the Point's Philosophy text book.
Eleven pages, that's it.
How would Hillary and Schumer exist in such a world?
Someone has to take the General Secretary spot.
With one revision -- removing the "guess" words -- I think it is worth remembering.
The thought behind it has been developing in my mind recently -- that if a Creator made the universe, that Creator transcends reality.
If by, "the universe," you mean material or natural existense (that existense which we directly perceive), that does not necessarily mean the same thing as reality.
From The Autonomist, Introduction to Autonomy:
Reality is what is so, whether anybody knows what is so or not. Reality includes everything that is and excludes everything that is not. It includes everything, not as a random collection of unrelated things but every entity, every event and every relationship between them. It includes fictional things as fictions, hallucinations as hallucinations, historical things as historical things, and material things as material things. Reality does not include fictions (such as Santa Claus) as material or historical facts. It does include the fact that Santa Claus is a common fiction used for the enjoyment of Children at the Christmas season.
Now, the interesting thing here is that the strict materialist believes that material existence is all there is, and except for those things which are concepts, nothing else exists, and from that view reality and material existense or the material universe are therefore all there is and the equivalent of reality.
The problem is, consciousness itself cannot be material. Material existense is all we are conscious of, but we cannot directly perceive consciousness. Consciousness in others is inferred (we certainly cannot directly perceive anyone else's consciousness) and our own is known in the same way we know we see. We cannot see our 'seeing', we know we see because we do it.
If material existense is that which we are conscious of, consciousness itself cannot itself material. Conscious and the content of consciousness cannot be the same thing.
There is the further question of rational/volitional consciousness. Material existense is "determined," that is, the laws of science, (cause and effect) determine all that occurs. If consciousness is nothing more than a material event, it is a caused event. This is a problem for both volition (which if caused is not volition at all) and reason, because the ability to reason depends on knowledge; but, if knowledge is nothing more than caused events there is no reason to suppose they are "rational." Thinking, if caused by material laws, is no more rational than a hiccup, caused by whatever physical and physiological laws apply, and all our supposed knowledge is just whatever physical laws have determined.
There is certainly room in a strictly objective understanding of epistemology and metaphysics for something more than material existense.
These are very dangerous concepts to suggest to those who have not yet even discovered the difference between perception and conception and still believe their ideas are "caused" by some kind of mystic "essence" or "universals" "uniting with their minds," (as if they had minds).
Hank
And for the last time your statement is fallacious because you can't prove a negative! Your very statement is dependent upon the stolen concepts you reject; that there are any such things as logic, coherent, contradictory, explanations, trustworthiness or senses which make absolutely no sense without the premise that these things exist which can ONLY by verified by the senses.
Your unprovable negative assertion is self refuting.
I like to take people like you, when I am having such discussions in person, and have them hold out their hand on a table and take my knife and hold it about 4 feet over their hand and let the knife go. I have never injured anyone because they all, without exception, suddenly find a logical reason to trust their senses. This statement is utter untruth, to put it politely.
As I have stated previously, I live in a beach community. It never ceases to amaze me how the most dysfunctional schizos patiently wait for the green light to cross the street. Even crazy people have that much logical reasoning within them.
If this statement were actually, accurately true, you wouldn't live long enough to respond on the morrow.
I'm tired of such irrationality. You couldn't think your way out of a wet paper bag.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe. All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mame raths outgrabe.
Made me laugh. Yes, exactly. All concepts root in perception or they are reified or floating abstractions.
Floating abstractions are concepts that are defined by other concepts that are defined by other concepts that are defined by the first concept, all in a circle. The supernatural, miraculous, beyond natural law, divine, ghostly, non-material circle. After reification this is the next most common and taken foregranted fallacy. At least in my meager experience. A 'ghost' could be just such an actualized concept.
Following your statement to its logical conclusion, then how do YOU know they exist? Are you something more than human? By definition they are outside 'human understanding' therefore you can't understand them either, or even know of their existence, except as a supposition.
If we are going there then, everything we can't explain is due to Unicorns. And you can't prove otherwise.
You amaze me Hank, rarely does anyone think so clearly. And state it so clearly.
Now, the interesting thing here is that the strict materialist believes that material existence is all there is, and except for those things which are concepts, nothing else exists, and from that view reality and material existense or the material universe are therefore all there is and the equivalent of reality.
The problem I have with this is that one cannot make the 'strict materialist' statement in all honesty. There is no way any one person, or even humanity as a whole, can know enough at this point to assert that the Universe is 'strictly material.' In fact, in light of recent theories and discoveries, it isn't material at all, but nearly entirely energy. Even material is a form of energy - E=Mc2. So accusations as to what 'materialists' believe are over rated, except for those materialists foolish enough to embrace them.
The rest of your comments on consciousness fall along these lines. I look at the idea of 'materialism' the same way present physicists look at Aristotle's 'Earth, Air, Fire and Water' definition of reality. We already know this is an outmoded model. The 'immaterial' aspects of reality, such as the wave interference that generates a hologram, are as 'real' or even more so, than the 'material' of a proton, which can be converted to 'immaterial' energy at any point.
And you are right, the implications are tremendous. But as long as we seek to force our new concepts into old bottles we will never arrive at the way things really are. That there isn't an 'essence' of cat 'uniting' with something in the mind doesn't mean there isn't something 'nonmaterial' animating the cat.
I live by the ocean by choice for one of these reasons. I love to go out on a pier and look at the waves as they travel into the shore. Try and wrap your mind around what is happening there and you will see that there is an element to reality that is 'non-material' that passes through us every moment of every day. The best word we have is 'process' but that says so little.
There is so much more to the mystery here than most are willing to consider. And that, I think, is the issue. It is much more comfortable to think you have all the answers given in a little black book somewhere than to really contemplate the mystery. Takes more courage than most have.
log·ic ( P ) Pronunciation Key (ljk) n.1. The study of the principles of reasoning, especially of the structure of propositions as distinguished from their content and of method and validity in deductive reasoning.
2.
a. A system of reasoning: Aristotle's logic.
b. A mode of reasoning: By that logic, we should sell the company tomorrow.
c. The formal, guiding principles of a discipline, school, or science.
3. Valid reasoning: Your paper lacks the logic to prove your thesis.
4. The relationship between elements and between an element and the whole in a set of objects, individuals, principles, or events: There's a certain logic to the motion of rush-hour traffic.ex·pe·ri·ence ( P ) Pronunciation Key (k-spîr-ns) n.
1. The apprehension of an object, thought, or emotion through the senses or mind: a child's first experience of snow.
2.
a. Active participation in events or activities, leading to the accumulation of knowledge or skill: a lesson taught by experience; a carpenter with experience in roof repair.
b. The knowledge or skill so derived.
3.
a. An event or a series of events participated in or lived through.
b. The totality of such events in the past of an individual or group.
Again, materialism can provide no coherent, logical explanation for the reliability of our senses (nor the unified experience of consciousness itself for that matter).
I challenge you to logically explain how a materialist can assert with certainty that the molecules in his brain ("thoughts") correspond to an external reality.
Well done.
LOL! I missed this before.
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