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Richard’s Selected Correspondence On René Descartes’: ‘I think therefore I am’
RESPONDENT No. 00: Would you say ‘I think therefore I am’ to be the ‘I’ being aware of ‘me’ being conscious? RICHARD: Yes. That infamous theorem ‘I think, therefore I am’ is fatally flawed. It is predicated upon the initial surmise – ‘I think’ – being a fact in order to produce the conclusion ... ‘I am’. The premise is faulty ... it should read only the fact that ‘there is thinking happening’. Thus the rewritten axiom now looks like this: ‘There is thinking happening, therefore I am’ ... which is, of course, nothing but twaddle dressed up as sagacity. Tacit assumptions expose the lie of philosophy. RESPONDENT: This is a misunderstanding of the axiom. The translation from Latin of the axiom is flawed. It is actually ‘thinking therefore I am’. RICHARD: Are you sure? As I understand it, the axiom ‘cogito, ergo sum’ translates literally into English as: ‘I think, therefore I am’.
Maybe you were thinking of ‘cogitat, ergo sum’? RESPONDENT: Descartes’ point is that in that there is thinking going on there must be a subject doing that thinking, that is ‘I’ the thinker exists. RICHARD: Indeed ... the Cartesian proposition is purportedly self-reinstating: deny that you think, and in so doing you think (implying that to deny that you exist then the very fact of denial gives proof of your existence). This still gives lie to ‘I’ being ‘proved’ by thinking ... the ‘I’ is pre-supposed to exist by virtue of what may be merely thinking happening. Nevertheless, Mr. René Descartes took this axiom as a first step in demonstrating the attainability of certain knowledge. The statement is indubitable, he argued: ‘because even if an all-powerful demon were to try to deceive me into thinking that I exist when I do not, I would have to exist for the demon to deceive me. Therefore, whenever I think, I exist’. Even so, he argued that the statement ‘I am’ (‘sum’) expresses an immediate intuition, not the conclusion of dubious reasoning, and is thus indubitable: ‘Whatever I know’, he stated, ‘I know intuitively that I am’. Therefore it is not a deductive axiom anyway – whilst looking like one – but is drawn from intuition ... according to him. The question is: what is intuition for him ... and why does he consider it indubitable? Incidentally, why not ‘sufferre, ergo sum’ ... which is a fortiori for ‘my’ existence. RESPONDENT: The proof has nothing to do with tacit assumptions. That is actually its point. RICHARD: If I may point out? This ‘cogito’ (‘I think’) premise is nothing but a subjective ‘a posteriori-like’ supposition (he called it ‘immediate intuition’) masquerading as an ‘a priori’ philosophical presentation ... which makes it a tacit assumption. His ‘proof’ for his premise (‘I think’) is therefore ‘proved’ by the intuition (‘I am’) ... which makes it an circular argument. It may look impressive, yet all he is trying to do is ‘mathematically’ formalise intuition. The question is: what is intuition for him ... and why does he consider it indubitable? RESPONDENT: Perhaps you have to understand the context of the axiom, to fully appreciate what Descartes meant. RICHARD: The context, as I understand it, is that Mr. René Descartes’ philosophical method is predicated upon a single process designed to pursue certitude about the nature of knowledge by means of his ‘Method of Doubt’. He found knowledge from tradition to be dubitable because authorities disagree; knowledge from empirical knowledge dubitable because of illusions, hallucinations and dreams; and even mathematical knowledge dubitable because people make errors in calculating. His ‘Method of Doubt’ works by suspending judgement on any belief until it can be shown to be systematically derived from more certain beliefs. The aim of the ‘Method’ is to reach a belief which cannot be doubted, and then to build up knowledge from that basis. In this way scepticism can be refuted. In his ‘Discours de la Methode’, Mr. René Descartes claimed that the intuitive ‘a priori’ belief in his own existence, ‘cogito ergo sum’ (‘I think therefore I am’), was immune to doubt and could, therefore, serve as the basic belief. On this basis he came to hold a dualist philosophy of mind; believing the essence of the ‘I’ to be thinking, and of the physical body to be extension. He is usually credited with having provided the most significant articulation of dualism, according to which the world is composed of a single material substance (nature), which is extended and divisible, and a plurality of mental or immaterial substances (God and the minds of individual persons), each of which is unextended and indivisible. The question once more is: what is intuition for him ... and why does he consider it indubitable? Of course, dualism in all of its forms leads to the notorious problem of interaction: namely, of understanding how substances of different kinds can affect one another. Mr. René Descartes sought to resolve this problem in the case of human beings by claiming that a particular part of the brain (the pineal gland) is responsible for coordinating the relations of mind and body. His solution depends, however, upon the role of God in instituting this arrangement, and a frequent objection of modern, secular dualists is that they have no alternative way of explaining the relation of mind and body. His is an extreme position in the philosophy of dualism, wherein he claimed that minds are utterly distinct substances. An important part of his argument for this position is the claim that mental states are known in a special way: they are directly given, transparent to their owner, and known infallibly. The question again is: what is intuition for him ... and why does he consider it infallible? However, he could be said to be the first modern Rationalist in that, being an original mathematician, his ambition was to introduce into philosophy the rigour and clearness that appealed to him in mathematics. He set out to doubt everything in the hope of arriving in the end at something indubitable. This he reached in his famous axiom ... for to doubt one’s own doubting would be absurd, he reasoned. Here then was a fact of absolute certitude, rendered such by the distinctness with which it presented itself to reason. His task was to build on this as a foundation, to deduce from it a series of other propositions, each following with the same self-evidence. He hoped thus to produce a philosophical system on which people could agree as completely as they do on the geometry of Mr. Euclid. The main cause of error, he held, lay in the impulsive desire to believe before the mind is clear. The distinctness upon which he insisted was not that of perception but of conception, the clearness with which the intellect grasps an abstract idea, such as the number three being greater than the number two. So, why does he consider intuition indubitable? Mr. René Descartes distinguished two sources of knowledge: intuition and deduction. Intuition, to him, is an unmediated mental seeing or direct apprehension of something experienced. The truth of the proposition ‘I think’ is guaranteed by the intuition one has of one’s own experience of thinking. One might think that the proposition ‘I am’ is guaranteed by deduction, as is suggested by the ‘ergo’. In ‘Objections and Replies’ (1642), however, Mr. René Descartes explicitly says that the certainty of ‘I am’ is also based upon intuition. He finds certainty in the intuition that when he is thinking, even if deceived, he exists: The cogito of ‘cogito, ergo sum’ is a logically self-evident truth that gives certain knowledge of a particular thing’s existence – that is, one’s self – but the cogito justifies accepting as certain only the existence of the person who thinks it. Because if all one ever knew for certain was that one exists – and if one adhered to Mr. René Descartes’ method of doubting all that is uncertain – then one would be reduced to solipsism, the view that nothing exists but one’s individual self and thoughts. To escape this, he argues that all ideas that are as clear and distinct as the cogito must be true, for, if they were not, the cogito also, as a member of the class of clear and distinct ideas, could be doubted. Since ‘I think, therefore I am’ cannot be doubted, all clear and distinct ideas must be true! What persuades him to reason like this? It is pertinent that he repeated the ontological argument first presented by Mr. Anselm (1033-1109), claiming to establish the existence of God ‘a priori’, that is, in a way that depends only on the concept of God, and draws on no factual premise. The ontological argument is thus contrasted with various cosmological arguments, which seek to demonstrate the existence of God as creator from the existence or order of the natural world. Mr. Anselm’s argument held that God is the most perfect conceivable being; that a God who exists in reality is of greater perfection than one who exists only as a conception in man’s mind; and that therefore God, as maximally perfect, must exist in reality. Thus Mr. René Descartes begins with the statement that he has an innate idea of God as a perfect being and then intuits that God necessarily exists, because, if he did not, he would not be perfect. This ontological proof for the existence of God is at the heart of Mr. René Descartes’ rationalism, for it establishes certain knowledge about an existing thing solely on the basis of reasoning from innate ideas, with no help from sensory experience. This is the source of his intuition – which now starts to resemble faith – because he then argues that, because God is perfect, he does not deceive human beings; therefore the world exists. Thus Mr. René Descartes claims to have given metaphysical foundations for the existence of his own mind, of God, and of the world. Mr. René Descartes then establishes that each mind is a spiritual substance and each body a part of one material substance. The mind or soul is immortal because it is unextended and cannot be broken into parts, as can extended bodies ... and on and on he goes. The persistence of identity even unto immortality in an immaterial after-life is legendary, by now. So much for his ‘intuition’ being indubitable, eh? There is a circularity inherent in Mr. René Descartes’ reasoning: To know that God exists, one must trust the clear and distinct idea of God; but, to know that clear and distinct ideas are true, one must know that God exists and does not deceive man. Mr. René Descartes, the rationalist, failed to see that his ontologically-inspired ‘intuitional’ proof is word-magic based on the superstition that a metaphysical reality can be determined – and validated as being fact – by ideas and thoughts. It is, as I said before, nothing but twaddle dressed up as sagacity. * RICHARD: The infamous theorem ‘I think, therefore I am’ is fatally flawed. It is predicated upon the initial surmise – ‘I think’ – being a fact in order to produce the conclusion ... ‘I am’ . The premise is faulty ... it should read only the fact that ‘there is thinking happening’. Thus the rewritten axiom now looks like this: ‘There is thinking happening, therefore I am’ ... which is, of course, nothing but twaddle dressed up as sagacity. Tacit assumptions expose the lie of philosophy. RESPONDENT: This is a misunderstanding of the axiom. The translation from Latin of the axiom is flawed. It is actually ‘thinking therefore I am’. RICHARD: Are you sure? As I understand it, the axiom ‘cogito, ergo sum’ translates literally into English as: ‘I think, therefore I am’.
RESPONDENT: Latin differs from English in that the verb takes on a case of the person: that is first, second, third person. So cogito, is the first person case of the verb cogitare. RICHARD: I have already presented (above) from the Oxford Dictionary: ‘Cogito: Latin: 1st. person present of ‘cogitare’. RESPONDENT: So the translation of cogito into ‘I think’ is imprecise, and flawed. For what you originally said that the ‘I’ is already present in ‘I think’ is manifested in English in a way that is only a grammatical case in Latin. RICHARD: Are you telling me that the ‘first person case of the verb cogitare’ correctly translates as ‘thinking’ ... instead of ‘I think’? That is, you are saying that ‘I’ is not implicit in ‘cogito’? Does this apply to all words or only ‘cogito’? For example: ‘amo’ (‘I love’ or ‘I am loving’) ... is this also imprecise and flawed and should only read ‘loving’? If so, what happens to ‘amas’ (‘you (s) love’ or ‘you (s) are loving’) ... would you say that ‘you’ is not implicit? If so, what happens to ‘amat’ (‘he loves’ or ‘he is loving’) would you say that ‘he’ is not implicit? If so, what happens to ‘amamus’ (we love’ or ‘we are loving’) ... would you say that ‘we’ is not implicit? If so, what happens to ‘amatis’ (‘you (pl) love’ or ‘you (pl) are loving’) ... would you say that ‘we’ is not implicit? If so, what happens to ‘amant’ (‘they love’ or ‘they are loving’) ... would you say that ‘they’ is not implicit? And are you saying that those academics who write dictionaries and encyclopaedias – the accepted scholarly translations penned by learned and titled professors of literature who have studied and argued these very matters scrupulously for years – are carelessly misleading the English-speaking world? Why would every reference I have ever read always say ‘I think’ instead of ‘thinking’? If you wish to convey ‘thinking’ instead of ‘I think’ ... would you not say ... um ... ‘cogitans, ergo sum’? RESPONDENT: Descartes whole point is that from the ongoing activity (thinking) this ‘I’ is directly deducible. RICHARD: And just how is it ‘directly deducible’ that an ‘I’ is doing the thinking if the only information given is the ‘ongoing activity of thinking’? Or do you also have a different definition of ‘deduce’ than the dictionaries that contend that to deduce is to infer from something already known or from a general principle and to reach a conclusion by reasoning ... or to trace the origin of or show derivation of a result. How can an ‘I’ be inferred or reasoned solely from ‘the ongoing activity of thinking’ ? Is there not a lack of intellectual rigour in all this? RESPONDENT: It is not from the ‘I’ of the ‘I think’, that it is deducible. That point would be philosophically insignificant. RICHARD: Indeed ... this is my point. It has been this fudging of the issue that makes the entire exercise into a tacit assumption ... which is: ‘we all intimately feel that there is an ‘I’ in there doing the thinking ... but we are going to make it look like we are logically proving it’. * RICHARD: Maybe you were thinking of ‘cogitat, ergo sum’? RESPONDENT: No. Descartes did use cogito, do you think that his point is clearer as cogitat? RICHARD: Yes ... he only thinks ‘I am’. The root of self is affective ... not cognitive. Be that as it may, I would be inclined to say that ‘cogitare, ergo sum’ would be more straightforward in that it would put paid to this academic quibbling over grammar. You see, I am finding it rather hard to swallow that in all of the scholarly books I have read over thirty or more years of ad hoc research, wherein it has always read ‘I think’ instead of ‘thinking’, that nobody has ever corrected this error you are saying is being made. RESPONDENT: Descartes’ point is that in that there is thinking going on there must be a subject doing that thinking, that is ‘I’ the thinker exists. RICHARD: Indeed ... the Cartesian proposition is purportedly self-reinstating: deny that you think, and in so doing you think (implying that to deny that you exist then the very fact of denial gives proof of your existence). This still gives lie to ‘I’ being ‘proved’ by thinking ... the ‘I’ is pre-supposed to exist by virtue of what may be merely thinking happening. Nevertheless, Mr. René Descartes took this axiom as a first step in demonstrating the attainability of certain knowledge. Even so, he argued that the statement ‘I am’ (‘sum’) expresses an immediate intuition, not the conclusion of dubious reasoning, and is thus indubitable: ‘Whatever I know’, he stated, ‘I know intuitively that I am’. Therefore it is not a deductive axiom anyway – whilst looking like one – but is drawn from intuition. The question is: what is intuition for him ... and why does he consider it indubitable? Incidentally, why not ‘sufferre, ergo sum’ ... which is a fortiori for ‘my’ existence. RESPONDENT: Yes, Descartes did say in answer to some critics that it could be any number of verbs in place of cogitare. RICHARD: I notice that you are using ‘cogitare’ and not ‘cogito’ ... any particular reason? RESPONDENT: In the case of the methodological doubt, ‘dubito’ rather than ‘cogito’ is preferred. RICHARD: I notice that you use ‘dubito’ instead of ‘dubitare’ here ... unlike what you previously did (above). Is ‘I’ not implicit in ‘dubito’? RESPONDENT: He even said that the maxim would work with the substitution of ‘walking’ or ‘ambulito’. RICHARD: And again, you use ‘ambulito’ rather than ... um ... ‘ambulans’? RESPONDENT: Intuition for Descartes must be understood as the light of reason. RICHARD: It may be ‘the light’ ... but it is not reason. RESPONDENT: And this is not a normal deduction, but a deduction that is in a sense inevitable for there is no other possible deduction. Meaning his mind cannot even imagine another alternative. RICHARD: And therein lies the rub ... this is where reason breaks down and supposition (intuition) enters masquerading as truth. RESPONDENT: That is an important point to understand in examining the proof. RICHARD: Aye ... except that there is no ‘the proof’ . It is an assumption ... born out by the fact that 6.0 billion people feel that they have an ‘I’ doing the thinking. It is this consensus that makes it a tacit assumption ... and thus the flawed ‘evidence’ of the axiom passes muster. Look, I am not arguing that there is no ‘I’ doing the thinking – I call such an entity ‘I’ as ego – but what I am pointing out is that this axiom is not ‘indubitable proof’ of ‘I’s existence. RESPONDENT: The proof has nothing to do with tacit assumptions. That is actually its point. RICHARD: If I may point out? This ‘cogito’ (‘I think’) premise is nothing but a subjective ‘a posteriori-like’ supposition (he called it ‘immediate intuition’) masquerading as an ‘a priori’ philosophical presentation ... which makes it a tacit assumption. His ‘proof’ for his premise (‘I think’) is therefore ‘proved’ by the intuition (I am’) ... which makes it an circular argument. RESPONDENT: This is not what Descartes was getting at, and so we need to be clear about this circularity. RICHARD: Mr. René Descartes was conveniently fudging the issue so as to formalise his ‘immediate intuition’ into looking like a mathematical fact. RESPONDENT: I am saying that if we understand the maxim, then there is no circularity. RICHARD: It requires a remarkable sleight of hand (or should I say sleight of mind) to ‘understand’ this maxim as containing no circularity. It smacks of the same chicanery as Mr. Anselm’s ontological argument ‘proving’ the existence of his god. * RICHARD: It may look impressive, yet all he is trying to do is ‘mathematically’ formalise intuition. The question is: what is intuition for him ... and why does he consider it indubitable? RESPONDENT: Yes, this is a good question here. It is indubitable because he cannot in a real actual sense doubt it. RICHARD: Ah, yes ... doubt. And herein lies the clue: if doubt is carried out scrupulously it leads to despair. The antidote? Faith. RESPONDENT: Perhaps you have to understand the context of the axiom, to fully appreciate what Descartes meant. RICHARD: The context, as I understand it, is that Mr. René Descartes’ philosophical method is predicated upon a single process designed to pursue certitude about the nature of knowledge by means of his ‘Method of Doubt’. <SNIP BACKGROUND CONTEXT> An important part of his argument is the claim that mental states are known in a special way: they are directly given, transparent to their owner, and known infallibly. The question again is: what is intuition for him ... and why does he consider it infallible? RESPONDENT: You have now repeated that question four times. RICHARD: Aye ... because it is his intuition that his entire metaphysics is built upon ... and not reasoning from a fact through deduction to a conclusion at all. * RICHARD: In ‘Objections and Replies’ (1642), Mr. René Descartes explicitly says that the certainty of ‘I am’ is also based upon intuition. He finds certainty in the intuition that when he is thinking, even if deceived, he exists: The cogito of ‘cogito, ergo sum’ is a logically self-evident truth that gives certain knowledge of a particular thing’s existence – that is, one’s self – but the cogito justifies accepting as certain only the existence of the person who thinks it. Because if all one ever knew for certain was that one exists – and if one adhered to Mr. René Descartes’ method of doubting all that is uncertain – then one would be reduced to solipsism. RESPONDENT: The danger of solipsism from Descartes position is well-known, and known to Descartes. That is the point of his introduction of the proof of God, to move outside of the solipsistic position requires God. RICHARD: Yet his ‘proof of god’ is as spurious as his ‘proof’ of ‘I’. Thus it is faith that stops the withdrawal into solipsism. * RICHARD: What persuades him to reason like this? Mr. René Descartes begins with the statement that he has an innate idea of God as a perfect being and then intuits that God necessarily exists, because, if he did not, he would not be perfect. This ontological proof for the existence of God is at the heart of Mr. René Descartes’ rationalism, for it establishes certain knowledge about an existing thing solely on the basis of reasoning from innate ideas, with no help from sensory experience. This is the source of his intuition – which now starts to resemble faith – because he then argues that, because God is perfect, he does not deceive human beings; therefore the world exists. RESPONDENT: The ontological proof is important but the interlocutor does not clearly explain why. RICHARD: In the West, a would-be solipsist desperately needs to believe that the objective world of people, things and events is true ... hence the rationalised belief in a perfect god that would not – by definition – deceive him. Whereas, in the East, a would-be solipsist desperately needs to believe that the objective world of people, things and events is false! RESPONDENT: His intuition is not ‘faith’, that characterization is unfair, though I do agree that the ontological proof is flawed. RICHARD: I am glad you agree that the ‘ontological proof’ is flawed ... because it exposes the lie of his intuition as being indubitable. Now, intuition, to him, is an unmediated mental seeing or direct apprehension of something experienced ... and he finds certainty in the intuition that when he is thinking, he exists. The cogito of ‘cogito, ergo sum’ is for him a logically self-evident truth that gives certain knowledge of one’s self as existing. Yet it does not; the only thing that is self-evident is that there is thinking going on (or walking or doubting or feeling and so on) ... unless one pre-supposes an ‘I’ as in ‘I think’. And why? Because, at root, ‘I’ feel that ‘I’ am. That is, ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being is affective. Thus the certitude ascribed to intuition – his indubitable immediate apprehension – is sourced in ‘it feels real’. When feelings enter the picture, rationality goes out of the window and one enters into the realm of belief, trust, hope ... and faith. Dress it all up in a self-serving pseudo-rationality and other-wise intelligent people will be convinced. * RICHARD: Thus Mr. René Descartes claims to have given metaphysical foundations for the existence of his own mind, of God, and of the world. RESPONDENT: Yes, and this is the order. Mind ... God ... and then the world. So he needs God to exit the solipsism. RICHARD: Yes, but more than this ... he needs his god for his immortal soul. * RICHARD: Mr. René Descartes then establishes that each mind is a spiritual substance and each body a part of one material substance. The mind or soul is immortal because it is unextended and cannot be broken into parts, as can extended bodies ... and on and on he goes. The persistence of identity even unto immortality in an immaterial after-life is legendary, by now. So much for his ‘intuition’ being indubitable, eh? RESPONDENT: Well, I feel that Richard is back. RICHARD: Hmm ... back from where? I present an eclectic background – gleaned from various academic sources – so as to place my discussion in a reasonably acceptable context ... I am not an academician. It was you who told me to contextualise his axiom:
* RICHARD: There is a circularity inherent in Mr. René Descartes’ reasoning: To know that God exists, one must trust the clear and distinct idea of God; but, to know that clear and distinct ideas are true, one must know that God exists and does not deceive man. RESPONDENT: Yes, this has been taken to be an actual problem in the methodological deduction. But it reveals the purpose of the introduction of God. RICHARD: Which is where rationalism breaks down. * RICHARD: Mr. René Descartes, the rationalist, failed to see that his ontologically-inspired ‘intuitional’ proof is word-magic based on the superstition that a metaphysical reality can be determined – and validated as being fact – by ideas and thoughts. It is, as I said before, nothing but twaddle dressed up as sagacity. RESPONDENT: Dear Richard, no reason to expand on the original opinion. It is neither twaddle nor sagacity. RICHARD: Dear No. 20, no reason to pretend to be agnostic on this issue ... what you say (below) gives lie to your statement that it is ‘neither twaddle nor sagacity’ . RESPONDENT: But you have now brought into our purview the entire argument, whereas I wanted you to focus on the original maxim, for it is a striking one. RICHARD: What is so striking about it? It is but a valiant – though ultimately futile – and vainglorious attempt to prop up selfish idealism. RESPONDENT: And I felt and still feel that you have not given this maxim its due. RICHARD: Yet the maxim attempts to validate the alien entity – self – and build a metaphysics on a lie! RESPONDENT: If you are interested in giving the maxim its full force, then don’t get lost in the rest of the Cartesian metaphysics. RICHARD: Oh, I am not lost in ‘Cartesian metaphysics’ ... I merely presented it so as to show the context that he derived his maxim from. ‘Cogito, ergo sum’ is the self-seeking justification for his metaphysics. * RICHARD: The infamous theorem ‘I think, therefore I am’ is fatally flawed. It is predicated upon the initial surmise – ‘I think’ – being a fact in order to produce the conclusion ... ‘I am’ . The premise is faulty ... it should read only the fact that ‘there is thinking happening’. Thus the rewritten axiom now looks like this: ‘There is thinking happening, therefore I am’ ... which is, of course, nothing but twaddle dressed up as sagacity. Tacit assumptions expose the lie of philosophy. RESPONDENT: This is a misunderstanding of the axiom. The translation from Latin of the axiom is flawed. It is actually ‘thinking therefore I am’. RICHARD: Are you sure? As I understand it, the axiom ‘cogito, ergo sum’ translates literally into English as: ‘I think, therefore I am’.
RESPONDENT: The translation of cogito into ‘I think’ is imprecise, and flawed. For what you originally said that the ‘I’ is already present in ‘I think’ is manifested in English in a way that is only a grammatical case in Latin. RICHARD: Are you telling me that the ‘first person case of the verb cogitare’ correctly translates as ‘thinking’ ... instead of ‘I think’? That is, you are saying that ‘I’ is not implicit in ‘cogito’? Does this apply to all words or only ‘cogito’? For example: ‘amo’ (‘I love’ or ‘I am loving’) ... is this also imprecise and flawed and should only read ‘loving’? RESPONDENT: No ‘I’ is implicit, but only as a grammatical form, not a substantive ‘I’. RICHARD: Are you sure that ‘I’ is implicit only as a grammatical form (by ‘substantive’, I take it you mean the grammatical designation of a substance as in ‘noun substantive’)? As you have already said that Latin differs from English in this respect, I am curious as to whether this lack of substantiveness that you say exists in Latin occurs in other languages ... according to you? The French version is ‘je pense, donc je suis’. RESPONDENT: His use of the grammatical first person case is however problematic in that it clouds the clarity of the deduction, and this is what you are taking to be circularity. RICHARD: It may be problematic for him and the adherents to his methodology ... but not for me. I find it very clear ... if he had meant ‘thinking’ instead of ‘I think’ he could have said ‘cogitans, ergo sum’. (French: ‘pensant, donc je suis’). RESPONDENT: But when I say that therefore ‘thinking therefore I am’ is a better translation, I am speaking about the meaning in the context of what Descartes is saying, rather than what is a literal or lexicographic translation. You are right that ‘I think’ is the way we translate ‘cogito’. RICHARD: Yes, I know this is the way it is translated into English ... but is it not the scholastically correct way to translate it? That is, accurately, literally and fundamentally correct? I only ask because you initially said: [Respondent]: ‘The translation of cogito into ‘I think’ is imprecise, and flawed. It is actually ‘thinking therefore I am’ . Now you seem to be saying otherwise:
RESPONDENT: But ‘thinking’ is a better translation of the intent of that maxim. RICHARD: Ah, the intent of the maxim. Mr. René Descartes makes it clear in his Dedication and Preface to ‘Meditations On First Philosophy’ that he wishes to offer secular proof for the existence of soul ... and for the revealed God of the scriptures. RESPONDENT: And this is especially true in that Descartes starts from nothing but what is experienced in the moment. The ‘I’ is not experienced in the moment. Rather the ‘I’ is inferred from the fact of their being any ongoing activity. Descartes was asked by a critic about this assumed indubitable connection between the existence of a subject in action, and he responded that he was not able to doubt it. That is what is striking about the maxim. Not that ‘I think’ already has an ‘I’ in it. But that thinking by necessity involves something that is thinking. So when Descartes says that ‘I think therefore I am’ what he means is ‘thinking therefore a thinker’. The I is empty without any content or characteristics, except for thinking. RICHARD: As for thinking as an ‘on-going activity’ where ‘the ‘I’ is not experienced in the moment’ he says: [quote]: ‘But I do not yet know clearly enough what I am, I who am certain that I am; and hence I must be careful to see that I do not imprudently take some other object in place of myself’. [endquote]. Note well that he says ‘I who am certain that I am’ ... which is a tacit assumption. He then proceeds from this base: [quote]: ‘But what then am I? A thing which thinks. What is a thing which thinks? It is a thing which doubts, understands, [conceives], affirms, denies, wills, refuses, which also imagines and feels’. [endquote]. Now ‘a thing’ which thinks – and the ‘thing’ cannot be the body as he has already dismissed it as doubtful – is by no stretch of the imagination indicating merely a ‘thinking’ process happening of its own accord ... it is a ‘thinker’, a self. Quite frankly, I fail to see how it is just a grammatical ‘I’ that you say is implicit but not substantive. RESPONDENT: So the ‘proof’ of the maxim comes down to whether it is conceivable that there is thinking without a thinker. If you can conceive of this possibility, then the ‘proof’ has no force at all for you. RICHARD: What is with this ‘conceivable’ business ... we are talking of direct observation here, not conceptualising. Mr. René Descartes makes a particular point of stripping away all conceiving, doubting, affirming, denying, willing and so on so as to get to the bed-rock ... that which is indubitable. RESPONDENT: But if you cannot conceive of it, and I cannot, then the ‘proof’ is a striking example of a statement that proves itself without needing outside evidence or support. I do not know what it means to say that there is thinking and there is no thinker. RICHARD: This is what makes it all pre-supposed and self-affirming ... do you see this? Look, I am not arguing that there is no ‘I’ doing the thinking – I call such an entity ‘I’ as ego – but what I am pointing out is that this axiom is not ‘indubitable proof’ of ‘I’s existence. It is an assumption ... born out by the fact that 6.0 billion people feel that they have an ‘I’ doing the thinking. It is this consensus that makes it a tacit assumption ... and thus the flawed ‘evidence’ of the axiom passes muster. RESPONDENT: Descartes whole point is that from the ongoing activity (thinking) this ‘I’ is directly deducible. RICHARD: And just how is it ‘directly deducible’ that an ‘I’ is doing the thinking if the only information given is the ‘ongoing activity of thinking’? How can an ‘I’ be inferred or reasoned solely from ‘the ongoing activity of thinking’? Is there not a lack of intellectual rigour in all this? RESPONDENT: I explained what is meant by it above. It is not a ‘proof’ in a mathematical sense, but rather it is a psychological proof. As you know every proof in logic is predicated on the psychological fact that the deduction is seen as necessary and indubitable. It is not just a mechanical procedure but expresses a law of thought. And this is what Descartes was after. A maxim that had this same certainty. Can you doubt p therefore p? Or can you doubt p and q therefore p? So Descartes adds, can you doubt thinking therefore a thinker? For Descartes the answer was no. RICHARD: Yet is this not because this was the answer that he was looking for so as to lay the basis for soul and god? Otherwise, all that can be reasoned is ‘thinking therefore thinking’. There is no way that, under the laws of thought wherein the proof of logic is predicated on the psychological fact that deduction is seen as necessary and indubitable, that an ‘I’ can be inferred, deduced, reasoned or logically implied from the bare information ‘thinking’ ... unless the bare process of thought is dominated by the affective faculty ... ‘me’ at the core of ‘being’. This domination I epitomised as: ‘we all intimately feel that there is an ‘I’ in there doing the thinking ... but we are going to make it look like we are logically proving it’. It has been this fudging of the issue that makes the entire exercise into a tacit assumption. RESPONDENT: Is the answer [can you doubt thinking therefore a thinker] for you, yes? RICHARD: Of course. RESPONDENT: Remember dear intellectual one, Descartes had it backwards. I think, therefore I Am is not True. RICHARD: It is neither ‘backwards’ nor forwards ... it is a circular argument. The infamous theorem ‘cogito, ergo sum’ (‘I think, therefore I am’) is fatally flawed. It is predicated upon the initial surmise – ‘cogito’ (‘I think’) – being a fact in order to produce the conclusion ... ‘ergo sum’ (‘therefore I am’). This ‘cogito’ (‘I think’) premise is nothing but a subjective ‘a posteriori-like’ supposition (Mr. René Descartes called it ‘immediate intuition’) masquerading as an ‘a priori’ philosophical presentation ... which makes it a tacit assumption. His ‘proof’ for his premise ‘cogito’ (‘I think’) is therefore ‘proved’ for him by his ‘immediate intuition’ (‘I am’) ... which makes it an circular argument. The premise is faulty ... it should read only the fact that ‘there is thinking happening’. Thus the rewritten axiom now looks like this: ‘There is thinking happening, therefore I am’ ... which is, of course, nothing but twaddle dressed up as sagacity. Tacit assumptions (‘immediate intuitions’) expose the lie of a philosophy’s wisdom. RESPONDENT: It is a delusion to think that the ‘ego’, the ‘I think’, the ‘not I’, comes before the ‘I Am’. RICHARD: As both ‘I’ as ego and ‘I’ as I Am are illusions and/or delusions anyway it is moot as to which comes where or when or how or why. RESPONDENT: A circular argument would be: ‘some disciples of Mahomet are said to advance the proposition that their holy book, the Qur’an, is infallible. why? it is asked. because it was written by Allah’s prophet. How do you know then that Mahomet is Allah’s prophet? Because it says so in the Qu’ran’. Descartes ‘I think, therefore I Am’, (which I could also say in Latin, but felt that any Catholics reading this may get confused) is not a circular argument. RICHARD: I am simply going by what Mr. René Descartes himself said. In ‘Objections and Replies’ (1642), Mr. René Descartes explicitly says that the certainty of ‘I am’ is based upon ‘immediate intuition’. He finds certainty in the ‘immediate intuition’ that when he is thinking, even if deceived, he exists: The cogito (‘I think’) of ‘cogito, ergo sum’, he says, is a logically self-evident truth that gives certain knowledge of a particular thing’s existence – that is, one’s self – but the cogito (‘I think’) justifies accepting as certain only the existence of the person who thinks it. Now, intuition, to him, is an unmediated mental seeing or direct apprehension of something experienced ... and he finds certainty in the intuition that when he is thinking, he exists. Yet it does not; the only thing that is self-evident is that there is thinking going on (or walking or doubting or feeling and so on) ... unless one pre-supposes an ‘I’ as in ‘I think’ (cogito). And why? Because, at root, ‘I’ feel that ‘I’ am. That is, ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being is affective ... (‘I know that I am because I feel it in my very ‘being’ that I am). Thus the certitude ascribed to intuition – his ‘indubitable immediate apprehension’ – is sourced in ‘I feel real’. When feelings enter the picture, rationality goes out of the window and one enters into the realm of belief, trust, hope ... and faith. Dress the self-serving circular argument up in a self-seeking pseudo-rationality and other-wise intelligent people will be convinced that their ‘feeling of being’ has now been logically proved. He also has to say this because if all he ever knew for certain was that he exists – and if one adhered to Mr. René Descartes’ method of doubting all that is uncertain one would – then he would be reduced to solipsism. This he cannot do ... Mr. René Descartes makes it clear in his ‘Dedication and Preface to Meditations On First Philosophy’ that he wishes to offer secular proof for the existence of ‘me’ as soul ... and for the revealed God of the scriptures. Yet his ‘proof’ of ‘god’ is as spurious as his ‘proof’ of ‘I’. Thus it is faith that stops the withdrawal into solipsism. And what persuades him to reason like this? Mr. René Descartes begins with the statement that he has an innate idea of God as a perfect being and then intuits that God necessarily exists, because, if he did not, he would not be perfect. This ontological proof for the existence of God is at the heart of Mr. René Descartes’ rationalism, for it establishes certain knowledge about an existing thing solely on the basis of reasoning from innate ideas, with no help from sensory experience. This is the source of his ‘immediate intuition’ – which now starts to resemble faith – because he then argues that, because God is perfect, he does not deceive human beings; therefore the world exists. Mr. René Descartes, the rationalist, failed to see that his ontologically-inspired ‘intuitional’ proof is word-magic based on the superstition that a metaphysical reality can be determined – and validated as being fact – by intuitive ideas and logical thought. It is, as I said before, nothing but twaddle dressed up as sagacity. RESPONDENT: ‘I think’ (thinking manifests from memory that anticipates the future) is ego. RICHARD: If I may point out? Enlightened people can think ... they can anticipate future events (‘Evening Darshan will be held at 6.00 PM’) and they can remember past experiences of people, things and events. RESPONDENT: Ego says, I Think, therefore I Am. However, the ‘Real I Am’ is not ego, and can only be ‘gnown’ when ego has been Let Go. RICHARD: Hmm ... ego, realising its inherent falseness, proposes a ‘Real I Am’ predicated
upon its own falseness ... in a process otherwise known as inverse projection, eh? RESPONDENT: I take it that the Cartesian view point (Cogito ergo sum; [{I think} therefore {I am} is a viewpoint that is flawed however when taken in reverse sum ergo cogito (if that is correct Latin) I am therefore I think] is a more sensible premise. RICHARD: Yes, Mr. Renée Descartes himself acknowledged that ‘cogito ergo sum’ was not a deductive axiom ... he said that the statement ‘I am’ (‘sum’) expresses an immediate intuition – and was not the conclusion of reasoning from ‘I think (‘cogito’) – and is thus indubitable because it is intuitive: ‘Whatever I know’, he stated, ‘I know intuitively that I am’ (it is in ‘Objections and Replies’ (1642) that Mr. René Descartes explicitly says that the certainty of ‘I am’ is based upon intuition). RESPONDENT: So ... it seems to be reasonable to infer that the thinking has its roots in this entity that feels <‘I’ am> hence that what is thinking is not separate from that what is feeling. RICHARD: If what you are saying is, in effect, that the feeling (the immediate intuition) that ‘I am’ comes prior to the thinking that ‘I am’ then ... yes. RESPONDENT: So as ‘I’ as a feeling entity is prior to the thought process it seems to be fair to say that I as a thinker is illusionary and as such can be ‘dismantled’. RICHARD: Yes ... and when ‘I as a thinker’ is dismantled one becomes enlightened. RESPONDENT: ‘I’ as a feeler on the other hand or ‘I’ as being present appears to be fairly difficult to ‘locate’. RICHARD: And this is because ‘I’ as a feeler am intuitively felt to be (rather than merely thought to be). RESPONDENT: Yet it’s (my) presence (in my) book is apparent so far. RICHARD: I presume you mean the feeling (the intuition) of ‘presence’ and not just the presence of the flesh and blood body. RESPONDENT: As to: [there is a circularity inherent in Mr. René Descartes’ reasoning: To know that God exists, one must trust the clear and distinct idea of God; but, to know that clear and distinct ideas are true, one must know that God exists and does not deceive man. Mr. René Descartes, the rationalist, failed to see that his ontologically-inspired ‘intuitional’ proof is word-magic based on the superstition that a metaphysical reality can be determined – and validated as being fact – by ideas and thoughts] could it be that Mr. D. might be afraid how the Church would respond and that he therefore introduced this God idea/concept. RICHARD: Mr. René Descartes makes it clear in his ‘Dedication and Preface to Meditations On First Philosophy’ (‘Meditations On First Philosophy’ (1641) was the treatise that ‘cogito ergo sum’ was published in) that he wishes to offer secular proof for the existence of both the Soul and the revealed God of the scriptures. He dedicated it to the ‘Most Wise and Illustrious the Dean and Doctors of the Sacred Faculty of Theology in Paris’. RESPONDENT: As to: [the question is: what is intuition for him ... and why does he consider it indubitable?] it seems to be that indeed Mr. D’s original premise is a clear example of how spiritual thinking reflects the very tendency to refuse to question/doubt the very premises of ‘I’ am which seems to be the core of Actualist practice. RICHARD: Yes. * RESPONDENT: Does a man of apperception fall under the yoke of causation or not? RICHARD: Actually it is not such an obvious question after all as the words ‘a man of enlightenment’ and the words ‘a man of apperception’ refer to two entirely different things: enlightenment is the release from the otherwise endless round of birth/death/rebirth and apperception is the release from the human condition. ‘Tis only from within the human condition that such concepts as karma and samsara arise (along with their rebirth/reincarnation implications). RESPONDENT: I’d say: be careful with your response here ... ‘five hundred rebirths as a fox’ ... wow! On the other hand better then ‘five hundred rebirths as a roach’. RICHARD: It essentially makes no difference (be it either as a fox or a roach) because, according to eastern spirituality, it is only as a human being that a sentient being has a chance for enlightenment (which is the main point of being sent back down the metempsychosical path). RESPONDENT: To be fair on that my guess is ‘Yes’ ... but then again the risk is high. RICHARD: The only risk on the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom is that one may be enticed to wander off the path and become enlightened instead. I kid you not. RESPONDENT: So ... I say I don’t know. RICHARD: Okay ... here is a hint: both karma and samsara have no existence here in this actual world. RESPONDENT: That seems to logically follow from: [‘tis only from within the human condition that such concepts as karma and samsara arise (along with their rebirth/reincarnation implications)]. As to: [I kid you not] though my posting of the Zen story, the question along with the remark [I’d say: be careful with your response here ... ‘five hundred rebirths as a fox’ ... wow! On the other hand better then ‘five hundred rebirths as a roach’] was written partly tongue in cheek, it also had the purpose of probing. Thus it’s taken that karma and samsara are concepts from within the human condition, however my question was not about karma it was: [does a man of apperception fall under the yoke of causation or not?] am I to take it that it that you say no to that? RICHARD: The story which prompted your query came from Zen Buddhism ... which means that the English word ‘causation’ is a translation of the Indian word ‘karma’ (or maybe it is even a translation of the Japanese word for the Chinese word for the Indian word ‘karma’). And as karma is inextricably linked with samsara then causation, in this context, is inextricably linked with birth/ death/ rebirth. And that, being metaphysical, is what I am saying ‘no’ too. RESPONDENT: As for giving a hint to the answer of that. I did not mean Karma with [the yoke of causation] my guess is ... Yes ... but then again I don’t know. RICHARD: If you did not mean ‘karma’ then perhaps your query would have been better served if you had simply asked whether physical cause and effect operates here in this actual world. Which, of course, it does. RESPONDENT: By the way I have enjoyed this conversation so far. RICHARD: Good ... it can be such fun to find out about life, the universe and what it is to be a human
being, eh? RICHARD: No flesh and blood body apperceptively aware of being a conscious, thinking flesh and blood body would ever say such a thing ... RESPONDENT: What you basically do is you turn an object [the body] into a subject [presence] and let this object make statements about itself. RICHARD: No, what happened was that the subject (the presence) parasitically inhabiting its host object (the body) self-immolated in its entirety ... and this actual world became apparent (which, being a world sans subjectivity, is not the objective world of that presence). For instance:
And:
RESPONDENT: Then, of course, it will not state that it is ‘present to itself’ but it will say that it is ‘a conscious body’ BUT the ‘presence’ is a presupposition to make such a statement. And that’s the Catch-22. RICHARD: Presumably you are referring to something like this:
As there is no such condition as you propose – a subjective presence being present-to-itself – there is no dilemma. RESPONDENT: A stone [object] cannot say ‘I am a stone’ BECAUSE a stone is not conscious. RICHARD: As a stone, being inanimate, is not even sentient your analogy is a non-sequitur RESPONDENT: If the stone was conscious the stone could say ‘I am a conscious stone’ BUT that is an epistemological mistake BECAUSE the stone’s presence to itself is a precondition of such a statement AND therefore the only true statement is ‘I am presence’ or ‘I am present to myself’ AND think ‘I am a stone’. RICHARD: As your basic premise (that a reflexive intuition of subjectivity is a precondition to experiencing in actuality) is invalid your sub-conclusion – that it is an epistemological mistake to report being a conscious (sentient) creature – is equally invalid: therefore your final conclusion, that the only faithful report is what you automorphically ascribe to a creature sans subject, is flagrantly incorrect. RESPONDENT: Otherwise it happens like in your case that one falls for materialistic reductionism and holds that ‘I am the conscious body’ and leaves totally out of the equation the ‘presence’ which preconditions the very statement. RICHARD: As the [quote] ‘presence’ [endquote] you are constantly referring to is totally out of the equation, in actuality, is it any wonder that such a report is not contingent upon such a precondition? * RICHARD: ... and to ascribe to a flesh and blood body the way a feeling ‘being’ (an affective presence, a feeler/intuiter) experiences itself is to commit the vulgar error of automorphism. RESPONDENT: I am not doing this. RICHARD: Here is a question for you, then ... when you say that the only thing you really know is that you are present to yourself (and that is the only real knowledge you have) just how, exactly do you know that? In other words: by what means is that knowing ascertained (in what way is that knowledge obtained)? And the reason I ask is that even Mr. René Descartes acknowledged that ‘cogito ergo sum’ was not a deductive axiom ... he said that the statement ‘I am’ (‘sum’) expresses an immediate intuition – and was not the conclusion of reasoning from ‘I think (‘cogito’) – and is thus indubitable because it is intuitive: ‘Whatever I know’, he stated, ‘I know intuitively that I am’. And, just for the record, it is in ‘Objections and Replies’ (1642) that Mr. René Descartes explicitly
says that the certainty of ‘I am’ is based upon intuition.
RETURN TO RICHARD’S SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE INDEX The Third Alternative (Peace On Earth In This Life Time As This Flesh And Blood Body) Here is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment and any other Altered State Of Consciousness, and challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics with its mystic cosmogony), anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its paranormal theology. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one.
Richard’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
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