Treedbear
Veteran Member
- Joined
- May 30, 2016
- Messages
- 2,567
- Location
- out on a limb
- Basic Beliefs
- secular, humanist, agnostic on theism/atheism
Descartes meant the "I" to be the thinking thing so he thought of his thoughts has literally being him ("I").
Of course you remain free to think that your thoughts are not you, or all of you, but it's a misrepresentation of Descartes's view to interpret "think" in the Cogito as some activity that the "I" would have.
EB
Am I my thoughts or am I that which is aware of thoughts which I call "my thoughts"?
If I have something then that something is not me, or at most it's only a part of me. And it certainly isn't if one is arguing for the existence of an essence of me, as is implied by many arguments for agency, free will, consciousness, etc. But this is more than a semantic argument. Things exist due to the relationships they have with other things. Therefore, however I might choose to describe myself, or any other thing, depends on either the explicit or the implied context. I find evidence for this in the scientific method, morality, esthetics, and linguistics.
Descartes meant the "I" to be the thinking thing so he thought of his thoughts has literally being him ("I").
Of course you remain free to think that your thoughts are not you, or all of you, but it's a misrepresentation of Descartes's view to interpret "think" in the Cogito as some activity that the "I" would have.
EB
I was under the impression that Descartes considered the "I" to be the "doing" thing, as in the doing of thinking, which seems to presage a kind of Existentialism. The doing (doing of anything will suffice, but only thinking is self evidently true) constitutes evidence of existence. But I agree that doing isn't having. My argument is that the having is more certain than the doing since I might not be certain where these thoughts come from. So I'm not supporting of Descartes or Sartre.