What would be the use of our "Cartesian theatre", if any?

[Speakpigeon]

The cortex is probably a better bet.

That said, I have a feeling that it's not necessarily the place either. But I would consider evidence. Perhaps sub can chip in here.

Note that the human cortex is, I think, one of our most recent developments, at least in terms of its amount, so that might point back to what we were wondering about when the phenomenon first appeared in the minds of our ancestors. Even before Descartes I mean.

I think you are both wrongish. Here's why. It's an old argument that I honestly never expected to deploy:

A foreigner visiting Oxford or Cambridge for the first time is shown a number of colleges, libraries, playing fields, museums, scientific departments and administrative offices. He then asks 'But' where is the University? I have seen where the members of the Colleges live, where the Registrar works, where the scientists experiment and the rest. But I have not yet seen the University in which reside and work the members of your University.' It has then to be explained to him that the University is not another collateral institution, some ulterior counterpart to the colleges, laboratories and offices which he has seen. The University is just the way in which all that he has already seen is organized. When they are seen and when their co-ordination is understood, the University has been seen. His mistake lay in his innocent assumption that it was correct to speak of Christ Church, the Bodleian Library, the Ashmolean Museum and the University, to speak, that is, as if `the University' stood for an extra member of the class of which these other units are members. He was mistakenly allocating the University to the same category as that to which the other institutions belong.

But when we are talking about the Cartesian theatre, it suddenly seems terribly appropriate. Much to my surprise.

Yeah, I already had thought about something else related to that. I wouldn't be too surprised if conscious processes were somewhat all over the place, like in effect government control is, in most countries at least. Still, pretty much anything that happens in any country is somewhat beyond government control simply because not all those doing anything are government people. And, in fact, even what government agents do is also to a large extent, strictly speaking, beyond the control of the government, just because all of these people pretty much do what they decide to do. So, wherever consciousness may be located, I would expect only a superficial layer of the material to be involved. So, I guess, much like the cortex itself, although I guess I wouldn't be too surprised if some of it took place outside of the cortex, like, I don't know, some lost neuron somewhere or the medulla oblongata.

Or even the pineal gland.

But overall, I would expect mostly the cortex.

Thought, I grant you I may be wrong.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

How about Francis Bacon? He's earlier, and the fact is that empiricism turned out to be the better bet than rationalism. Bacon was undeniably the father of empiricism while Descartes really inherited, ironically, rationalism from the Jesuits. Descartes greatest hits in this area: global scepticism and dualism have both proven to be profoundly unhelpful and both the discourse and the meditations are generally accepted to be flat wrong. The same could not be said of Bacon's Organum.

<snip>

Bacon was earlier, more influential and didn't make any dreadful errors like dualism or global scepticism. I'm not saying Descartes wasn't important but most of the following philosophers were knocking down his errors. Those following Bacon were building on his successes. Descartes was the father of modern philosophy. Bacon was the father of modern science. There's no denying that we need both, but I know who Ruby will be cheering for and I'm afraid I agree with him.

I sure like bacon.

And roast beef too, which we spell "rosbifs" here, which we Frogs can use to mean the English, apparently as a reference to the likely appearance of their sanguine or vermilion faces, at least in former times.

I like Bacon as much as I revere Descartes.

Both died too early.

And he was really French, like Descartes:

Bacon is a Norman French surname originally from Normandy and England.

Seriously, I'm not aware that Bacon made any scientific discovery. Apparently, the one time he tried it proved fatal to him.

Francis Bacon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon

Aubrey's vivid account, which portrays Bacon as a martyr to experimental scientific method, had him journeying to Highgate through the snow with the King's physician when he is suddenly inspired by the possibility of using the snow to preserve meat:

They were resolved they would try the experiment presently. They alighted out of the coach and went into a poor woman's house at the bottom of Highgate hill, and bought a fowl, and made the woman exenterate it.​

After stuffing the fowl with snow, Bacon contracted a fatal case of pneumonia. Some people, including Aubrey, consider these two contiguous, possibly coincidental events as related and causative of his death:

The Snow so chilled him that he immediately fell so extremely ill, that he could not return to his Lodging … but went to the Earle of Arundel's house at Highgate, where they put him into … a damp bed that had not been layn-in … which gave him such a cold that in 2 or 3 days as I remember Mr Hobbes told me, he died of Suffocation.​

Compare Descartes...

One of his main motivation was the justification of the possibility of science:

René Descartes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/René_Descartes

Descartes also saw very clearly that all truths were linked with one another so that finding a fundamental truth and proceeding with logic would open the way to all science.

And unlike Bacon, he made a few actual discoveries, both in mathematics and science. He was an actual practitioner.

Mathematics:

He is credited as the father of analytical geometry, the bridge between algebra and geometry, used in the discovery of infinitesimal calculus and analysis. One of Descartes' most enduring legacies was his development of Cartesian or analytic geometry, which uses algebra to describe geometry.He was first to assign a fundamental place for algebra in our system of knowledge, using it as a method to automate or mechanize reasoning, particularly about abstract, unknown quantities. European mathematicians had previously viewed geometry as a more fundamental form of mathematics, serving as the foundation of algebra. Algebraic rules were given geometric proofs by mathematicians such as Pacioli, Cardan, Tartaglia and Ferrari. Equations of degree higher than the third were regarded as unreal, because a three-dimensional form, such as a cube, occupied the largest dimension of reality. Descartes professed that the abstract quantity a² could represent length as well as an area. This was in opposition to the teachings of mathematicians, such as Vieta, who argued that it could represent only area. Although Descartes did not pursue the subject, he preceded Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in envisioning a more general science of algebra or "universal mathematics," as a precursor to symbolic logic, that could encompass logical principles and methods symbolically, and mechanize general reasoning.

Descartes' work provided the basis for the calculus developed by Newton and Leibniz, who applied infinitesimal calculus to the tangent line problem, thus permitting the evolution of that branch of modern mathematics.[110] His rule of signs is also a commonly used method to determine the number of positive and negative roots of a polynomial.

Science:

Descartes discovered an early form of the law of conservation of mechanical momentum (a measure of the motion of an object), and envisioned it as pertaining to motion in a straight line, as opposed to perfect circular motion, as Galileo had envisioned it. He outlined his views on the universe in his Principles of Philosophy.

Descartes also made contributions to the field of optics. He showed by using geometric construction and the law of refraction (also known as Descartes' law or more commonly Snell's law) that the angular radius of a rainbow is 42 degrees (i.e., the angle subtended at the eye by the edge of the rainbow and the ray passing from the sun through the rainbow's centre is 42°).

He also independently discovered the law of reflection, and his essay on optics was the first published mention of this law.

He was also apparently a decisive influence on Newton, arguably himself the first clear example of modern science:

Influence on Newton's mathematics
Current opinion is that Descartes had the most influence of anyone on the young Newton, and this is arguably one of Descartes' most important contributions. Newton continued Descartes' work on cubic equations, which freed the subject from the fetters of the Greek perspectives. The most important concept was his very modern treatment of independent variables.

So, compared to Bacon, I think Descartes did very well by science.

And that's just one aspect. There are a few other things to say, but I'm good for now.
EB

 

[ruby sparks]

I guess I'm saying that this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaUVSwK1OKI

is the best possible metaphor for my Cartesian theatre.

Yours, of course, would look more like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPs80PrkyZU

And, I'm only guessing but:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Uh249iQyj0

Given my externalist leanings this also explains the rather interesting expansion of self and sense of connection involved in playing or listening to music in a group...

Thx. I'll aim to peruse all of them, and other stuff you've posted here and on other threads, when my current blizzard of work settles down.

I'm quite interested in the article I think you posted by the Jaynes guy, as I came across his name in something else I was reading the other day.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Bacon on the other hand was getting down to the practicalities of not fooling yourself and was quite methodically working through the congnitive biases so that natural philosophy could be alert to them. For example:

For the mind of man is far from the nature of a clear and equal glass, wherein the beams of things should reflect according to their true incidence; nay, it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of superstition and imposture, if it be not delivered and reduced. For this purpose, let us consider the false appearances that are imposed upon us by the general nature of the mind, beholding them in an example or two; as first, in that instance which is the root of all superstition, namely, that to the nature of the mind of all men it is consonant for the affirmative or active to affect more than the negative or privative. So that a few times hitting or presence countervails ofttimes failing or absence, as was well answered by Diagoras to him that showed him in Neptune’s temple the great number of pictures of such as had escaped shipwreck, and had paid their vows to Neptune, saying, “Advise now, you that think it folly to invocate Neptune in tempest.” “Yea, but,” saith Diagoras, “where are they painted that are drowned?

What's apparent to me is that what Bacon does here is 100% philosophy, using the same basic tool as Descartes, i.e. articulate and discute, as clearly as possible, various possible reasons to adopt particular views. In other words, Bacon's method was the same as Descartes', rationalism. And I say, good for him.

Bacon was only interested in establishing the general principle of a scientific method. He was still only a philosopher. I believe nobody actually tried to implement his "method" in practice. I think Bacon's general ideas and principles percolated through the literati at the time and this must have helped, somehow, empiricism to take shape, and presumably help at least some scientists to understand how to proceed.

Broadly, I take the whole business to have been made possible by the overall evolution of countries, people, politics, religion, and of course ideas, at the time in Europe. Still, it's also obvious that various actors played a more significant part, among them, both Bacon and Descartes. I would say they both did well given the period they came on stage. Newton and John Locke, for example, did better but came also later.

British empiricism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism

British empiricism, though it was not a term used at the time, derives from the 17th century period of early modern philosophy and modern science. The term became useful in order to describe differences perceived between two of its founders Francis Bacon, described as empiricist, and René Descartes, who is described as a rationalist. Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza, in the next generation, are often also described as an empiricist and a rationalist respectively. John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume were the primary exponents of empiricism in the 18th century Enlightenment, with Locke being the person who is normally known as the founder of empiricism as such.

Early modern philosophy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_modern_philosophy

Early modern philosophy is a period in the history of philosophy at the beginning or overlapping with the period known as modern philosophy. The early modern period in history is roughly 1500-1800, but the label "early modern philosophy" is sometimes used to refer to a more specific period of time.

In the narrowest sense, the term is used to refer principally to the philosophy of the 17th century, posited to have begun with René Descartes; to have included Thomas Hobbes, Blaise Pascal, Baruch de Spinoza; and to have ended with Leibniz, Isaac Newton or Spinoza. Many would stretch this period one generation further, thus including David Hume, John Locke, and George Berkeley.

The term is sometimes used more broadly and considered to have begun in the 16th century with Niccolò Machiavelli, Martin Luther and John Calvin; to have also included Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, Francis Bacon, Giambattista Vico, Voltaire and Thomas Paine; and to have ended at the latest in 1804 with the death of Immanuel Kant. Considered in this way, the period spans from Renaissance philosophy to the Age of Enlightenment.

The Scientific Revolution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science#Modern_science

The Scientific Revolution is traditionally held by most historians to have begun in 1543, when the books De humani corporis fabrica (On the Workings of the Human Body) by Andreas Vesalius, and also De Revolutionibus, by the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, were first printed. The thesis of Copernicus' book was that the Earth moved around the Sun. The period culminated with the publication of the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1687 by Isaac Newton, representative of the unprecedented growth of scientific publications throughout Europe.

Other significant scientific advances were made during this time by Galileo Galilei, Edmond Halley, Robert Hooke, Christiaan Huygens, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Gottfried Leibniz, and Blaise Pascal. In philosophy, major contributions were made by Francis Bacon, Sir Thomas Browne, René Descartes, and Thomas Hobbes. The scientific method was also better developed as the modern way of thinking emphasized experimentation and reason over traditional considerations.

More on that later.
EB

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

If I might jump in midstream, I think it's a simple matter (in the abstract at least) of the brain creating/animating a representational analogue of the totality of the body (what we call a "self"). As it maps the external world (based on the information constantly being gathered/shunted toward it by the body) it has also developed the ability to "place" the analogue self into those maps, initially as a survival tactic, which has simply repurposed over time as our survival shifted from hourly to decades.

Such an analogue would naturally be imbued with the ability of "free will" to act within any such maps for the purpose of navigating best-case scenarios prior to acting. As the ability evolved (and our survival shifted to leisure), so too did its practical use/application until we find ourselves "self-reflecting" and being able to create and keep track of multiple such animated selves.

At this stage in our evolution, we are merely at the point of discovery, but it's likely a very rudimentary stage to what is no doubt a highly complicated and many layered process, but ultimately it comes down to animation; the redrawing--from moment to moment/millisecond to millisecond--of the change in state information necessary to make slight alterations/updates on a constant "real time" basis.

But the self--the "homunculus"--has a latency lag, of course; always just behind its own annihilation/recreation--hence the phenom of thinking about moving our arm seemingly occurring at the same time we actually move our arm. "We" (the selves) are constantly being "refreshed"--like a TV or computer monitor--and as such we die and are reborn every nano-second, only with some information lost and some information gained. A fluidity as someone else put it; an animation as I would put it.

Thus all of humanity is explained. "God" is the indifferent brain always seeking its lowest energy state and we are Pinnochio, always thinking we are "real" boys (and girls)--when in fact we're just as "artificial" as our dream-states--and in that sense (the chemical sense, where time has no meaning) we are immortals. The body dies; we just cease being projected, but in that cessation an eternity of experience can be imbued. With apologies to Bill.

Where's my prize?

 

[Speakpigeon]

Bacon was earlier, more influential and didn't make any dreadful errors like dualism or global scepticism. I'm not saying Descartes wasn't important but most of the following philosophers were knocking down his errors. Those following Bacon were building on his successes. Descartes was the father of modern philosophy. Bacon was the father of modern science. There's no denying that we need both, but I know who Ruby will be cheering for and I'm afraid I agree with him.

Did Bacon make any claim? I guess you could think of his advocacy of an empiricist agenda as a broad claim and that was certainly vindicated by science itself. I'm even prepared to grant that point, but Bacon was really part of a general mood in Europe, that followed on an existing practice begun much earlier than him, although it may be difficult to give a precise date or period. It seems to me that Bacon is typical of somebody giving a synthetic and rational expression to ideas and bits of practice that were slowly coming up in his time. So, yes, he apparently did that well enough and possibly at a critical time. And he certainly focused his advocacy on empiricism. That has to be more effective for a scientific perspective.

Descartes was following several tracks. He definitely did some scientific work but also wrote extensively on "the passions of the soul" that he saw as produced by the body and subject therefore to a scientific investigation, although he definitely was too early on this one.

Still, as I see it, the main merit of Descartes is the Cogito. I see the Cogito as the discovery of the mind as an ontological reality. Previously, the mind is the spirit, something to consider from a moral perspective only. Consciousness is still something that is subject to passions and moral dilemmas of guilt and shame. Christians still believed souls once in Heaven somehow would look like bodies. The Cogito asserts instead that we know our minds exist as we experienced them. This must have been a novel ideas for the few people in Europe who would have understood the Cogito at the time. I think it was the origin of our modern concept of mind, consciousness, subjective experience and qualia.

Obviously, science is still unable to vindicate the Cartesian concept of mind but we don't need that. All we need is to understand the Cogito, which can only be from our own subjective perspective. If you understand the Cogito, you won't be claiming that subjective experience and qualia are somehow "illusions", as some people repeatedly liked to do on this Website and elsewhere.

Descartes was the one to bring to our attention what it is that we know. This only thing we effectively know. Our own mind. That he did it in the 17th century is simply astonishing. Most people on this planet still don't get it. Even educated people. Even with all the science that we have today.

That there's no scientific application of this concept yet, if ever, is completely irrelevant.
EB

 

[Subsymbolic]

Bacon was earlier, more influential and didn't make any dreadful errors like dualism or global scepticism. I'm not saying Descartes wasn't important but most of the following philosophers were knocking down his errors. Those following Bacon were building on his successes. Descartes was the father of modern philosophy. Bacon was the father of modern science. There's no denying that we need both, but I know who Ruby will be cheering for and I'm afraid I agree with him.

Did Bacon make any claim? I guess you could think of his advocacy of an empiricist agenda as a broad claim and that was certainly vindicated by science itself. I'm even prepared to grant that point, but Bacon was really part of a general mood in Europe, that followed on an existing practice begun much earlier than him, although it may be difficult to give a precise date or period. It seems to me that Bacon is typical of somebody giving a synthetic and rational expression to ideas and bits of practice that were slowly coming up in his time. So, yes, he apparently did that well enough and possibly at a critical time. And he certainly focused his advocacy on empiricism. That has to be more effective for a scientific perspective.

Descartes was following several tracks. He definitely did some scientific work but also wrote extensively on "the passions of the soul" that he saw as produced by the body and subject therefore to a scientific investigation, although he definitely was too early on this one.

Still, as I see it, the main merit of Descartes is the Cogito. I see the Cogito as the discovery of the mind as an ontological reality. Previously, the mind is the spirit, something to consider from a moral perspective only. Consciousness is still something that is subject to passions and moral dilemmas of guilt and shame. Christians still believed souls once in Heaven somehow would look like bodies. The Cogito asserts instead that we know our minds exist as we experienced them. This must have been a novel ideas for the few people in Europe who would have understood the Cogito at the time. I think it was the origin of our modern concept of mind, consciousness, subjective experience and qualia.

Obviously, science is still unable to vindicate the Cartesian concept of mind but we don't need that. All we need is to understand the Cogito, which can only be from our own subjective perspective. If you understand the Cogito, you won't be claiming that subjective experience and qualia are somehow "illusions", as some people repeatedly liked to do on this Website and elsewhere.

Descartes was the one to bring to our attention what it is that we know. This only thing we effectively know. Our own mind. That he did it in the 17th century is simply astonishing. Most people on this planet still don't get it. Even educated people. Even with all the science that we have today.

That there's no scientific application of this concept yet, if ever, is completely irrelevant.
EB

I'm afraid that variations on what, some 1950 odd years later would be called the cogito is clearly advanced in both Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics:

To perceive that we think or perceive is to perceive our being (since we saw that out being is to perceive or think.)

NE1170A 34-35 (I presume familiarity with Becker citation) Mind you, he also invented the Intentional Stance in that, rather fine book...

and, well over a thousand year before Descartes, in Augustine's City of God:

Si fallor, sum

(If I am mistaken, I exist).

Obviously, like Descartes, this is part of longer argument, the key move is here:

Quid, si falleris? Si enim fallor, sum. Nam qui non est, utique nec falli potest; ac per hoc sum, si fallor. Quia ergo sum si fallor, quo modo esse me fallor, quando certum est me esse, si fallor.

(What difference, if you are mistaken? For if I am mistaken, I am. For he who is not, assuredly cannot be mistaken; and therefore I am, if I am mistaken. Therefore because I am if I am mistaken, how am I mistaken that I am, when it is sure that I am, if I am mistaken.) (book IX chapter 26)

Descartes claimed to be unaware of Augustine's version which was very well known in Catholic France at the time. Some people even believed him, but I'm surprised that as a Descartes scholar you are unaware of the accusations of something like plagiarism that swirled around Descartes in his lifetime. In fact more recently other accusations have surfaced...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11620528

There's also versions of the same idea in Plotinus, Ghazali and Avicenna.

Bacon, on the other hand is widely believed to have written Shakespeare's plays (and probably Racine's .

 

[ruby sparks]

Fun fact: Plato nicknamed Aristotle 'The Foal', apparently.

https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2015...e-aristotle-starts-his-own-school-aelian-4-9/












And you know what they say; one should never put descartes before the horse. Boom boom.

 

[4321lynx]

Bacon, on the other hand is widely believed to have written Shakespeare's plays (and probably Racine's .

I object. It is well known that the whole of Shakespeare's work was written by a different man of exactly the same name who lived in exactly the same place at exactly the same time as Shakespeare.

 

[Speakpigeon]

If I might jump in midstream, I think it's a simple matter (in the abstract at least) of the brain creating/animating a representational analogue of the totality of the body (what we call a "self"). As it maps the external world (based on the information constantly being gathered/shunted toward it by the body) it has also developed the ability to "place" the analogue self into those maps, initially as a survival tactic, which has simply repurposed over time as our survival shifted from hourly to decades.

Such an analogue would naturally be imbued with the ability of "free will" to act within any such maps for the purpose of navigating best-case scenarios prior to acting. As the ability evolved (and our survival shifted to leisure), so too did its practical use/application until we find ourselves "self-reflecting" and being able to create and keep track of multiple such animated selves.

At this stage in our evolution, we are merely at the point of discovery, but it's likely a very rudimentary stage to what is no doubt a highly complicated and many layered process, but ultimately it comes down to animation; the redrawing--from moment to moment/millisecond to millisecond--of the change in state information necessary to make slight alterations/updates on a constant "real time" basis.

But the self--the "homunculus"--has a latency lag, of course; always just behind its own annihilation/recreation--hence the phenom of thinking about moving our arm seemingly occurring at the same time we actually move our arm. "We" (the selves) are constantly being "refreshed"--like a TV or computer monitor--and as such we die and are reborn every nano-second, only with some information lost and some information gained. A fluidity as someone else put it; an animation as I would put it.

Thus all of humanity is explained. "God" is the indifferent brain always seeking its lowest energy state and we are Pinnochio, always thinking we are "real" boys (and girls)--when in fact we're just as "artificial" as our dream-states--and in that sense (the chemical sense, where time has no meaning) we are immortals. The body dies; we just cease being projected, but in that cessation an eternity of experience can be imbued. With apologies to Bill.

You don't actually say what the specific use of it, except in the rather vague notion here of "survival tactic". Given we all seem to accept here the inevitability that our Cartesian theatre will lag somewhat behind at least some, possibly most, of the sensory data otherwise available to our brain, I assume that you are considering what I would call "planning ahead". All control rooms in any technological system lag behind in terms of the information they get from the system and their decisions can only aim at effecting actions or operations in an inevitably somewhat distant future. And whether actions and operations are effectively carried out isn't even in the control of the control room. It's the bit of the control system closest to the action that will in fact decide. The control room is really only planning actions and then making suggestions while maintaining supervision. I would say it's arguable that there's no actual decision taken inside the control room that's directly affecting the part of the system actually performing the action. The only decisions made within control room are decisions to send orders, instructions, information, etc.

So, I would expect the same within our brain. The Libet-type experiments may be all looking at something else than the decisions actually taken consciously. They may all have identified the unconscious bit of brain that does control the performance of the action. They may have simply overlooked the conscious activity that would be responsible for planning, ordering, supervising the action, if not for the actual carrying out of the action. Overlooking may be easy if you're not looking for what there is. And possibly, conscious activity of the brain may be less apparent than unconscious activity, for example if it is less localised.

Personally, the only reason I see for a delay is in terms of function. A control room setup typically makes delays inevitable, and the control room function can only be carried out using a typical control room setup. Consciousness per se has nothing to do with it. We are clearly unable to control consciously certain actions, for example the keyboard typing I'm doing right now. Yet, it's just that it's not a function of our conscious process to do that, just as it's not a function of our conscious process to control our hear beat, our blood pressure, the concentration of sugar in our blood stream and many, many other things besides. Big deal. The function of the conscious process seems to be more in terms of planning, supervising, longer term control, etc. That still makes us, or rather our homunculus, an after-the-facts spectator of a lot of whatever our body is doing. Yet, it's nothing new. We already understood that well before Libet because we've long known of unconscious processes doing a lot without even being aware of this activity, like the control of our heart bit and our blood pressure. Libet, I think, discovered the cutting point and made us aware that we really know much less than we thought.

Where's my prize?

So, thanks to all here who have contributed to making this issue much clearer than it was initially, at least in my mind. There are probably a few more things to say on the subject but we've articulated the main ideas. Thanks to a!l!
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

I'm afraid that variations on what, some 1950 odd years later would be called the cogito is clearly advanced in both Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics:

To perceive that we think or perceive is to perceive our being (since we saw that out being is to perceive or think.)

NE1170A 34-35 (I presume familiarity with Becker citation) Mind you, he also invented the Intentional Stance in that, rather fine book...

and, well over a thousand year before Descartes, in Augustine's City of God:

Si fallor, sum

(If I am mistaken, I exist).

Obviously, like Descartes, this is part of longer argument, the key move is here:

Quid, si falleris? Si enim fallor, sum. Nam qui non est, utique nec falli potest; ac per hoc sum, si fallor. Quia ergo sum si fallor, quo modo esse me fallor, quando certum est me esse, si fallor.

(What difference, if you are mistaken? For if I am mistaken, I am. For he who is not, assuredly cannot be mistaken; and therefore I am, if I am mistaken. Therefore because I am if I am mistaken, how am I mistaken that I am, when it is sure that I am, if I am mistaken.) (book IX chapter 26)

I knew of Saint Augustine's bit but not of Aristotle's, I don't think.

Still, it's not the point. We are bound to make existential claims about all sorts of things. It would be obviously very difficult to be certain that Aristotle's "to perceive our being" or Saint Augustine's "if I'm mistaken, I am" didn't amount to Descartes' Cogito but I just don't think so. Here is the bit where Descartes makes clear what the Cogito means:

Meditations (René Descartes)
Thinking is another attribute of the soul; and here I discover what properly belongs to myself. This alone is inseparable from me. I am--I exist: this is certain; but how often? As often as I think; for perhaps it would even happen, if I should wholly cease to think, that I should at the same time altogether cease to be. I now admit nothing that is not necessarily true. I am therefore, precisely speaking, only a thinking thing, that is, a mind, understanding, or reason, terms whose signification was before unknown to me. I am, however, a real thing, and really existent; but what thing? The answer was, a thinking thing.
(...)
But what is a thinking thing? It is a thing that doubts, understands, [conceives], affirms, denies, wills, refuses; that imagines also, and perceives.

So, in the case of Descartes, there's no doubt.

Most people take, initially at least, the Cogito to mean "Descartes says he exists". So, the bit here is rather crucial in being so explicit he means something else.

So, bring me equivalent stuff from Aristotle or Saint Augustine. Until then, me, I'll believe they had a more mundane conception of the human mind. And they had something else in mind.

Descartes claimed to be unaware of Augustine's version which was very well known in Catholic France at the time. Some people even believed him, but I'm surprised that as a Descartes scholar you are unaware of the accusations of something like plagiarism that swirled around Descartes in his lifetime. In fact more recently other accusations have surfaced...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11620528

There's also versions of the same idea in Plotinus, Ghazali and Avicenna.

I'm sure Descartes was well read and I'm convinced that his Cogito was partially inspired by his reflections on what other people had said before. I'm still convinced he discovered something entirely new, something others didn't have in mind at all.

It's in fact very easy to verify this. Look at the amount of criticism the Cogito inspired. An inordinate large number of people desperately tried to fault the Cogito or interpret it as meaning something else. Show me similar criticisms for Aristotle's or Saint Augustine's relevant ideas and I might have to reconsider.

And, sorry, I have to rephrase something I never said. I'm not a scholar of anything, unfortunately. I never stood a chance. I haven't read Descartes extensively. A few years back, I read very carefully the Method and the part of the Meditations relevant to the Cogito, and that's it. I never had the motivation to read the rest to begin with, except short bits here and there to make sure I wasn't missing on anything relevant.

I'm not really an admirer of Descartes, although I like his style. I'm just gobsmacked than anybody could think the Cogito at the time when it seems so difficult for so many educated and intelligent people to even get it today.

Bacon, on the other hand is widely believed to have written Shakespeare's plays (and probably Racine's .

Yes, I heard noises to that effect. William Shakespeare was 1564–1616 and Bacon 1561–1626, so they may have met and made a deal of some kind. Apparently, nobody knows.

But Jean Racine was really later, 1639–1699. They couldn't have possibly met. And there's no doubts about Racine's authorship. Though, maybe, Bacon was really Racine and Racine Bacon. Unfortunately, none of them admitted to it...

Besides, Bacon seemed to have been a very busy man to bother with such trivialities.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Bacon, on the other hand is widely believed to have written Shakespeare's plays (and probably Racine's .

I object. It is well known that the whole of Shakespeare's work was written by a different man of exactly the same name who lived in exactly the same place at exactly the same time as Shakespeare.

Sorry. That's just fake news. Very ridiculous.

What is widely known is that Bacon and Shakespeare just wrote exactly the same plays at then same times.

Stuff happens.
EB

 

[PyramidHead]

What would it be like from an evolutionary perspective if we lacked this Cartesian theatre? Would our behavior be any different? Would we fail to pass on our genes, or would different populations pass theirs on who wouldn't have done so?

 

[4321lynx]

Bacon, on the other hand is widely believed to have written Shakespeare's plays (and probably Racine's .

I object. It is well known that the whole of Shakespeare's work was written by a different man of exactly the same name who lived in exactly the same place at exactly the same time as Shakespeare.

Sorry. That's just fake news. Very ridiculous.

What is widely known is that Bacon and Shakespeare just wrote exactly the same plays at then same times.

Stuff happens.
EB

But I had my information from the man I met in my office building:

Show

As I was going up the stair
I saw a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today,
I wish to god he'd go away.

 

[Subsymbolic]

What would it be like from an evolutionary perspective if we lacked this Cartesian theatre? Would our behavior be any different? Would we fail to pass on our genes, or would different populations pass theirs on who wouldn't have done so?

One way of looking at the Cartesian theatre is to argue that it’s a user illusion derived from what it feels like to have information bound and shared across the brain, later augmented by intentional narratisation. If you believe that then your question answers itself really.

Your mileage may vary.

 

[Subsymbolic]

I'm afraid that variations on what, some 1950 odd years later would be called the cogito is clearly advanced in both Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics:

NE1170A 34-35 (I presume familiarity with Becker citation) Mind you, he also invented the Intentional Stance in that, rather fine book...

and, well over a thousand year before Descartes, in Augustine's City of God:

(If I am mistaken, I exist).

Obviously, like Descartes, this is part of longer argument, the key move is here:

Quid, si falleris? Si enim fallor, sum. Nam qui non est, utique nec falli potest; ac per hoc sum, si fallor. Quia ergo sum si fallor, quo modo esse me fallor, quando certum est me esse, si fallor.

(What difference, if you are mistaken? For if I am mistaken, I am. For he who is not, assuredly cannot be mistaken; and therefore I am, if I am mistaken. Therefore because I am if I am mistaken, how am I mistaken that I am, when it is sure that I am, if I am mistaken.) (book IX chapter 26)

I knew of Saint Augustine's bit but not of Aristotle's, I don't think.

Still, it's not the point. We are bound to make existential claims about all sorts of things. It would be obviously very difficult to be certain that Aristotle's "to perceive our being" or Saint Augustine's "if I'm mistaken, I am" didn't amount to Descartes' Cogito but I just don't think so. Here is the bit where Descartes makes clear what the Cogito means:

Meditations (René Descartes)
Thinking is another attribute of the soul; and here I discover what properly belongs to myself. This alone is inseparable from me. I am--I exist: this is certain; but how often? As often as I think; for perhaps it would even happen, if I should wholly cease to think, that I should at the same time altogether cease to be. I now admit nothing that is not necessarily true. I am therefore, precisely speaking, only a thinking thing, that is, a mind, understanding, or reason, terms whose signification was before unknown to me. I am, however, a real thing, and really existent; but what thing? The answer was, a thinking thing.
(...)
But what is a thinking thing? It is a thing that doubts, understands, [conceives], affirms, denies, wills, refuses; that imagines also, and perceives.

So, in the case of Descartes, there's no doubt.

Most people take, initially at least, the Cogito to mean "Descartes says he exists". So, the bit here is rather crucial in being so explicit he means something else.

So, bring me equivalent stuff from Aristotle or Saint Augustine. Until then, me, I'll believe they had a more mundane conception of the human mind. And they had something else in mind.

Descartes claimed to be unaware of Augustine's version which was very well known in Catholic France at the time. Some people even believed him, but I'm surprised that as a Descartes scholar you are unaware of the accusations of something like plagiarism that swirled around Descartes in his lifetime. In fact more recently other accusations have surfaced...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11620528

There's also versions of the same idea in Plotinus, Ghazali and Avicenna.

I'm sure Descartes was well read and I'm convinced that his Cogito was partially inspired by his reflections on what other people had said before. I'm still convinced he discovered something entirely new, something others didn't have in mind at all.

It's in fact very easy to verify this. Look at the amount of criticism the Cogito inspired. An inordinate large number of people desperately tried to fault the Cogito or interpret it as meaning something else. Show me similar criticisms for Aristotle's or Saint Augustine's relevant ideas and I might have to reconsider.

And, sorry, I have to rephrase something I never said. I'm not a scholar of anything, unfortunately. I never stood a chance. I haven't read Descartes extensively. A few years back, I read very carefully the Method and the part of the Meditations relevant to the Cogito, and that's it. I never had the motivation to read the rest to begin with, except short bits here and there to make sure I wasn't missing on anything relevant.

I'm not really an admirer of Descartes, although I like his style. I'm just gobsmacked than anybody could think the Cogito at the time when it seems so difficult for so many educated and intelligent people to even get it today.

Bacon, on the other hand is widely believed to have written Shakespeare's plays (and probably Racine's .

Yes, I heard noises to that effect. William Shakespeare was 1564–1616 and Bacon 1561–1626, so they may have met and made a deal of some kind. Apparently, nobody knows.

But Jean Racine was really later, 1639–1699. They couldn't have possibly met. And there's no doubts about Racine's authorship. Though, maybe, Bacon was really Racine and Racine Bacon. Unfortunately, none of them admitted to it...

Besides, Bacon seemed to have been a very busy man to bother with such trivialities.
EB

Both Bacon and especially Racine was mostly a joke. An old friend lives in the shadow of the unfinished castle at Racine’s birthplace*, so Racine Shakespeare comparisons are an old game.

*Technically Paris due to the canal at the bottom of the hill.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Sorry. That's just fake news. Very ridiculous.

What is widely known is that Bacon and Shakespeare just wrote exactly the same plays at then same times.

Stuff happens.
EB

But I had my information from the man I met in my office building:

As I was going up the stair
I saw a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today,
I wish to god he'd go away.

Yeah? Bloody Hell, I myself wrote a poem with the exact same lines. It was 1899, I think.
Obviously, I'm not here and my name is Hughes Mearns.
So, yeah, stuff happens.
HM

 

[ruby sparks]

What would it be like from an evolutionary perspective if we lacked this Cartesian theatre? Would our behavior be any different? Would we fail to pass on our genes, or would different populations pass theirs on who wouldn't have done so?

A very good question. I don't know the answer. I doubt anyone does.

But we could speculate.

There are many species of living things, plants and animals, who almost certainly don't have the experience of a cartesian theatre, so my guess would be yes, our ancestors who probably didn't have it managed to evolve into us and we probably would have carried on, all things being equal, if that particular trait hadn't emerged. Maybe it helped. maybe it was a hindrance. Who knows? I suspect the former though, considering the ways we've managed to outcompete so many species and managed to thrive in so many varied environments.

That said, here, apparently, are the 'Top 10' species, based on longevity, impact on the planet, evolutionary success and geographical spread:

1. Earthworms

2. Algae

3. Cyanobacteria

4. Rhizobia

5. Lactobacillus

6. Homo sapiens

7. Stony corals

8. Yeast

9. Influenza

10. Penicillium

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ea...nd-dinosaurs-in-table-of-top-100-species.html

It must be said the author is not necessarily an expert in the field. He's a historian. But still. Food for thought. I doubt if many of the others apart from homo sapiens experience a cartesian theatre.