primus

Almost 400 years ago, Rene Descartes made the famous statement "Cogito ergo sum", or "I think, therefore I am". Several website writers propose "I am thinking, therefore I exist" as a more accurate translation. I prefer the e-prime statement "I think, therefore I exist", or even "I think right now, therefore I exist right now" as a more accurate description of what Rene probably meant.

Nevertheless, when I hear Rene's statement, I ask myself the following questions:

If I stop "thinking", do I stop to "exist"?

Can I "exist" without "thinking"?

Can I "think" without "existing"?

Can "thinking" take place without an entity that "thinks"?

Does "observing" an entity "think" prove the "existence" of the observer, of the observed entity, or both?

If the entity equals the observer, what proves its existence: "observing", or "thinking", or both, or neither?

Interesting questions, and I don't have a definite answer yet. What do you think?

Square

Considering that Rene believed that human mind has no accurate way of defining whether the outside reality truly exists or not, he concentrated on the mind itself as a thing connected with real existence, thus strictly tying thinking and living.

To compare this with one of your questions, it seemed to Descartes that thinking does require an existant thinking entity, and thus, unlike the visions percieved by senses, may really tell of existence of something.

Of course, I only talk about his original conception. The fun part connected with philosophical questions revolves around trying to answer or interpret them in various ways.

EmptyGraves

I conclude that I, as anything more than a bundle of existential experiences of sights, feelings and sounds, don't exist at all. When I felll into unconsciousness when undergoing surgery, and woke up several hours later, I did not sense time, or anything else. Did I stop existing during the sedation, or did I never exist at all, and merely stopped viewing the illusion of existing? No, I haven't smoked anything.

BobHurt

The being you call "I" challenges others to identify him, to differentiate him from a T-bone steak. How shall we achieve such differentiation? Perhaps through his personality.

I notice characteristics in persons that I do not notice in insects, fish, birds, and non-human animals:

• Self-awareness (awareness of awareness)
• Ability to make moral decisions
• Ability to love (to desire to do good to others)
• Ability to communicate thoughts, ideas, and ideals to other persons
• Craving and ability to know God

He who says "I" must have the above characteristics to warrant calling him a person. Practically speaking, "I" equals personhood.

Although we cannot equate personality to identity, personality seems to organize energy and matter in such a way as to produce identity of an energy-matter system.

A person can exist, as can a non-person, but only a person actually persists. In other words, when a person dies, the person does not necessarily die. In even further words, humans, as personal being, can go to heaven, but our four-legged furry buddies, non-persons, cannot.

Thus, you might say that only only persons can exist indefinitely, up to the point of meeting God face-to-face, perhaps, and even way beyond that.

Naturally, persons think. Obiously, both animals and humans possess mind, but unlike humans, animals do not possess the mental capacity for true wisdom (the realm of philosophy), morality, or truth achievement and recognition (the realm religion, the quest for and devotion to supreme values).

How can you characterize the process of thinking? Does it amount to the contemplation of possible actions and consequences, the rights and wrongs of those choices, calculations and reasoning, and so on? Or does it merely consist of dredging pictures up from memory, looking at them, and fitting them together, as in a puzzle? To what extent might animals engage in thinking, and how do animal thoughts differ from human thoughts?

How about babies? Do their memories contain pictures and words, or actions and consequences at birth? Can they think without pictures and words in their memories? When do they start thinking? Do they possess personhood? When do they become persons - before or after birth?

Now if animals do think, do they exist, even though their thoughts differ in nature from human thoughts? Do they exist in some everalasting sense as humans might? Or do they not really exist at all?

jacobs

You sound like an optimist! I noticed some other qualities that I don't see in non-human animals...

• Self-pity (a self-indulgent attitude concerning one's own difficulties)
• Ability to make immoral decisions
• Ability to hate (to desire to do bad to others)
• Ability to manipulate and exploit others through thoughts, ideas, and ideals
• Ability to consider and reject the notion of a "higher being"

How do you know that a person, or personal being, can persist and go to heaven? And why "can" (as opposed to "does")?

Michael

No; existing can take place without thinking, as seen with inanimate objects. However, thinking cannot take place without existing, and so the case that one thinks necessarily implies the case that one exists, by virtue of its dependence on the case that one exists.

See above.

See twice above.

Of course not. An entity that thinks must perform the process of thinking, for only the condition of thinking characterises the entity as an entity that thinks.

The observing proves the existence of the observer if by "observing" one refers to the action of conscious perception. One may say that a plant "observes" the sun, but such an observation relies, not on conscious perception, but on purely mechanical reactions to stimuli.

The observing does not prove the existence of that which appears to think, for one's perception of another thinking does not necessarily imply the case that the object of perception actually thinks.

One cannot observe if one does not think, so both the observing and the thinking prove the existence of the entity as observer, with the former a product of the latter.

Chinmay

Tim Lyons

Perhaps we should distinguish between what we might call "habitual thought" and what we might call "directed thought." If you sit quietly, perhaps following your breath, you will notice that your mind doesn't stop. And when you sleep, the mind seems to go on. From a Buddhist perspective, ego develops largely from habitual mind. You can find the process described more precisely in presentations of the Five Skandhas. Chogyam Trungpa's CUTTING THROUGH SPIRITUAL MATERIALISM has a helpful presentation. So if by "I" Descartes meant "ego; my self-conception," and if by "thought" he meant "habitual thought," we might say that, yes, it seems that ego develops from habitual thought.

On the other hand, some types of directed thought seem to help us to cut through ego, to cut through habit. Of course, some will say that even this "directed thought" arises from habit.

We also might wish to distinguish between "mind" and "conceptual thought." Many Buddhist teachers make this distinction: they say that we can have a mental awareness of things and yet not have concept. So when Descartes says, "I think," does he refer to conceptual processes or to mental processes that don't seem to qualify as conceptual?

"Thinking" seem a high level abstraction. When we use the term, we think (!!) that we know what we mean, but maybe we don't. I can have a habitual mental process, and I can call that "thinking." Or I can analyze that process (as Korzybski apparently advocated), and I can call that "thinking" as well. But they seem different, don't they?