NationStates Jolt Archive

Ok, I want to hear some interesting ways in which we might deny the sceptical conclusions, such as that we're all brains in vats, or that there is an evil demon deceiving us all. Can we put an end to their doubts?

Cogito, ergo sum. Simple enough.

i don't deny those possibilities. i simply don't care. whether or not they are true will not impact how i am living my life, so it doesn't matter to me.

Cogito, ergo sum. Simple enough.

Well what exactly does this establish? I don't think that Descartes' certainty amounts to very much. It simply shows that one sort of statement follows from another, rather than proving that he actually knows anything. To say "I exist" is not a statement of necessary truth but like most other statements is capable of being true or false, since we are contingent. Yet, if the statement is expressed, it is necessarily true, since a person who claims existence is bound to be correct. But this statement doesn't tell you anything about yourself. Existence, unlike Descartes seems to assume is not a property or predicate, which something can either have or lack. To assert that I exist is not to attribute myself the quality of existence, but to say that there is an x in the world, such that statement "i am x" is true. Statements such as " i exist" have nothing to say beyond what is implied in the fact that they have a reference.

Ok, I want to hear some interesting ways in which we might deny the sceptical conclusions, such as that we're all brains in vats, or that there is an evil demon deceiving us all. Can we put an end to their doubts?

Oh that's easy ... car battery, jumper cables, testicles ... you fill in the rest.

i don't deny those possibilities. i simply don't care. whether or not they are true will not impact how i am living my life, so it doesn't matter to me.

Will it not impact the way you live your life if life is ultimately meaningless? If there is no point to your life, then you could do anything. There would be no constraint on you to do good or bad.

Cogito, ergo sum. Simple enough.

Nah: that is making unwarrented assumptions, the most that can be said is
cogitatum est - there is thinking. Even if one does go so far as to believe in the cogito, then all that the self can be identified as is a 'thinking thing', which leaves the old spectre of the deceiving demon/brain in vat looming large.

Oh that's easy ... car battery, jumper cables, testicles ... you fill in the rest.

Eh?

Eh?
Put them together, my friend. Together they are strong.