Descartes I Think, Therefore I Am Disproven?

[Constantine]

I was told in a thread that shall not be named that Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" position was recently attacked and disproven.

I've done a fair amount of digging around in his collected works and have lots of research done on the question of consciousness. The individual for whatever reason won't give me the source. If this source rings in someone's mind, please tell me.

And no, I'm not a Cartesian. I'm just interested. Hard to extract info out of some people.

[Gary Childress]

That's a good question.

I would think that to "disprove" something is to show that something once thought to be true is shown to be either not true or else not proven.

If "I think therefore I am" is not true or proven to someone, then whoever has "disproven" it perhaps doesn't agree that because he or she "thinks" that she or he "is". Or perhaps he or she disagrees that she or he "thinks"?

Not sure, but I suspect "eliminative materialism" is at work behind the claim that Descartes claim has been disproven. Can't say I hold eliminative materialism as a very ethical position to hold, but maybe that's because I happen to be a thing that also thinks.

[Constantine]

I'm gonna go look up eliminative materialism right now.

[Constantine]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliminative_materialism

Evolution eliminates intentionality

Any naturalistic, purely causal, non-semantic account of content must rely on Darwinian natural selection to build neural states capable of storing unique propositions, as required by folk psychology. Theories that attempt to account for intentionality within materialism face the disjunction problem, which results in the indeterminacy of propositional content. If such theories cannot solve the disjunction problem, then neurons cannot store unique propositions. The only process that can build neural circuits, evolution by natural selection, cannot solve the disjunction problem. The whole point of Darwin's theory is that in the creation of adaptations, nature is not active but passive. What is really going on is environmental filtration—a purely passive and not very discriminating process that prevents most traits below some minimal local threshold from persisting. Natural selection is selection against. Selection for requires foresight, planning, and purpose. Darwin's achievement was to show that the appearance of purpose belies the reality of purposeless, unforesighted, unplanned, mindless causation. All adaptation requires is selection against. That was Darwin's point. But the combination of blind variation and selection against is not possible without disjunctive outcomes.

Natural selection cannot discriminate between coextensive properties. To see how Darwinian selection against works in a real case, consider two distinct gene products, one of which is neutral or even harmful to an organism and the other of which is beneficial, that are coded for by adjacent genes on the chromosomes. This is the phenomenon of genetic linkage. The traits that the genes coded for will be coextensive in a population because the gene-types are coextensive in that population. Mendelian assortment and segregation do not break up these packages of genes with any efficiency. Only crossover, the breaking up and faulty re-annealing of chromosomal strings or similar processes, can do this. As Darwin realized, no process producing variants in nature picks up on future usefulness, convenience, need, or adaptational value. The only thing evolution (natural selection-against) can do about the free-riding maladaptive or neutral trait, whose genes are riding along close to the genes for an adaptive trait, is wait around for the genetic material to be broken at just the right place, between the genes. Once this happens, Darwinian processes can begin to tell the difference between them. But only when environmental vicissitudes break up the DNA on which the two adjacent genes sit can selection against get started—if one of the two proteins is harmful.[42][43]

Darwinian theory's disjunction problem is that the process Darwin discovered cannot tell the difference between these two genes or their traits until crossover breaks the linkage between one gene, which is going to increase its frequency, and the other, which is going to decrease its frequency. If they are never separated, it will remain blind to their differences forever. What is worse, and more likely, one gene sequence can code for a favorable trait—a protein required for survival—while part of the same sequence can code for a maladaptive trait—some gene product that reduces fitness. Natural selection will have an even harder time discriminating between these two traits. Since evolution cannot solve the disjunction problem, the right conclusion for the materialist is to accept eliminativism by denying that neural states have as their informational content specific, particular, determinate statements that attribute non-disjunctive properties and relations to non-disjunctive subjects.

This doesn't really disprove Descartes position, as Descartes merely made a statement knowing this was all that was necessary to know he existed. He had plenty of other things within the mind to take as further proof. A simple dualistic approach aligns the darwinian perspective with Descartes quite nicely.

Eliminative Materialism seems more wish fulfillment and a religion than anything. A future messianic knowledge base will come that will free us of folk belief. Time will tell. I think better money is on Jesus and Muhammad and Buddha riding in on a horse first than disproving love or my big toe doesn't exist.

[Iwannaplato]

I was told in a thread that shall not be named that Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" position was recently attacked and disproven.

I've done a fair amount of digging around in his collected works and have lots of research done on the question of consciousness. The individual for whatever reason won't give me the source. If this source rings in someone's mind, please tell me.

And no, I'm not a Cartesian. I'm just interested. Hard to extract info out of some people.

There are arguments against the cogito, but it hasn't been disproven. Proofs are for math and symbolic logic. There are some good arguments against it or saying that it is weaker than it might seem at first glance. I looked at the other thread and while both of you were confusing at times, he was a pest and calling you asking for a source for the debunking a cop out was very silly.

The first main problem with the cogito is that just because there is thinking or really cognition going on it doesn't mean there is an 'I' for example. There could just be this phenomenon. This experiencing, which either persists through some time or doesn't.

[Constantine]

I agree there isn't always a basis for a I, but there is always a basis for a I when you deduce that. I'm not saying program a simple Lambda Calculus program to blurt that statement out is consciousness.... but if you can arrive at that conclusion with a sense of awareness having never been programmed to do so, then it is valid.

There does appear to be a great deal of consciousness that proceeds conscious awareness. Fighter pilots are cued into this. Snipers. Strategists. Ancient pythagoreans studying light patterns in the eyes. You don't have to have a sense of self for that, but you do need a reactive awareness and save for the bottom most lowest tier of phenomenology a point of orientation to observe from. But this doesn't require language skills and thus not Descartes. But that doesn't disprove him either.

[Gary Childress]

I was told in a thread that shall not be named that Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" position was recently attacked and disproven.

I've done a fair amount of digging around in his collected works and have lots of research done on the question of consciousness. The individual for whatever reason won't give me the source. If this source rings in someone's mind, please tell me.

And no, I'm not a Cartesian. I'm just interested. Hard to extract info out of some people.

There are arguments against the cogito, but it hasn't been disproven. Proofs are for math and symbolic logic. There are some good arguments against it or saying that it is weaker than it might seem at first glance. I looked at the other thread and while both of you were confusing at times, he was a pest and calling you asking for a source for the debunking a cop out was very silly.

The first main problem with the cogito is that just because there is thinking or really cognition going on it doesn't mean there is an 'I' for example. There could just be this phenomenon. This experiencing, which either persists through some time or doesn't.

How can there not be an "I". Are you at this instant in which you are typing, not conscious? While I admit you could be an AI chatbot for all I know, I can attest to the fact that I exist at this moment, and that I am having what we conscious beings refer to as "thoughts".

[Constantine]

I can't figure out how to post images yet, but say you are able to see hynagogic hallucinations, such as colorful static in your eyes when closed or sometimes open. About 40% of the population can. That's 60% who can't. That static is a precursor for imagination. The human mind can manipulate it into shapes and things. It turns into the sleeping dream state.

At the most basic this static has a 0-1 duality. It can be 0-0, 0-1, or 1-1, for any two points side by side.... just like the static on a old analog TV set. Any two points side by side two any two points can likewise have this byte rule at times.

If you are a primitive organism, say a early worm in the Cambrian Era, a distant ancestor of ours, or a frog, that's essentially how you see. A frog will pick up a trajectory of something moving across the static doing a systematic flipping of the binary code, and snap its tongue out to grab it.

How self aware is a frog? How many species rear their young, and of the ones who sorta do, how many aren't prone to cannibalizing their young? Not many. Most are abandoned. They have a sense of observation and of pain and fear, for they leap the fuck away when I approach them.... but I doubt they have a deep sense of self. I have my doubts many are philosophers. A mole.... perhaps. A bird perhaps. A worm.... fuck no.

[Impenitent]

I have always argued that the cogito amounts to the subject does something therefore the subject exists... it is circular...

Nietzsche had some arguments against it as well...

an article by Jonas Monte illustrates Nietzsche's positions:

https://aporia.byu.edu/pdfs/monte-Sum_ergo_cogito.pdf

-Imp

[Gary Childress]

I have always argued that the cogito amounts to the subject does something therefore the subject exists... it is circular...

Nietzsche had some arguments against it as well...

an article by Jonas Monte illustrates Nietzsche's positions:

https://aporia.byu.edu/pdfs/monte-Sum_ergo_cogito.pdf

-Imp

From the quoted article:

Thus, Descartes does not call into doubt the conceptualization of thinking, existence, consciousness,
and so on.

I'm not sure what that means. As far as I'm aware, Descartes wanted to find a foundation based on something which he could not possibly doubt. That was the whole impetus of his meditations, the reason he undertook them. He was unsettled by all the uncertainty that was afflicting Europe at the time. So having a great interest in mathematics, he decided to try to see if he could build certainty in a Euclidean manner using a first axiom. He searched his thoughts for something that he could not even possibly doubt. He found that no matter how he approached it, he thought and because he thought, he must also be for if he were not, then he could not have thoughts. How one defines something like "existence", "substance" "consciousness" etc is open for much debate, however, in its simplest form Descartes hit the one rock he couldn't break with doubt. He exists (or at least existed).

Of course, now he's stuck with the possibility of solipsism. He went on to "prove" that God exists and that God is not a deceiver and that he can therefore trust the clear and distinct ideas in his mind, such as found in maths and science, etc.

Whether he succeeded in getting out of the Cogito is subject to much debate, however, I will say, one probably cannot be an ethical agent in the world if one does not believe others exist in the same way as oneself. Therefore, I find it pragmatically impossible (even potentially unethical) to dwell only in the Cogito and be of the mind that no other being around us who is like us feels pain or joy or suffers or anything else as we do.

[Age]

I was told in a thread that shall not be named that Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" position was recently attacked and disproven.

I've done a fair amount of digging around in his collected works and have lots of research done on the question of consciousness. The individual for whatever reason won't give me the source. If this source rings in someone's mind, please tell me.

And no, I'm not a Cartesian. I'm just interested. Hard to extract info out of some people.

Yes it is.

WHY will you NOT tell us in which thread that the CLAIM above appeared in?

We will now SEE just how hard it is to EXTRACT some information, out of some people.

[Constantine]

Because I'm nice.

Some people don't know how to debate, and it was apparently really, really, really, really, really important I lose. So I agreed to lose, but I really wanted his tangential mention of Descartes being proved wrong to materialize given it is a area I work on.

If I give the link, it will spoil his victory. It meant alot to him.

[Gary Childress]

Because I'm nice.

Have you ever been mean to anyone?

[Constantine]

Yes.

[Gary Childress]

Yes.

And they deserved it, I suppose?