Big Think

HerbieP on November 23, 2008, 5:10 AM

And your point is?

Matt Pidlysny on November 23, 2008, 9:33 AM

Herbie: I truly want to give you the benefit of the doubt, because you come off as a professional of sorts. Unfortunately for you, I see a literally elementary understanding of the world (Based on what you taught me in the Sacks thread), regardless of your knowledge compendium. I don’t see you apply it at all and that bothers me.

The point is, you must THINK for yourself on this one.

Spot on November 23, 2008, 4:58 PM

Is it possible to prove that we are not in this dream world? How would we know?

Musycks on November 23, 2008, 6:17 PM

Call it what you like spotmanx, but if it’s the only world we ever experience, then the point is moot. Has anyone been able to verify to a credible degree that they have been ‘outside’ the dream and seen the brain in a jar in Kansas? No. It’s about as likely as Heaven, Hell and any number of useless imaginary constructs. It’s a mind game, and the problem with that is it does some people’s minds no good to speculate on this stuff.

Musycks on November 23, 2008, 10:23 PM

Hi RO, good to see you’re surviving in the jungle up there… just don’t turn into Mel Gibson!!

Spot on November 24, 2008, 1:00 AM

On a similar note, Descartes struggled with another problem. He wondered how we could ever know anything to be irrefutably true. That is, how can know 100% that we are right about something. He developed a method called Methodological Doubt. He would discard anything that could be refuted, including sensory experiences, physical properties, even mathematical truths. Then, he built on innate ideas until he came to an ultimate conclusion. So the question is "We can be absolutely certain we know something on a platonic scale and still be wrong about it. Therefore, is it ever possible to right about anything?

P.S. Thanks everyone for your responses, this is part of philosophy assignment; therefore, the more responses I receive the better it shall turn out.

Musycks on November 24, 2008, 1:12 AM

Hi spotmanx… did Descartes factor in much of a utilitarian viewpoint? I would think the law of probability should play some part… even though we can’t be 100% sure of anything if it’s all subjective, there is enough shared evidence to make our way through the maze of life in a manner that is mostly useful and would sideline his type of esoteric question to the academic margins where all bullshit belongs.
Just as well he never knew about the quantum scale!

Good luck with the assignment by the way ;)

HerbieP on November 24, 2008, 3:55 AM

Spotmanx Descartes’ work and ideas have had almost 400 years of critical philosophical analysis. If you are undertaking a serious assignment there is a wealth of philosophical texts that will serve your purposes better than a a set of responses from random individuals to an over-simplified statement of aspects of Descartes’ work. Unless of course your assignment is is sociological study or PastorJ stops by to write your assignment for you.

Giesela Dohrmann on November 24, 2008, 4:20 AM

yes, spotmanx, – try reading a bit of Kant,Nietzsche or Freud and you have your answer…..

HerbieP on November 24, 2008, 8:47 AM

Sorry Spotmanx perhaps that came across as a little harsh. If you would like a personal non-philosophy academic view of Descartes cogito ergo sum…

Descartes starts his game disingenously because his objective is to prove the existence of god. As such he starts from a dualist perspective. Inherent in Descartes’ problem of verification of the outside world is his assumption that consciousness is a single identifiable entity that is distinct from the world described by sensations.

It is fairly simple to demonstrate that consciousness is no such thing. Here are a number of sallies against the individual ‘self’:

We can perceive things unconsciously that affect our thoughts and yet we are initially unaware of the perception.

When we dream there is often an ‘I’ that is the protagonist of the dream and yet there is another ‘I’ directing and possibly another ‘I’ scripting. We can occasionally distinguish dreams from other ‘realities’ because we can take conscious control and alter the direction or script. There can be a smooth segue from unconscious to conscious control.

We have internal dialogues, who is talking to whom?

We sometimes act (or have thoughts) contrary to our beliefs. For example a person consciously committed to celibacy may have lustful thoughts that he or she condemns himself/herself for. If there is only a single ‘self’ how is it possible to act other than one would wish to?

A simple dualist model does not work. Consciousness is almost certainly an emergent phenomenon that is multi-faceted.

Since Descartes assumes dualism it is not surprising that he has difficulty breaching his axiomatic barrier between self and causal world.

And then we have the problem of the assumption that memory is real…

Musycks on November 24, 2008, 7:17 PM

hey Herbie, leave some room for us amateurs!

HerbieP on November 25, 2008, 1:38 AM

Musycks I’m sure PastorJ would point out that I am very much an amateur philosopher – one course unit in ’76.

Giesela Dohrmann on November 25, 2008, 3:44 AM

if you still looking for an answer to your question, spotmanx, why not make your self familiar with “applied solipsism”,
it can be the answer to everything…..

Musycks on November 26, 2008, 6:24 PM

verisoph… if a solipsist falls in the forest, does anybody hear it? ;)
more importantly, if I whack a solipsist around the ears, does he feel it? and if he does, is that not the demise of his construct?…

Giesela Dohrmann on November 27, 2008, 11:53 PM

well- musycks, yes to the two first questions and as for the 3rd one, how can it be the demise of construct, if everything is just a projection of the solipsis’t mind?
you just cannot argue with a solipsist for, you are an invention of his mind…
( I hope you can see the humor in this…?)

Spot on December 1, 2008, 5:44 PM

Thanks everyone for the responses:

Herbie:
I believe Descartes did not set out originally to prove the existence of God. Rather, he was working on his Method of Doubt and had to find a way around the “Evil Genie” problem. The only solution he could think of was the existence of an infinite perfect being. (though don’t quote me on that, haha)

As for the criticism that we could never know if we lived in a dream world, then hypothesizing about it is useless. I wonder if you feel the same way about asking about the existence of God and/or Heaven.

Verisoph and Musycks:

Solipsism is an interesting idea. There is another interpretation of solipsism in which one believes that he/she is the only thinking being. Therefore, everyone else is just a robot. What happens when you rip that solips head off and reveal to him/her that there is nothing inside other than gears and chips?

Musycks on December 1, 2008, 6:46 PM

spotmanx… heaven and dreams have a lot in common my friend, both are constructs of the mind. Just because humans have an ability to embrace the abstract, that does not make these concepts tangible. People might take the credit for dreams as coming from ‘within’ but seem reluctant to admit the same of god, and insist ‘he’ is ‘without’?
They both belong in the realm of the invisible.

Spot on December 1, 2008, 11:16 PM

I agree with you musyck to a certain extent. I was sitting in class and a funny thought occurred to me. It should elicit a smile from you. What came first the God or the Man?

HerbieP on December 2, 2008, 1:42 AM

spotmanx don’t mistake the order that things are written in for the order that they were concieved. Descartes pretty well had his agenda worked out before he started.

Yes god(s), heaven etc are as usless as hypotheses as the matrix.

Musycks on December 3, 2008, 6:13 PM

hey spotmanx… my first idea on this site was that god was one of the lesser creations of man. Music art and literature are all far superior….
man first… god nowhere.

sciencesaves on December 4, 2008, 8:50 AM

Religion is the perfect mental prison, no need for anything other than a premise, exaggerated claims and false promises.

Why live in a mind-trap?

Wake up, there’s more to life than perpetuating myth for illusions of comfort.

Spot on December 6, 2008, 3:35 PM

Sometimes such questions may seem impossible; however, it could just be the case that we have not yet figured out how to solve them. I think asking these questions serve some sort of purpose even if it is only to stimulate thoughts. That is, its a good thing that we ask these “crazy” questions. Questioning in such as manner keeps us away from dogmatic believes and drives us to find true knowledge. So I’d say keep asking questions even if they seem impossible to answer.

Musycks on December 8, 2008, 6:28 PM

hang in there spotmanx… a curious brain fueled with credible information is a wonderful thing…. keep swingin’!

Nosmo King on January 19, 2009, 11:51 AM

As you may know, Rene Descartes could only accept the notion that he is thinking because in the act of denying his thoughts he would be thinking. This is known as “Cogito, ergo, sum” or , more popularly and incorrectly used, “I think, therefore, I am.”