Can you doubt you exist

@Jessica phil,

Jessica wrote:

Can we doubt we exist?

Of course. But I wouldn't think of doing so.

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@Jessica phil,

Jessica wrote:

Can we doubt we exist?

Do you?

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@Jessica phil,

Sure, we can, and should, doubt everything. Self doubt is a valuable tool - Descartes famously began with self doubt to arrive at his "I think, therefore I am".

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@Jessica phil,

Quote:

Sure, we can, and should, doubt everything. Self doubt is a valuable tool - Descartes famously began with self doubt to arrive at his "I think, therefore I am".

I could be wrong, but didn't Descartes doubt everything but his existence?

Quote from the Second Meditation (Paragraph 25 in my book): "... was I not then likewise persuaded that I did not exist? Not at all; of a surety I myself did exist since I persuaded myself of something [or merely because I thought of something]."

I believe he was able to doubt everything EXCEPT that he existed.

1 Reply

@de Silentio,

de Silentio wrote:

I could be wrong, but didn't Descartes doubt everything but his existence?

He didn't doubt that he was thinking, and therein concluded that he existed. Existence was predicated on thinking. He also did not doubt the existence of God.

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@Jessica phil,

I'd say yes. IMO un-checked doubt can never be satisfied. If I allow myself to doubt my reasoning abilities, Descartes' argument stops working. So even with a question with such an obvious answer, there's no way to "prove" anything.

Some people might not agree with my conclusion. But even so, if the question is "can I doubt that I exist?", I would personally say: Yes, because I have... And IMO it was one of the more important dead-ends I've gone down in my intellectual journeys.

(I have a longer explanation of my thoughts here: http://www.philosophyforum.com/forum/epistemology/658-proof-existence.html)

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@Didymos Thomas,

Didymos Thomas wrote:

Sure, we can, and should, doubt everything. Self doubt is a valuable tool - Descartes famously began with self doubt to arrive at his "I think, therefore I am".

I didn't think that "self-doubt" meant doubting that one exists. Did you?

1 Reply

@NeitherExtreme,

NeitherExtreme wrote:

I'd say yes.

Some people might not agree with my conclusion. But even so, if the question is "can I doubt that I exist?", I would personally say: Yes, because I have... And IMO it was one of the more important dead-ends I've gone down in my intellectual journeys.

(I have a longer explanation of my thoughts here: http://www.philosophyforum.com/forum/epistemology/658-proof-existence.html)

I don't think that Descartes thought it was impossible to say to oneself, "I doubt I exist". After all, people can say all kinds of outlandish things. I think that what Descartes was asking was whether is was rationally possible to doubt one's own existence. And, Descartes answer was, of course, that is wasn't on the ground that to do so was self-refuting, since one could not doubt one's own existence without existing in the first place (as one cannot do anything at all without existing in the first place).

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@NeitherExtreme,

NeitherExtreme wrote:

If I allow myself to doubt my reasoning abilities, Descartes' argument stops working.

I've always seen Descartes' cogito as a sort of romanticized notion of the thinking self, but I don't see any reason why it must be regarded as an unquestioned philosophical truth.

I mean, what's wrong with the obverse philosophical presupposition I am, therefore I think?

In fact, there is a conundrum buried within I think, therefore I am. That is, you can think without being self-aware at times, and you can live without self-conscious thought. Think about daydreaming, or dreaming while asleep, or that kind of dissociative state you can enter when driving and you kind of zone out. Does that mean you don't exist in moments that lack self-awareness?

To rephrase the cogito in my own conception of it, more accurate is to say I know that I think, therefore I know I am a thinking being -- but as far as I can tell that is the only philosophically necessary subtext of the cogito.

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@Aedes,

Just to get weird for a moment... Would it be possible that "I", in reality, am a computer/machine/puppet type thing and that I don't actually do my thinking or choosing? Could I be some sort of trick or illusion without a rational existence? (even if I have some sort of physical existence)

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@Jessica phil,

I've always thought you were... Wink

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@Jessica phil,

I guess that settles it then... Very Happy

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@Jessica phil,

But couldn't something like "pure thought" exist? (For example, in a "thought generator" created/evolved far in our future?) And if this unembodied thought nonetheless possessed an internally-conceptualized self-concept, of a singular identity or "I", which did not in fact point to something actually existing, then the "pure thought" would be wrong in that case.

To make this clear, we must understand that the human brain harbors internally-represented concepts, some of which point to things that actually exist -- like the plants and animals and world around us -- and some of which point to things that do not actually exist -- like Santa Claus, Fairies, Unicorns, etc.

One's self-concept in some cases is accurate -- if I consider I am a mortal human being, etc. -- and in some cases not accurate -- if I consider I am a god, or an android, or an alien in human skin, etc.

So, if "pure thought" existed, without an actual self or unique "I" -- then the "pure thought" would merely be thought itself, and therefore "I exist" would be incorrect, while "thought exists" would be correct. That is, "I think" is begging the question by attributing existing thought to an "I" or self. So, if thought exists, how does that thought know that an "I" exists, and that the thought belongs solely to this "I"?
And, it is begging the question to claim that "I doubt my own existence" since, again, the "I" is assumed to exist, then it is concluded from that that "I must exist to doubt". To avoid that logical fallacy, this must be worded, "Doubt exists about that 'I' which is assumed to originate these thoughts", and so on.

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@Jessica phil,

But even those things that do not exist, and are imagined like Santa Claus, are composed of things that do exist.

1 Reply

@Aedes,

Aedes wrote:

I mean, what's wrong with the obverse philosophical presupposition I am, therefore I think?

In fact, there is a conundrum buried within I think, therefore I am. That is, you can think without being self-aware at times, and you can live without self-conscious thought. Think about daydreaming, or dreaming while asleep, or that kind of dissociative state you can enter when driving and you kind of zone out. Does that mean you don't exist in moments that lack self-awareness?

To rephrase the cogito in my own conception of it, more accurate is to say I know that I think, therefore I know I am a thinking being -- but as far as I can tell that is the only philosophically necessary subtext of the cogito.

N

I mean, what's wrong with the obverse philosophical presupposition I am, therefore I think?

Well, because tables and chairs are (exist) but they do not think. All thinking things exist; but many which exist do not think. (Actually, Everything that exists, thinks, is the converse, not the obverse of, everything that thinks exists).

"I think therefore I am" does not seem to mean that I am self-aware. Why should it? It just means that if I do anything, then I exist. For example, it is also true that if I take a walk, then I exist. Isn't it. After all, could I take a walk and not exist? So it has nothing to do with being self-aware.

1 Reply

@kennethamy,

kennethamy wrote:

I mean, what's wrong with the obverse philosophical presupposition I am, therefore I think?

Well, because tables and chairs are (exist) but they do not think. All thinking things exist; but many which exist do not think. (Actually, Everything that exists, thinks, is the converse, not the obverse of, everything that thinks exists).

Thinking REQUIRES existence.

Existence does not automatically create thought, but there can be no thought without existence a priori.

Quote:

"I think therefore I am" does not seem to mean that I am self-aware. Why should it? It just means that if I do anything, then I exist. For example, it is also true that if I take a walk, then I exist. Isn't it. After all, could I take a walk and not exist? So it has nothing to do with being self-aware.

That doesn't really reflect Descartes' argument, though... I'm pretty sure that Descartes didn't even use the phrase "I think therefore I am (or cogito ergo sum) " in his Meditations, where the argument is actually expounded -- he used it in his earlier Discourse on Method, in which the argument is not really articulated.

So I think you need to look at the argument and not the famous phrase. Because the argument Descartes offers is NOT "if I do anything, then I exist". His argument is that his thought is the ONE thing that he can NEVER DOUBT -- and because there is one thing beyond all doubt THEN he can conclude that he must exist.

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@Didymos Thomas,

Didymos Thomas wrote:

Sure, we can, and should, doubt everything. Self doubt is a valuable tool - Descartes famously began with self doubt to arrive at his "I think, therefore I am".

To expand from Thomas' response towards the initial topic of the thread,

I think a more appropriate saying of Descartes' which is much lesser known is "I doubt therefore I am."

Absolutely we can doubt we exist. But it is precisely because we do doubt that we must exist. Doubt is a symptom of consciousness.

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@Didymos Thomas,

Didymos Thomas wrote:

But even those things that do not exist, and are imagined like Santa Claus, are composed of things that do exist.

I don't think there are any things that do not exist. So I do not see how things that do not exist can be composed of anything.

Perhaps you have in mind not things that do not exist (since, as I pointed out, there are none) but the concepts or the ideas of Santa Claus, or of mermaids, or of, as another example, centaurs. The idea of a centaur can be said to be composed of the ideas of a man's head conjoined to a horse's body. But, since there are no centaurs, there are no men's head conjoined to the bodies of horses.

It is important to keep separate the idea of something from the something itself. Ideas of centaurs there are. But centaurs there are none.

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@Jessica phil,

Jessica wrote:

Can we doubt we exist?

The question is ambiguous. It may mean, can we doubt that we exist? Or it can mean, can we rationally doubt that we exist? Descartes himself pointed out that a madman can doubt anything he pleases to doubt. So, a madman can certainly doubt that he exists. But it is a very different question whether a person can rationally doubt that he exists. And, to that, Descartes (of course) answered, no. His argument was that it was self-refuting to doubt whether one exists, because in order to doubt (or do anything at all, for that matter) one has to exist. So, by doubting that you exist, you show that that you do exist.

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Can you doubt you exist

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