> [Krimel] > The cogito is a simple statement: "I think therefore, I am." In formulating > it Descartes was seeking an answer to skeptics. I would not deny that 17th > century French culture influenced him in this effort and that Descartes is a > product of 17th century culture; but I don't think it is at all accurate to > say that the cogito rests on the assumptions of 17th century French culture. > In fact Descartes' aim was to construct a statement that would hold true > regardless of the assumptions one has or the culture one participates in. > Nor is the statement's validity altered in any way by the MoQ.
[Magnus] Let me ask you this then. *If* the levels were discrete and dependent, would you agree that the Descarte statement would be changed into what I said yesterday? [Krimel] Levels are conceptual structure much like what Piaget and other cognitive psychologists call schema. These are structures of thought that help us organize and interpret the information we as sentient beings are bathed in. As noted above I think these conceptual structures are fractal and as Piaget said we construct them by assimilating new information that fits into them or accommodating them to handle new data that doesn't fit. (the platypus is a classic example of accommodation) These conceptual schema are illusions. They are particular ways that we have of organizing the world. The outstanding quality of human beings is our ability to construct these schema and to shift between and among them. Which is to say our ability to take different points of view. [Magnus] I think (I (subject), experience the ideas (object) in my brain) therefore I exist in the same stack in which my physical brain resides. Because ideas are intellectual patterns and all patterns are dependent on lower level patterns. [Krimel] No. The cogito only provides certainty as to your own existence. It tells you nothing about the nature of that existence nor about the existence of anything else. It doesn't tell you anything about a brain or about levels or patterns. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
