Krimel said:
I don't think the cogito moves us anywhere near a subject or objects. I just
used "subject" because the statement contains some "I"s. All it says is that I
know that I exist in virtue of my thoughts. I cannot seriously doubt that I am
having thoughts but that says buttkiss about what thoughts are, where they come
from, what my relationship to them is or anything whatever about the "I" that
is having them. Most of the "problems" associated with Descartes come from his
own elaborations of the cogito and from the elaborations of his commentators.
dmb says:
Well, there is some truth to the idea that subsequent commentators gave shape
to Descartes ideas. But it's also true that Descartes is the father of SOM. In
fact the subjective side of SOM is what we'd call the Cartesian self. For Renee
the mind was an unextented substance and matter was extended substance and the
connection between these two categories is THEE problem of Modern epistemology.
Before Descartes the word "mind" was not used as a noun, was not concieved as a
thing. It was just a verb, as in "mind your manners". William James's ESSAYS ON
RADICAL EMPIRICISM begins with the essay titled "Does Consciousness Exist?". He
answers in the negative. He says that consciousness is not a thing but rather a
function, a verb.
Nietzsche had said the same thing in his own pithy way. He said statements like
"I think" are misleading insofar as the "I" is concieved as the thing that does
the thinking. Compare that statement to statements like "it is raining". Do we
imagine there actually is an "it" that does the raining? No. The rain is all
there is to raining. When thunder rolls there is no thunderer that preforms the
task.
And then there is Pirsig's correction of Descartes. To dispute this correction
is to dispute almost all postmodern thinkers. Not that postmodernist are into
the levels of the MOQ. But it is a widely accepted notion that all ideas grow
out of a cultural context and have meaning by virtue of that context. Explore
the concepts behind "contextualism" and you'll see that for yourself.
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
