Posted by alexandra_k on May 10, 2005, at 18:26:39
In reply to Re: and the key to my depression as well » alexandra_k, posted by sunny10 on May 10, 2005, at 8:37:18
> I think, therefore I am.
> I think I am a useless piece of sh*t (because it is all I was taught when I was a child and I cannot seem to re-train my brain), therefore I am a piece of sh*t...Oh, no no no.
Your argument goes like this:
P1) I think I am a worthless piece of sh*t.
P2) Whatever I think is the case (ie - that I am a worthless piece of sh*t) actually is the case (in external reality).
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C) I am a worthless piece of sh*t in reality.You didn't state the second premiss (P2) explicitly - but that is required in order for the argument to be valid. But the problem with making that premiss explicit is that P2) is false - and so in virtue of that we don't have good reason to believe C - even if P1 is true.
Basically the problem is that you can't infer from the way things seem to you (P1) to the way things actually are in mind-independent reality (c) (assuming that there is such a thing as mind-independent reality).
What Descartes showed us is that if things seem a certain way to you then it just has to be true that they do in fact seem that way to you. But that is a truth about your experiences. If you have certain experiences then it is indubitibly true that you are in fact haveing those experinces.
But as soon as you make some kind of claim about the way the mind independent world is or has to be on the basis of your experinces then there is room for doubt to creep in. Because you cannot know anything beyond the contents of your mind. You cannot know that there is an external world that causes your experiences, you cannot know that your experinces are an accurate representation of reality even assuming that there is an external world.
What 'I think, therefore I am' shows us about your 'I am a worthless piece of sh*t' example is that if you think you are a worthless piece of sh*t then it is impossible to doubt that you think you are a worthless piece of sh*t. It is indubitable (impossible to doubt) that you are in actual fact having the experiences that you are in actual fact having. That is a tautology (fairly much saying the same thing twice).
P1) I think I am a worthless piece of sh*t.
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C) It is certain that I actually do think I am a worthless piece of sh*t.This argument is valid because IF P1) is true then C) JUST HAS TO BE true. If P1) is true and C) was false then one would end up in a contradiction (which just is an impossible state of affairs). But you only end up in a contradiction becaue you are fairly much saying the same thing twice...
So.Just because you think you are a worthless piece of sh*t does not at all mean that you actually are a worthless piece of sh*t. Even if we assume you have a body ;-)
All that follows from the fact that you think you are a worthless piece of sh*t is that it is certain that you do in fact think that you are a worthless piece of sh*t.
All by itself that is fairly uninformative...
But it teaches us a lot about the limits of certainty etc etc.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:494272
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20050503/msgs/496158.html