Cogito, ergo sum
(if you have no interest in philosophy, thought, or humanity, please bugger off and let me be. Otherwise: comments not only welcome, but sought)
I have a bundle of thoughts I need out of my head, and this is the handiest medium at the moment.
Descartes talks a lot of crap. Spinoza better, but apparently equally dim. Roll back to Aristotle, Plato and Socrates, and we have arrived at the culprits of this continued idiocy.....
I recently read 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'. I had the feeling of an epiphany when finishing reading it, but I couldn't reach where the epiphany was going. It was like some part of me was having the realisation, but wasn't letting my conciousness in to the party.....
I tried Sophie's World several years ago (twas a gift from a friend), but gave up after 20-30 pages. I'm not sure why.
I started it again this afternoon, and am about 50% done. It's a brief run-down of the history of philosophy. I'm sure it gets more detailed later, but right now I'm confused.
Not about the book. I'm quite clear on that. I would like to meet Descartes and punch him in the mouth for not only spouting such drivel, but for molding the thought of so many centuaries after. I mean, how *dare* he.....
I'm not ambivalent, in that I'm not stuck between two choices.
I mean I *confused*. I'm in the process of dumping dialectics, but I don't know what I'm adopting instead. I recognise that dialectics are a tool. But it's not the *only* tool. Something I have only come to realise recently. Zen opened my eyes on that.
Zen spoke in favour of the Sophists, philosophers around at the time of Socrates/Plato. Theirs was a philosophy that existed alongside Socratic method, that was in direct opposition and competition to it.
Socrates: everything can be known. There is an ultimate Truth.
Sophism: nothing can be known, you have only opinions.
Socrates and everyone after him chased that ultimate truth. They have waffled on about A Priori knowledge (knowledge that you are born with, essentially, knowledge without experience), and the soul, and how the senses can be trusted, or cannot be trusted, and that truth can only be reached by Reason alone.
Bunk, I say. Bullsh!t.
Sophism, to the best of my knowledge, said that there are no ultimate answers. No Natural Right/Wrong. That Right and Wrong are defined by society, not by God, or Nature, or Genetics.
Socratic thought won that. The Sophists were banished/killed/silenced/I don't know exactly.
But I *do* know that the following 2500 years of Law, Philosophy, Relegion, and Culture have all been predicated on, and driven by, the core concept that there is a Divine Right/Wrong. That *everyone* knows the difference between Right and Wrong. That to do Wrong is Sin, and You Should Know Better.
And that's my fscking epiphany right there...... (I *knew* I needed to write this out)
Cogito, Ergo Sum. I think, therefore I am.
Descartes, idiot-boy. Sh!t-for-brains. Mr. "Hey, let's reason it all out".
Reason this out:
"I think" is an assumption. Not a *fact*. It is an *opinion*. "Therefor I am" is a conclusion based on an empirically unprovable assumption. Therefore: Unacceptable.
In short: fsck you Descartes.
I am going to the library next week. I am inhaling their philosophy section. They better have *something* on Sophism. Or I may break. My mind is currently flapping loose, and I need something to tether it.....
[Edit: so several years have passed, and I'm now in Vancouver, Canada, finishing a BA in Philosophy. It's the 13th of June, 2010, right now.
This post is mostly ignorant nonsense. I'm glad that exposure to Philosophy all those years ago got me interested in the topic (even if vehemently against), but the notions expressed in this post are painfully, embarrassingly wrong. I'm not deleting this post. A guy's gotta have some record of his prior errors, or the mind will paper over them and pretend that they don't exist.
To clarify one point in here, in case people read it and thing my reasoning is sound.
The point of Descartes's "I am thinking, therefore I am existing" is to say the following:
Right now, I can hear thoughts (ostensibly mine). I am thinking.
But perhaps I am not thinking: this is doubt. Doubt is, itself, a form of thinking. So regardless of whether I am positively thinking (i.e. asserting ideas) or negatively thinking (criticizing those ideas), I am still thinking.
And if I am thinking, then something (not necessarily human, or anything that I can conceive of) is *doing* the thinking.
Therefore something must exist, even if we know nothing about it beyond "it is a thinking thing".
That is the Cogito, and it's rock solid. A lot of other stuff that Descartes stuff is nonsense, but that particular piece of philosophy is fantastic.]