This is a static copy of In the Rose Garden, which existed as the center of the western Utena fandom for years. Enjoy. :)

#1 | Back to Top03-02-2011 04:04:38 PM

tuomastahti
Banned
From: Finland / NSK
Registered: 08-29-2010
Posts: 40
Website

Can we prove our own existence?

In 1637 René Descartes published the famous deduction "I think, therefore I am", also known as "Cogito ergo sum". Descartes claimed that even if our senses can trick us and even if we can't prove the existence of our physical body, we know at the very least that our mind is real; otherwise we wouldn't be able to have thoughts. However, his conclusion is based on the rules of logic. Descartes assumed that thinking requires presence.

Throughout his career Descartes hypothesized that there might be an object (perhaps we could even call it a "creature") that places false thoughts in one's mind. For example, we think that 2+2=4 but according to Descartes there is a theoretical possibility that 2+2=5 and we just don't realize it.

Seems like Descartes took a shortcut with the problem of the existence of mind. Like I said, he based his idea on the rules of commonly "known" logic. Those rules are descriptive, not prescriptive. We are using them because they seem to work in the universe that we observe with our senses. What if we observed the world differently, for example on quantum level? Would we have different logic rules in our mind? Do we know for sure that the logic that we use (and Descartes used) has no mistakes? And if our logic isn't completely reliable, how can we prove our own existence? I have been thinking about this for a while now but so far I haven't been able to leave the doubt behind.

If we follow the way of thinking that Descartes used, we could formalize the question like this: Is there a theoretical possibility that some object or false postulate makes it seem self-evident that thinking requires the presence of the thinker, while this requirement doesn't actually exist?

Moreover, if our logic fails, it is a disaster for the traditional continental rationalism.

Can a human individual prove his/her own existence (to himself/herself)? Any ideas? Please answer me if you exist.

Offline

 

#2 | Back to Top03-02-2011 04:27:53 PM

satyreyes
no, definitely no cons
From: New Orleans, Louisiana
Registered: 10-16-2006
Posts: 10328
Website

Re: Can we prove our own existence?

I exist, but I can't prove it.  emot-keke

I agree with you: if we adopt an attitude of radical doubt, to the extent that we even doubt that two plus two is four, then we should also doubt that whatever logic underlies "cogito, ergo sum" is true.  It sounds true that if there's a thought then there must be a thinker, but a lot of things sound true, and if we're doubting everything then we have to doubt our own logic too.  For that matter, maybe we're deceived that there's a thought in the first place.  Or maybe there is a mind doing the thinking, but it's not my mind.  We're not the first to make these criticisms of Descartes, by the way; we're preceded by philosophical luminaries including Soren Kierkegaard and Immanuel Kant.  I don't move in philosophical circles, but I expect in any given group of philosophers you could get a number to agree with you that "cogito, ergo sum" is not a logical proof if we begin from the position of radical doubt.

That said, based on what I do understand of my favorite branch of philosophy -- the philosophy of science -- it's out of fashion these days anyway to argue that anything can be known with perfect certainty.  All logic begins with premises, including but not limited to the premise that logic works.  You can't prove those premises without resorting to other premises, and so on back.  We have to start by making some set of assumptions that we agree are true without needing to prove them.  "I exist" may not be a proposition I can prove, but it's as good a place as any to start, since if I don't exist then I might as well not bother talking about philosophy.  emot-keke

Offline

 

#3 | Back to Top03-02-2011 08:11:27 PM

OnlyInThisLight
KING OF ALL DUCKS
Registered: 01-15-2008
Posts: 4412

Re: Can we prove our own existence?

I don't believe it's the thought, however, that matters, its that there is something or someone there to assert it.  If that creature puts that thought into your head, hell, the fact that you've been tricked into thinking proves you exist, don't it?

I always wondered if we existed in dreamless sleep.  How would one know?

Also, of le course, I agree with everything Sat said.  Just wanted to say something and be popular.  etc-saiowank

Offline

 

#4 | Back to Top03-02-2011 09:17:45 PM

Stormcrow
Magical Flying Moron
From: Los Angeles
Registered: 04-24-2007
Posts: 5971
Website

Re: Can we prove our own existence?

Actually, from a logical point of view, cogito is gibberish. The conclusion he's attempting to prove is his own existence. So what does he present as evidence? That HE is thinking. Which already assumes the conclusion he's trying to prove. I don't know the latin name for that fallacy off the top of my head.

As for proving our own existence, there's two ways to look at it. Either the proof is vacuous, because while Descartes' statement is bad logic, it's also intuitively as obvious as anything can possibly be, or such proof is impossible, because from the standpoint of radical doubt, no evidence that would support such a claim can be accepted as valid. You have to decide whether you accept the claim or not based on your own feelings on the matter, it's a question like whether god exists. It can't be proven or refuted.


"The devil want me as is, but god he want more."
-Truck North
Honorary Hat Mafia Member

Offline

 

#5 | Back to Top03-02-2011 09:41:42 PM

Syora
Presidential Accoster
From: Under Northern Lights
Registered: 06-07-2009
Posts: 1866

Re: Can we prove our own existence?

I have never been well-versed in philosophy. But I have to ask, why is this question even important? How is it relevant to anything aside from being an exercise in logic?

Offline

 

#6 | Back to Top03-02-2011 10:17:28 PM

OnlyInThisLight
KING OF ALL DUCKS
Registered: 01-15-2008
Posts: 4412

Re: Can we prove our own existence?

Syora wrote:

I have never been well-versed in philosophy. But I have to ask, why is this question even important? How is it relevant to anything aside from being an exercise in logic?

Not much other than as an exercise in logic for some - turning these questions in one's head and with others helps one take a more critical and in-depth look at topics such as belief and truth, which can be extended to areas such as ethics and morality.  For the religious, existential debates hold even more weight. 

As for me, I like philosophy, as in reading it.  Debating it is certainty my weakness, since I never end up satisfied with one viewpoint or philosopher enough to back it with any real gusto or knowledge, yet am not confident enough to propose any theories of my own.

Well, I do find Alan Watts rather nifty.  He doesn't (at least from what I have read) seem to pay much attention to matters of existence (saying any arguments trying to discover God or truth are confounded by our language contexts -as soon as we name God we lose the essence of what God is, so on, so on; basically agnosticism) or ethics, but more like a way to look at and envision the world in way that brings a person happiness.  His book The Wisdom of Insecurity has helped me loads with my depression.

Last edited by OnlyInThisLight (03-02-2011 10:17:55 PM)

Offline

 

#7 | Back to Top03-02-2011 10:19:59 PM

satyreyes
no, definitely no cons
From: New Orleans, Louisiana
Registered: 10-16-2006
Posts: 10328
Website

Re: Can we prove our own existence?

Syora wrote:

I have never been well-versed in philosophy. But I have to ask, why is this question even important? How is it relevant to anything aside from being an exercise in logic?

That's a good question.  To what OITL said, I would add that it was important to Descartes because Descartes thought that he could use it to establish that anything "self-evident" is true, including the existence of God.  This turned out, generously, to not be a very productive exercise.  To average people today, it's important for navel-gazing types who genuinely wonder whether they exist or not.  I think it's fairly obvious that I exist, and I will go out on a limb and conjecture that you exist as well, but not everyone is happy to leave it stand.  People who enjoy honestly debating whether they exist are called philosophers. emot-smile

Offline

 

#8 | Back to Top03-03-2011 01:23:11 AM

Almaser
Qualified Duellist
From: Brisbane
Registered: 10-16-2006
Posts: 727

Re: Can we prove our own existence?

So, um, warning: I just finished a degree in philosophy. THIS THREAD IS LIKE CANDY TO ME poptart

Stormcrow wrote:

Actually, from a logical point of view, cogito is gibberish. The conclusion he's attempting to prove is his own existence. So what does he present as evidence? That HE is thinking. Which already assumes the conclusion he's trying to prove. I don't know the latin name for that fallacy off the top of my head.

This point gets brought up a lot, but there is an intriguing counter-point: Descartes phrases it not so much that he himself IS thinking, but rather that, given the method of doubt he sets up, the very act of doubting any sort of reality points towards the existence of a thinking self that does the doubting/is persuaded of the dubious nature of perceptions/has those perceptions. It's certainly very circular in its way, and I agree with tuomastahti that it's actually taking a bit of a shortcut but it's not that terrible an argument given his premises (though he presents it in an absolutely rubbish manner).

Syora wrote:

But I have to ask, why is this question even important? How is it relevant to anything aside from being an exercise in logic?

Like a lot of big philosophical questions, it's only relevant to the extent that the person being asked finds it interesting. If you're not troubled by the thought of being unable to be certain of your existence, then the question appears quite lifeless and uninteresting. If, on the other hand, you've got some qualms about how "real" reality is, that sort of question can tantalise and tease your mind like nothing else. There's definitely no hard and fast rule that any philosophical question should or shouldn't interest anyone - for example, I am bored stiff by the Sorites Paradox despite liking paradoxes and logic in general, and that's just how it is for me.
Also, some of the assumptions about our own existence, if turned upside down, would make it very hard for many philosophers to have their theories retain coherence. So, there's probably a little bit of personal-pride motivation for some to have a good answer to that question. emot-wink

tuomastahti wrote:

And if our logic isn't completely reliable, how can we prove our own existence?

This is the meatiest question ever and oh my do I want to sink my teeth in! emot-biggrin

I think you definitely have an excellent point on the problem of having assumed that thinking requires presence. It's entirely possible that all of our thoughts and experiences could occur independently without some being existing to have them. We could very well not exist in any real sense at all, and be deceived into even thinking we exist. It would be a tangled, strange metaphysics you'd have to build to explain that kind of result, but I don't see a reason for it not to be achievable.

Personally, I've always approached the problem of existence from a more empirical, metaphysically-disinterested position: if all of our perceptions are up to be doubted, then our conclusions about those doubts, being informed by those perceptions, are also equally suspect. We can't be absolutely certain that we don't exist, and in fact any conclusion we make that says we don't is just as questionable as one that says we does. Even doubt must be doubted if we're to go about doubting properly. (Try saying that ten times fast!)

At the same time, we always seem to have access to our current mental states, including perception, knowledge, memory, and imagination, and they comprise the limits of our experience. Even if we don't exist (and we should doubt any conclusion that says we definitely don't), we still perceive ourselves as experiencing these perceptions. Though the conclusions we reach about our existence are all suspect, we're still having all of this experiences that suggest a physical reality whose existence is assured. These perceptions, which may be illusions and also may not be illusions, don't ever seem to present us with the data that we need to judge definitively that we do or do not exist in a real sense. But we always have the image of the physical/real presenting itself to us, and without any clear indicators as to its truth or falsity, we can only accept it as something we are experiencing. Even if what "we" are is something we don't have the full story of, we still have enough to suggest that acting in the world is something that we can do.

TL;DR - There's no proof one way or another, so taking the world as it presents itself and accepting the unknowability of its reality is probably the best way to roll?

(I am way out of practice and also bombed out from a long day at work. I apologise for all gaping logical holes)

Offline

 

#9 | Back to Top03-03-2011 02:06:01 AM

satyreyes
no, definitely no cons
From: New Orleans, Louisiana
Registered: 10-16-2006
Posts: 10328
Website

Re: Can we prove our own existence?

Almaser wrote:

At the same time, we always seem to have access to our current mental states, including perception, knowledge, memory, and imagination, and they comprise the limits of our experience. Even if we don't exist (and we should doubt any conclusion that says we definitely don't), we still perceive ourselves as experiencing these perceptions. Though the conclusions we reach about our existence are all suspect, we're still having all of this experiences that suggest a physical reality whose existence is assured. These perceptions, which may be illusions and also may not be illusions, don't ever seem to present us with the data that we need to judge definitively that we do or do not exist in a real sense. But we always have the image of the physical/real presenting itself to us, and without any clear indicators as to its truth or falsity, we can only accept it as something we are experiencing. Even if what "we" are is something we don't have the full story of, we still have enough to suggest that acting in the world is something that we can do.

This way of putting it -- based on the repeated human experience -- is nicely parallel to the ideas in the philosophy of science.  Science is based on inductive reasoning.  We've dropped the rock a thousand times, a million times, and it has always fallen.  And it turns out that the time it takes to fall depends on its height according to an equation I can write on one line.  Now, this consistency certainly could be an illusion.  I can't prove that the rock will always fall in the future.  Maybe it's sheer coincidence that the rock has always fallen.  Maybe God guides the rock that way because it pleases him for now, or maybe a demon tricks our memories into believing that the rock has always fallen, or maybe the Flying Spaghetti Monster is messing with our measurements via His Noodly Appendages.  I can't prove that any of those things isn't true.  But I'm nonetheless pretty sure that this rock will fall when I drop it under ordinary conditions.  I'm sure enough to call it a law. 

Later it turns out that if I drop the rock at a Lagrange point between the Earth and the Moon, it doesn't fall.  But there's a new equation that I can still write on one line that predicts which way the rock will fall and how fast based on the rock's location between the Earth and the Moon.  My original law was inconsistent, but it was inconsistent in a consistent way.  Either God/Satan/FSM/coincidence is really good at doing math on the fly, or there's some kind of larger natural law at work.  Either of those things might be true, but, well -- the "law" has always worked so far, we observe celestial phenomena like planets orbiting a star that make sense in light of the "law," we even build rockets that rely on the "law" and they work too... it's easiest to say "it's a law."  And we do.  We are always open to revising our understanding later, if more data comes in, perhaps under unusual conditions we hadn't ever gotten to observe before.  And we often have to do that.  But so far it's always turned out that through research, curiosity, and the occasional bout of genius, we can make sense of everything we've seen in terms of laws that have always worked.  If it's always happened before, it will most likely happen again, and that's the philosophy of science in a nutshell.  emot-smile

Offline

 

#10 | Back to Top03-03-2011 03:46:03 AM

Almaser
Qualified Duellist
From: Brisbane
Registered: 10-16-2006
Posts: 727

Re: Can we prove our own existence?

And the best thing about that is, satyr, is that the philosophy of science descends directly from Hume's work on the problem of induction, in which he took on Descartes' notions of self and the limits of a rational basis for believing in our own existence! school-sherlock And Hume was the one who inspired my take on things, so basically all these ideas tie neatly to one another emot-biggrin That is one of the things I love about questions like this - they always end up being connected to a whole bunch of other considerations.

Offline

 

#11 | Back to Top03-03-2011 09:03:44 AM

Hiraku
Easter Elf #40
From: Singapore
Registered: 02-21-2007
Posts: 6342
Website

Re: Can we prove our own existence?

Science is philosophy after all. Beginning with the ancient Greeks discussing how the universe is organized by the Demiurge. Wasn't until some point after the Cartesian that scientists started dropping "God" out of the equation.

Now looking back, it seems that humans have been searching for the answer to the same question they've been asking over 5000 years ago. I wonder what new things we will discover about the universe that may revolutionize our thoughts in this era.

Back to "existence", I'm actually curious, not necessarily about whether we exist or not, but if there is "more" of us out there that we weren't able to perceive with our 5 senses. I'm not in the math department, but I read Sphereland/Flatland. And, it got me wondering for a while, 2D being in the 3D world, and 3D in the 4D world, how can I extend my existence into the 5th, 6th, nth dimension?

Offline

 

#12 | Back to Top03-03-2011 09:38:15 AM

tuomastahti
Banned
From: Finland / NSK
Registered: 08-29-2010
Posts: 40
Website

Re: Can we prove our own existence?

Thank you very much for your reply, Almaser.

Almaser wrote:

At the same time, we always seem to have access to our current mental states, including perception, knowledge, memory, and imagination, and they comprise the limits of our experience.

This part made me think about what Socrates said: "I know that I know nothing." Isn't there a possibility that we actually do know something but we just don't remember it at the moment? Of course we could logically say that if we have forgotten something even temporarily, then we don't know it anymore, but we had assumed that logic can't always be trusted. Therefore, wouldn't the saying of Socrates be better in this form: "It seems that I know nothing." This may also be a bit problematic, but is there any better way to put it?

By the way, you were right when you said that "that sort of question can tantalise and tease your mind like nothing else".
All day long I think of things but (so far) nothing seems to satisfy.

Offline

 

#13 | Back to Top03-03-2011 02:27:38 PM

satyreyes
no, definitely no cons
From: New Orleans, Louisiana
Registered: 10-16-2006
Posts: 10328
Website

Re: Can we prove our own existence?

The irony of Socrates saying he "knows that he knows nothing" is that Socrates, by Plato's report in Meno, actually believed that some things can be known for certain.  Socrates thought that before our births, our immortal souls mix with the ideal forms of all true knowledge, and our souls still remember this knowledge even if our minds do not.  Per Socrates, there's no such thing as learning something you don't already know, only remembering what your soul already knew.  To me this is a bit on the silly side, a distinction without a difference, but to Socrates, it meant that knowledge -- once recollected and understood -- was certain and "tethered" to eternal and immortal truths (about topics ranging from mathematics to social justice).  Given that he said in the Apology that he knew nothing, it's a little strange to find Socrates advocating for true and certain knowledge, isn't it?

Offline

 

#14 | Back to Top03-03-2011 09:02:15 PM

Hiraku
Easter Elf #40
From: Singapore
Registered: 02-21-2007
Posts: 6342
Website

Re: Can we prove our own existence?

Maybe knowledge isn't something for individuals to own, as it is something pre-established out there. Maybe it's like the Allegory of the Cave? Where there ARE ideal images of things out there, but we can only make less than ideal imitations of the true knowledge, so in a sense, we have yet to own any of the truth out there unless we venture out of the cave.

Offline

 

#15 | Back to Top03-06-2011 05:37:21 PM

Lightice
Azure Paleontologist
From: Finland
Registered: 10-21-2006
Posts: 1255

Re: Can we prove our own existence?

satyreyes wrote:

The irony of Socrates saying he "knows that he knows nothing" is that Socrates, by Plato's report in Meno, actually believed that some things can be known for certain.  Socrates thought that before our births, our immortal souls mix with the ideal forms of all true knowledge, and our souls still remember this knowledge even if our minds do not.

I'm fairly sure that these were Plato's thoughts, not Socrates's. Ofcourse we can't know for certain, since almost everything we know about Socrates comes from Plato's writings, but the "world of ideas"-concept is usually attributed to Plato.


Hei! Aa-Shanta 'Nygh!

Offline

 

#16 | Back to Top03-06-2011 06:40:42 PM

satyreyes
no, definitely no cons
From: New Orleans, Louisiana
Registered: 10-16-2006
Posts: 10328
Website

Re: Can we prove our own existence?

Lightice wrote:

I'm fairly sure that these were Plato's thoughts, not Socrates's. Ofcourse we can't know for certain, since almost everything we know about Socrates comes from Plato's writings, but the "world of ideas"-concept is usually attributed to Plato.

That always bugged me when I was reading the Socratic dialogues emot-smile  I wanted to know how much of them was actual Socrates, and how much of them was Plato using Socrates as a sock puppet.  I think that's probably why I liked Aristophanes' "The Clouds" so much; I finally got a perspective on what kind of guy Socrates was from someone other than his reverent student!  emot-biggrin

Offline

 

Board footer

Powered by PunBB 1.2.23
© Copyright 2002–2008 PunBB
Forum styled and maintained by Giovanna and Yasha
Return to Empty Movement