Descartes says that you cannot completely convince yourself you don't exist, or, you can't truly doubt your existence. I disagree. I think that you can doubt your existence by assuming that the part of you that thinks is motivated by some other being of whom you are only part, and as such, you don't exist in the way necessary for you to be able not to doubt it. That is, the fact that you supposedly could not naturally doubt some level of existence is only a necessary fiction created by the entity which controlls you, akin to a dream of that entity.
Or, again, your existence may be a fiction entered into wholly by an entity other than yourself only periodically, or only for a limited amount of time, again like a dream, only with the distinction that the entity inhabits your exact existential position or context in such a way as to be deceived into thinking that your supposed existence is its own existence, which, like waking from a dream, it will later view as false (but will be unable to doubt till that time [the span of your "existence"]). The basis for the problem is, then, the inexact nature of existence within time, and the corollary, the inexact nature of the knowledge of the continuity of existence.
I just thought I should put that out there, in case I start acting strange, or any of you do, or any of you disappear, or I die or seem to die. Also, maybe I'm actually an angel, or one of you is!
posted by will keillor @ Tuesday, January 31, 2006
2 Comments:
Aren't all of those examples simply cases in which one has a misconception about the details of one's existence? We all be in a lot of hot water if our existence were predicated on have an acurate conception of what that existence entails.
JK
Very good, at least the first part. The second would require serious thought, but superficially I suppose you have a point.
But I suppose I ought to try to respond. I believe it would be possible to adaquately respond, but it might require editing the original material, which would then bring us into a discussion which could go on quite a long time. So I won't even try to do that. I'll just try to save face a little.
The essence of my response, such as it is, is that the context is Descartes' Meditations. I believe that following the tack I did in my post, one could arrive at questions surpassing the "details" of existence. Hold on, looking back, I believe that, convincing yourself that you don't exist as you think you exist, that is, that you do not know anything about the details of your existence, would be tantamount to discrediting the idea of specific existence, and would leave you only with the idea that something could exist, based upon the fact that "I think." This would not enable the second part of the phrase: "therefore I am." Why? because "I am" require some level of self-knowlege to create the possibility of individuality. There is a difference beyond mere details in "...therefore I am" and "...therefore something is." But this is admittedly rather weak.
Furthermore, all I am claiming is that you can doubt your existence, which I think my subsequent example allows. Therefore, while it may be true that all I am doing is dealing with the details of existence, if those details, or more accurately, if any details at all, are necessary for the belief in existence, then, by eliminating the possibility of any firm details, I have suceeded in theoretically convincing myself I do not exist.
Lastly, within the context of Descartes, I believe my argument is as strong as those he provides against the physical world, which he is ready to dismiss as a delusion. One could make a similar dismissal to yours of mine concerning the arguments presented by him. You see, it's the fact that I am thinking within a particular context that allows you to make me look like an ass.
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