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If you add enough "necessary axioms", you can end up believing whatever made them necessary. Hence religion, a flat earth supported on turtles, and other kinds of foolishness.Better to start with observations.
The only thing we can be sure of is our own existence.
Any reasoning must start somewhere, which is the basic assumption.
That's why this assumption is necessary.
Quote from: Halc on 19/11/2021 23:09:32Which is sort of like asking if 3+5 is actually equal to 8, or only if 3 and 5 exist.I think this is a false equivalence. Can those numbers have subjective experience?
Which is sort of like asking if 3+5 is actually equal to 8, or only if 3 and 5 exist.
You can't be aware of your own existence while not existing.
Is it possible for anything to be conscious while not exist?
If it’s an assumption, then it must be because it cannot be demonstrated. So how can you be so sure of something for which there is no empirical evidence, necessitating this assumption?
I never said anything about 3+5 having subjective experience. I said that their property of existence or lack of it has no bearing on whether their sum is 8 or not. That’s the premise that I hold, because I cannot prove or disprove it.
Perhaps it would be best to actually give your definition of existence, to prevent us from talking past each other. It’s so important in topics like this, but is typically omitted by the naive poster. My own definition is doubtless quite different from yours, but I’m not using my definition, only guessing at yours.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/existDefinition of existintransitive verb1a: to have real being whether material or spiritual//did unicorns exist//the largest galaxy known to existb: to have being in a specified place or with respect to understood limitations or conditions//strange ideas existed in his mind2: to continue to be//racism still exists in society
You assume that your current model of reality is the most correct one.
What if we are in a simulation
Quote from: hamdani yusuf on 20/11/2021 03:32:56You assume that your current model of reality is the most correct one. Until proven otherwise by observation. It's what distinguishes scientists from believers.
Cogito ergo sum is necessarily true because it's negation leads to contradiction.
Quote from: Halc on 20/11/2021 19:41:06I never said anything about 3+5 having subjective experience. I said that their property of existence or lack of it has no bearing on whether their sum is 8 or not. That’s the premise that I hold, because I cannot prove or disprove it.A conscious agent can only be sure about its own existence. It can't be sure about the consciousness of other things. It It can only conclude about them through observations, which may or may not be correct. Someone seeing a marionette in action may think that it's conscious.
Quote from: Halc on 20/11/2021 19:41:06Perhaps it would be best to actually give your definition of existence, to prevent us from talking past each other. It’s so important in topics like this, but is typically omitted by the naive poster. My own definition is doubtless quite different from yours, but I’m not using my definition, only guessing at yours.Quotehttps://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/exist1a: to have real being whether material or spiritual//did unicorns exist//the largest galaxy known to existb: to have being in a specified place or with respect to understood limitations or conditions//strange ideas existed in his mindThinking alone can only guarantee the existence in definition #1b. The conscious agent can turn out to be a brain in a vat or a computer simulation.For definition #1a, especially the material portion, more evidences are required to demonstrate that the agent exists in objective reality. The conclusion can be made as a Bayesian inference.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/exist1a: to have real being whether material or spiritual//did unicorns exist//the largest galaxy known to existb: to have being in a specified place or with respect to understood limitations or conditions//strange ideas existed in his mind
but the thing I'm not allowed to discuss is causing a lot of harm.
If that were true, it wouldn’t need to be an assumption, so you’re contradicting yourself yet again. Kindly show (without begging any other assertions) how its negation (I think and not I am) leads to a contradiction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito,_ergo_sumThe Latin cogito, ergo sum,(a) usually translated into English as "I think, therefore I am",(b) is a philosophical statement that was made by René Descartes. The phrase originally appeared in French as je pense, donc je suis in his 1637 Discourse on the Method, so as to reach a wider audience than Latin would have allowed.[1] It appeared in Latin in his later Principles of Philosophy, and a similar phrase also featured prominently in his Meditations on First Philosophy. The dictum is also sometimes referred to as the cogito.[2] As Descartes explained it, "we cannot doubt of our existence while we doubt." A fuller version, articulated by Antoine Léonard Thomas, aptly captures Descartes' intent: dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum ("I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am").[c][d]Descartes's statement became a fundamental element of Western philosophy, as it purported to provide a certain foundation for knowledge in the face of radical doubt. While other knowledge could be a figment of imagination, deception, or mistake, Descartes asserted that the very act of doubting one's own existence served—at minimum—as proof of the reality of one's own mind; there must be a thinking entity—in this case the self—for there to be a thought.One common critique of the dictum, first suggested by Pierre Gassendi, is that it presupposes that there is an "I" which must be doing the thinking. According to this line of criticism, the most that Descartes was entitled to say was that "thinking is occurring", not that "I am thinking".[3]While we thus reject all of which we can entertain the smallest doubt, and even imagine that it is false, we easily indeed suppose that there is neither God, nor sky, nor bodies, and that we ourselves even have neither hands nor feet, nor, finally, a body; but we cannot in the same way suppose that we are not while we doubt of the truth of these things; for there is a repugnance in conceiving that what thinks does not exist at the very time when it thinks. Accordingly, the knowledge, I think, therefore I am,[e] is the first and most certain that occurs to one who philosophizes orderly.[p]
Does the property of existence or lack of it have any bearing on whether the sum of 3+5 is 8 or not.
Quote from: alancalverd on Yesterday at 16:35:44Quotebut the thing I'm not allowed to discuss is causing a lot of harm.You can discuss it all you want in relevant topics. Don't derail unrelated ones.
They are fully defined in "elementary"* arithmetic, but cardinal numbers are essentially adjectives, not nouns, so "existence" is not a required quality for them to be useful.
Quote from: wikiAs Descartes explained it, "we cannot doubt of our existence while we doubt."
As Descartes explained it, "we cannot doubt of our existence while we doubt."
A fuller version, articulated by Antoine Léonard Thomas, aptly captures Descartes' intent: dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum ("I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am").…One common critique of the dictum, first suggested by Pierre Gassendi, is that it presupposes that there is an "I" which must be doing the thinking.
Quote from: Halc on 21/11/2021 17:10:44Does the property of existence or lack of it have any bearing on whether the sum of 3+5 is 8 or not.Evaluating the sum 3+5=8 requires ...
Online dictionaries say that they are nouns. Did they make a common mistake?
Do you doubt your own existence?
Quote from: hamdani yusuf on 20/11/2021 20:56:56Cogito ergo sum is necessarily true because it's negation leads to contradiction.Kindly show (without begging any other assertions) how its negation (I think and not I am) leads to a contradiction.
I also don’t think that this was his base assertion, since as I recall it was something more along the lines of “there is doubt, therefore there is something to instantiate the doubt”, and only later on was the “I” concluded and Descartes makes his famous ‘cogito ergo sum’ conclusion. I could be wrong, but a base premise rarely has a 'therefore' in it.Point is that if ‘there is thinking’ as metaphysical axiom (as opposed to the everyday language definition that you are using), then he’s alreaady begging his conclusion. I do not accept the bold statement above if the metaphysical existence of the doubt is exactly what is in question. That would be completely fallacious reasoning.
Accordingly, seeing that our senses sometimes deceive us, I was willing to suppose that there existed nothing really such as they presented to us; And because some men err in reasoning, and fall into Paralogisms, even on the simplest matters of Geometry, I, convinced that I was as open to error as any other, rejected as false all the reasonings I had hitherto taken for Demonstrations; And finally, when I considered that the very same thoughts (presentations) which we experience when awake may also be experienced when we are asleep, while there is at that time not one of them true, I supposed that all the objects (presentations) that had ever entered into my mind when awake, had in them no more truth than the illusions of my dreams. But immediately upon this I observed that, whilst I thus wished to think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should be something; And as I observed that this truth, I think, therefore I am,[e] was so certain and of such evidence that no ground of doubt, however extravagant, could be alleged by the Sceptics capable of shaking it, I concluded that I might, without scruple, accept it as the first principle of the philosophy of which I was in search.[h]
The word "number" is a noun, but that's not the point! "Color" is a noun, but "blue" (or any color) is an adjective.