John Page

If
"I think, therefore I am" is a valid statement about reality
then
is "I am my thoughts" a valid statement as to what I am?
and, if so,
How do my thoughts escape me?
How can I be free from my thoughts?

Keith Russell

John, I always viewed cogito ergo sum as "I think, therefore I know I am".

You aren't your thoughts, you are quite a bit more than your thoughts. Our individual consciousnesses are each more than even our conscious thoughts.

But, the only way to know (have awareness of) one's existence, is to have conscious awareness. Before one can 'do' (think), one first has to 'be'.

Thus, if you realize that you are thinking (or walking, or eating, looking, or anything else one might do), one can know that one is.

Keith.

yguy

By seeing that you are caught up in them.

John Page

Thanks - see my questions below to tease out some issues.....

But what is it that "knows"?
Is not consciousness but a collection of self-perceiving, self-aware thought processes? (Therefore I am what's thinking)
Being is thinking. When I am not thinking I am not "being" anymore (dead or asleep). So, one needs to distinguish between materially "being" as in a rock existing and an intelligent being. (No thought, no intelligence).
"Is" what?

Cheers, John

John Page

If this is how I can free myself from my thoughts, I'm still thinking that I can see I was caught up in the thoughts that I had had (ad nauseum).

mhc

On one interpretation (the cogito as a Performative) Descartes' insight was to see that to attempt to deny that one existed is self defeating since the attempt verifies that one exists.
In a sense, you are your thoughts. You cannot imagine not having thoughts, because imagining that state is thought itself, and so the exercise, like Descartes', is self defeating.
Are you asking if the content of our thoughts is the same thing as our character? I dunno, they certainly seem inseparable.

thestickman

From Descartes view I think he thought that you are more than your thoughts, he just said you couldn't be sure what form 'you' really is, just that you are a thinking thing. George Berkeley was one that thought we are basically a collection of ideas, like thoughts.

If I understand the question correctly, according to Descartes you can't. His argument only works given the premise you are thinking, so if you escape your thoughts, my interpretation being that you effectively stop thinking, then you cease to exist.



Is real, and thinks...

I dunno the answer, is this like the chicken and the egg?

-Ryan

T. E. Lords

If one were to stop thinking they would not seize to exist. They may seize to know that they exist but it would have no effect on a third parties perception of their existence.

Would you argue that a person suffering from brain damage and in a “vegetable state” does not exist? Granted they may not exist in the same manor that would exhibit the characteristics commonly attributed with being human but physically they would still be in our collective perception of existence.

thestickman

Speaking in terms of Descartes argument, that is until he starts arguing in terms of a good God, we can only be sure of our own existence, nothing more. Therefore, though we may percieve a 'vegative' person, that has really no substance. If I became brain dead, and I personally don't know if a brain dead person stops thinking, but if they do, and I stopped thinking, in terms of Descartes argument, I would cease to exist. Collective perspective is a sensation, which Descartes says can always be doubted. That is, until he attempts to prove reality in terms of a good God.

-Ryan

NearNihil Experience

check out Hume's Treatise of Human Nature and Inquiry into Human Understanding. Although quite thick, they take over where Descartes and Berekley left off. And of course Kant pretty much says give up on ever answering any of the questions you asked, mostly because your not him and he was way too cool for school...