About Being Necessary
November 16th, 2008, search relatedRelated posts :: No related posts
William Peck wrote:
>about being necessary: kant is alive to the problem of the scope of
>the necessity operator in the argument. the argument is supposed to
>focus on the claim that necessarily if i think, i am. but if you don’t
>watch it you come out saying that i necessarily think, or even that i
>necessarily am.
Descartes says (after confronting the malicious demon of supreme cunning
and power), “But I do not yet understand well enough what this I is
that, now necessarily, I am”. this seems reasonable to me, Descartes is
clearly referring to his conclusion in the previous sentence where he
decides that the proposition ‘I am’ is necessarily true whenever he
states it or thinks it.
>the shift from “think” to “experience” seems to me a good kantian
>move. but then “think” in descartes has a very wide extension: if i
>think something, that means that something appears to me (to be the
>case).
yes; this is why I say the Experiento (I am experiencing; therefore, I
am) is a better translation of ‘cogito ergo sum’ than the standard ‘I
think therefore I am’. Note that in their translation of the _Principles
of Philosophy_, Anscombe & Geach provide the translation, I experience
therefore I am’; so, my version is not 100% original.
Joe
–
Philosophy is, after all, done ultimately in the first person for the
first person. — H-N Castaneda
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http://what-am-i.net
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