From: Immanuel Smits <ismits-AT-ardron.com>
Subject: RE: PLC: sets
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 01:04:48 -0500


Friend,

It seems that even solipsism is too good for Descartes.  He cannot
logically move from "there is thinking going on" to "I think."  Or can
he?

i


	-----Original Message-----
	From:	George Trail [SMTP:gtrail-AT-UH.EDU]
	Sent:	Sunday, February 01, 1998 2:21 PM
	To:	phillitcrit-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
	Subject:	Re: PLC: sets

	I think, therefore I am, is an enthememe. Any pronouncement on
the validity
	of an ethememe is dependent upon what is assumed to be the
unspoken second
	premise, without which no assessment of validity can be made.

	Descartes began with the idea that in order to find truth one
had to doubt
	everything (that is, assume nothing) hence the "dubito" precedes
the
	"cogito." Doubting is a kind of thinking. The doubter,
therefore, thinks.
	There can be, it is assumed, no thought without a thinker. The
thinker
	must, then, exist, since an act of thinking is going on in the
process of
	doubting.

	Where the real problem occurs is in the next step in which
Descartes
	proceeds to the assumption that there must be something to
doubt, and that
	there must be a force leading him to do so, which must be Satan,
which
	implies God, and here we are.

	Logically Descartes can move no step beyond the cogito, and is
thus left
	alone in his inescapably solopsistic affirmation of self.

	g


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