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    The Cartesian move from 'I think' to 'I am' is no longer ... — Carmelics
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
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    Home/Skepticism
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    The Cartesian move from 'I think' to 'I am' is no longer available to modern thought.

    Consciousness & Mind
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.The content of a person's reality—living, working, speaking—always exceeds what can be captured by a merely thinking self.
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    • 2.Conversely, if 'I' denotes only a conscious being, then that 'I' fails to encompass most of what the self-in-the-world actually is.
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    • 3.Thought cannot be separated from the empirical and historical unthought that constitutes who we are.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Descartes' cogito does not assert that thought exhausts the self, but only that thinking entails existence as a minimal, indubitable fact.
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    • 2.Foucault's objection conflates the epistemic scope of the cogito with an ontological claim Descartes never made about the full content of the self.
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    • 3.Even under historicist accounts of subjectivity, the reflexive act of doubting still logically presupposes a subject who doubts, preserving the inferential core of the cogito.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Husserl's transcendental phenomenology demonstrates that the move from 'I think' to 'I am' survives the reduction precisely because it operates at the level of pure intentional structure, not empirical content.
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    • 2.Foucault's counter-argument targets only the empirical-psychological reading of the cogito, leaving the transcendental version, defended by Husserl and Sartre, largely untouched.
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    Topics

    SkepticismConsciousness & Mind

    Connections

    2 topics

    Personal Identity2 linkedTruth & Knowledge1 linked

    Related

    Conversely, if 'I' denotes only a conscious being, then that 'I' fails to encomp...Descartes' cogito does not assert that thought exhausts the self, but only that ...Even under historicist accounts of subjectivity, the reflexive act of doubting s...Foucault's counter-argument targets only the empirical-psychological reading of ...
    +4 moreShow less
    Foucault's objection conflates the epistemic scope of the cogito with an ontolog...Husserl's transcendental phenomenology demonstrates that the move from 'I think'...The content of a person's reality—living, working, speaking—always exceeds what ...

    Similar

    Therefore the 'I am' must be re-grounded in a way that does not presup...78%Therefore, no one can be in genuine doubt concerning the proposition '...76%If the proposition 'A is A' were not given, one could never affirm the...75%Reasoning 'I will continue to exist because I am now thinking' fails, ...74%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: foucault
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    It might seem that Husserl’s phenomenology has carried out the Kantian project of synthesizing man as object and as subject by radicalizing the Cartesian project; that is, by grounding our knowledge of empirical truths in the transcendental subject. The problem, however, is that, as Foucault sees it, the modern notion of man excludes Descartes’ idea of the cogito as a “sovereign transparency” of pure consciousness. Foucault’s key claim in the dense chapter 9, “Man and his doubles,” is that thoug
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Thought cannot be separated from the empirical and historical unthought that con...
    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit