I think, therefore I am.

[jimhelm]

True or False?

[skysidhe]

False.

It is not proof of life.

[GunMaster357]

Don't know. I need to think about it.




There a lot of people out there who don't think at all but they do exist if only to make you mad.

[glatt]

Yes. Of course it's true.

[DanaC]

For there to be a thought there has to be an I.

[Pete Zicato]

Establishment:
Of course you are, my bright little star...
I've miles and miles of files
Pretty files of your forefather's fruit
And now to suit our great computer
You're magnetic ink!

[Happy Monkey]

True, but nothing else can be derived from it.

[jimhelm]

from this book

The seventeenthcentury
philosopher Descartes, regarded as the
founder of modern philosophy, gave expression to this primary error with his
famous dictum (which he saw as primary truth): “I think, therefore I am.”
This was the answer he found to the question “Is there anything I can know
with absolute certainty?” He realized that the fact that he was always
thinking was beyond doubt, and so he equated thinking with Being, that is to
say, identity – I am – with thinking. Instead of the ultimate truth, he had
found the root of the ego, but he didn't know that.
It took almost three hundred years before another famous philosopher
saw something in that statement that Descartes, as well as everybody else,
had overlooked. His name was JeanPaul
Sartre. He looked at Descartes's
statement “I think, therefore I am” very deeply and suddenly realized, in his
own words, “The consciousness that says 'I am' is not the consciousness that
thinks.” What did he mean by that? When you are aware that you are
thinking, that awareness is not part of thinking. It is a different dimension of
consciousness. And it is that awareness that says “I am.” If there were
nothing but thought in you, you wouldn't even know you are thinking. You
would be like a dreamer who doesn't know he is dreaming. You would be as
identified with every thought as the dreamer is with every image in the
dream.

[skysidhe]

I do not have to be in a state of 'thinkingness' to know I exist.

If you hit your thumb with a hammer, it hurts like hell. The fact that it hurts like hell tells you, you are quite alive and I bet there isn't any philosophical pondering over it either.

[Pico and ME]

Yeah, but, you are thinking 'that effin hurts like hell!!!!'.

[jimhelm]

I just think the distinction between the thinker and the thoughts is interesting.

[classicman]

You gotta elaborate Jim - It seems pretty straightforward that for there to be a thought there must, therefore, be a thinker.

[jimhelm]

yes, but thought is not required for existence to be real.

So, while it is true that you must exist in order to think, the thought is not proof of existence. You can exist ...in fact you DO, separately from your thoughts. You can observe the fact that you are 'thinking'... and doing so is a thought in itself... but ....

Sometimes, I think of it like a book with words on the pages. You are the book and the pages. The thoughts are the words.

[classicman]

I don't smoke anymore, so ....

[jimhelm]

laf