>>24772613
What's the context for this quote?

>>24772792
The dream argument. Early version of the brain in a vat/simulation argument
>>24772613
No.

>>24772792
Fifth Meditation. This specific context is basically:
"Right now I think, therefore I am. Sometimes I don't think of this fact, so I lack this verification. During those times I am prone to being deceived of my existence and its facets. Oh wait, God can do it for me and he surely wouldn't have me be deceived."

>>24772613
No.

>>24772613
It's just a thought experiment that he goes on to reject, anon. Keep reading.

>>24772613
Cartesian circle is anti-gnostic

>God isn't evil because he just isn't ok???
>I know because of my miraculous ability to doubt

>>24772885
You’re lying

>>24772792
He sets up the idea of the evil demon merely to refute it with the solipsistic “god would never deceive me because an all powerful god could never be deceptive.”

>>24772885
The Cartesian circle actually makes sense if you posit thought/ idea as an actually concrete thing which exists outside both Heaven/ God and this physical world. Any idea you have has physical existence within your idea of it (the ex. A Chiliagon has 1,000 sides and it is real yet you can’t physically picture it) so by that logic pure Being must have existence as you you can think of it while not being can’t have existence as you can’t actually think of something that’s non-Being.

I can think of Being and so Being must have real existence in my mind

I can NOT think of something without Being and so Non-Being can’t exist

>>24772885
It is frequently simplified to “god is real because he is perfect and to be perfect is to be real” but I think this is the full argument and that’s just a simplified form of it.

>>24773018
Right, Descartes is a mid-tier philosopher at best. I'm glad you understand this. What's your next move, friendo?
>>24773035
>I can NOT think of something without Being and so Non-Being can’t exist
There is no being without non-being. "Omnis determinatio est negatio". You've fallen right off the wagon, past the early moderns, past the medievals, past most of the Greeks. You're back at Parmenides. Your task in life is now to find a way out of this abyss into which you have cast yourself. Have you ever even thought about what Being is? What determinations can it possibly have? It can't have any, so it is nothing. Your two propositions are directly contradictory.

>>24773035
That's parmenides really but sure read it that way
>>24773040
That's a more classical ontological argument. The cartesian circle is axshually the clear and distinct ideas thing iirc.
>>24772890
Read the thread...

>>24773035
>I can think of something I can't imagine, therefore thought exits in a realm of Pure Being apart from the sensuous world
The absolute state of this board. Read Kant, all of you.

>>24772885
that's not the cartesian circle you fucking imbecile. Proving gods existence needs clear reasoning but we can't be sure if our reasoning is clear unless there is a god to guarantee clear reasoning. That's the cartesian circle

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It is evident from what has been said that the conception of an absolutely necessary being is a mere idea, the objective reality of which is far from being established by the mere fact that it is a need of reason. On the contrary, this idea serves merely to indicate a certain unattainable perfection, and rather limits the operations than, by the presentation of new objects, extends the sphere of the understanding. But a strange anomaly meets us at the very threshold; for the inference from a given existence in general to an absolutely necessary existence seems to be correct and unavoidable, while the conditions of the understanding refuse to aid us in forming any conception of such a being.

Philosophers have always talked of an absolutely necessary being, and have nevertheless declined to take the trouble of conceiving whether—and how—a being of this nature is even cogitable, not to mention that its existence is actually demonstrable. A verbal definition of the conception is certainly easy enough: it is something the non-existence of which is impossible. But does this definition throw any light upon the conditions which render it impossible to cogitate the non-existence of a thing—conditions which we wish to ascertain, that we may discover whether we think anything in the conception of such a being or not? For the mere fact that I throw away, by means of the word unconditioned, all the conditions which the understanding habitually requires in order to regard anything as necessary, is very far from making clear whether by means of the conception of the unconditionally necessary I think of something, or really of nothing at all.

>>24773064
Nay, more, this chance-conception, now become so current, many have endeavoured to explain by examples which seemed to render any inquiries regarding its intelligibility quite needless. Every geometrical proposition—a triangle has three angles—it was said, is absolutely necessary; and thus people talked of an object which lay out of the sphere of our understanding as if it were perfectly plain what the conception of such a being meant.

All the examples adduced have been drawn, without exception, from judgements, and not from things. But the unconditioned necessity of a judgement does not form the absolute necessity of a thing. On the contrary, the absolute necessity of a judgement is only a conditioned necessity of a thing, or of the predicate in a judgement. The proposition above-mentioned does not enounce that three angles necessarily exist, but, upon condition that a triangle exists, three angles must necessarily exist—in it. And thus this logical necessity has been the source of the greatest delusions. Having formed an à priori conception of a thing, the content of which was made to embrace existence, we believed ourselves safe in concluding that, because existence belongs necessarily to the object of the conception (that is, under the condition of my positing this thing as given), the existence of the thing is also posited necessarily, and that it is therefore absolutely necessary—merely because its existence has been cogitated in the conception.

If, in an identical judgement, I annihilate the predicate in thought, and retain the subject, a contradiction is the result; and hence I say, the former belongs necessarily to the latter. But if I suppress both subject and predicate in thought, no contradiction arises; for there is nothing at all, and therefore no means of forming a contradiction. To suppose the existence of a triangle and not that of its three angles, is self-contradictory; but to suppose the non-existence of both triangle and angles is perfectly admissible. And so is it with the conception of an absolutely necessary being. Annihilate its existence in thought, and you annihilate the thing itself with all its predicates; how then can there be any room for contradiction? Externally, there is nothing to give rise to a contradiction, for a thing cannot be necessary externally; nor internally, for, by the annihilation or suppression of the thing itself, its internal properties are also annihilated. God is omnipotent—that is a necessary judgement. His omnipotence cannot be denied, if the existence of a Deity is posited—the existence, that is, of an infinite being, the two conceptions being identical. But when you say, God does not exist, neither omnipotence nor any other predicate is affirmed; they must all disappear with the subject, and in this judgement there cannot exist the least self-contradiction.

>>24773066
You have thus seen that when the predicate of a judgement is annihilated in thought along with the subject, no internal contradiction can arise, be the predicate what it may. There is no possibility of evading the conclusion—you find yourselves compelled to declare: There are certain subjects which cannot be annihilated in thought. But this is nothing more than saying: There exist subjects which are absolutely necessary—the very hypothesis which you are called upon to establish. For I find myself unable to form the slightest conception of a thing which when annihilated in thought with all its predicates, leaves behind a contradiction; and contradiction is the only criterion of impossibility in the sphere of pure à priori conceptions.

Against these general considerations, the justice of which no one can dispute, one argument is adduced, which is regarded as furnishing a satisfactory demonstration from the fact. It is affirmed that there is one and only one conception, in which the non-being or annihilation of the object is self-contradictory, and this is the conception of an ens realissimum. It possesses, you say, all reality, and you feel yourselves justified in admitting the possibility of such a being. (This I am willing to grant for the present, although the existence of a conception which is not self-contradictory is far from being sufficient to prove the possibility of an object.)[67] Now the notion of all reality embraces in it that of existence; the notion of existence lies, therefore, in the conception of this possible thing. If this thing is annihilated in thought, the internal possibility of the thing is also annihilated, which is self-contradictory.

[[67]A conception is always possible, if it is not self-contradictory. This is the logical criterion of possibility, distinguishing the object of such a conception from the nihil negativum. But it may be, notwithstanding, an empty conception, unless the objective reality of this synthesis, but which it is generated, is demonstrated; and a proof of this kind must be based upon principles of possible experience, and not upon the principle of analysis or contradiction. This remark may be serviceable as a warning against concluding, from the possibility of a conception—which is logical—the possibility of a thing—which is real.]]

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>>24773072
I answer: It is absurd to introduce—under whatever term disguised—into the conception of a thing, which is to be cogitated solely in reference to its possibility, the conception of its existence. If this is admitted, you will have apparently gained the day, but in reality have enounced nothing but a mere tautology. I ask, is the proposition, this or that thing (which I am admitting to be possible) exists, an analytical or a synthetical proposition? If the former, there is no addition made to the subject of your thought by the affirmation of its existence; but then the conception in your minds is identical with the thing itself, or you have supposed the existence of a thing to be possible, and then inferred its existence from its internal possibility—which is but a miserable tautology. The word reality in the conception of the thing, and the word existence in the conception of the predicate, will not help you out of the difficulty. For, supposing you were to term all positing of a thing reality, you have thereby posited the thing with all its predicates in the conception of the subject and assumed its actual existence, and this you merely repeat in the predicate. But if you confess, as every reasonable person must, that every existential proposition is synthetical, how can it be maintained that the predicate of existence cannot be denied without contradiction?—a property which is the characteristic of analytical propositions, alone.

I should have a reasonable hope of putting an end for ever to this sophistical mode of argumentation, by a strict definition of the conception of existence, did not my own experience teach me that the illusion arising from our confounding a logical with a real predicate (a predicate which aids in the determination of a thing) resists almost all the endeavours of explanation and illustration. A logical predicate may be what you please, even the subject may be predicated of itself; for logic pays no regard to the content of a judgement. But the determination of a conception is a predicate, which adds to and enlarges the conception. It must not, therefore, be contained in the conception.

>>24773075
Being is evidently not a real predicate, that is, a conception of something which is added to the conception of some other thing. It is merely the positing of a thing, or of certain determinations in it. Logically, it is merely the copula of a judgement. The proposition, God is omnipotent, contains two conceptions, which have a certain object or content; the word is, is no additional predicate—it merely indicates the relation of the predicate to the subject. Now, if I take the subject (God) with all its predicates (omnipotence being one), and say: God is, or, There is a God, I add no new predicate to the conception of God, I merely posit or affirm the existence of the subject with all its predicates—I posit the object in relation to my conception. The content of both is the same; and there is no addition made to the conception, which expresses merely the possibility of the object, by my cogitating the object—in the expression, it is—as absolutely given or existing. Thus the real contains no more than the possible. A hundred real dollars contain no more than a hundred possible dollars. For, as the latter indicate the conception, and the former the object, on the supposition that the content of the former was greater than that of the latter, my conception would not be an expression of the whole object, and would consequently be an inadequate conception of it. But in reckoning my wealth there may be said to be more in a hundred real dollars than in a hundred possible dollars—that is, in the mere conception of them. For the real object—the dollars—is not analytically contained in my conception, but forms a synthetical addition to my conception (which is merely a determination of my mental state), although this objective reality—this existence—apart from my conceptions, does not in the least degree increase the aforesaid hundred dollars.

>>24773079
By whatever and by whatever number of predicates—even to the complete determination of it—I may cogitate a thing, I do not in the least augment the object of my conception by the addition of the statement: This thing exists. Otherwise, not exactly the same, but something more than what was cogitated in my conception, would exist, and I could not affirm that the exact object of my conception had real existence. If I cogitate a thing as containing all modes of reality except one, the mode of reality which is absent is not added to the conception of the thing by the affirmation that the thing exists; on the contrary, the thing exists—if it exist at all—with the same defect as that cogitated in its conception; otherwise not that which was cogitated, but something different, exists. Now, if I cogitate a being as the highest reality, without defect or imperfection, the question still remains—whether this being exists or not? For, although no element is wanting in the possible real content of my conception, there is a defect in its relation to my mental state, that is, I am ignorant whether the cognition of the object indicated by the conception is possible à posteriori. And here the cause of the present difficulty becomes apparent. If the question regarded an object of sense merely, it would be impossible for me to confound the conception with the existence of a thing. For the conception merely enables me to cogitate an object as according with the general conditions of experience; while the existence of the object permits me to cogitate it as contained in the sphere of actual experience. At the same time, this connection with the world of experience does not in the least augment the conception, although a possible perception has been added to the experience of the mind. But if we cogitate existence by the pure category alone, it is not to be wondered at, that we should find ourselves unable to present any criterion sufficient to distinguish it from mere possibility.

>>24773097
Whatever be the content of our conception of an object, it is necessary to go beyond it, if we wish to predicate existence of the object. In the case of sensuous objects, this is attained by their connection according to empirical laws with some one of my perceptions; but there is no means of cognizing the existence of objects of pure thought, because it must be cognized completely à priori. But all our knowledge of existence (be it immediately by perception, or by inferences connecting some object with a perception) belongs entirely to the sphere of experience—which is in perfect unity with itself; and although an existence out of this sphere cannot be absolutely declared to be impossible, it is a hypothesis the truth of which we have no means of ascertaining.

The notion of a Supreme Being is in many respects a highly useful idea; but for the very reason that it is an idea, it is incapable of enlarging our cognition with regard to the existence of things. It is not even sufficient to instruct us as to the possibility of a being which we do not know to exist. The analytical criterion of possibility, which consists in the absence of contradiction in propositions, cannot be denied it. But the connection of real properties in a thing is a synthesis of the possibility of which an à priori judgement cannot be formed, because these realities are not presented to us specifically; and even if this were to happen, a judgement would still be impossible, because the criterion of the possibility of synthetical cognitions must be sought for in the world of experience, to which the object of an idea cannot belong. And thus the celebrated Leibnitz has utterly failed in his attempt to establish upon à priori grounds the possibility of this sublime ideal being.

The celebrated ontological or Cartesian argument for the existence of a Supreme Being is therefore insufficient; and we may as well hope to increase our stock of knowledge by the aid of mere ideas, as the merchant to augment his wealth by the addition of noughts to his cash account. Furthermore, Descartes is a shallow-pate.

>>24773099
>>24773097
>>24773079
>>24773075
>>24773072
>>24773066
>>24773064
What a needlessly complex way to say 'just because you think of something doesn't mean it's real'.

this descartes guy sounds based, I should read him

>>24773050
Kant is just a dogmatist. It's just that his dogmatic assumptions have been popular in modernity. He tries to fix Hume after granting him all his premises, but arguably we ought grant Hume none of his premises.

That aside, when there are so many different, conflicting arguments from introspection or phenomenology, I see no reason why one ought affirm one over any other. Why are Hume and Kant right about the nature of reason and Plato and Augustine wrong? Or why would Husserl or the post-modern phenomenologists be right about experience and Hegel and Plotinus wrong or vice versa?

>>24773642
>Kant was just a dogmatist
This is correct, his successors would agree with you. In this case though his logic is clear and actually nearly the same as Aquinas’ on the same question in st. The idea would be that Kant, in a misguided attempt to “refute” Hume, stumbled on a new way to think about metaphysics. For the rest you’d just have to make your own discoveries. German idealism doesn’t so much refute premodern philosophy as take a different vantage point altogether. You’re conflating many radically different modes of thought. I could make the same rhetorical argument against scholasticism (if it’s true, how come they disagree so much?)

>>24773671
I was thinking primarily of Kant's successors here, particularly Hegel.

It seems to me though that Kant and Hume's legacy haunts modern thought much more than Kant's German successors, except perhaps Nietzsche. In analytic thought, the problems set up by dogmatically assuming the core empiricist presuppositions dominates. In Continental thought, it is more than this position is set up as a foil, found to be untenable, and we get a ~P therefore Q type argument, even though Q hardly appears to be the only other option aside from P.

>I could make the same rhetorical argument against scholasticism (if it’s true, how come they disagree so much?)

That wasn't really what I was thinking of but I think that would be a facile argument. There was obviously far more consensus during the Scholastic period, especially if you cut out the late-Medieval period, and late-antiquity also shows a pattern of strong *convergence*, which is obvious in figures like Boethius', but even in looking at figures like Proclus and Evagrius side by side, or Plotinus and Origen. It's sort of the exact opposite trend from the endless fracturing and multiplicity of modern thought.

Funny enough, a plausible thesis I have seen here is that antique schools worked hard to bring their doctrines somewhat in line with one another and to identify and highlight broad areas of agreement precisely because of the challenges posed by radical skeptics and the way they fractured discourse. Whereas, we seem to be in a place where skepticism is used as a jackhammer to split apart philosophy. Everything must be stripped out of the "web of belief" and rebuilt from scratch in a new "critical" form. But each camp does this differently, hence ever more multiplicity.

I don't fault Kant for thinking that past thought had failed to be critical, but I do fault contemporary thinkers for dogmatically repeating this myth. It seals them off to paths away from skepticism.

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>>24772792
I don't wish to make an exaggerated comment about /lit/ being shit for uneducated anons, but how can you be clueless about Descartes' most famous text? Even Wikipedia philosophers would be aware of the evil demon argument.
I'll give you some slack anon, we all read Descartes at one point in our lives.

>>24773698
In Hegel at least it’s not about annihilating or falsifying crude empiricism but showing that it can’t be ultimate. The worldview of a STEM guy isn’t grossly incorrect so much as incomplete. I think Aristotelians and Thomists more or less say the same thing today, no? The convergence in late Platonism, not trying to argue with your good post, but I always thought of it as sociological in nature. Philosophy in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages was very weak and threatened by anti-rational tendencies in parts of Christianity, so there was pressure to present a united front and synthesize everything from the presocratics to Plotinus. Even then though there were real disagreements, like about theurgy, or the fall of the soul. I think you’ve read more than me or different authors anyway so I can’t say much else, enjoyed your effortpost. Who is your favorite Neoplatonist and why?

>>24773698
>everyone except Nietzsche
>muh scepticism is bad bruh

This is poorest imitation of gamma I've seen in a long time.

>muh like sceptic do be good do but like it gotta be like muh sceptic do it do be frfrfr
>muh dat jackhammering scepticism do be forcing us to think n sheeeit
>muh I ain't got no coherent thought to speak of bruh
>just want me meta and me incoherent nonsense packaged under god bruh

Yeah all those help threads did wonders for you.

>muh like it do be a big relativistic shit

Yeah that's always one type of agreement.

>>24773035
>i can not think of something without being and so non-being can't exist
you can't think of 1 million coins at once so 1 million coins can't exist?

>>24773722
I think that's right, in the West at least, but more so later as the empire collapsed. But the convergence is already underway back when the Christians are still a persecuted minority. Also, this started more in the East, Alexandria being one epicenter, and things were quite a bit different there.

Proclus is probably my favorite (unless we count Christian, Islamic, and Jewish "Neoplatonists). I actually found the Book of Causes first so I am somewhat partial to it still.

Still, I think there is definitely an "inward turn " that helped build consensus as the political situation in the empire got worse and paths to living a careerist life were closed off.

>>24773808
No, you misunderstand that. With the chiliagon he said that you can have something that is impossible to envision but which still exists the same way that intellect and Being exist outside of the physical body- the fact you physically can’t see something or picture it using thought isn’t proof that it doesn’t exist

>>24773808
You can relate that to Being because while you can have a short hand version of what Being is (like an old bearded guy on a cloud wearing a toga) you can’t have an actual distinct and clear idea of it much like with the one thousand sided chiliagon.