behind door number one
“I am thinking therefore I exist” is probably a better translation of what Descartes said, (http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/bshp/beaney/teaching/emp/descarte/cogito.htm ). There are two primary cruxes in this statement that need to be addressed, the concept of “I” and in turn what does it mean to “exist”.
First let’s to try to get a grip on this “I”, “me”, “self” thang.
Hume did a pretty good job on summing up the “I” when he took ‘Cogito Ergo Sum’ to the extreme and boxed it up in solipsism; basically the idea that all you can ever really know is your own thoughts which can be considered the “I”; thoughts = something semantically referred to as “I”.
Number two, Exist or in other words ‘to have actual being or be real’ is another story and frankly requires a leap of faith or more practically know these days as a kind of ‘leap of phenomenology’, (
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/#1). ‘To exist’ is equal to ‘something real’ which is how I define myself based on the world around me which is something that can NOT be proven to exist because it is after all only thought; I know, a bit circular to say the least, (thanks NateTG).
So, have faith in anything, the physical laws of the universe as you and I know them, faith in rain, in the blue collar, the right wing, the Buddha, pencils, flying pigs etcetera. In other words it’s a kind of create your own existence gig.
So to answer the question, neither Descartes discourses nor the simple statement in the sentence I am writing at this moment prove that you exist when defined as above.
Discourse I:
When there is enough universal energy vibrating with a particular force it creates a critical mass where/when consciousness takes form. Why the particular energy mass you and I experience fragmented into a bunch of “I(s)” is most likely something ‘I or you/you or I’ will never know until ‘our or the’ energy state changes. After all, wasn’t it a fairly respected shared energy fragment that once said “an organism can never be defined by itself but only by a higher organism”. Or to rephrase in slightly more hippy terms “an energy consciousness can never be defined by itself but only by a different energy consciousness”. ??
That said, I actually take back my remark about Descartes statement. If we are just simply energy waves, (or particles, or strings, or whatever else you would like to call it/us) that have bought into the same vibration of reality then Descartes was kind of correct. But you really can’t get the whole picture from his translations. Probably the better way of wording it would be “I am thinking therefore I can exist”
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