Descartes was wrong: ‘a person is a person through other persons’ (2017)
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Re: Descartes was wrong: ‘a person is a person through other persons’ (2017)
#2I don't see anything that I'd explicitly disagree with, but I also can't help but have a feeling that something is lost in translation. I'm not sure that Descartes and African philosophers are talking about exactly the same thing when they say something like "person".
Re: Descartes was wrong: ‘a person is a person through other persons’ (2017)
#3This is very close to one of the main theses in Hofstadter's "I am a Strange Loop", that your existence/consciousness must extend into the minds of people you know and interact with.
Re: Descartes was wrong: ‘a person is a person through other persons’ (2017)
#4This profoundly misunderstands Descartes.
Descartes is about proving existence through doubt.
If you start doubting everything around you, what is left is your own mind that must exist since it is thinking and doubting.
It has nothing to do with being a 'person' as a social construct, or about who I am.
Re: Descartes was wrong: ‘a person is a person through other persons’ (2017)
#5This profoundly misunderstands Descartes. Descartes is about proving existence through doubt. If you start doubting everything around you, what is left is your own mind that must exist since it is thinking and doubting. It has nothing to do with being a 'person' as a social construct, or about who I am.
This.
There may be an interesting thread to pull about whether a western philosophical tendency to focus on an idealised rational individual confronting the world has led to a particular idea of the self. Though I'm not sure whether this has been the dominant view in analytic philosophy post linguistic turn, or whether it has ever been the mainstream in continental philosophy. This would need a lot more work to unpack.
Trying to construct a conflict between Descartes sense of self in the cogito(which as far as I can see amounts to nothing more than 'I exist') and African philosophy seems deeply odd. If Descartes 'sense of self' is mere existence (and I think this is a very odd reading of the cogito), then are we supposed to say that African babies don't exist until they become part of society?
Re: Descartes was wrong: ‘a person is a person through other persons’ (2017)
#6This profoundly misunderstands Descartes. Descartes is about proving existence through doubt. If you start doubting everything around you, what is left is your own mind that must exist since it is thinking and doubting. It has nothing to do with being a 'person' as a social construct, or about who I am.
This. There may be an interesting thread to pull about whether a western philosophical tendency to focus on an idealised rational individual confronting the world has led to a particular idea of the self. Though I'm not sure whether this has been the dominant view in analytic philosophy post linguistic turn, or whether it has ever been the mainstream in continental philosophy. This would need a lot more work to unpac…
My understanding is that the cogito isn't mere existence but that it is proof of mere existence.
A baby, like everything else in the world, is something you perceive through your senses and that you can thus never be sure really exists. Let's say that Descartes laid the premise for the Matrix.
Re: Descartes was wrong: ‘a person is a person through other persons’ (2017)
#7This profoundly misunderstands Descartes. Descartes is about proving existence through doubt. If you start doubting everything around you, what is left is your own mind that must exist since it is thinking and doubting. It has nothing to do with being a 'person' as a social construct, or about who I am.
I disagree, Descartes believes that he had proven the existence of "a priori" thought, a place from which thinking could be conducted without doubt - that was the point of his project. That place is also the only reliable locus of personhood in his view. Future thinkers who talked about "embodied" thinking, were conceiving of a personhood that could exist before that a priori consciousness, rather than as a doubtful thing perceived by it.
Re: Descartes was wrong: ‘a person is a person through other persons’ (2017)
#8This profoundly misunderstands Descartes. Descartes is about proving existence through doubt. If you start doubting everything around you, what is left is your own mind that must exist since it is thinking and doubting. It has nothing to do with being a 'person' as a social construct, or about who I am.
I disagree, Descartes believes that he had proven the existence of "a priori" thought, a place from which thinking could be conducted without doubt - that was the point of his project. That place is also the only reliable locus of personhood in his view. Future thinkers who talked about "embodied" thinking, were conceiving of a personhood that could exist before that a priori consciousness, rather than as a doubtful…
Well, again that is not the same thing. It's about 'personhood' only in the sense of existence.
To quote Wikipedia:
"While other knowledge could be a figment of imagination, deception, or mistake, Descartes asserted that the very act of doubting one's own existence served—at minimum—as proof of the reality of one's own mind; there must be a thinking entity—in this case the self—for there to be a thought."
Re: Descartes was wrong: ‘a person is a person through other persons’ (2017)
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree, Descartes believes that he had proven the existence of "a priori" thought, a place from which thinking could be conducted without doubt - that was the point of his project. That place is also the only reliable locus of personhood in his view. Future thinkers who talked about "embodied" thinking, were conceiving of a personhood that could exist before that a priori consciousness, rather than as a doubtful…
Well, again that is not the same thing. It's about 'personhood' only in the sense of existence. To quote Wikipedia: "While other knowledge could be a figment of imagination, deception, or mistake, Descartes asserted that the very act of doubting one's own existence served—at minimum—as proof of the reality of one's own mind; there must be a thinking entity—in this case the self—for there to be a thought."
The thinking entity that is proven to exist is the person. To descartes that thinking entity is the very core and fundamental unit of the person. The body and the interactions with others is irrelevant to that core.
Re: Descartes was wrong: ‘a person is a person through other persons’ (2017)
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, again that is not the same thing. It's about 'personhood' only in the sense of existence. To quote Wikipedia: "While other knowledge could be a figment of imagination, deception, or mistake, Descartes asserted that the very act of doubting one's own existence served—at minimum—as proof of the reality of one's own mind; there must be a thinking entity—in this case the self—for there to be a thought."
The thinking entity that is proven to exist is the person. To descartes that thinking entity is the very core and fundamental unit of the person. The body and the interactions with others is irrelevant to that core.
It's the 'person' in a totally different sense than what this article discusses.