Hi. I was wanting to make a thread about sartre and his pre-reflexive cogito (philosophy section). For those tierd of me, I can only say I am trying to do better. ...I was becoming incresingly interested in Sartre's pre-reflexive cogito, for, it seems a basic truth. A common-sence sort of thing in some cases. So, what is this pre-reflexive cogito, how does sartre establish it as 'a' truth?
Perhaps, for us philosophy impared, you could state Sartre's "pre-reflexive cognito"? I have had some basic philosophy, but we went over Sartre pretty fast.
Existence precedes essence. NO!!!! Crap. I just meant to add this line as a new post. But deleted my god damned post and can't get it back!!!!! Ok. I'll explain again. Sigh.
Alright. A brief explanation. It's really quite a simple concept and which is actually rather self-evident (I disagree with some aspects of existentialism, but this isn't one of them.) First. It's pre-reflective cogito. Not reflexive. (Unless I'm missing something.) Second. It derives ultimately from Descartes' famous Cogito Ergo Sum. Descartes claims that he exists because he knows that he exists. That he is able to think about existing and thus he must exist for said thinking to take place. All fine and dandy as far as it goes, but doesn't really get to the primal essence of existence. There is a level of being that precedes this thinking performed by the Cartesian Cogito. It is Sartre's Being-In-Itself (which I won't explain here for two reasons. One, because I'm somewhat muddled about Sartre's nomenclature myself. Two, because its unnecessary for the discussion at hand.) Simply put, Being-in-itself simply is. Anyway. The simplest method of explanation for the pre-reflective cogito would be an example. A chair sits in front of you. You are experiencing the chair. You see it. Smell it. You can touch it. You can even hear and taste it. All avenues of sensory perception are available and through them comes the experience of the chair. Your mind is directed outward. At the chair. The chair is the object of your mental state. (This is where intentionality comes in. But, intentionality is far too complex too go into here. A simple explanation would be that every mental state is directed toward some object. In this case, the chair.) Now. This is the pre-reflective cogito. You're not thinking about the chair. You're simply experiencing it. Comes the shift. The subtle inflection of attention. From the chair. To the experience of the chair. Do you see it? It's quite subtle. But also quite pronounced. We move into Descartes' Cogito and our mental state ceases to be directed outward toward the chair, but rather inward towards our experience of the chair. We are reflecting on the chair. And it is in this reflection that a great many insights might come, but they are derived not from the chair itself, but rather our experience of the chair. A mental state. A mental state directed towards a mental state. (And. Is it possible to achieve another layer of reflection on top of this? A mental state directed towards a mental state directed towards a mental state? And so on? An infinite recursive function? I believe that this is so and is at the heart of our cognitive ability, but Sartre, I think, did not believe this. He didn't like the idea of infinite recursion. Thought it ridiculous and contradictory. It's obvious that he never read Godel, Escher, Bach. Poor guy.... A victim of his times.) As I said. This is my second attempt at an explanation. In some ways this one is superior to the previous. In others it is inferior. But, it will have to suffice. And I now shift from the act of explaining. To reflecting on that act. And I do so with a simple push of a button. Like so...
my god invert nexus ! That was amazing out the side load. So does anyone else care to describe certain things about this philosophy? I may reply later with other stuff.
Well, on the advice of invert_nexus, I tasted my chair. I don't think I "experienced chair", or perhaps not as I should have, although I did experience revulsion. Perhaps I should have tasted someone else's chair. In any event, though, would I be considered absurd if I rejected the notion of pre-reflective cogito altogether, and specified the existence of things without the knowledge of their existence: that, for example, the kitten still exists in the box without us opening the box and seeing or smelling or (ewww) tasting the kitten? There are stars and planets and lint in our belly buttons we've never seen; and yet they must exist without our knowledge of them, since the critical point of the Descartian for want of a better term logic above is that personal experience dictates reality, but any person might or might not be experiencing them aside from me. But how can I be the sole reference of reality? Some people would say that framing reality only in my point of reference is biased. Obviously, such people are fools, but they may have stumbled on a point here. To assume that things only exist, either ourselves or anything else, without experiencing them seems highly anthrocentric to me. So, in short: things exist because they exist. Circle the arguments; the Descartians are coming. Geoff
Buzz! Sorry. You've gotten the wrong idea here. Existentialism isn't solipsism. In fact, it is, in a way, meant to eradicate a sort of elipsism that develops directly from Descartes' argument. (Ironically, Descartes was also attempting to get around solipsism. But, in order to do so, he had to posit the existence of a creator.) The chair does exist whether you experience it or not. Your experience of the chair has nothing to do with the chair's experience of itself or the world (and what a drab experience a chair has...) It has only to do with you. Your experience. Your being. The chair doesn't exist for you before experiencing, but it still exists in the world. Now. We can say that the chair exists for the world. That the world experiences the chair (in fact, in the same way, the world experiences you.) We can do this by realizing that the chair affects the world in many ways. It diverts the wind around it. It provides a surface for leaves to fall on. For birds to shit on. For smells to accumulate on. Etc... It interacts with the world and therefore exists for it. Is experienced by it. It leaves a record behind in the world. For that matter, the world leaves a record behind on it.... Anyway. Circle those arguments back. You've circled the wrong direction and have landed in foreign territory. Solipsism is bad, m'kay?
Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! How is pre-reflective cogito a truth for me right now? Is it something about me, right now, nothing else but "my self"; that's all i'm concerned with knowing.
People are ignorant of truths because they don't like their names. When presented with "Sartres pre-reflective cogito" people are like wow, it's a pre-reflective cogito! Amazing o!
"Gawrsh, Billy, I'd thunk they wuz Idealists, but seems ah've read the map wrong and we's strayed inter neo-Materialist territ'ry!" But if we attach an experientialist doctrine to interpreting reality, and we can only ultimately experience from within our own perspective, then how can we refute sliding backwards into egoism? I can't be a chair no matter how hard I try (and moreover my recent research finds that no one will sit on me anyway, which precludes it as a career path). I have to experience from my own perspective. Whether wind blows around the chair, or birds defecate on it (if this is somehow a problem you experience then I would recommend some kind of alternative chair-storage area) if we define a chair as that which is being experienced as a chair, then how can I experience it as anyone but me? I assume you experience the chair - or, apparently, the birds - but I can't know how you experience it, and if so, how can I say it exists outside my purview if it must be experienced? Also why did Descartes have to postulate a creator to get around solipsism? Are you alluding to that when you say the "world" experiences the chair? It seems an unreasonable precondition to attach to physical reality. If we're going to call this notion "Being-in-Itself", then why do we need to attach an existential paradigm to it? Bloody false advertising, that is. Anyway, I'm not a solipsist, unless I'm losing an argument. Geoff
invert nexus: I was wanting to know if you could come help me out in the thread i created in the free thoughts section "My existence is absurd!--thread" i don't want to form an in-grown toe-nail.......
invert is correct in stating that existentialism does not lead to solipsism. This would be the naif understanding of existentialism. What existentialism recognizes is that despite the appearance that the individual is 'locked' into its own mind, there are other things, objects, sensations, people, who are at least as real as the individual, so real in fact, that these things impinge upon our reality (sense of self, what have you...) regardless of whether or not we want them to. This is the dreaded 'otherness', which comes with its power of affectivity. Ultimately, it's the very fact that we can be changed by other things, that therefore gives us reason to conclude that there is more to reality than I. You cannot, strictly speaking. This is where Hume comes into the picture with respect to certainty: there can be none within the experiencial realm. We can have very safe bets (inductively), but no certainty. This is the 'other minds' problem. Still, no need to fall into solipsism here. While one can never gain the kind of certainty of 'other' that you seem to be seeking, we can and do behave quite effectively by working with indutively derived conclusions such that 'others' exist. You've misunderstood Descartes' reasoning here. The deity option was invoked by Descartes as a means to countering the 'evil-deceiver' argument. Basically: suppose an evil-deceiver has given us our own illusiory world in which to live. We could never be able to verufy whether or not this is the case. (This is yet another source for The Matrix ....). Yet, of one thing I can be sure and that is that there is a thinking agent (me), and that agent cannot deceive itself that it is itself that is thinking. It is this apodictic that is supposed to be a gift from god, ergo, a god.
Ok. Here is a rational one fir' you.... I remember reading 100% certain, lol: that "is what establishes a contact with reality" with everyone or something, in "Being and Nothingness". I was wondering, because this is talking about the pre-reflective cogito, if rather what makes a connection to reatlity? The pre-reflective cogoti? Therefore, etcetc. Therefore, at this moment I contain a pre-reflective cogito "within myself" (itallics), lol, but no body cares to tell me about it. Well thank you bloody hell!
solipsism and the pre-reflective cogito I may be wrong here (if I am please correct me because I'm writing a paper for class on this right now) but Sartre's response against solipsism is "the Look". When we find ourselves (or suspect ourselves) being gazed at by others it changes us. Normally we feel the weight of being a for-itself, caught between facticity (the hand of cards dealt us by life) and our trancedence (how we, through our fundamental project, interpret that hand of cards). But when we are the subject of "the Look" of an "other". We are frozen in our facticity. If the other catches us sitting in a tree with binoculars looking in a window we ARE a peeping Tom. We feel ourselves in the moment as an in-itself being. Not only are we frozen into this role of the peeping Tom, but also we don't know what this role means to the other. we are completely at their mercy. It steals our world away in a way that would not be possible were there not truly "others" who are also for-itself beings.
tnerb: I'm new to this forum, and came here seeking answers. I get the feeling that you post things about philosophy to stir up people's emotions and get a response. It doesn't seem that you want to listen to the knowledge that comes from the users of this site. I see that you have tons of posts in may different categories and it is great that you are interested in philosophy. You often get mad at people who are just telling it as it is (or at least how they understand the philosopher). you won't agree with every philosopher, in face you probably won't find one that you wholly agree with. the point is to study them and put them in context with the surrounding philosophies. Then you will be able to know how the world is (in your own philosophy). As far as understanding philosophers there is a great series of books from Continuum called "Guides for the perplexed" they have books on everyone from Aristotle to Wittgenstein. I use them all the time to make sense of the readings I do for class. They will be more consistent and comprehensive than the posts on this forum.
I look at my dog. Pre-reflective cogito. I'm now experiencing the dog: reflecting on what it looks, smells, sounds like. Is that correct? "A mental state directed towards a mental state directed towards a mental state?" Would this be like reflecting on how your reflecting works? Reflecting on how I experience sight, smell, sound etc.? Good, because if you were I might say you were insane. Communicating with your imagination and all.
Hard to say, although I have definitely tried to inform the thread about this issue. I don't know what it is that's why I was asking.
Interesting good post. I find your first sentence intriguing. Sartre's response against sophism is the look. That would basically mean he's been trying to refute sophism I think he said it was unrealistic already. I don't know the topic of your post but find it very good. Have had troubles myself sitting still focusing on things not being a peeping tom or some such. What I need to know however is if Sartre's pre-reflexive cogito means that it is the before contact with object. I guess sort of like, "I think therefore I am" is Descartes "Cogito" Sartre's Prereflexive cogito is "I think" and comes before the I think. It's a really confusing matter to me. It's almost like it makes little sense. Regarding the stirring up of emotions, there is none, it is only the stirring up of inner qualties of sadness hurt and let down. It's basically an obsession that needs quellingPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
