When you thought to yourself, "I think therefore I am," in what language did you think it? In English? The English language is an artifact of a community of English speakers. You can't have a language with grammatical rules without a community of speakers to make that language.
Almost nobody in the English-speaking community has direct access to the internals of your mind. The community learns things through consensus, e.g. via the scientific method. We know things in English via a community of English-speaking scientists, journalists, historians, etc. etc. Wittgenstein calls these the "structures of life," the ordinary day-to-day work we do to figure out what's true and false, likely and unlikely.
As you're probably aware, the scientific method has long struggled to find a "mind" in the brain doing the thinking; all we can find are just atoms, molecules, neurons, doing things, having behaviors. We can't find "thoughts" in the atoms. As far as our ordinary day-to-day scientific method is concerned, we can't find a "mind."
But "cogito ergo sum" isn't part of the scientific method. We don't believe "cogito ergo sum" because reproducible experiments have shown it to be true. "Cogito ergo sum" proposes a way of knowing disconnected from the messy structures of life we use in English.
So, perhaps you'd say, "oh, good point, I suppose I didn't think 'cogito ergo sum' in English or Latin or whatever, I thought it in a private language known only to me. From this vantage point, I only have direct knowledge of my own existence and my own perceptions in the present moment (since the past is uncertain), but at least I can have 100% certainty of my own existence in that language."
The problem is, you really can't have a private language, not a language with words (terms) and grammatical rules and logical inferences.
Suppose you assigned a term S to a particular sensation you're having right now. What are the rules of S? What is S and what is not S? Are there any rules for how to use S? How would you know? How would you enforce those rules over time? In a private language, there's no difference between using the term S "correctly" or "incorrectly." There are no rules in a private language; there can't be. Even mathematical proofs are impossible when every term in the proof means anything you want.
Descartes didn't originally write "cogito ergo sum" in Latin. He originally published it in French, "je pense, donc je suis." But in Europe, where Descartes was writing, Latin was the universal language, the one known to all sorts of people across the continent. For Descartes, Latin was the language of empire, the language every civilized person knew because their ancestors were forced to learn it at the point of a sword, the language of absolutes.
Wittgenstein has a famous line, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." So must we be silent about "cogito ergo sum." "cogito ergo sum" isn't valid in Latin; "je pense, donc je suis" isn't valid in French. It could only be valid in an unspeakable private language, a language with no grammatical rules, no logic, where true and false are indistinguishable. "Cogito ergo sum" could only be valid in an unusable language where everything is meaningless.
That's a lot of words to claim that language has exist before thought can, which gets disproved in an instant when your audience points to the large number of fauna on earth that has no language and yet displays thought.
That's not what I'm arguing. The argument is that "cogito ergo sum" is invalid, which is part of an argument against the existence of a "mind" above and beyond what the brain does in a living body. The atoms are all there is.
I don't think I have a "mind" above and beyond my body, and I don't think you do, either. Animals can remember stuff, solve puzzles, and express pain, just like you or I do. We do all that with our brains, not with our "minds."
The problem with making universal assertions as opposed to existential assertions is that a single counterexample is all that is necessary to prove the assertion is incorrect or wrong.
> That's not what I'm arguing.
Okay; your argument is difficult to digest because, unlike most philosophy arguments, you neither lead nor end with the actual thesis; you present a book-length text as support for a thesis that is never stated.
> The argument is that "cogito ergo sum" is invalid, which is part of an argument against the existence of a "mind" above and beyond what the brain does in a living body. The atoms are all there is.
What's your thesis, then? "Cogito ergo sum is invalid" is hardly a thesis. Maybe you are asserting that there is no "mind" above and beyond the living brain, which will be a universal claim not an existential one.
If that is indeed your claim, then it's not a testable/falsifiable one anyway; you are going to require instead a sequence of premises that are each accepted by the audience you wish to sway, with intermediate conclusions that are likewise accepted by the audience, before you present your final conclusion based exclusively on the premises list.
A narrative is not a good way to present a philosophical argument, especially when it is a counter argument to an argument that was presented (even if only verbally at the time) in the standard logical format I described.
A better way to convince that any formally presented logic (as Cogito ergo sum was) is invalid (or unsound) is to attack the premises. It is not normal to ignore the premises of the original argument and present premises of your own.
(PS. It's been a long time since I was in a formal logic philosophy class and maybe things have changed, but they haven't (I hope!) changed so much that logic is completely thrown out the window in favour of narrative)
Language, and especially its mechanics like grammar, are entirely a distraction w.r.t. "cogito ergo sum". The underlying argument it points to is language-independent.
Correct. Here is the stub of a reply I can't be assed to finish right now:
Words and language refer to sensations (P.I. §244: "How do words refer to sensations?").
Sensations can exist independently of language to refer to them (P.I. §256: "—But suppose I didn’t have any natural expression for the sensation, but only had the sensation?").
Thus it can be possible for one to experience the cogito, the mere act of awareness, independently of language. The point of the cogito is its self-evidence, prior to language even entering the picture as a sign standing for or referring to the self-evident sensation of conscious awareness.
I note that you keep saying "cogito" without the "ergo."
"I think therefore I am" is invalid, and what's wrong with it is the "therefore," the idea that you knew one thing, and you drew a "logical" conclusion from it, in a "prior to language" environment where words have no meaning, where "true" and "false" are indistinguishable, and logic is impossible.
Logic requires words. "Logical" means "verbal," from the Greek logos (λόγος). You can't have a logical argument (you can't draw a conclusion) from the instantaneous standpoint of someone "experiencing" cogito, where words mean whatever you want, or nothing at all.
The experience you're having is not a logical argument. As a sentence, "cogito ergo sum" is invalidated as soon as you write it down in a shared language.
I'm sure it feels right to you! But you can't actually say anything true about it in English, or Latin, or any other shared language.
For, on the one hand, there is the real world, and on the other,
a whole system of symbols about that world which we have in our minds.
These are very very useful symbols; all civilization depends on them;
but like all good things they have their disadvantages, and the
principle disadvantage of symbols is that we confuse them with reality,
just as we confuse money with actual wealth; and our names about
ourselves, our ideas of ourselves, our images of ourselves, *with*
ourselves.
Now of course, reality, from a philosopher's point of view, is a
dangerous word. A philosopher will ask me, what do I mean by reality?
Am I talking about the physical world of nature, or am I talking about
a spiritual world, or what?
And to that I have a very simple answer. When we talk about the material
world, that is actually a philosophical concept - so in the same way, if
I say that reality is spiritual, that's also a philosophical concept -
and reality itself is not a concept.
Reality is - [...]
... and we won't give it a name.
The last refuge of the Cartesian is always, "My argument is correct in an ineffable way that I couldn't possibly write down."
"Cogito ergo sum" presents itself as a self-evident deduction, the one guaranteed universally agreeable truth, but, when you investigate it a little… oh, well, it's really more of a vibe than an argument, and isn't "logical argument" really a monkey-mind distraction from the indescribable lightness of existence?
If you define "logic" as requiring words, then it's only a model of casuality, which is real irrespective of life entirely.
You're demanding that language perfectly convey an abstract argument, which is obviously unreasonable, and saying that since it can't do that we can't discuss tricky subjects at all, which if you take this line of reasoning seriously is all of them. So how about you "remain silent".
When you thought to yourself, "I think therefore I am," in what language did you think it? In English? The English language is an artifact of a community of English speakers. You can't have a language with grammatical rules without a community of speakers to make that language.
Almost nobody in the English-speaking community has direct access to the internals of your mind. The community learns things through consensus, e.g. via the scientific method. We know things in English via a community of English-speaking scientists, journalists, historians, etc. etc. Wittgenstein calls these the "structures of life," the ordinary day-to-day work we do to figure out what's true and false, likely and unlikely.
As you're probably aware, the scientific method has long struggled to find a "mind" in the brain doing the thinking; all we can find are just atoms, molecules, neurons, doing things, having behaviors. We can't find "thoughts" in the atoms. As far as our ordinary day-to-day scientific method is concerned, we can't find a "mind."
But "cogito ergo sum" isn't part of the scientific method. We don't believe "cogito ergo sum" because reproducible experiments have shown it to be true. "Cogito ergo sum" proposes a way of knowing disconnected from the messy structures of life we use in English.
So, perhaps you'd say, "oh, good point, I suppose I didn't think 'cogito ergo sum' in English or Latin or whatever, I thought it in a private language known only to me. From this vantage point, I only have direct knowledge of my own existence and my own perceptions in the present moment (since the past is uncertain), but at least I can have 100% certainty of my own existence in that language."
The problem is, you really can't have a private language, not a language with words (terms) and grammatical rules and logical inferences.
Suppose you assigned a term S to a particular sensation you're having right now. What are the rules of S? What is S and what is not S? Are there any rules for how to use S? How would you know? How would you enforce those rules over time? In a private language, there's no difference between using the term S "correctly" or "incorrectly." There are no rules in a private language; there can't be. Even mathematical proofs are impossible when every term in the proof means anything you want.
Descartes didn't originally write "cogito ergo sum" in Latin. He originally published it in French, "je pense, donc je suis." But in Europe, where Descartes was writing, Latin was the universal language, the one known to all sorts of people across the continent. For Descartes, Latin was the language of empire, the language every civilized person knew because their ancestors were forced to learn it at the point of a sword, the language of absolutes.
Wittgenstein has a famous line, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." So must we be silent about "cogito ergo sum." "cogito ergo sum" isn't valid in Latin; "je pense, donc je suis" isn't valid in French. It could only be valid in an unspeakable private language, a language with no grammatical rules, no logic, where true and false are indistinguishable. "Cogito ergo sum" could only be valid in an unusable language where everything is meaningless.
Thereof, we must remain silent.