Does thinking = existing? And if not, why so?

[Wayfarer]

@Jay

What is lost, by using the mirror image? Have we hit a visual wall of some kind, which prevents me from saying, “I see my face”?

But your hand demonstrably cannot grasp itself! I don’t see any feasible way to dispute that - and it seems at least as consequential to me as cogito ergo sum. Likewise seeing the image of the eye in a mirror - looking at an image of the eye - is also demonstrably reliant on ‘the act of seeing’, which is the means by which the image is seen, but the act of seeing is not itself seen.

[Jay]

@Wayfarer

the act of seeing is not itself seen.

No indeed, but that’s a different claim from “The eye can’t see itself.” What would it even mean to see an act of seeing? Category mistake?

The hand grasping itself is interesting. At the techno-frontier level, I bet this is going to be possible very soon, thanks to virtual reality! But that’s not really a fair response to the point I think you’re making. More simply, I would ask what the inability of the hand to grasp itself implies for the limits of our power to use the hand as an object of cognition. What are we missing? I hope you’ll agree that, for this to be a good analogy with the self/subject, something important and conceptually basic needs to be missing, or blocked. What would that be?

(And BTW, I’m offline now for the night so no rush . . .)

[Paine]

The numbering of the comments keeps moving around. I meant:

@Mww

The cogito in Descartes’ sense cannot be already given; if it was already given he wouldn’t have to prove, first, that there is a substance other than body, and, second, because of that distinction, along with odds and ends of meditations, finalized by “philosophizing in an orderly manner” (“Discourse on Methods……, 1637), concluding with the impossibility of doubting that he thinks.

If the two explanations of what is experienced are interchangeable then the ubiquity of appearance does not create a difference. When you say:

@Mww

Is not each of our individual appearances an image of God, hence not at all reflections of emptiness?

neither the God nor the Cogito is given a recognizable character. The pair collapse into a tautology.

[Wayfarer]

@Jay

The hand grasping itself is interesting. At the techno-frontier level, I bet this is going to be possible very soon, thanks to virtual reality!

I can see the headline:

Science invents Self-Grasping Hand!

Research to continue on Possible Applications

[Mww]

Two explanations of what is experienced? The reference you gave me, Med. 3, #31, was for two causal explanations for existence, the difference being only in the causes themselves.

And my comment you re-posted doesn’t have anything to do with explanations of experience.

There are religious interpretations that proclaim we are all God, which is to make God and cogito tautological, insofar as they are each representations of the same idea. But that is an exception to the rule, not the rule itself, in which human beings and theistic entities are given recognizably different characters.

Sorry, I’m not understanding what you’re trying to say.

[Paine]

Fair enough. I stitched together points of view well outside of the topic of what is given that you put forth.

I will try to approach the difference between Kant and Descartes in a different way in the coming days. More study is required.