Cogito ergo cogito sum

[Dillinger]

Cogito ergo cogito sum. (I think, therefore I think I am.)

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold in the mind at the same time two opposed ideas, and still retain the ability to function. -- F. Scott Fitzgerald.

What is the limit? Seems the opposition in my mind has gathered recruits who are now at odds with each other. At what point does my intelligence (if it ever even was first-rate) just surrender?

I throw these threads out in the hope of understanding. My mind has dived headfirst into the singularity of Zen and I wonder if I am talking to myself because I am the only one who can understand me. If anyone can actually understand anyone else. If we can even claim that there is indeed anyone else.

Talk to me. Prove to me that you exist.

 

[Weevil]

Allright then,

How's it going?

 

[mig]

I can only do that if you need me to exist.

 

[Black_Bird]

What is the limit? Seems the opposition in my mind has gathered recruits who are now at odds with each other. At what point does my intelligence (if it ever even was first-rate) just surrender?

*bites lip* Actually - I have an interesting little text that I think might have your answer... the problem is, I've never shared it with anyone before and there is a bit o' weird history that goes along with it. PM me if you are interested.

I throw these threads out in the hope of understanding. My mind has dived headfirst into the singularity of Zen and I wonder if I am talking to myself because I am the only one who can understand me. If anyone can actually understand anyone else. If we can even claim that there is indeed anyone else.

Talk to me. Prove to me that you exist.

What's the point?

 

[fillmup]

I can only do that if you need me to exist.

If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one around, does it make a sound?

 

[Dillinger]

I'm not sure I need you to exist. Or anyone... or even me. But then again, it would be pretty fucking boring without existence, wouldn't it?

EBW - how do I know that's you?

 

[Weevil]

EBW - how do I know that's you?

Well, I'm the only one with my password.

 

[Dillinger]

Black Bird... what's not the point? And how sharp is it?

EBW - So you are saying that you are defined by your password? What if you lose it? Will you no longer exist?

 

[Dillinger]

If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one around, does it make a sound?

Let me take that a step further and hand it back to you...

Many will say sound is only sound if a person hears it...

But philosophy isn't obvious, its devious...

If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one around to hear it... but there is a tape player recording the event. Did it make a sound?

 

[Guest]

Dillinger,

I exist through my words. My words are dots on a page - those dots create symbols. Those symbols are then taken in through your eyes and transmitted to your brain. Does that make me real? You've never held me or listened to my cries. You've only seen them as symbols on this screen, but, you've felt them. Does that prove I am real? You've not seen the color of my eyes, yet you know I have them because I can read what you've written. Have you ever heard my sighs while watching a heavenly sunset? No, but you've read how I feel about them.

Am I real?

Enchanted

 

[fillmup]

If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one around to hear it... but there is a tape player recording the event. Did it make a sound?

With or without batteries?

 

[Dillinger]

With or without batteries?

Solar powered. And, in a double blind test - you do not even know the sun was shining that day (or if it happened day or night). Yet you have to answer the question before checking the tape.... *grin*

 

[Dillinger]

Dillinger,

I exist through my words. My words are dots on a page - those dots create symbols. Those symbols are then taken in through your eyes and transmitted to your brain. Does that make me real? You've never held me or listened to my cries. You've only seen them as symbols on this screen, but, you've felt them. Does that prove I am real? You've not seen the color of my eyes, yet you know I have them because I can read what you've written. Have you ever heard my sighs while watching a heavenly sunset? No, but you've read how I feel about them.

Am I real?

Enchanted

You tell me, Enchanted. Are you real? Do you feel real? All the time? How about when you're asleep?

Even if I was standing "real life" in front of you now - forget the dots, the computer, the internet... how do I know you're real? How do YOU know you're real?

 

[mig]

Did I post this?.

Perhaps what you are reading was typed by one of an infinite
number of monkeys trying to recreate the works of Shakespear.

 

[Weevil]

Black Bird... what's not the point? And how sharp is it?

EBW - So you are saying that you are defined by your password? What if you lose it? Will you no longer exist?

No, but that's how you know it's me. I don't think I'll lose my password. Its a word I won't forget.

 

[kotori]

amo ergo sum

I love,

I am loved,

I have been loved

I will love

 

[Dillinger]

EBW - "No, but that's how you know it's me. I don't think I'll lose my password. Its a word I won't forget." --- Actually I don't know any such thing for a thousand different reasons. Stand in front of me face to face and prove that you are you. Define yourself. Then define yourself as separate from me.

Mig - I think you might have posted it. Of course I could have posted it. Could you prove that I didn't post it? As far as the monkeys go, I just put them on the payroll... so far they've come up with:

31 Octal = 25 Decimal; thus 31 Oct = 25 Dec; and thus Halloween = Christmas.

Not bad for a first shot, huh?

kotori - brilliant... love is existence? Existence is love? You haven't proven anything, but I love it. *grin*

 

[Calamity Jane]

But Dilly darlin... define existence for me.

So many exist only in my head, my fantasies, on my computer screen. And sometimes... sometimes they're more real than those that exist in a tactile way.

What is existence?

 

[modest mouse]

I'm real.
You're real
The delusions are gone.
Since the shock treatments.
Now quiet.
Or I'm telling.

 

[Guest]

You tell me, Enchanted. Are you real? Do you feel real? All the time? How about when you're asleep?

Even if I was standing "real life" in front of you now - forget the dots, the computer, the internet... how do I know you're real? How do YOU know you're real?

Dillinger,

I am real. I feel real. I feel real all of the time. When I am asleep I am real because I am still breathing, my heart is still beating, my mind is in constant motion because those thoughts create my dreams.

I have felt the pain of losing children, I have felt the pain of lost love, I have felt the pain of lost friendships. I have felt the joy of creating new life, I have felt the joy of being in love all over again, I have felt the joy of new friends. This makes me real.

I have held my hand out to those who need strength, I have given my shoulders to those who need to lean on me, I have given my smile to those who have been in need. I have given my heart to others when they are in despair. This makes me real.

I am real because I say I am real. I am real because I have feelings. I AM REAL!

Enchanted

 

[perks]

sliding to my knees, supple lips caressing the tender skin of your belly. My nails graze along your thighs. You don't know if I exist. My hazelnuts look up at you pleadingly. A glimpse of a pink tongue wets my lower lip. You grab my tussled hair, holding on to it, willing it to stay tightly between your fingers. You feel my breath, and proof of your existence slaps against my lips. I'm never more real than when you feel my velvety tongue lick your cock.

 

[Dillinger]

pagancowgirl...

Define... define...

Who am I? Who are you? What is the mind? Where is the soul?

What makes you you, and what are your boundries?

You ARE a center of consciousness... but what in the world is consciousness?

What is it like to be you? What is it like to be me? Those things of which I am conscious, and the ways in which I am conscious of them, determine what it is like to be me. I know in a way no other could know what it is like to be me. This perspective sunders the univerese in two... me and everyone/everything else.

Is consciousness existence? We might say that things exist without consciousness. Certainly a calculator has no conscious. But then again if the universe was nothing but calculators who would there be to know they even existed? Or to even define what existence is... Doesn't this take us back to Mig's tree and the hypothetical monkeys?

E.R. John's once said that conciousness is "a process in which information about mulitiple individual modalities of sensation and perception is combined into a unified multidimensional representation of the state of the system and its environment

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)
"Borges and I"

The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate; I know of Borges from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship; I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but rather to the language and to tradition. Besides, I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in him. Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, though I am quite aware of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things.

Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him and went from the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time and infinity, but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have to imagine other things. Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him.

I do not know which of us has written this page.

 

[KillerMuffin]

Well, dillypop, things must exist outside of yourself. If they did not, then how do you gain knowledge that you did not previously have? How can you know things that you have never known before unless something exists beyond the realm of yourself?

For instance, how do you know how to use a computer if you do not know how to create one?

How can you drink the water from your faucet if you do not know how it gets there?

How can you drive a car if you do not know how to melt the steel to create it?

The fallacy in the cogito ergo cogito sum argument is that there is cogito-ing going on that sum isn't a part of.

How can you think if you do not exist? Ergo, cogito ergo sum. If your existence hinges on your ability to cogito, then cogito is the definition of existence, so if you cogito, you sum.

Now tell me how your mind relates to your body, darlin popsicle.

 

[Black_Bird]

Black Bird... what's not the point? And how sharp is it?

I don't think there is one thing that wouldn't fit on the head of a pin. You are right - everything is related to our individual existance... but why question it? It only serves to breed doubt.

Or perhaps... that's the point.

 

[fillmup]

sliding to my knees, supple lips caressing the tender skin of your belly. My nails graze along your thighs. You don't know if I exist. My hazelnuts look up at you pleadingly. A glimpse of a pink tongue wets my lower lip. You grab my tussled hair, holding on to it, willing it to stay tightly between your fingers. You feel my breath, and proof of your existence slaps against my lips. I'm never more real than when you feel my velvety tongue lick your cock.

Whoa Perky_baby! You sure make me feel real!!!