does any one understand the problem "i think therefore i am"?

Answer 1

How is it a problem? It's a true statement and also likely the only one you will ever be able to make with complete certainty.

Answer 2

The problem is finding certain knowledge, and the hope was to find such knowledge in the very capacity for reflection: the thinking subject must surely be immune to doubt, yes?

But alas, the foundation isn't as secure as Descartes hoped. When you aren't thinking, do you cease to be? and if that seems reasonable, then what is it about thinking that can will itself into and out of existence so easily? Is what and who you are exhausted by the capacty to think?

At most Descartes could conclude "I think, therefore when I'm thinking I can be certain that I am at the very least a thing that thinks." But what sort of thing is that? Am *I* synonymous with that thing? or am *I* the totality of both the organism and unity of thought and memories that seems to cohere whether or not I'm conscious and reflecting? If *I* am the latter totality, then Descartes has a lot of work ahead, proving his and my and your existence with certainty, simply from 'cogito ergo ...'

Answer 3

I think the real problem here is the assumption that you have to think to be.

The assertion was based upon the concept that you cannot deny your own existence if you can think. Perhaps that provides some proof of your existence, but minimal at best.

Proving existence is more of a material proof than an existential proof. Anything physical exists whether it thinks or not.

Decarte felt that thought added a dimension of confusion to existence. He felt that he had to refute the arguments that we could be figments of our own imagination. Perhaps our bodies are nothing more than something we dreamed up. His statement that we are real because we can think was his proof that we exist.

The problem today is that we can create robots that appear to think, but do they exist as we do? Can a robot made of electronics exist beyond the physical?

Decarte along with the other Philosophers never really defined existence. That is part of the problem. If you are unclear on what it means to exist, then how can you explain it?

Take care,
Troy

Answer 4

Yes. It's attributed to Descartes, but he was expanding on existing philosophies. It means, literally, I think, I exist (this is the translation of the original french, not the mistranslation). Here's a good explanation:
In Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy, he employs hyperbolic doubt to re-establish his existence. Through hyperbolic doubt, he disbands his belief in the existence of everything that has questionable existence. His purpose is to rebuild the true things in the world. With everything doubted and falsifed, anything recognized as true will completely be true and there can be no doubt about its validity. Through his method, he derives his first major saying "dubito sum" meaning "I doubt, I am". He recognizes that to be able to doubt, he must exist--within the doubting, there is existence, and vice versa. And as doubting is a form of thinking, "cogito sum" was born.
Contrarily, "cogito, sum" translates as "I think, I am" meaning that in doing the thinking, he is also existing at the same time. The thinking and the existing are simultaneous and not causal. Through this point, Descartes has found a point to his Archimedean lever and thus can extrapolate his next major point, the "res cogitans." Which is thus followed by the great deceptor, the existence of God, and the re-establishment of the material world.
It's a transition from the material to immaterial (internal) to prove the existence of the outside world.

You can read the dialog here:
http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/Choir/4792/descartes.html

Answer 5

I agree...it's not a problem, it's a statement. I believe it means that if you are able to think, that proves that you exist. Thinking means existing, which is not to say that something can exist in a physical form even though it doesn't think (which someone on here mentioned), but instead consciousness is a state of existence. Correct me if i'm wrong.

Answer 6

I understand that it's not a problem. It's just a philosophical statement.
If you do not "think," or that is, if you don't have thoughts, cognitive brain activity, then you have no sense that you exist.
It's very simple.

Answer 7

Sure - for one thing, there are lots of things that can't think but still are.

But here are some more "philosophic" objections:
"In Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy, he employs hyperbolic doubt to re-establish his existence. Through hyperbolic doubt, he disbands his belief in the existence of everything that has questionable existence. His purpose is to rebuild the true things in the world. With everything doubted and falsifed, anything recognized as true will completely be true and there can be no doubt about its validity. Through his method, he derives his first major saying "dubito sum" meaning "I doubt, I am". He recognizes that to be able to doubt, he must exist--within the doubting, there is existence, and vice versa. And as doubting is a form of thinking, "cogito sum" was born.
Contrary to popular belief, Descartes never said the phrase "cogito ergo sum." Rather, he said "cogito, sum", which got lost in the translation from French to Latin to English. "Cogito ergo sum" translates as "I think therefore I am" which implies that existence is the effect of the cause of thinking, which is a philosophical fallacy. This jargon is equivalent to making existence a quality with which can be put on an object. [E.g. This ball is red, round, filled with air, and (oh by the way) it exists.] Contrarily, "cogito, sum" translates as "I think, I am" meaning that in doing the thinking, he is also existing at the same time. The thinking and the existing are simultaneous and not causal. Through this point, Descartes has found a point to his Archimedean lever and thus can extrapolate his next major point, the "res cogitans." Which is thus followed by the great deceptor, the existence of God, and the re-establishment of the material world.
Common errors

Some non-philosophers who first come across the cogito attempt to refute it in the following way. "I think, therefore I exist," they argue, can be reversed as "I do not think, therefore I do not exist." They argue that a rock does not think, but it still exists, which disproves Descartes' argument. However, this is the logical fallacy of denying the antecedent. The correct corollary by modus tollens is "I do not exist, therefore I do not think."
This fallacy and its prevalence is illustrated by the popular joke:
Descartes is sitting in a bar, having a drink. The bartender asks him if he would like another. "I think not," he says, and vanishes.

Criticisms of the cogito

There have been a number of criticisms of the cogito. The first of the two under scrutiny here concerns the nature of the step from "I am thinking" to "I exist". The contention is that this is a syllogistic inference, for it appears to require the extra premise: "Whatever has the property of thinking, exists", and that extra premise must surely have been rejected at an earlier stage of the doubt.
It could be argued that "Whatever has the property of thinking, exists" is self-evident, and thus not subject to the method of doubt. This is because the instantiation principle states that: "Whatever has the property F, exists", but within the method of doubt, only the property of thinking is indubitably a property of the meditator. Descartes does not make use of this defence, however; as we have already seen, he responds to the criticism by conceding that there would indeed be an extra premise needed, but denying that the cogito is a syllogism. Jaakko Hintikka offered a non-syllogistic interpretation. "I exist" is immune to Descartes' method of doubt because it is impossible to be mistaken about one's own existence. If we don't exist then we can't be mistaken, so we might as well believe we do.
Perhaps a more relevant contention is whether the 'I' to which Descartes refers is justified. In Descartes, The Project of Pure Enquiry Bernard Williams provides a history and full evaluation of this issue. The main objection, as presented by Georg Lichtenberg, is that rather than supposing an entity that is thinking, Descartes should have said: "thinking is occurring." That is, whatever the force of the cogito, Descartes draws too much from it; the existence of a thinking thing, the reference of the "I", is more than the cogito can justify.
Williams provides a meticulous and exhaustive examination of this objection. He argues, first, that it is impossible to make sense of "there is thinking" without relativising it to something. It seems at first as though this something needn't be a thinker, the "I", but Williams goes through each of the possibilities, demonstrating that none of them can do the job. He concludes that Descartes is justified in his formulation (though possibly without realising why that was so).

Williams' argument
Whilst the preceding two arguments against the cogito fail, other arguments have been advanced by Williams. He claims, for example, that what we are dealing with when we talk of thought, or when we say "I am thinking", is something conceivable from a third-person perspective; namely objective "thought-events" in the former case, and an objective thinker in the latter.
The obvious problem is that, through introspection, or our experience of consciousness, we have no way of moving to conclude the existence of any third-personal fact, verification of which would require a thought necessarily impossible, being, as Descartes is, bound to the evidence of his own consciousness alone."

Answer 8

If you were not able to think, you would not be aware of your existence, I mean you would not be able to come up with the sentence : "Hey, I exist!".
And if you did not exist, you wouldn't think anyway.
So where's the problem?

Answer 9

Bible - "As a man thinks, so he is."

Proverbs 23:7 "For as he thinks in his heart, so is he."

Descartes must have read the Bible. Or at least the Old Testament.

Answer 10

"I think therefore I am" needs a question mark after it...Beginning a staetment with "I think" implies doubt.