Great episode! One pushback on Descartes: "I think, therefore I am" is a definitional statement. Descartes is not begging the question, but his point is that the only meaning "I am" can have is that you are having some sort of experience. If you're asking the question "Do I exist?" then you must "exist" to ask the question, and what does "exist" mean? Well, you cannot know the nature of existence, because you cannot see beyond appearances (cf. Plato's Cave), but the appearances are *something*. At a minimum, they are something you are experiencing, even if they are illusions and phantoms. But to see an illusion, YOU still have to be there to see it and to ask whether it is real. Once you are asking this question, then at a minimum, you exist in a solipsistic dream world all by yourself. But you still exist. If you didn't, then neither would the dream or the questions about it.
Great episode! One pushback on Descartes: "I think, therefore I am" is a definitional statement. Descartes is not begging the question, but his point is that the only meaning "I am" can have is that you are having some sort of experience. If you're asking the question "Do I exist?" then you must "exist" to ask the question, and what does "exist" mean? Well, you cannot know the nature of existence, because you cannot see beyond appearances (cf. Plato's Cave), but the appearances are *something*. At a minimum, they are something you are experiencing, even if they are illusions and phantoms. But to see an illusion, YOU still have to be there to see it and to ask whether it is real. Once you are asking this question, then at a minimum, you exist in a solipsistic dream world all by yourself. But you still exist. If you didn't, then neither would the dream or the questions about it.
I agree. I don't have a problem with Descartes starting place - just all the "conclusions" he thought he could derive from that axiom.