[Avodah] RSRH and the Cogito

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 2:37pm, R Gershon Seif gershonseif at yahoo.com
posted a list of RSRH quotes. One doesn't quite work.

> "I think, therefore I am." - Renne Descartes
> "I am thought about, therefore I am - my existence depends upon the
> thought of a Supreme Being Who thinks me." - Rabbi S.R. Hirsch

Des Cartes' "Cogito ergo sum" (or "the Cogito", as it's called in
philosophy class) doesn't relate to the same topic as RSRH's quote.
The more full form is "Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum -- I doubt, therefore
I think, therefore I am."

De Cartes concluded that you can't really be sure of anything. However,
you can't construct an argument and prove anything without postulates.
However, there is one thing you can take for a given -- that you yourself
exist. After all, if you're wrong on that, there is no one trying to
prove anything, no one to be wrong!

IOW, it's really "I am the one doing the doubting, therefore I know I'm
thinking, therefore I know I exist." (With the usual quote starting at
step 2.)

>From that, in meditation 3, he constructs 2 arguments for G-d.

1- My idea of G-d exists, and yet I am insufficient to construct this
idea. I am finite, and my idea is of Something Perfect and Infinite. (I
think this seifa bit is weak.) Thus, there must be a G-d.

2- I exist, therefore either:
    a- I caused myself -- in which case, where do my flaws come from? I
       wouldn't have caused an imperfect me
    b- I always existed - in which case, I am either an independent
       noncontingent being (ie G-d, as per Rambam Yesodei haTorah 1:1)
       or Something has exist to explain how I'm sustained.
    c- my parents caused me - infinite regress: Who caused them?
    d- an imperfect creator -- impossible because I can think of
       perfecxtion, again, the thought exists
    e- G-d.


RSRH's point is more along the lines of the Copenhagen interpretation
of Quantum Mechanics. Reality is fixed by observation, until then,
things only exist in a statistical sense. Google "Schroedinger's
cat". (Although I get that anyone who didn't hear of it skipped this
email by now.) Therefore my existence implies an observer. And therefore
the universe's existence as a whole implies an Observer. (Or you allow
for circular logic -- a universe that [part of which] observes itself.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Today is the 46th day, which is
micha at aishdas.org        6 weeks and 4 days in/toward the omer.
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Fax: (270) 514-1507                         "unity" be over domineering?