To anyone who wants to take PH1101E: Reason and Persuation... please take PH2210: Logic before hand... it will make life a lot easier... hehe! Well, this module is driving me a little nuts... thank God I took 2 other philosophy modules before hand... to prepare myself! Interesting thing is that this module has a blog, and students are required to make 2 blog posts during the course. The 3 posts are counted in the final grade... this was one of my posts:
Just some thoughts on the statement, "I think, therefore I am". What exactly does Descarte mean by "I am"? Is he refering to existence? I'm assuming he does mean it that way, ie. "I think, therefore I exist". (Which seems reasonable to me)
But then, won't that be begging the question, "What does it mean to exist?". To exist in the world physically or to exist not as a sentient being, but as some "thinking machine" somewhere?
To imagine this scenario, we can look at "The Matrix" movie, in which there were sentient beings, capable of independent thought and not controlled by the Matrix itself. One such "being" was the Merovingian. In the movie they were refered to as "programs" but yet they acted as though they did not follow some algorithmic programing. This is kind of like an example to my hypothesized "thinking machine" above.
But then, since these "thinking machines" can think, they must exist, by Descartes proposition. However, it is entirely possible that these "thinking machines" do not exist in a physical state. And if something does not exist in some kind of physical state, can we really say it exists?
Suppose we allow that things that might not have a physical form can still exist. Then we would have to allow that a mind can exist without a body (some physical housing). However, wouldn't a mind not be able to exist if there is no body?
Yah... as you can tell.. I'm confused myself just trying to read what I wrote!
PS: Check out some of the new pics in flickr... Kelvin Tan totally peng san during science of music lecture...
