Jayson_Virissimo comments on Abandoning Cached Selves to Re-Write My Source Code Partially, I've Become Unstable - Less Wrong

6 Post author: diegocaleiro 10 October 2012 05:47PM

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Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 12 October 2012 03:29:10AM 1 point [-]

I perhaps should clarify that I am impressed with Descartes' work relative to his cultural context.

Uh...what? Descartes' cogito ergo sum is a paraphrase of Saint Augustine's argument in De Civitate Dei (published in the Early Middle Ages). Hell, Aristotle makes almost the same argument in the Nicomachean Ethics.

Comment author: wedrifid 12 October 2012 03:45:00AM 0 points [-]

Uh...what? Descartes' cogito ergo sum is a paraphrase of Saint Augustine's argument in De Civitate Dei (published in the Early Middle Ages). Hell, Aristotle makes almost the same argument in the Nicomachean Ethics.

Are you suggesting that Descartes' wasn't even particularly impressive in his own time? I'd be willing to take the word of others on that because I certainly have no interest in spending time rummaging through obsolete philosophical writings to more precisely calculate situation-dependent merit.

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 12 October 2012 09:07:09AM *  2 points [-]

Are you suggesting that Descartes' wasn't even particularly impressive in his own time?

No, not at all. His work in math and physics was very impressive for his time. I am merely pointing out that paraphrasing a thousand year old argument (which he was almost certainly introduced to during his scholastic training) isn't a good example of his impressiveness (I'm guessing a majority of his classmates could have done the same).

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