>>22994952That framing sets up a false dichotomy. Recognizing that logical systems have structure and objectivity doesn’t require believing they’re eternal or metaphysically perfect.
Logic can be formalized by humans and still point to relationships that hold regardless of who observes them. For example, if all A are B and C is A, then C is B; that conclusion isn’t true because we invented it, it’s true because it reflects necessary relations between concepts, no matter how flawed or contingent we are.
The fact that we discovered these systems through experience doesn’t make them reducible to experience.
Math and logic aren’t eternal Platonic realms, but they’re also not arbitrary they reveal stable patterns that structure thought and reality, even if our access to them is imperfect.
>>22994954But that’s precisely why Cogito, ergo sum is so radical it doesn’t require prior knowledge of the "I" or its essence.
Descartes isn’t saying, “I know what I am, therefore I exist.” He’s saying the act of thinking itself is undeniable. The “I” isn’t assumed as a fully defined essence; it’s the minimal placeholder for whatever it is that is thinking.
Even if you argue that the thinker is something else like an illusion, a process, a system, it doesn’t matter.
Something is thinking. That’s all Descartes needs to assert existence. The cogito doesn’t rest on a metaphysical commitment to essence; it’s a self-validating act that proves that being is required for thought, even if that being’s nature is uncertain.
