River...
So you study philosophy, eh? Bully for you. You're still wrong. (I don't want to get into philosophy poker - but I have several degrees in philosophy and a job as a philosopher at one of the UK's best universities, with a string of international publications on the subject. Your move.)

I know what you mean, but, although I don't have the reference to hand, but D's deduction comes at the end of his system of hyperbolic doubt; what he wants to show is that, whatever else he can doubt, the fact that he is doubting it is proff that he is there to doubt it, therefore (he claims) he must exist. The ergo is there. (Note: Wikipedia says that it's in the Principles, pt. 1, art. 7. If it wasn't, his position would have been even worse, for what it's worth - but the point about the meaning of "begging the question" would stand anyway.)

It took me a while to get why Descartes was wrong - he has intuition on his side. But the principle of the cogito is nothing more than an accident of grammar.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 7 May 2008, 16:46, Reply)