If "I think therefore I am"...?

Question

is a valid statement for existence.

Is "I don't think therefore I am not" equally as valid an argument for non-existence?

Answer 1

As with a lot of this stuff I wouldn't take it too literally. I think what is trying to be said here is that without thought and without forming your own opinion, life in itself is actually pointless because you don't contribute yourself and your ideas to it. That is, frankly put, referring to an intellectual and fulfilling existence as opposed to an inanimate physical one.

Answer 2

The answer is in the second part of your own question. "I don't think..." is not "valid."

"Validity" is the stuff of logic, and Cogito ergo sum works only because it IS validated by the formal rules of logic.

The second statement would be INvalidated by those same rules.

Answer 3

very simple answer, no.

If you do not think than how can you possibly consider the statement 'if i do not think, i am not'

The reason Descartes came up with the statement you said is based on the idea that if you ponder whether we truly exist than we have answered our own question because we are thinking and to think means we are indeed here. A leap in logic but he defended this to those who critiqued.

If one is not here they cannot think the opposite.

Answer 4

No, not at all. By the very nature of being able to form a statement, thought must be used to frame the inquiry, and place it within the realm of speculation. You have just proved you exist.

Answer 5

Only dead people don't think anything, so...yes.  But then again, their corpses exist. And brain dead comatose patients don't think, So...no. Plants exist. They don't think. So the best modification for Descartes statement would be: I am because I, myself or others have reasons to think I am.

Answer 6

When you think that you don't think,  you are thinking,  and therefore non-existence is out of question.

Answer 7

Plenty of things exist without thinking.  Rocks, for example, don't appear particularly thoughtful.  But they certainly seem to exist.  

The premise behind 'I think, therefore I am' is that you cannot think if you don't exist.  It doesn't mean that you cannot exist if you don't think.

Answer 8

"It thinks" is the appropriate correction to ubiquitous Cartesian excess. "I think" prefigures a psychological attachment to that which is thought of. "Therefore", or the anxious protraction of one's will upon that which is though of, inclines toward the physical with the result of scarcity in one's milieu: other egos are exerting the imposition of their will to a lesser (cooperative>Dialectical Materialism) or greater (competitive>Rational Empiricism) degree. Getting what one asserts to be rightfully what is one's own is the anxious project of the uncertain origin of what is given to be thought of. It can be done by brute force or argument; it can be done simultaneously. It thinks, and has cruel punishments in store for those who deny, per ego, that it thinks, experiences, them. A predominant will has already affixed the ego to its lot.