Is Evolution Science?

"Cogito ergo sum" was coined by Descartes, not Pascal. Pascal was the rascal (pun intended) that came up with that horrendously fallacious "wager."BTW, Descarte's famous statement is also fallacious -- it begs the question by assuming its conclusion (I am) in the premise (I think). Blessings,::

Descartes' statement is fallacious to the extent that his conclusion is invalidly deduced from the premise according to the rules of logic. Tautologies are not deductive, and so are not accurately characterized as fallacious. Since his statement is not a precise syllogism (it only contains one premise), perhaps it is better regarded as an axiom than a deduction. In that sense, then, you are correct.So I suppose to answer your questions more directly -- yes, the statement is basically a tautology, and as such is not a valid deduction (i.e. when regarded as a deduction it is fallacious). I was unwarrantedly regarding the statement as a deduction only because it was used in the context of Loudmouth's post as a deductive conclusion. Basically, one cannot validly deduce that one objectively exists solely from the knowledge that one's thought's exist. One can at the very most conclude that he is his thoughts, as well as is everything else which he exeperiences.Truly, all theorems of logic are tautologies. I think it was Wittgenstein who said something precisely to that effect...Blessings,::EDIT: Reading Loudmouth's post again, I do not find the context which I just claimed led me to regard Descarte's statement as a deduction. It seems perhaps I was projecting a bit whilst reading his post from the number of times I've seen Descartes' statement abused. My apologies for the confusion. [This message has been edited by ::, 08-19-2003]