User:Ergo Sum

Welcome to my user page. Should you care to know, my interests and contributions are fairly eclectic. I enjoy law and philosophy, and am a big history buff. I do my best to make no mistakes, but as a human, I am fallible. If you believe I have acted in error or just want to say hello, feel free to stop by my talk page. Insofar as one may generalize, I am both an inclusionist and an incrementalist, but there are certainly exceptions to both.

On my username
The name "Ergo Sum" derives from the famous proposition by French philosopher René Descartes, "cogito, ergo sum," which translates from the Latin as "I think, therefore I am." This statement was the conclusion of his argument for the proof of the existence of the self as a thinking being, thereby ameliorating the problem of philosophical skepticism (although Descartes himself treated this problem only as methodological skepticism). The immense power of this simple statement permits the existence of knowledge and validates the epistemic endeavor. While innumerable philosophers went on to challenge various aspects of this argument, the Cartesian impact is still pervasive throughout the field of philosophy today.

The next question you might rightly ask is, "what does this have to do with Wikipedia?" Right. As an encyclopedia, Wikipedia is (ideally) a repository of human knowledge, which is to say, it contains all of and only that which is true. The veracity of a postulation may be tested empirically or metaphysically (the latter being logically necessary due to Hume's problem of induction), but all inquiries rest on the presupposition that the acquisition of knowledge is, in fact, possible. As such, the organization of inquiry into a methodological study of knowledge, epistemology, is forever indebted to Descartes.

It should be noted that Descartes is not alone in deserving laudation by those who cherish the rigorous and systematic study of reality, which, if not the definition, is at least the essence of philosophy.

Articles created
The following are articles and other pages I've created, with a few that I've primarily contributed to but not created: