Everything about Cogito Ergo Sum totally explained
"
Cogito, ergo sum" (
Latin: "I think, therefore I am") or
Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum (Latin: "I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am") is a
philosophical statement used by
René Descartes, which became a foundational element of
Western philosophy. The simple meaning of the phrase is that if someone is wondering whether or not he exists, that's in and of itself proof that he does exist.
Descartes's original statement was "Je pense donc je suis," from his
Discourse on Method (1637). He uses the Latin "Cogito ergo sum" in the later
Principles of Philosophy (1644), Part 1, article 7: "Ac proinde hæc cognitio,
ego cogito, ergo sum, est omnium prima & certissima, quæ cuilibet ordine philosophanti occurrat.", by which time it had become popularly known as 'the "Cogito Ergo Sum" argument'.
Although the idea expressed in
Cogito ergo sum is widely attributed to Descartes, many predecessors offer similar arguments — particularly
St. Augustine of Hippo in
De Civitate Dei: "Si […] fallor, sum" ("If I'm mistaken, I am") (book XI, 26), who also anticipates modern refutations of the concept. Another predecessor was
Avicenna's "Floating Man"
thought experiment on human
self-awareness and
self-consciousness.
Introduction
The phrase
Cogito ergo sum isn't used in Descartes's most important work, the
Meditations on First Philosophy, but the term "the
cogito" is (often confusingly) used to refer to an argument from it. Descartes felt that this phrase, which he'd used in his earlier
Discourse, had been misleading in its implication that he was appealing to an inference, so he changed it to "I am, I exist" (also often called "the first certainty") in order to avoid the term "cogito."
At the beginning of the second meditation, having reached what he considers to be the ultimate level of doubt — his argument from the existence of a deceiving god — Descartes examines his beliefs to see if any have survived the doubt. In his belief in his own existence he finds it's impossible to doubt that he exists. Even if there were a deceiving god (or an evil demon, the tool he uses to stop himself sliding back into ungrounded beliefs), his belief in his own existence would be secure, for how could he be deceived unless he existed in order to be deceived?
But I've convinced myself that there's absolutely nothing in the world, no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies. Does it now follow that I too don't exist? No. If I convinced myself of something [orthought anything at all] then I certainly existed. But there's a deceiver of supreme power and cunning who is deliberately and constantly deceiving me. In that case I too undoubtedly exist, if he's deceiving me; and let him deceive me as much as he can, he'll never bring it about that I'm nothing so long as I think that I'm something. So, after considering everything very thoroughly, I must finally conclude that the proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it's put forward by me or conceived in my mind. (AT VII 25; CSM II 16–17)
There are three important notes to keep in mind here. First, he only claims the certainty of
his own existence from the first-person point of view — he hasn't proved the existence of other minds at this point. This is something that has to be thought through by each of us for ourselves, as we follow the course of the meditations. Second, he isn't saying that his existence is necessary; he's saying that
if he's thinking, then necessarily he exists (see the
instantiation principle). Third, this proposition "I am, I exist" is held true not based on a deduction (as mentioned above) nor on empirical induction, but on the clarity and self-evidence of the proposition.
Descartes doesn't use this first certainty, the
cogito, as a foundation upon which to build further knowledge; rather, it's the firm ground upon which he can stand as he works to restore his beliefs. As he puts it:
Archimedes used to demand just one firm and immovable point in order to shift the entire earth; so I too can hope for great things if I manage to find just one thing, however slight, that's certain and unshakable. (AT VII 24; CSM II 16)
According to many of Descartes' specialists, including
Étienne Gilson, the goal of Descartes in establishing this first truth is to demonstrate the capacity of his criterion — the immediate clarity and distinctiveness of self-evident propositions — to establish true and justified propositions despite having adopted a method of generalized doubt. As a consequence of this demonstration, Descartes considers science and mathematics to be justified to the extent that their proposals are established on a similar immediate clarity, distinctiveness, and self-evidence that present itself to the mind. The originality of Descartes' thinking, therefore, isn't so much in expressing the cogito — a feat accomplished by other predecessors, as we've seen — but on using the cogito as demonstrating the most fundamental epistemological principle, that science and mathematics are justified by relying on clarity, distinctiveness, and self-evidence.
Criticisms of the cogito
There have been a number of criticisms of the
cogito. The first of the two under scrutiny here concerns the nature of the step from "I am thinking" to "I exist." The contention is that this is a
syllogistic inference, for it appears to require the extra
premise: "Whatever has the property of thinking, exists," and that extra premise must surely have been rejected at an earlier stage of the doubt.
It could be argued that "Whatever has the property of thinking, exists" is self-evident, and thus not subject to the method of doubt. This is because the
instantiation principle states that: "Whatever has the property
F, exists," but within the method of doubt, only the property of thinking is indubitably a property of the meditator. Descartes doesn't make use of this defense, however; as we've already seen, he responds to the criticism by conceding that there would indeed be an extra premise needed, but denying that the
cogito is a syllogism.
Jaakko Hintikka offered a non-syllogistic interpretation. "I exist" is immune to Descartes' method of doubt because it's impossible to be mistaken about one's own existence. If we don't exist then we can't be mistaken, so we might as well believe we do.
Perhaps a more relevant contention is whether the "I" to which Descartes refers is justified. In
Descartes, The Project of Pure Enquiry,
Bernard Williams provides a history and full evaluation of this issue. The main objection, as presented by
Georg Lichtenberg, is that rather than supposing an entity that's thinking, Descartes should have said: "thinking is occurring." That is, whatever the force of the
cogito, Descartes draws too much from it; the existence of a thinking thing, the reference of the "I," is more than the
cogito can justify.
Friedrich Nietzsche put forward a similar form of criticism, suggesting a more appropriate phrase would be "it thinks." In other words the "I" in "I think" could be similar to the "It" in "It is raining"
Williams provides a meticulous and exhaustive examination of this objection. He argues, first, that it's impossible to make sense of "there is thinking" without relativising it to
something. However, this something can't be Cartesian egos, because it's impossible to differentiate objectively between things just on the basis of the pure content of consciousness.
Williams' argument in detail
In addition to the preceding two arguments against the
cogito, other arguments have been advanced by Bernard Williams. He claims, for example, that what we're dealing with when we talk of thought, or when we say "I am thinking," is something conceivable from a
third-person perspective; namely objective "thought-events" in the former case, and an
objective thinker in the latter.
The obvious problem is that, through
introspection, or our experience of
consciousness, we've no way of moving to conclude the existence of any third-personal fact, to conceive of which would require something above and beyond just the purely subjective contents of the mind. This obvious problem is
not recognized as such by marked non-western philosophers.
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