COGITO ERGO SUM

"'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.
"''Cogito ergo sum''" is a translation of Descartes' original French statement: "''Je pense, donc je suis''", which occurs in his ''Discourse on Method'' (1637). (See ''Principles of Philosophy'', Part 1, article 7: "Ac proinde hæc cognitio, ''ego cogito, ergo sum'', est omnium prima & certissima, quæ cuilibet ordine philosophanti occurrat.")
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 am mistaken, I am") (book XI, 26), who also anticipates modern refutations of the concept.

Contents

Introduction

Criticisms of the ''cogito''

Williams' argument in detail

Further reading

External links

Introduction

The phrase "''Cogito ergo sum''" is not used in Descartes' most important work, the ''Meditations on First Philosophy'', but the term "the ''cognito''" is (often confusingly) used to refer to an argument from it. Descartes felt that this phrase, which he had 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 has survived the doubt. In his belief in his own existence he finds it: it is 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?
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 has not 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 is not saying that his existence is necessary; he is 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 does not use this first certainty, the ''cogito'', as a foundation upon which to build further knowledge; rather, it is the firm ground upon which he can stand as he works to restore his beliefs. As he puts it:
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, is not so much in expressing the cogito -a feat accomplished by other predecessors, as we have 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 does not make use of this defence, however; as we have 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 is impossible to be mistaken about one's own existence. If we do not exist then we cannot 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 is 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".
Williams provides a meticulous and exhaustive examination of this objection. He argues, first, that it is impossible to make sense of "there is thinking" without relativising it to ''something''. However, this something cannot be Cartesian egos, because it is impossible to objectively differentiate 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 are 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 have 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.

Further reading

★ W.E. Abraham, "Disentangling the Cogito", ''Mind'' 83:329 (1974)

★ Z. Boufoy-Bastick, ''Introducing 'Applicable Knowledge' as a Challenge to the Attainment of Absolute Knowledge '', ''Sophia Journal of Philosophy'', VIII (2005), pp 39–52.

★ R. Descartes (translated by John Cottingham), ''Meditations on First Philosophy'', in ''The Philosophical Writings of Descartes'' vol. II (edited Cottingham, Stoothoff, and Murdoch; Cambridge University Press, 1984) ISBN 0-521-28808-8

★ G. Hatfield, ''Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Descartes and the Meditations'' (Routledge, 2003) ISBN 0-415-11192-7

★ B. Williams, ''Descartes, The Project of Pure Enquiry'' (Penguin, 1978)

External links

★ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Descartes' Epistemology

★ Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Descartes -- The Cogito Argument