What kind of claim is, 'cogito ergo sum'?

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Kajal Gorasia

What kind of claim is, ‘cogito ergo sum’?

The Second Meditation sees the development of Descartes’ arguably most famous claims, ‘cogito ergo sum’ translated as ‘I am thinking therefore I am’. The question about what kind of claim this is has been of heated debate since its establishment.

Previous to the Second Meditation Descartes has established that he must doubt everything. In response he asks ‘So what remains true?’ at the beginning of the Second Meditation. The very fact that he is thinking about doubt establishes for him that he exists necessarily, for as long as the demon continues to deceive him ‘he will never bring it about that I am nothing’. In other words as long as the demon is allowed to deceive him, it implies that he exists. At this stage Descartes establishes that ‘I exist’ but refrains from making judgement about what this ‘I’ is. Also he says this ‘I’ only exists as a thinking thing and not in any material way, which continues to remain an uncertainty.

Thinking is ‘inseparable’ from existence for Descartes, for it does not depend up on the senses as previously thought. He had come to realise whilst sleeping that there were many things that he appeared to perceive through the senses, which he afterwards realised he did not perceive through the senses at all. This thing was ‘thinking’. Thus this is inseparable from ‘I’. The fact that ‘I think’ does not make one exist but as long as ‘I am thinking’ because as soon as one stops thinking one ceases to exist. Despite being unable to provide any characteristics of ‘I’ Descartes believes he has established that he is at least ‘something’, which is an improvement from the First Meditation. After coming to this conclusion, Descartes is confused as to why he has a ‘more distinct grasp of things which I realise are doubtful…than I have of that which is true’.

In light of such analysis Descartes attempts to show that his concluding claim, ‘cogito ergo sum’ is unshakably sound and thus one of certainty. He does this through his many replies to the objections raised against his arguments. In the second objection the point is raised that the structure of the argument, ‘cogito ergo sum’, flows from a premise to a conclusion. As a result the argument is deductive by nature. However, in his replies to this objection, Descartes dismisses this by saying thinking is ‘self evident’, known through ‘intuition of the mind’ and therefore not the result of syllogism.

A syllogistic interpretation of the cogito, although not accepted by Descartes, at least attempts to shed light on the validity of the claim ‘I exist’ if nothing else. To reject the interpretation renders that Descartes needs to find another means of showing how his conclusion is necessary and certain. For Descartes the certainty comes from the extreme doubt undergone. Doubting renders the claim ‘I am thinking’ as certain. To doubt means the ‘I’ exists because doubting requires a doubter. Here doubting is assumed to be a type of thinking. This is the basis for Descartes attempt to maintain the credibility of his claim. Thus when it is raised in the Third Set of Objections that if ‘thinking’ is replaced by ‘walking’ it leads to absurd conclusions, Descartes is able to defend himself. For it is possible that I may be dreaming that I am walking. Even if we replace walking with a non-material implication such as ‘I am hoping therefore I am’ Descartes stands firm because it does not fit the mechanism of doubt. For to doubt hope does not confirm the certainty of existing because doubting is not hoping but thinking. To quote Cottingham, ‘doubting that one is reflecting is impossible, since doubting is itself a case of reflecting’. 

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However by saying that his dictum is not the result of syllogism Descartes raises further confusion. Should it be the case that he is not deducing ‘sum’ from ‘cogito’, that is ‘sum’ is self evident, what is the purpose of mentioning ‘cogito’ in the dictum? For if the conclusion is contained within the premises there is no real need to mention ‘cogito’, in the same way that it is not necessary to say that a spinster is an unmarried woman. Many have tried to justify why Descartes makes the association between thinking and existence. Some maintain that the dictum ...

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2/5 The essay starts in a very confused way, with the argument very heavily obscured by poor grammar and writing in general. Thoughts are included as if at random and the reader is left to draw on their own knowledge of the cogito to guess at what the writer means. This is a very bad start to an essay. The essay includes in its middle an extended section of highlighted text with lots of capitalisation, which is expressed with verve and precision and even includes some Gerald Manley Hopkins. This section would be great were it connected to the rest of the essay in any way. This section is followed by some paragraphs rather clearer expressed than the opening passages, which make neat isolated points, but which fail to make any coherent overall argument. By the end, the essay has once again returned to making unexplained claims which it is difficult to interpret. This essay would benefit from clearer expression. Without this it is difficult to evaluate the merits of the ideas it contains.