Topic 2 - "Cogito, ergo sum"

To speak of the phrase "cogito, ergo sum" (French "je pense, donc je suis; English "I am thinking, therefore I am") with respect to the Meditations is somewhat of a misnomer as the phrase is not taken from this work, but instead from the "Discourse on the Method." Its appearance in the Meditations arises as the first fundamental proof that Descartes can salvage in the Second Meditation after the flood of doubts that he had introduced in the First Meditation. How then does Descartes come to this conclusion given the attempts of the malicious demon to deceive him? Quite simply, even if it is the case that all he perceives by way of the senses is a sham, and that his body and the world as he sees it are false, then in order to be deceived he must necessarily exist, and while he is engaged in doubt, thought, and reflection of this kind, it cannot be the case that he does not exist, as he must exist in order to carry out these mental processes.
The key point that Descartes makes in "The Search for Truth" is that the meditator is doubting everything by the end of the First Meditation, and that this doubting is essentially a form of thinking; thus in doubting, he is thinking, and it must be true that he exists. One cannot doubt that one is thinking, as doubting is a form of thinking; doubting that one is thinking is to confirm that one is in fact thinking.
This helps to explain why one cannot use any other premises in concluding one's existence. For example, to say "I am breathing, therefore I exist" will not do as the meditator has resolved him or herself to the fact that they may not have a body at all. Similarly, to say "I am walking, therefore I exist" is also open to doubt, as one could be dreaming one was walking. Even premises involving mental aspects as opposed to corporeal ones are vulnerable in this way. If one to affirm "I am hoping, therefore I exist," then one could doubt that they were hoping; the key, as I have already said, is that doubting is thinking, and there cannot be any way in which doubting one is thinking is anything other than thought itself. Thus doubting that one is hoping, willing, etc. does not entail that one is actually doing the action (mental or physical). The only action for which the proposition is indubitable is thinking, or other descriptions of acts of thinking. Given this indubitability, that one cannot doubt that one is thinking, and that one cannot be unaware of ones thinking, then one's existence necessarily follows. As long as one continues this activity, existence is assured.
This interpretation can be called a "narrow" interpretation, as only acts of thinking will serve as premises that will render the argument valid. Other acts will not do as to doubt them does not confirm them. However, many commentators have offered what could be termed a "broader" interpretation, based on the fact that Descartes himself defines "thought" in a very broad sense in the Second Set of Replies. He includes the operations of the will, the intellect, the imagination, and the senses as types of thought. Furthermore, in the "Principles" he seems to say that any mental act will suffice as a premise for the Cogito.
On this view, any mental act from the above categories can be said to involve thought as the mind becomes directly aware of the action. A thought can be defined in this instance as anything of which I am immediately aware, and we can see that these suffice. However, it has been suggested that the problem here is simply one of language; the Latin and French words for thought (cogitatio and pens�e respectively) have a much wider meaning than the English equivalent, and the translation simply loses this subtle difference, thus resulting in difficulties for English-speaking students of Descartes. On the other hand, Descartes had to explain to his contemporaries that he was using the wider sense of the word, and this suggests that they were confused by the apparent contradiction here.
This broad interpretation is less satisfactory than the narrow one, as it rests on the assumption (also known as the "perfect transparency of the mind) that the mind is evidently aware of all its actions. If this is what Descartes meant, then it is curious that at no point does he argue for it. But is it not conceivable that the malicious demon might trick me into believing I am having some desire or hope, in which case this assumption does not apply. Secondly, the broad interpretation fails to convey the fact that it is the link between doubting and thinking that enables one to come to the conclusion that one exists.
Is there any way these two points of view can be reconciled? Cottingham thinks so. He believes that the reason Descartes defined thought in such broad terms was that each of the activities he mentioned could satisfy the premises of the Cogito because within each of the types of action mentioned was contained an intellectual reflective action of the kind required to satisfy the Cogito. Thus when we receive sensory data, or use our imagination, or use our power of will, etc. there is within each of these actions an element that is a specifically intellectual, reflective activity such that doubting it will confirm it. In this way, the implications of Descartes' wide definition of thought actually lend support to the narrow interpretation. Whatever the nature of the mental act that the meditator performs, there will always be a small part that involves reflection and doubting, which will support the Cogito in the way described above; that it is impossible to doubt that one is not performing this narrowly intellectual and reflective act, since doubting is a reflective act itself. So whether we start with a broad or narrow act of thinking, we will end up at the conclusion of the Cogito, namely that we exist. The argument does not take the form of a syllogism of the type associated with Aristotle, despite the fact that Burman seemed to think it did. Descartes recognised that to postulate the Cogito this way would lead to a trap of circularity. One would need to know the major premise "Whatever thinks exists," whereas this is also an extended conclusion of the realisation of ones own existence. Descartes instead asserts that one recognises the certainty of the Cogito as self-evident from intuition of the mind.
Other modern commentators, whilst accepting that Descartes need not have constructed a formal syllogism of this type, have tried to show that in order for the Cogito to hold its force, it does in fact rely on a concealed premise that says that whatever has attributes must exist, and when saying that I have an attribute of thought, I can deduce my existence based on the knowledge that I exist because having this attribute makes this necessary. Descartes does state elsewhere that nothingness has no attributes (a standard logical maxim), so therefore a property must be assigned to some subject; however, this does not mean that he needs to be aware of this when deducing his existence from the Cogito. As he points out later in the Meditations, there are objects to which we can assign certain properties without having to assert that they actually exist. This seems perfectly plausible, indeed, authors in the fantasy or science-fiction genres routinely invent strange and fantastic creatures, new elements and technologies, and even whole new modes of existence, and consequently in describing them in detail assign them all sorts of attributes. Yet it would be absurd to say that any of the these weird and wonderful creations exist outside of the author's and readers' imaginations. Quite clearly then, this objection, or at any rate, the notion that anything that has attributes must necessarily exist, is rubbish.
Yet even Cottingham's attempts to defend the self-evidence of the argument depend on some prior knowledge that, although it may seem trivial and obvious, is vital for the meditator to undertake the journey through the stages of the Cogito. These include what it is to think, the knowledge that doubting is a form of thinking, and that existence is necessary in order to think. Descartes himself agrees that this is a prerequisite to understand the Cogito. So is it true to say, given that we must know these premises, that the knowledge of self-existence is the first piece of knowledge we can distinguish from the maelstrom of doubt? Not exactly; it would be more accurate to say that it is the first piece of information about existential truths, i.e. things that really exist. However, in order to come to this conclusion, it is the case that we need a range of premises about fundamental concepts that we can draw upon. The very fact that Descartes doesn't include these in his First Meditation shows that his doubt was not absolute. It is also a reflection on the nature of the project he had undertaken; he was not trying to prove reason or build a system of cognition, but rather to construct the foundations for a new scientific system.
Because of the fact that any attempts to formalise the Cogito have proved to be inconsistent with Descartes' expressed belief in the self-evidence of the argument, it still remains unclear as to exactly how Descartes himself understood it to be so certain and self-evident. As a result, one cannot say that the Cogito is flawless; however, it has been robust enough to stand up to much criticism since it was written. Descartes believes he has salvaged something from his doubt in the existence of himself, even for the briefest of periods of thought. He must then go on to show how this can be expanded to knowledge of other things.