CMU

I Think, Therefore I am
Cogito Ergo Sum

Cole Johnson
The Task of Philosophy: The Question of Knowledge Chris Huebner February 25th/2016

‘Cogito ergo sum’, or its translation, “I think, therefore I am,” is a frequently quoted line from well-known philosopher named Rene Descartes. Descartes was born in 1596 in France and died later in Sweden in 1650. Descartes was known as the father of modern philosophy and he gave many notable contributions to modern philosophy that we still use today. “I think, therefore I am”, might seem like a very simple quote but if you take a deeper look into it, it has a lot more meaning than you think. To begin to understand this quote, you must first have a firm grasp of the term skepticism. This is the idea that all ideas and beliefs can be doubted. Having a method of doubt or skepticism is something that a lot of people have trouble wrapping their minds around. For example, I have a body and I have a pair of hands, so why would I doubt these things? Descartes finds skepticism very puzzling and it intrigues him to find out why someone would think this way.
In an effort to understand why some people thought like this, Descartes tries to break everything down into its bare bones. He thinks that you cannot build a body of knowledge unless you have firm foundation first. This makes sense because if you’re trying to build theory’s and ideas of things without knowing where these ideas came from, or even if those ideas are truthful or not, then you are just fooling yourself and wasting your own time. Your superstructure of knowledge must have some sort of structural integrity to it. You can’t build your knowledge upwards or expand your structure without sure support beams to follow it up.
Descartes then goes on to believing there is a demon that exists everywhere which tricks everyone that our senses are a complete illusion of our own body, including all bodily sensations. Descartes truly believes this demon exists in the world so he wipes out everything he has ever known about the world to avoid this ‘evil demon’ that he thinks that exists. Descartes denies his entire existence and also the entire worlds’ existence because he thinks we are all delusional to this ‘demon’ that surrounds us. Descartes then goes on to thinking that the only basic thought we have is that, ‘I am thinking so I must exist.’ Even the evil demon cannot interfere with this thought because even the thought of the demon concludes that we as humans are able to think and that thought must come from somewhere. This then goes on to conclude two things for certain, I am thinking and I exist. This is where the famous quote ‘Cogito ergo sum’ comes from.

This idea really made me really think about and doubt the world around me. What if my perception of red, is another persons perception of blue, yet we both call it red even though we are seeing something different? We will continue our whole lives thinking that a certain color is red except in reality we are seeing something different? There is no baseline of matching up colors, so how do we know what other people are seeing? I cannot climb into your head or someone else’s to see what you are seeing so will we ever know what red truly is?
What if this is true for more than just our senses and perception as well? This could be the reason that everyone has different tastes and interests in music. We all hear the same sounds and taste the same food yet our mind interprets them into something they are not. This makes it very hard to trust any of our senses. I truly believe everyone interprets things differently and see’s the world around them differently. How can one person taste something like chocolate and one person loves the taste yet another one hates it? It’s a very hard concept to wrap my head around, but Descarte’s theory makes it a lot easier to understand.
Descartes then goes onto write about how he thinks the mind can exist separate from the body. Our thoughts and feelings are a separate entity to our body. Our mind is a non-physical thinking thing, which is the complete opposite to our body, which is a physical yet non-thinking thing. Therefore Descartes concludes that our minds and bodies are separated things. He has a hard time believing there is a physical world outside his own body. A modern example way of this is the movie “The Matrix” where everyone is controlled by a super computer. This is Descartes way of thinking, in a current version. He doubts that we ourselves are controlling our physical bodies in any form. Descartes believes this is the doing of that ‘evil demon’ once again. Upon thinking this, Descartes creates the thought of the perfect being. The only perfect being that he is aware of is God himself. God does not make mistakes so all of his senses and qualities are perfection so Descartes looks to him to get rid of this evil demon. Descartes understand that he himself is not a perfectionist and therefore not equal in any way shape or form the same as God. He is certain that God is real therefore only God gives him certainty that his thoughts and his physical existence are real. He now knows that the evil demon does not exist, and that he can finally be certain of a lot of his fundamental old beliefs. The point he is trying to get across is that if you have a firm belief in God then there should be no doubt in your mind that you and the world around you are real.
This is where Descartes and I cross paths in our beliefs. I myself do not have a firm and confident belief in God. Because of this reason I find it hard to believe that all our physical body and world is real. In my world there is no powerful God looking down upon us that makes zero mistakes and gives us certainty amongst everything we do. This is the same for many other great philosophers’ that came after Descartes. Other philosophers such as Spinoza, Hume, Libiniz, and many others challenge a lot of Descartes work and disprove him in many ways. There are, however, many others that agree with a lot of his work, as well.