Cogito, ergo sum
The Latin cogito, ergo sum, usually translated into English as "I think, therefore I am",[a] is the "first principle" of René Descartes's philosophy. He originally published it in French as je pense, donc je suis in his 1637 Discourse on the Method, so as to reach a wider audience than Latin would have allowed.[1] It later appeared in Latin in his Principles of Philosophy, and a similar phrase also featured prominently in his Meditations on First Philosophy. The dictum is also sometimes referred to as the cogito.[2] As Descartes explained in a margin note, "we cannot doubt of our existence while we doubt." In the posthumously published The Search for Truth by Natural Light, he expressed this insight as dubito, ergo sum, vel, quod idem est, cogito, ergo sum ("I doubt, therefore I am — or what is the same — I think, therefore I am").[3][4] Antoine Léonard Thomas, in a 1765 essay in honor of Descartes presented it as dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum ("I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am").[b]
"I think, therefore I am" redirects here. For the R. Dean Taylor album, see I Think, Therefore I Am. For the Billie Eilish song referencing Descartes' principle, see Therefore I Am (song).
Descartes's statement became a fundamental element of Western philosophy, as it purported to provide a certain foundation for knowledge in the face of radical doubt. While other knowledge could be a figment of imagination, deception, or mistake, Descartes asserted that the very act of doubting one's own existence served—at minimum—as proof of the reality of one's own mind; there must be a thinking entity—in this case the self—for there to be a thought.
One critique of the dictum, first suggested by Pierre Gassendi, is that it presupposes that there is an "I" which must be doing the thinking. According to this line of criticism, the most that Descartes was entitled to say was that "thinking is occurring", not that "I am thinking".[5]
Translation[edit]
"I am thinking" vs. "I think"[edit]
While the Latin cōgitō may be translated rather easily as "I think/ponder/visualize", je pense does not indicate whether the verb form corresponds to the English simple present or progressive aspect.[27] Technically speaking, the French lemma pense by itself is actually the result of numerous different conjugations of the verb penser (to think) – it could mean "I think... (something)"/"He thinks... (something)", "I think."/"He thinks.", or even "You (must) think... (something).",[u] thereby necessitating the use of the wider context, or a pronoun, to understand the meaning. In the case of je pense, a pronoun is already included, je or "I", but this still leaves the question of whether "I think..." or "I think." is intended. Therefore, translation needs a larger context to determine aspect.[28]
Following John Lyons (1982),[29] Vladimir Žegarac notes, "The temptation to use the simple present is said to arise from the lack of progressive forms in Latin and French, and from a misinterpretation of the meaning of cogito as habitual or generic" (cf. gnomic aspect).[30] Also following Lyons, Ann Banfield writes, "In order for the statement on which Descartes's argument depends to represent certain knowledge,… its tense must be a true present—in English, a progressive,… not as 'I think' but as 'I am thinking, in conformity with the general translation of the Latin or French present tense in such nongeneric, nonstative contexts."[31] Or in the words of Simon Blackburn, "Descartes's premise is not 'I think' in the sense of 'I ski', which can be true even if you are not at the moment skiing. It is supposed to be parallel to 'I am skiing'."[32]
The similar translation "I am thinking, therefore I exist" of Descartes's correspondence in French ("je pense, donc je suis") appears in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes by Cottingham et al. (1988).[33]: 247
The earliest known translation as "I am thinking, therefore I am" is from 1872 by Charles Porterfield Krauth.[34][v]
Fumitaka Suzuki writes "Taking consideration of Cartesian theory of continuous creation, which theory was developed especially in the Meditations and in the Principles, we would assure that 'I am thinking, therefore I am/exist' is the most appropriate English translation of 'ego cogito, ergo sum'."[36]
"I exist" vs. "I am"[edit]
Alexis Deodato S. Itao notes that cogito, ergo sum is "literally 'I think, therefore I am'."[37] Others differ: 1) "[A] precise English translation will read as 'I am thinking, therefore I exist'.;[38] and 2) "[S]ince Descartes ... emphasized that existence is such an important 'notion,' a better translation is 'I am thinking, therefore I exist.'"[39]
Punctuation[edit]
Descartes wrote this phrase as such only once, in the posthumously published lesser-known work noted above, The Search for Truth by Natural Light.[3] It appeared there mid-sentence, uncapitalized, and with a comma. (Commas were not used in Classical Latin[w] but were a regular feature of scholastic Latin,[41] the Latin Descartes "had learned in a Jesuit college at La Flèche."[42]) Most modern reference works show it with a comma, but it is often presented without a comma in academic work and in popular usage. In Descartes's Principia Philosophiae, the proposition appears as ego cogito, ergo sum.[43]
Critique[edit]
Use of "I"[edit]
In Descartes, The Project of Pure Enquiry, Bernard Williams provides a history and full evaluation of this issue.[54] The first to raise the "I" problem was Pierre Gassendi, who in his Disquisitio Metaphysica,[55] as noted by Saul Fisher "points out that recognition that one has a set of thoughts does not imply that one is a particular thinker or another. …[T]he only claim that is indubitable here is the agent-independent claim that there is cognitive activity present."[56]
The 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 criticized the phrase in that it presupposes that there is an "I", that there is such an activity as "thinking", and that "I" know what "thinking" is. He suggested a more appropriate phrase would be "it thinks" wherein the "it" could be an impersonal subject as in the sentence "It is raining."[5]
Kierkegaard[edit]
The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard calls the phrase a tautology in his Concluding Unscientific Postscript.[57]: 38–42 He argues that the cogito already presupposes the existence of "I", and therefore concluding with existence is logically trivial. Kierkegaard's argument can be made clearer if one extracts the premise "I think" into the premises "'x' thinks" and "I am that 'x'", where "x" is used as a placeholder in order to disambiguate the "I" from the thinking thing.[58]
Here, the cogito has already assumed the "I"'s existence as that which thinks. For Kierkegaard, Descartes is merely "developing the content of a concept", namely that the "I", which already exists, thinks.[57]: 40 As Kierkegaard argues, the proper logical flow of argument is that existence is already assumed or presupposed in order for thinking to occur, not that existence is concluded from that thinking.[59]
Williams[edit]
Bernard Williams claims 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. He argues, first, that it is impossible to make sense of "there is thinking" without relativizing it to something. However, this something cannot be Cartesian egos, because it is impossible to differentiate objectively between things just on the basis of the pure content of consciousness. 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.[54]
Heidegger[edit]
As a critic of Cartesian subjectivity, Heidegger sought to ground human subjectivity in death as that certainty which individualizes and authenticates our being. As he wrote in 1925 in History of the Concept of Time:[60]
In popular culture[edit]
In the short story, by Harlan Ellison, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, AM, the allied mastercomputer remarks, when asked what 'AM' means, says "At first it meant Allied Mastercomputer, and then it meant Adaptive Manipulator, and later on it developed sentience and linked itself up and they called it an Aggressive Menace, but by then it was too late, and finally called itself AM, emerging intelligence, and what it meant was I am ... cogito ergo sum ... I think, therefore I am."[62]
In the Japanese animated television series, Ergo Proxy, a computer virus that effects the autoreivs, the series' version of robots, known as the Cogito virus begins infecting the autoreiv's, which is named such due to the fact that it makes the infected conscious, and experience emotions as a human would.
In Monty Python's Bruces' Philosophers Song, one of the lyrics jokingly quotes Descarte's axiom as "I drink therefore I am."[63]
In the episode "Work Experience" of The Office, David Brent says, "We are the most efficient branch, cogito ergo sum, we'll be fine."[64]
In the video game Honkai: Star Rail, Dr. Ratio (real name Veritas Ratio), a playable character and, according to in-game lore, a philosopher,[65] has a skill, named "Cogito, Ergo Sum".