The only certainty, Descartes contends, is that I exist. Through his method of doubt, all else has been proven to contain some element of doubt, and thus cannot be trusted as absolutely certain. In the Discourse, Descartes says, "... I noticed that while I was trying... to think everything false, it was necessary that I, who was thinking this, was something. And observing that this truth 'I am thinking, therefore I exist' was so firm and sure that all the most extravagant suppositions of the sceptics were incapable of shaking it, I decided that I could accept it without scruple as the first principle of the philosophy I was seeking.
" The argument of the certainty of my existence rests upon the validity of the cogito. I shall consider the three separate arguments over the nature of the cogito, and in so doing come to some sort of conclusion as to whether it is 'an intuition, a deduction, [or] a performance'. This will lead to the answer to how certain one can be that one exists. The first argument, that the cogito is an intuition, is that which Descartes himself asserts as true. He claims it to be intuitively apparent based upon the method of doubt discussed in the First Medititations.
In this he states that we must doubt everything in order to find an absolute basis of truth, on which to build our scientific knowledge. And in the process of doubting everything, we find that there is only one thing that cannot be doubted - doubt itself, or the fact that we are doubting. And this leads to a proof of one's existence, for if doubting is a process of thinking (as Descartes claims) and in order to think one must exist, one who doubts must therefore exist. To doubt that one exists when one is thinking, Descartes argues, is an absolute contradiction: " . . .
we cannot for all that [we might doubt] suppose that we, who are having such thoughts, are nothing. For it is a contradiction to suppose that what thinks does not, at the very time when it is thinking, exist. Accordingly, this piece of knowledge - I am thinking, therefore I exist - is the first and most certain of all to occur to anyone who philosophises in an orderly way. " This is the essence of the cogito, and its very proof. Descartes' assertion, in the Meditations, that "this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind" illustrates clearly the intuitive nature of the cogito.
It states that there is no general rule that 'whatever is thinking exists' or even that 'I have thought, therefore I exist'; the essence of the cogito is that it remains true only as long as I am thinking. When I am thinking I can intuitively conclude that I exist, but not from any previous knowledge or experience, but because at the moment I am thinking it intuitively follows that I exist. If I did not exist then I could not be thinking. As Cottingham confirms, "the proposition 'I exist' is true whenever it is conceived in the mind.
" This concurs with Williams' conclusion that the cogito is self-verifying, in that "if anyone asserts the proposition, then that assertion must be true. " This remains the essence of the cogito, that it is self-evident, proving its innate intuitive nature. But what of the argument that the cogito is merely a deduction? It is a relatively popular criticism of the cogito that it relies on the standard Aristotelian triadic pattern of a major premise, a minor premise and a conclusion: whatever is thinking exists, I am thinking, therefore I exist.
This is taken, by Burman (amongst others), to be a syllogism, or based upon deductive reasoning. From the major premise, that 'whatever is thinking exists', one may deduce that if one is thinking, one exists. And from this we may find, as many other critics have, that Descartes is indeed guilty of syllogism, which would offer an extremely insufficient foundation on which to build his subsequent beliefs. A syllogism cannot, by its very nature, be based upon something absolutely certain (if indeed we are to believe Descartes that there is nothing certain other than the cogito).
There is nothing to prove absolutely that the first premise of 'whatever is thinking exists' is absolutely true; we are merely assuming it to be true and deductively reasoning that if combined with the second premise, we must arrive at the conclusion that 'I exist'. But before coming to the firm conclusion that Descartes is guilty of syllogism, perhaps we should consider his response to these accusations in his Second Set of Replies.
He claims simply that he does not "deduce existence from thought by means of a syllogism but recognises it as something self-evident by a simple intuition of the mind. " Descartes admits that in concluding knowledge of our own existence, we may regard the major premise as 'implicitly presupposed', though we are not 'explicitly aware' of any such premise. Inference of one's own existence - 'I am thinking therefore I am' - does not necessarily confer validity to the general notion of 'whatever is thinking exists'.
As Cottingham contends, "as far as the individual mediator is concerned, arriving at knowledge of one's existence is a matter of recognising a particular fact that is true in one's own case; there is no need for the mediator to construct any formal syllogism. " That is to say that we may not assume that simply because 'I am thinking, therefore I exist' holds, this will entail the general premise that 'whatever is thinking exists', as it clearly does not.
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