I Think I Thunk Correctly

 

1968

                                                                                 

         It was Descartes hope to discover at least one undeniable and indubitable truth, and to accomplish this by logical reasoning.  He proceeded to examine carefully all he knew of the world and concluded that his knowledge came through his senses, and the senses often fooled him.  He then eliminated everything that depended on his senses.  However, he stressed, while doing this, he had no intention of disputing practical matters.  He allowed that the practical world must remain as it had been, despite his doubt of its existence in his search for truth.  He felt it would not be wise for a person still dependent on the practical world to indulge in his exercise, and he noted that he did only because he was free from normal obligations.  But he does mentally eliminate the practical world, including all its objects, even his own body.  When he finished eliminating what his senses had given him, he was left with his mind, and he continued to carve away at it.

         He had doubts, he realized; doubts concerning his own existence.  But if he had doubts, then indeed, he did have something.  He will always have something as long as he has doubts, even if there is some being who tried to deceive him into doubting that he had doubts.  For even if he had doubts that he had doubts, he had a doubt.  Descartes associated doubting and wondering with these doubts, which is what he had been doing with thinking.  To doubt is to think.  He concluded that to think is to exist.

         This is certain, he felt.  There was no denial of his thinking.  There was possible denial of the world, of his body, of other men, of conversation, for his senses could twist and distort these, or he could have imagined them or dreamt them and still be convinced that they existed.  But nothing could distort the fact that he was thinking.  For distortion itself would be a thought.  “I think, therefore, I am.”

         But “I think” does not prove “I am”.  Descartes could be perfectly correct about the existence of thinking, but he can only infer that the thinking is his.  There is a thought.  A thought does exist, but whether Descartes existed is not proven.  This is the difficulty with his argument.

         Can this difficulty be resolved?  There is a certain extension of what Descartes has proved that can be developed.  There is a thought, therefore there is something.  There is something existing.  It is thought, one single thought.  But it is dynamic.  It is dynamic because there also exists a question.  That question is: Does anything exist that is certain and indubitable?  The answer is: There is a thought.  The thought asks the question.  By asking the question and giving the answer, it creates a process.  That process is thinking.  And the process of thinking asks a second question:  Do I exist?  The answer is: Yes.  There is a thought, therefore, there is an I.  Then I exist.  But whether I am Descartes or somebody else is irresolvable.

(For more information on Descartes philosophic views, click on the title of this post.)