Could 'cogito ergo sum' possibly be false?

Question

I've heard it postulated by some people that *"we can't truly know anything"*. While that does seem to apply to the vast majority of things, I can't see how *'cogito ergo sum'* can possibly be false. No matter what I am, no matter in what way I'm being tricked, no matter how I may be deluded, I *must* exist in order to - in some way - be considering this right now (or be being tricked right now). Is *'cogito ergo sum'* necessarily correct, or have I missed something?

Answer 1

Taken as evidence cogito ergo sum is self evident. Activity of some sort implies being of some sort. Thinking implies a thinking being. But this is epistemic causality not metaphysical causality. Some people get those confused.

If you want to discuss more, we can schedule a lesson.

Answer 2

The problem with Descartes' cogito is the introduction of the term "I." Why should the entity that is being fooled be "I"? Why must it be an entity or ego at all?

Truly "systematic doubt" should be doubtful about everything, like Husserl's concept of the eidetic reduction as a preamble to a genuine phenomenology (Ideas).

Another difficulty with "I think, therefore I am" is the ergo part. Is it logically or even empirically true that thinking (or whatever it is that is perceived) creates a being. As a counterexample, an amoeba no doubt is a living being but it probably does not "think" in the sense that humans do.

Finally, from the too-easy formulation of the cogito, Descartes went on to formulate Cartesian dualism, which led to him restoring all his previous beliefs in his ego, the physical world, matter, the French monarchy, etc.

Answer 3

Actually, the global skeptic's claim that we can't know anything is not self-contradictory because it isn't a claim about what we know. It doesn't claim that we know that we can't know anything, which would be self-contradictory. It only claims that we can't know anything. It's not a claim about what we know, but rather a claim about our inability to know anything. That may be false, but it isn't self-contradictory.

Also, "cogito ergo sum" is a deductive argument--the premise is "I think" and the conclusion is "I am"--so it technically doesn't make sense to ask if it can be false because only propositions can be false. It looks like you're wondering about the conclusion and whether it's possible for it to be false that you exist. This might depend on what we think of "you". If "you" are supposed to be an enduring thing over time, or an entity that persists over time as one and the same entity, then it could be false that "you" exist because there may be no enduring "you" that exists (perhaps you're what Roderick Chisholm calls a "successive entity"--you're not an enduring entity, or one that actually persists over time, but rather something that technically changes over time into brand new entities, as "your car" does every time it loses or changes parts). Perhaps there's a way to frame Descartes' argument "I think; therefore, I am" in a way that circumvents this problem. This is a valid argument--there's no way that non-existent stuff can think--so if we can formulate the premise in a way that makes it come out as definitely true and as something that we know, then we can know that we exist by correctly deducing our existence from our knowledge of the premise.

Answer 4

One of the first things to keep in mind is that the claim that "we can't know anything" is a (self-contradicting) truth claim. That is, the person is claiming that we know that we can't know.

Your thought regarding cogito ergo sum corresponds to that of Descartes. Anytime there is any thinking going on (1) there must be some thing which is doing the thinking, and (2) your awareness of this necessitates your existence. It is arguable that awareness is prior to thinking, but either way we have the same result: certainty regarding one's existence.