5.

‘And, when someone says, I am thinking, therefore I am, or exist, he is not deducing
existence from thought by means of a syllogism, but recognises it as known directly
by a simple intuition of the mind.’ (DESCARTES) Discuss.

In this essay, I will be objecting to Descartes’ claim that you can verify your own existence as
a ‘self’ by directly intuiting it using the mind. I will, in fact, be arguing that there is no such
thing as a ‘self’ or ‘thinking thing’, and that Descartes is wrong when he comes to this
conclusion.

The first argument I will employ against Descartes’ claim that he can verify his own existence
as a ‘thinking thing’ through simple intuition will be that we have many intuitions that are
irrational and yet we still have them anyway. I will call this the argument from irrationality.
An example of an irrational intuition we may have are phobias, fear of something that is not
proportional to the actual threat that that thing poses. For example, a phobia of heights
even when there is no danger of actually falling from that height. Even though this phobia is
irrational, there is still an intuitive reaction to the experience of being high above ground
level: shakiness, dizziness, fear, nausea, etc. The point is not just that some people have
irrational phobias, but that we as people are capable of having intuitions which are
misaligned with actual reality. Throughout this essay, I will be proposing that the simple
intuition that there is a ‘thinking thing’ is an irrational intuition, a kind of mass delusion
among all people, that is misaligned with actual reality in the same way that an irrational
phobia is misaligned with actual reality.

The second argument I will employ against Descartes’ conclusion of an undoubtable

‘thinking thing’ or ‘self’ will be that we cannot trust our thoughts any more than our senses.
Just because our thoughts have the character or impression of being personal and being
willed into being by our ‘selves’, doesn’t mean that this is necessarily the case. Going back to
my argument from irrationality, it is clear that our intuitions are often wrong. In this specific
case of thoughts, there is no reason why our intuitions about the external world (which we
collect data from using our senses) can be called into doubt and yet our intuitions about the
personal ‘character’, ‘flavour’ or ‘smell’ of thoughts can’t be called into doubt. The natural
intuition of there being a thinker behind thoughts can be called into question in just the
same way that sense data can be called into question. It is possible that thoughts are as
impersonal as things in the external world that we cognise with the senses are, and that the
personal ‘flavour’ that thoughts carry is an illusion. Furthermore, it is also possible that
people are naturally inclined to place more value on the appearance of a thought (perceived
through the faculty of mental hearing) than the appearance of a sound, such as the
background sound of a clock ticking (perceived through the faculty of physical hearing).
However, the actual reality is that both the thought and the sound have the same value
objectively. In this way, we could come to regard the mental as a kind of sixth sense rather
than something that is completely different to the physical, where the sense faculty would
be that of mental apprehension and the things being sensed being thoughts, in the same
way that the ear is the sense faculty of hearing and the things being sensed are sounds.

The third argument I will employ against Descartes’ conclusion of an undoubtable ‘thinking
thing’ or self is what I will call the argument from control. When Descartes identifies a
‘thinking thing’, he intuitively assumes that it is something that is willing thoughts into being,
something that is able to exert control over what thoughts it decides to have. However, if
Descartes had taken his meditation a step further, he might have realized that there is in fact
no way of exerting control over thoughts. Take the following example: someone tells you not
to think of an elephant. Before this person tells you this, you have not had any previous
inclination or desire to think about elephants, so there is no reason for you to not follow
their directive. Despite this, as soon as someone tells you not to think of an elephant, it is
inevitable that you think of an elephant. What this example shows is that we don’t actual
have control over our thoughts, thoughts simply come and go without us being able to
decide which ones we have and don’t have. The idea that there is something behind
thoughts which exerts control over them is an illusion. To back up this claim further, take
another example: you decide that you want to completely stop thinking for the next day.
Maybe for a few moments, or possibly longer, you can completely stop having thoughts, but
inevitably sooner or later a thought will pop into your head, even though you don’t want it
to. Once again, this illustrates how there is no thinker of thoughts, no thing that exerts
control over thoughts, there are just thoughts themselves and the sense faculty of mental
apprehension which perceives them.

The final argument I will employ against Descartes’ conclusion of an undoubtable ‘thinking
thing’ or self is that positing some kind of substratum to serve as the executive function
behind mental and physical activity is unnecessary. When we talk about carrying out an act,
say removing a piece of chewing gum from my shoe, we intuitively talk about it in terms of it
being the same ‘I’ or self that steps on the chewing gum, sees the gum on the shoe, has the
thought of deciding to remove it, and then actually using a hand to remove the gum.
However, if we were to think of this sequence in terms of a chain of cause and effect
involving an interconnected network of different mental and physical faculties, we can
remove the notion of some underlying ‘I’ or self that is doing these different things. Applying
this to the example, the eye sense faculty perceives the gum which causes a thought to arise
of deciding to remove the gum. This thought is perceived by the mental apprehension sense
faculty which then causes the hand to remove the gum. Throughout this account, there has
been no need to posit something over and above the different physical and mental faculties
that is serving as the executive function behind the series of events. Following Ockham’s
Razor, which states that if there are two theories which can be used to explain something it
is better to pick the theory that posits the least number of unobservable entities, we
conclude that it is unnecessary to posit a self or ‘thinking thing’ at all.

Having made my arguments against Descartes’ conclusion of there being an undoubtable

‘thinking thing’ or self, I will now expand more on why we even have this illusion of a
persisting self. Following natural selection, the idea that life evolves through random
mutations in traits among species and the survival of those species depends on which have
the most beneficial traits, I believe that the illusion of a self is a trait we as humans have
developed to help us survive. The illusion of a self that persists across time helps to organise
the various thoughts and desires that the interconnected network of different physical and
mental faculties experience so that planning for the future and learning from the past can
take place, giving us a better chance of survival than if we did not have this function.
In conclusion, I reject Descartes’ claim that you can directly know that you are a ‘thinking
thing’ through simple intuition of the mind, because I reject that there is such a thing as a
‘thinking thing’ in the first place.