Descartes' "I Think Therefore I Am"

Rene Descartes was a French mathematician and philosopher who has been given credit for developing the western notions of science and reason. His whole philosophy was based on the idea of essential doubt whereby, nothing that is sensed or perceived is essentially true. This is when he came up with the formulation, “I think therefore I am” meaning: the only thing that is actually true is the fact that there is some consciousness or a mind that does the believing or doubting of the things that we perceive (Cottom, 2003). He also proposed that the body and the mind are two different and separate entities, and the body is not a certain entity because we can only think of it as an entity because the mind perceives or senses it. As much as Rene was a famous philosopher, so many people disagreed with his theories, and he received so much criticism especially from the religious groups because of his theories. 

According to one of his theories, Rene suggested that all the opinions that we perceive may be false because sometimes our senses deceive us. Therefore, in his opinion, nothing exists in the way that is presented to us by our brain or our senses. He suggested that everything we perceive while awake, is the same as the illusions that we get while asleep or dreaming; nothing is true; they are all just illusions in our head. However, because our mind perceives such things, they might as well be true, because the mind perceives what it sees. Thus, “I think, therefore I am” (Cottom, 2003). 

He also talks about how the body is just an assembly of body parts such as the face, legs, arms, etc. that exist as one entity, with a mind that feels it. He goes on to say that through the mind and the use of the body, we can perceive things such as taste, touch, heat, sound, and the likes. However, people still have thoughts and dreams when they sleep (Cottom, 2003). Therefore, our body is an object that thinks; and because we have acknowledged our bodies as objects that think, then it is possible that the things our bodies perceive, say, listen, touch, are all elements of functions of the brain. We may think that we are touching or hearing noises, but in the real sense, it is just our mind that is making us think that we hear the sounds. He believed that the faculty of judgment that lays in our minds, makes us believe what our eyes think they saw. 

Rene’s theory is one of the most susceptible to criticism in all history. There have been numerous criticisms of his theory for centuries. For instance, Rene believed that everything was an illusion and we only saw the things that we thought existed. This is not practical on any level because this would mean that nothing really existed, and if it did exist, then it only exists in our mind (Longuenesse, 2014). If that was the case, then are people really people or something perceived by the brain; and whose brain would be perceiving these people? And if nothing really existed; if everything was just an illusion, does that mean that things like the sky, the earth, houses, etc. do not really exist and they are just objects of our imagination? Where then does this body with a mind that perceives life or exist? 

In conclusion, agreeing with Rene’s theory, would mean that nothing really existed including life itself. I think Rene took the phrase “I think, therefore I am” a little bit too literally. This phrase can only have meaning when it is used metaphorically, say: if you believe you can do or achieve something, then you indeed shall. Believing that everything we perceive is just an illusion is so wrong and impractical on so many levels because life exists. Our minds perceive what our eyes see, and these are not illusions. If they were illusions, wouldn’t everyone have a different illusion or perspective of how the world really is? 

References 

Cottom, D. (2003). I Think Therefore I Am. Routledge , 70(4), 1067-1026. 

Longuenesse, B. (2014). Chapter 1. Kant’s “I Think” versus Rene Descarte’s “I Am a Thing That Thinks”. Kant and the Early Moderns.