Editing Cogito, ergo sum (section)

== Critique ==
=== Use of "I" ===
In ''Descartes, The Project of Pure Enquiry'', English philosopher [[Bernard Williams]] provides a history and full evaluation of this issue.<ref name=":1" /> The first to raise the "I" problem was [[Pierre Gassendi]], who in his {{Lang|la|Disquisitio Metaphysica}},<ref>{{Cite book|last=Gassendi|first=Pierre|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=59cFzgEACAAJ|title=Disquisito metaphysica, seu dubitationes et instantiae adversus Renati Cartesii metaphysicam et responsa|date=1644|publisher=Vrin|language=la}}</ref> as noted by Saul Fisher, "points out that recognition that one has a set of thoughts does not imply that one is a particular thinker or another. …[T]he only claim that is indubitable here is the agent-independent claim that there is cognitive activity present."<ref>Fisher, Saul. [2005] 2013. "[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/gassendi/ Pierre Gassendi]" (revised ed.). ''[[Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]]''. Retrieved 17 June 2020.</ref>

The objection, as presented by [[Georg Christoph Lichtenberg|Georg Lichtenberg]], is that rather than supposing an entity that is thinking, Descartes should have said: "thinking is occurring." That is, whatever the force of the ''cogito'', Descartes draws too much from it; the existence of a thinking thing, the reference of the "I," is more than the ''cogito'' can justify. [[Friedrich Nietzsche]] criticized the phrase in that it presupposes that there is an "I", that there is such an activity as "thinking", and that "I" know what "thinking" is. He suggested a more appropriate phrase would be "it thinks" wherein the "it" could be an [[Dummy pronoun|impersonal subject]] as in the sentence "It is raining."<ref name="thinkingisoccurring">{{Cite web|url=http://aporia.byu.edu/pdfs/monte-Sum_ergo_cogito.pdf|title=Sum, Ergo Cogito: Nietzsche Re-orders Decartes|last=Monte|first=Jonas|date=2015|website=aporia.byu.edu|publisher=BYU|access-date=17 September 2016
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220602112713/https://aporia.byu.edu/pdfs/monte-Sum_ergo_cogito.pdf
|archive-date=2 June 2022}}</ref>

=== Søren Kierkegaard ===
The Danish philosopher [[Søren Kierkegaard]] called the phrase a [[Tautology (logic)|tautology]] in his ''[[Concluding Unscientific Postscript]]''.<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|38–42}} He argues that the ''cogito'' already presupposes the existence of "I", and therefore concluding with existence is logically trivial. Kierkegaard's argument can be made clearer if one extracts the premise "I think" into the premises "'x' thinks" and "I am that 'x'", where "x" is used as a placeholder in order to disambiguate the "I" from the thinking thing.<ref>Schönbaumsfeld, Genia. ''A Confusion of the Spheres''. Oxford, 2007. p. 168-170.</ref>

Here, the ''cogito'' has already assumed the "I"'s existence as that which thinks. For Kierkegaard, Descartes is merely "developing the content of a concept", namely that the "I", which already exists, thinks.<ref name=":0">[[Søren Kierkegaard|Kierkegaard, Søren]]. [1844] 1985. ''[[Philosophical Fragments]]'', translated by P. Hong.</ref>{{Rp|40}} As Kierkegaard argues, the proper logical flow of argument is that existence is already assumed or presupposed in order for thinking to occur, not that existence is concluded from that thinking.<ref>Archie, Lee C. 2006. "Søren Kierkegaard, 'God's Existence Cannot Be Proved'." In ''Philosophy of Religion''. Lander Philosophy.</ref>

=== Bernard Williams ===
Williams himself claimed that what we are dealing with when we talk of thought, or when we say "I am thinking," is something conceivable from a [[Grammatical person|third-person]] perspective—namely objective "thought-events" in the former case, and an [[Objectivity (philosophy)|objective]] thinker in the latter. He argues, first, that it is impossible to make sense of "there is thinking" without relativizing it to ''something.'' However, this something cannot be Cartesian egos, because it is impossible to differentiate objectively between things just on the basis of the pure content of consciousness. The obvious problem is that, through [[introspection]], or our experience of [[consciousness]], we have no way of moving to conclude the existence of any third-personal fact, to conceive of which would require something above and beyond just the purely subjective contents of the mind.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|last=Williams|first=Bernard Arthur Owen|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eiTXAAAAMAAJ&q=%22there+is+thinking%22|title=Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry|date=1978|publisher=Penguin Books|isbn=978-0-14-013840-5|language=en}}</ref>

=== Martin Heidegger ===
As a critic of [[Cartesian Self|Cartesian subjectivity]], German philosopher [[Martin Heidegger]] sought to ground human subjectivity in death as that certainty which individualizes and authenticates our Being ([[Dasein]]). As he wrote in 1925 in ''History of the Concept of Time'':<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Heidegger|first1=Martin|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt16gzbw5|title=History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena|last2=Kisiel|first2=Theodore|date=1985|publisher=Indiana University Press|isbn=978-0-253-32730-7|location=|pages=317|jstor=j.ctt16gzbw5}}</ref>{{blockquote|This certainty, that "I myself ''am'', in that I will die," is the basic certainty of [[Dasein]] itself. It is a genuine statement of Dasein, while ''cogito sum'' is only the semblance of such a statement. If such pointed formulations mean anything at all, then the appropriate statement pertaining to Dasein in its being would have to be ''sum moribundus'' [I am in dying], ''moribundus'' not as someone gravely ill or wounded, but insofar as I am, I am ''moribundus''. The ''MORIBUNDUS'' first gives the ''SUM'' its sense.}}

=== John Macmurray ===
The Scottish philosopher [[John Macmurray]] rejected the ''cogito'' outright in order to place action at the center of a philosophical system he entitled the Form of the Personal. "We must reject this, both as standpoint and as method. If this be philosophy, then philosophy is a bubble floating in an atmosphere of unreality."<ref>[[John Macmurray|Macmurray, John]]. 1991. ''The Self as Agent''. [[Humanity Books]]. p. 78.</ref> The reliance on thought creates an irreconcilable dualism between thought and action in which the [[:wikt:unity|unity]] of experience is lost, thus dissolving the integrity of our selves and destroying any connection with reality. In order to formulate a more adequate ''cogito'', Macmurray proposes the substitution of "I do" for "I think,"  ultimately leading to a belief in God as an agent to whom all persons stand in relation.

=== Alfred North Whitehead ===
In ''Process and Reality'', Whitehead wrote "Descartes in his own philosophy conceives the thinker as creating the occasional thought. The philosophy of organism inverts the order, and conceives the thought as a constituent operation in the creation of the occasional thinker. The thinker is the final end whereby there is the thought. In this inversion we have the final contrast between a philosophy of substance and a philosophy of organism."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Whitehead |first=Alfred North |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uJDEx6rPu1QC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Process+and+Reality&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjuysLqu8SLAxVdGjQIHaYzK-MQ6AF6BAgFEAM#v=snippet&q=%22He%20writes%20(Meditation%20II)%22&f=false |title=Process and Reality |date=2010-05-11 |publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=978-1-4391-1836-8 |pages=150-151 |language=en}}</ref>