Philosophers

According to Descartes, there is only 1 truth, I think therefore I am. But if the fact that there is only 1 truth is true then there is not only 1 truth. I would like to know what the panelists' thoughts on this are.

Comments

I think you're right that there is something inconsistent about theclaim that "X [some other claim held true] is the only truth". Thankfully, that's not what Descartesheld. He tried to show how all our knowledge (and he thought that weknew many truths) could ultimately be based on certain rock-solidstarting points. One of these was that I (understood asmy present thinking self) exist. This claim is not something that couldbe intelligibly doubted, he argued, because the very act of doubting itshows that it's correct. On the basis of this slimfoundation, Descartes attempted to erect the entire edifice of ourknowledge. For a modernized translation of Descartes' great Meditations on First Philosophy, see here.

Just a couple of remarks about Descartes. First of all, Descartes doesn't even use the phrase, "I think, therefore I am" in the Meditations; the phrase only appears in the Discourse on Method. In the Meditations, Descartes writes: "So after considering everything very thoroughly I must finally conclude that this proposition, 'I am, I exist', is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind." What this 'I' is, however, is another matter, which Descartes goes on to examine further in the Second Meditation. In fact, in the Sixth Meditation, Descartes purports to show that the 'I' is a thinking thing. (This raises a vexing question: what does Descartes take the essence of thought to be?) Although 'I am, I exist' is the first truth discovered in the Meditations, it's not the only truth: in the Third Meditation, Descartes purports to discover that God exists; in the Fifth Meditation, he purports to discover the essence of body is extension; in the Sixth Meditation, he purports to discover that the mind is really distinct from the body.

Although Descartes claims in the Second Meditation that 'I am, I exist' is an 'Archimedean point' from which he can begin to reconstruct knowledge on certain and unshakeable foundations, it's not at all clear to me that any other of the claims to knowledge made in the Meditations actually rest on that foundation. So the question is, what is the significance of the discovery that 'I am, I exist' is necessarily true?

For a very interesting discussion of various possible interpretive approaches to the Meditations, see Gary Hatfield, Descartes and the Meditations (Routledge, 2003).

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