“I Think, Therefore I am”?

This statement involves a single serious doubt.

Descartes a few hundred years ago expressed some fresh insight that stirred up the field of philosophy. He stated “cogito, ergo sum” which has been typically translated into “I think, therefore I am”. I initially understood this translation as as long as I think, I exist, or something along that line. But this is not what Descartes meant.

It should be understood as while I am doubting my existence, I exist in that very moment. The word cogito in Latin also means doubt, and many scholars believe that the correct translation should be “I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am”.

First of all, it’s important to understand this phrase using a simple example. My best shot is to use The Sims to explain this point. If you have never come across The Sims, I can’t be friend with you, but I’ll forgive you if you try to understand my next point.

For those who are unfamiliar with the Sims, it is a simulation game of the real world, Sims characters perform the daily tasks that are required to survive and strive. Sims go on holiday, fall in love with other Sims, have babies, and other things. They have needs like ours although not quite as sophisticated as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. They do require basic needs such as food, sleep, hygiene, and excretion. Other needs are social interactions and entertainment. If their needs are not met, they either die or go mentally crazy.

Apart from having needs, they also have different moods and ambitions. However, they are a very simplified version of human beings. Sims can kind of take care of their needs on their own without your commands. If you leave them idle, they can choose for themselves the tasks that they need to do to fulfil their needs and the things they want to do according to their unique personality, mood, and ambition.

However, just like real babies and toddlers, the baby and toddler Sims can’t take care of themselves, so you have to make sure there is a carer around to attend to those little creatures. Sims characters vary in abilities and skills. They can create music, paintings, sculptures, foods, and other cool tricks. It’s enough to keep you entertained. The fact that I have played the Sims 2, 3 and 4 in the last decade and a half says something about the game, right? Or maybe it says more about me and my weird relationship with this game. Either way, I am going to make a very important point.

Although Sims characters can imitate very basic human beings, as far as I know, they have never doubted their existence. The thought of Sims having doubts about their existence in the virtual world is inconceivable to me. Imagine your Sims thinking to themselves “I wonder if I truly exist or am I just a product of someone’s imagination?”.

Game characters do not possess the level of consciousness required to doubt their existence in the world. Given that they are incapable of having any doubt about their existence, they simply do not exist. At least, not in the real world.

“Cogito, ergo sum” is the doubt about one’s existence. It is, however, not the doubt in relation to the existence of someone or something else. For example, we have doubts about extra-terrestrial life. There is not enough evidence to suggest that aliens exist, but we can’t deny this possibility. Who knows? Aliens may or may not exist. If they do, and if they possess the ability to doubt their own existence in the universe, then they definitely exist by Descartes’s definition.

I find myself thinking “I exist, great, now what?”. I felt that Descartes left the statement “I think, therefore I am” hanging, so I was curious to find out more. It turned out that Descartes did not leave this massive claim hanging, there was more. In his subsequent works, he explained “Ego sum res cogitans, id est dubitans, affirmans, negans, pauca intelligens, multa ignorans, …” which in English means “I am a thinking (conscious) thing, that is, a being who doubts, affirms, denies, understands a few things and is ignorant of many…”.

This answers my question, it tells me what I am. I am indeed a being who doubts, affirms, denies, understands a few things, and is ignorant of many.

Human beings are both blessed and cursed with the ability to question anything and everything. The doubt about my own existence rarely surfaces, like many people, I take my existence for granted.

Although we take our existence for granted, we might not take for granted the things that concern our existence, such as death anxiety, meaning and meaninglessness, freedom and responsibility, isolation and relationships. I touched on some of these existential concerns in my previous article.

To sum up, we all have doubts in many shapes and forms. Some doubts are small and limited to a specific scenario, whereas some other doubts are heavy and pervasive. Doubting your existence is not an everyday doubt. It is sort of like an unpopular cousin of the doubt about the meaning of life. Think about them, these two doubts are very much related. The former is to confirm one’s existence, and the latter is to create meaning for one’s existence. The saying “I think, therefore I am” should therefore be followed by the question “What am I about?”.