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owever, Descartes has been criticised for claiming too much without having accounted for it in the Cogito. He has only managed to show that there is thinking going on, as opposed to a thing having those thoughts. At the moment, Descartes is only allowed to say that there are thoughts happening at the time they are being thought, so this suggests that he should not refer to himself as a ‘thinking thing’, as he has not proved that those thoughts belong to him.
The Lichtenberg Objection takes a similar angle by arguing that the only thing proven by the Cogito is that there is thinking happening. It suggests that the thoughts do not require a thinker, in a similar way that the happening of rain does not require a ‘rainer’. I take this to be an ineffective criticism as the analogy assumes that the essence of rain is the same as that of thoughts. However, it seems that thoughts are similar in essence to that of walking. Walking requires a walker and thoughts require a thinker.
Descartes starts the sixth meditation off by establishing his body and the material world. To do this, he explains the difference between imagination and intellect, and how imagination requires more effort. Imagination is not an essential part of the ‘thinking thing’ that he considers himself to be, so if he possessed a body, it would explain the existence of imagination. He concludes that it is likely that he has a body which experiences the external world.
He then returns to the Cogito to prove that not only is he a thinking thing, but that he has a mind which is separate to his body. As a radical dualist, he believes that the mind possesses completely different properties to the mind, which in turn, leads to him to believe that they cannot be one and the same thing. The body is a divisible, unessential and extended substance whereas the mind is certain, essential and indivisible.
With various methods, Descartes has tried to establish that not only does his body exist, but his mind does too. The Cogito has tried to prove that he is a ‘thinking thing’ which was then developed upon to prove the existence of a body and mind. Although I consider the Cogito proving him to be a ‘Res Cogitans’ a success, the methods in which he confirms the existence of a body fall short and opens itself up to criticism. Thus, I b
