Positivistic Critique of Cogito

In this paper, I examine the critiques of the Archimedean point of knowledge in Descartes’ philosophy – cogito, (ergo) sum – as presented by Moritz Schlick and Alfred Ayer. Both prominent philosophers of the positivist tradition believe that there is something problematic about the “first truth” of Descartes’ system, though they identify different sources of the issue. Schlick believes that Descartes arrives at the cogito on the basis of the faculty of intuition; thus, he presents an interesting critique of the possibility of such a faculty. Although not without merit, Schlick’s intuitionist interpretation is, unfortunately, inconsistent with Descartes’ text. In other words, Schlick uses a concept of intuition that differs from the one used by Descartes. This equivocation significantly weakens the immediacy of his critique, as it automatically renders it external to Descartes’ philosophy. On the other hand, Ayer’s linguistic-logical interpretation attributes Descartes’ justification of the cogito to the relationship between statements and logical concepts such as self-contradiction, implication, and negation. Not only is Ayer’s interpretation clearly external and anachronistic — since it relies on the concepts of 20th-century philosophy of language and logic — but it is also limited by the substantive aspect of Descartes’ method. The culmination of the methodical doubt — the possibility of the existence of an all-powerful Demon — prevents the cogito and sum from being justified through high-theoretical means such as Ayer’s linguistic-logical conceptual apparatus. Although both critiques are insufficiently informed by the primary text, they nevertheless “strike” at the core of two seemingly opposing tendencies in the justification of the first truths of Descartes’ philosophy, thereby raising the question: is the cogito the result of intuition or of logical processes? I address this question in the final chapter of the paper by drawing on a somewhat neglected Descartes’ work, Rules for the Direction of the Mind, in order to better understand Descartes’ concepts of intuition and reasoning. Once these are understood, it becomes clear that the faculties of intuition and reasoning are not mutually exclusive but that faculty of reasoning depends on intuition; consequently, it is revealed that the dilemma posed by the above question is a false one.