"I Exist" in the Second Meditation

The following is an essay I wrote for class. To avoid plagiarism, I will not be putting up the prompt, just my personal findings. There were footnotes as well, but they don't show up in a copy-paste edit.

“I Exist” In The Second Meditation

Descartes argues that “I exist” is necessarily true. He writes, “...if I convinced myself of something then I certainly existed.” Being convinced of something implies there is someone real to be convinced. If there was no person existing to be convinced, then the thoughts don’t exist for us to be considering. But they are being considered, so there is a person existing. Descartes formulates the argument in a modus ponens, but can also be understood in the modus tollens way that I gave as they are materially equivalent.

The conclusion that “I exist” is significant in the Meditation because it comes in the context of a severe skepticism. Skepticism in this sense is not the rejection of beliefs as actually being false, but only that we do not subscribe to them as though they were false. We are only skeptical of those things which we can doubt, and nothing which can be doubted can provide an adequate foundation for knowledge. This methodological skepticism does away with the majority of beliefs except for the belief that I exist given for the reason above. So, “I exist” provides a foundation for the rest of knowledge.

The proposition “I exist” is immune from methodological skepticism, or it is immune from the question, ‘Could I be deceived about this?’ If anything, deception supports the proposition that I exist since there exists someone to be deceived. This eliminates the possible confusion between the content of the belief and the belief as a belief. The content or the truth value of the belief doesn’t matter so much as there exists a belief. So long as there is belief, even false belief and genuine deception, these are only possible if one exists.

There is an immediate limit to this belief however. Because of the genre of the Meditations, the “I” in “I exist” is whomever is doing the meditation, and not necessarily Descartes himself. What this means is that from the proposition “I exist” I cannot immediately infer that someone else exists, or that anything else exists at all. All I’m clarifying is who the I is, not what the I is. Descartes does think he can lead the meditator to those beliefs with “I exist” as a proper and secure foundation, but those take extra steps and are the subject of the rest of the meditations.