On 10/20/02 10:48:00 PM, Julia Prociw
wrote:

>As prof. quoted in our 2nd med. notes,
>descartes wrote "en cogito ergo sum". I
>have also been told that the translation
>should read more like "during cognition
>I must exist". Kinda the same thing to
>me as "I think therefore I am". The
>second sounding more poetic. In the
>second meditation paragraph 6,
descartes
>concludes that he is a thinking thing.
>Maybe prof. can shed some more light!

"I think, therefore, I am" is actually from an
earlier work called "Discourse on the
Method" (1637; the Meditations were
published in 1641) but encapsulates
Descartes argument in the second
meditation in a poeitc way, as Julia points
out.

Quoting from my notes and commentary
on Meditation 2:

So the Arch Deceiver can try to fool me as
much as he likes, says Descartes, I know
that I exist.
In my very act of doubting my own
existence, I prove it. "Cogito ergo sum" as
he puts it in another work, "I think,
therefore, I am." This becomes
Descartes' foundation for knowledge.

Prof. Borrowdale