Russell on the Cogito

Bertrand Russell

1945

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Source: Russell, Bertrand. 1945. A History of Western Philosophy And Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day. New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 567.

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Descartes’s indubitable facts are his own thoughts—using “thought” in the widest possible sense. “I think” is his ultimate premiss. Here the word “I” is really illegitimate; he ought to state his ultimate premiss in the form “there are thoughts.” The word “I” is grammatically convenient, but does not describe a datum. When he goes on to say “I am a thing which thinks,” he is already using uncritically the apparatus of categories handed down by scholasticism. He nowhere proves that thoughts need a thinker, nor is there reason to believe this except in a grammatical sense.