PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: A contemporary introduction

288 NONMONOTHEISTIC CONCEPTIONS

I think that I am something, so that after having reflected well

and carefully examined all things, we must come to the definite

conclusion that this proposition: I am, I exist, is necessarily true

each time that I pronounce it, or that I mentally conceive it.^16

The claim is that Necessarily, the fact that I think includes the fact of my
existence and that I can know without danger of error that I am a thinking
being and that I exist. Descartes does not make the false claim that Descartes
exists is, if true, then necessarily true. In his investigations of self-
consciousness he “was merely investigating these properties of which I was
able to attain to sure and evident knowledge”^17 – in particular such properties
as pertain to the nature of Descartes as a sample person. He claims that he, as
a person, is a self-conscious substance, and that this is introspectively
evident. It is logically impossible that he exist without being a self-conscious
being, and hence being a self-conscious being is at least part of his essence.
He adds that since this is true of him as a representative person, what it is to
be a person is to be an enduring self-conscious substance.
Two sorts of claims are represented here. One sort is introspective,
strictly speaking; Descartes is aware of his thinking of the nature of
persons rather than reflecting about triangularity, logical necessity, the
nature of matter, or the prospects of his completing a letter to Elizabeth.
Discerning what one is thinking about is a matter of being aware of one’s
thoughts – a matter of introspection. Another sort is conceptual and
metaphysical – he is considering the nature of persons rather than
wondering how his mother is doing or considering what to have for dinner,
and by doing such conceptual thinking he can discern the nature of persons

• just as, in thinking about triangles, he can discern their essence. In this
  special case, he holds, he has (as anyone can have) a unique advantage –
  what he considers the essence of is also an object of direct awareness and
  thus the concept of essence can be compared with something that has the
  essence the concept expresses. Thus his claim is that these two sorts of
  thinking – introspective and conceptual – to some degree coalesce in the
  case of his deliberate use of self-awareness as a source of knowledge
  regarding his nature as a person. He observes in himself not only his
  thinking and his existence but also a necessary connection between the
  property Descartes thinking now and the property Descartes existing now
  that eliminates any need for inference from the fact that he has the one
  property to the fact that he has the other (though of course that inference
  is proper). He is able to reflect that he exists only if he is a self-conscious
  thing – permanent loss of self-consciousness is also cessation of his
  existence; and he is directly aware of himself as a self-conscious substance.
  Put differently, Descartes is often aware of his being in certain
  introspective states. Some of these states are states of abstract thought, and