Another thing is the philosophy traditionally uses cogito in a cognitive situation analysis. As a motto we’ll take the title of the founder’s of the American pragmatism, Charles S. Peirce’s, article How to Make Our Ideas Clear. The question the philosophers answer in the shortest and the simplest way can be put as follows. How can one prove the idea of a thing shaped in one’s mind complies with the original – an object working outside the mind? That’s the framework for Descartes’ cogito to be born as a primary condition for the knowledge. Because to have some knowledge there shall be something to have it. Leaving the scheme aside we should consider about the dichotomy of something and somebody. When we try to explain the idea of the alcohol addiction it’s quite natural we speak about a human suffering from the addiction. Then the question arises about the structure of that somebody. Since a human is an object of cogito control in his (her), then there’s the question if the cogito is the same Who that is like an ambassador representing a sophisticated complex called a human being in this human’s relations with the whole world. In different philosophic systems self is used as a synonym of cogito (not as a part of a pronoun, but as a noun). Thus, our problematic issue becomes clearer a little. A human Ego or self, which borders in our commonplace understanding as the same as the shapes of the human body, when viewed in a more sophisticated way has a somewhat different outline. For the question about where Ego finishes and non-Ego begins brings us to the beginning of the trouble and has no conventional answer. Different philosophic systems answer it in a different way.

Share this page: