Will and the Doubting of Doubt

The logical soundness of Descartes' pivotal assertion 'I cannot doubt that I am doubting' entails simultaneity, i. e. that 'I doubt' and 'I am not doubting' cannot both occur at the same time. So, insofar as Descartes does indeed make the assertion on logical grounds, the proposition is vulnerable to the phenomenological challenge that doubting, and the attempt to doubt that doubting, are, in fact, successive, not simultaneous, events. However, the phenomenological report is inaccurate, so the challenge is flawed. For, as previously discussed, the proper object of doubt is a belief, i. e. the actual experiential sequence is: 1. doubt the belief of X, 2. believe not-X, 3. doubt the belief that not-X, rather than: 1. doubt X, 2. doubt the doubting of X, as the standard phenomenological report has it. Thus, a third interpretation of Descartes' assertion is that it unwittingly expresses his discovery that he cannot doubt in the absence of some affirmation. On that interpretation, underlying the discovery is the realization that Doubting, as a mode of Will, the principle of indeterminate Diversification in Experience, lacks the capacity to generate a determinate Belief. Accordingly, the lacuna in Descartes' procedure is his transition from 'I doubt' to 'I am a thinking being', which requires straying from the method to which he has adhered until that point.