Russell (1961: 548):
Having now secured a firm foundation, Descartes sets to work to rebuild the edifice of knowledge. The I that has been proved to exist has been inferred from the fact that I think, therefore I exist while I think, and only then. If I ceased to think, there would be no evidence of my existence. I am a thing that thinks, a substance of which the whole nature or essence consists in thinking, and which needs no place or material thing for its existence. The soul, therefore, is wholly distinct from the body and easier to know than the body; it would be what it is even if there were no body.
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Through the lens of Systemic Functional Linguistics, the 'I' that thinks is the Senser of a mental process. Descartes limits the 'I' to the Medium of mental Processes, ignoring all the other process types that the 'I' participates in. The evidence that the 'I' is simultaneously the Medium (Existent) of an existential Process is lost to the 'I' when the 'I' is not the Medium of a mental Process. Existence, for Descartes, thus correlates with the unfolding of a mental process.
The conclusion that the Senser is wholly distinct from the body does not follow, of course, and the ideas that a Senser projects through mental Processes depend crucially the experience that has impacted on the body.
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