For Sartre, the I Think and The Cogito are not the same thing. That’s what he is proving in this section. The I that comes up when I reflect on my consciousness has a special status. It is not part of consciousness. Sartre then go on to show it by saying that there is an unreflected act of consciousness without the I which is directed on a reflected consciousness, meaning it becomes its object. For example, I think about something that I did in the past, I take out the I when I revisit that experience and now my object of consciousness is the reflected consciousness, not the object of consciousness that I had at the beginning. This shows that I is not part of consciousness, it just a point of view on consciousness.
The object of consciousness always reveals to us just one part of the story. It is just a unity of infinite possibilities. When the mind thinks, it doesn’t do it in a particular time, but consciousness which understands these thoughts does. Sartre then asks if the I Think also gathers in a specific time. Sartre is saying that it does not. It is not part of the act of consciousness; it is beyond it. The I Think is not the reflected consciousness, it is given through it. When the mind reflects on something, the I always pops up. But it never comes with adequate evidence. You can’t be sure about its source. You can’t say it is the source of consciousness because only consciousness can be the source of consciousness. If the I of I Think would come from consciousness, there will be two I’s: the I of the reflective consciousness and the I of the reflected consciousness, which is the object of reflective consciousness. If these two I’s both came from consciousness they wouldn’t have been able to communicate with each other, and they can’t be seen as one I.
Therefore Sartre concludes, the I has a special existence, different from meaning, mathematical truths or spatio – temporal things, but not less real. And it is not part of consciousness, it hides behind the reflected consciousness. It appears only when the mind reflects on something. And the I won’t be a part of the phenomenological reduction. Instead of saying that I think about this object, one should mention that there is a consciousness of this object. That way we are describing the phenomenon of reflective consciousness.