![]() At last I have discovered it - thought! This is the one thing that can’t be separated from me. ![]() “Now that I have convinced myself that there is nothing in the world - no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies - does it follow that I don’t exist either? No it does not follow for if I convinced myself of something then I certainly existed. Do you even have a physical body? Perhaps you are actually a brain in a vat hooked up to electrodes simulating your current experience.Īccording to René Descartes, one thing that you cannot doubt is your own existence as a thinking thing. How’s that going for you? You can doubt many aspects of yourself, such as, are you a good person? Are you even human? Perhaps you are actually an alien octopus creature dreaming. Go ahead, try it doubt your own existence entirely. It is perhaps better summarized as “I doubt, so I think therefore, I am.” “I think therefore, I am” is a truncated version of this argument. Therefore, I exist, at the very least as a thinking thing.If I attempt to doubt my own existence, then I am thinking.Descartes found that although he could doubt many things about himself, one thing that he could not doubt, is that he exists. After doubting everything in the external world, Descartes turns to attempting to doubt his internal word, that of his own mind. This is where the cogito argument enters, to save the day. Although unlikely, it’s at least possible that we are in a cosmic dream or being deceived by a powerful demon, and so we cannot know with absolute certainty that the world around us actually exists. Through methodic doubt, Descartes determined that almost everything could be doubted. The 17th century philosopher René Descartes wanted to find an absolute, undoubtable truth in order to build a system of knowledge on a solid foundation.
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