Cogito Ergo Sum Quotes

Cogito ergo sum. (I think, therefore I am.)

Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum -- "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am;" as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.

Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum. (English: "I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am")

I am ... cogito ergo sum ... I think, therefore I am.

I am not much for philosophy, but that old Descartes, he got me thinking. And therefore being. Anyone? Anyone? Cogito ergo sum jokes? No? Okay.

There is no unmoving mover behind the movement. It is only movement. It is not correct to say that life is moving, but life is movement itself. Life and movement are not two different things. In other words, there is no thinker behind the thought. Thought itself is the thinker. If you remove the thought, there is no thinker to be found.

Cogito ergo sum, certamen ergo sum.

I think therefore I am, right?" "No, not really. A fuller formation of Descartes's philosophy would be Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum. 'I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.' Descartes wanted to know if you could really know that anything was real, but he believed his ability to doubt reality proved that, while it might not be real, he was.

Cogito ergo sum

It is impossible to exaggerate how much better the formula es denkt in mir is than cogito ergo sum, which lets us in for pure subjectivism.

For the new year. -- I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think. Sum, ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum. Today everybody permits himself the expression of his wish and his dearest thought: hence I, too, shall say what it is that I wish from myself today, and what was the first thought to run across my heart this year -- what thought shall be for me the reason, warranty, and sweetness of my life henceforth. I want to learn to see more and more as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who makes things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all and all and on the whole: someday I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.

But as Descartes observed, even an infinitely powerful evil demon couldn’t trick him into thinking he himself existed if he didn’t exist: cogito ergo sum, “I think, therefore I am.

Instead of René Descartes' famous "Cogito ergo sum" (I think, therefore I am), I propose "Communico ergo sum," (I communicate, therefore I exist") as the philosophical proof of man's existence.

I had a pupil who turned in a couple of well-crafted essays on Descartes, subjecting "cogito ergo sum" to effective and damaging criticism...This was the sort of thing the best students did, and it was thought to be Oxford intellectual training at its most sophistocated. But I said to him, "If all the criticisms you've made of Descartes are valid-- and on the whole I think they are-- why are we spending our time here now discussing him? Why have you just devoted a fortnight of your life to reading his main works and writing two essays about them? ...More to the point: if all these things are wrong with his ideas--and I think they are-- why is his name known to every educated person in the Western world today, three and a half centuries after his death? ...[text].. The pupil saw my point straight away but was at a loss to answer...[text].. Along such lines as these I made it a conscious principle of my teaching, whatever the subject, to get the pupil first of all to do the necessary learning, and the detailed work of analysis and criticism, and then to raise "Yes, but what is the point of all this-- why are we doing it?" questions. And students almost invariably found that it was only when that stage was reached that the really exciting interest and importantance of what it was they were doing opened up before their eyes.

Life was a pleasure; he looked back at its moments, many of them as much shrouded in mist as the opposite bank of the Thames; objectively, many of them held only misery, fear, confusion; but afterwards, and even at the time, he had known an exhilaration stronger than the misery, fear, or confusion. A fragment of belief came to him from another epoch: 'Cogito ergo sum'. For him that had not been true; his truth had been, 'Senito ergo sum'. I feel so I exist. He enjoyed this fearful, miserable, confused life, and not only because it made more sense than non-life.

Vinculum alius ergo sum - Another bond, therfore I am.

For the new year — I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think. Sum, ergo cogito, cogito, ergo sum. Today everybody permits himself the expression of his wish and his dearest thought; hence I, too, shall say what it is that I wish from myself today, and what was the first thought to run across my heart this year — what thought shall be for me the reason, warranty, and sweetness of my life henceforth! I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.

Cartesian,adj. Relating to Descartes, a famous philosopher, author of the celebrated dictum, Cogito ergo sum- whereby he was pleased to suppose he demonstrated the reality of human existence. The dictum might be improved, however, thus: Cogito cogito ergo sum- 'I think I think, therefore I think that I am'; as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.

But immediately upon this I observed that, whilst I thus wished to think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should be somewhat; and as I observed that this truth, I think, therefore I am (COGITO ERGO SUM), was so certain and of such evidence that no ground of doubt, however extravagant, could be alleged by the sceptics capable of shaking it, I concluded that I might, without scruple, accept it as the first principle of the philosophy of which I was in search

La base primera de la filosofía cartesiana es el cogito ergo sum: pienso, luego soy.

Dubito ergo cogito, cogito ergo sum' (I doubt therefore I think, I think therefore I am)

Socrates knows only that he does not know; he is an idiot. Likewise, Descartes – who casts doubt on everything – is an idiot. Cogito ergo sum is idiotic.

Descartes said, Cogito ergo sum-"I think therefore I am." But suppose we are nothing more than the sum of our first, naive, random behaviors. What then?

I am in doubt as to the propriety of making my first meditations in the place above mentioned matter of discourse; for these are so metaphysical, and so uncommon, as not, perhaps, to be acceptable to every one. And yet, that it may be determined whether the foundations that I have laid are sufficiently secure, I find myself in a measure constrained to advert to them. I had long before remarked that, in relation to practice, it is sometimes necessary to adopt, as if above doubt, opinions which we discern to be highly uncertain, as has been already said; but as I then desired to give my attention solely to the search after truth, I thought that a procedure exactly the opposite was called for, and that I ought to reject as absolutely false all opinions in regard to which I could suppose the least ground for doubt, in order to ascertain whether after that there remained aught in my belief that was wholly indubitable. Accordingly, seeing that our senses sometimes deceive us, I was willing to suppose that there existed nothing really such as they presented to us; and because some men err in reasoning, and fall into paralogisms, even on the simplest matters of geometry, I, convinced that I was as open to error as any other, rejected as false all the reasonings I had hitherto taken for demonstrations; and finally, when I considered that the very same thoughts (presentations) which we experience when awake may also be experienced when we are asleep, while there is at that time not one of them true, I supposed that all the objects (presentations) that had ever entered into my mind when awake, had in them no more truth than the illusions of my dreams. But immediately upon this I observed that, whilst I thus wished to think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should be somewhat; and as I observed that this truth, I think, therefore I am ["cogito ergo sum"], was so certain and of such evidence that no ground of doubt, however extravagant, could be alleged by the sceptics capable of shaking it, I concluded that I might, without scruple, accept it as the first principle of the philosophy of which I was in search

You're imprisoned within a self that doesn't feel wholly yours...But also, to you that self often feels deeply contaminated." I nodded. "But you give your thoughts too much power, Aza. Thoughts are only thoughts. They are not you. You do belong to yourself, even when your thoughts don't." "But your thoughts are you. I think therefore I am, right?" "No, not really. A fuller formation of Descartes's philosophy would be Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum. 'I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.' Descartes wanted to know if you could really know that anything was real, but he believed his ability to doubt reality proved that, while it might not be real, he was. You are as real as anyone, and your doubts make you more real, not less.

Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum. ‘I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.’ Descartes wanted to know if you could really know that anything was real, but he believed his ability to doubt reality proved that, while it might not be real, he was. You are as real as anyone, and your doubts make you more real, not less.

...Uzun zamanım kalmadı. Önümde kalan zaman benim zamanım, benim can sıkıntım, benim hiç'im, ama benim olacak. Kırk yıldır düşündüğüm halde, düşünmeye zamanım olmadığı duygusundayım. Varoluşumuzun en ilginç yanı bu düşünsel oyun. Acı,sevgi,kurtuluş,yalnızlık, mutluluk, kin, ölüm, ağaç,dağ, deniz, çocuk, adam, gece, sabah, evlerin duvarları, dünya, dünyayı saran boşluk, sonsuzluk, hepsi düşüncede oluşuyor. Hayır "cogito ergo sum" demeyeceğim. Peki ne diyeceğim? "Varım, öyleyse düşünüyorum.

The question of what a dog is thinking is actually an old metaphysical debate, which has its origins in Descartes’s famous saying cogito ergo sum—“I think, therefore I am.” Our entire human experience exists solely inside our heads. Photons may strike our retinas, but it is only through the activity of our brains that we have the subjective experience of seeing a rainbow or the sublime beauty of a sunset over the ocean. Does a dog see those things? Of course. Do they experience them the same way? Absolutely not.

But if you fake any trait long enough it becomes an essential part of you, like your fingerprint. So there’s no point telling yourself not to be scared. You can’t control your thoughts and emotions. But you can control your actions. In the end, we are the sum of what we do.

But immediately upon this I observed that, whilst I thus wished to think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should be somewhat; and as I observed that this truth, I think, therefore I am (cogito ergo sum), was so certain and of such evidence that no ground of doubt, however extravagant, could be alleged by the sceptics capable of shaking it, I concluded that I might, without scruple, accept it as the first principle of the philosophy of which I was in search … I thence concluded that I was a substance whose whole essence or nature consists only in thinking, and which, that it may exist, has need of no place, nor is dependent on any material thing; so that ‘I’, that is to say, the mind by which I am what I am, is wholly distinct from the body, and is even more easily known than the latter …

(Even the attribution of the idea to Descartes seems wrong to me: Cogito ergo sum is not the first step in the Cartesian reconstruction, it is the second. The first is Dubito ergo cogito. The starting point of the reconstruction is not a hypothetical a priori that is immediate to the experience of existing as a subject. It’s a rationalistic a posteriori reflection on the first stage of the process in which Descartes had articulated a state of doubt: logic dictates that if someone doubts something, they must have thought about it. And that if they can think, then they must exist.

Descartes begitu mengagungkan rasio, katanya Cogito ergo sum maksudnya "Aku berfikir, jadi aku ada." dengan itu ia bermaksud, bahawa akal budi pemikir (cogitare), adalah sumber, khalik, ukuran serta norma dari segala kebenaran tentang Allah, manusia dan dunia. Ia yakin bahawa rasio manusia itu, apabila mengikuti hukum-hukum logiknya sendiri, sanggup memberi jawapan terhadap pertanyaan sukar tentang Allah, manusia dan dunia. Rasio ditempatkan pada tempat yang tertinggi, dan menjadikannya berdaulat. Ia lupa, bahawa kita seharusnya mengatakan Deus est, ergo sum bererti "Tuhan itu ada, jadi aku ada.

Cogito, ergo sum

COGITO, ERGO SUM.

Cogito, ergo sum

Cogito, ergo sum; I think, therefore I am.

I assume therefore I think I think yet still don't know a goddamn thing.

Cogito, ergo sum.

Descartes said, "Cogito, ergo sum." I think, therefore I am. So I said, "I exist because will of the truth." Without that truth I have no meaning. I have no right to exist.

CARTESIAN, adj. Relating to Descartes, a famous philosopher, author of the celebrated dictum, Cogito ergo sum—whereby he was pleased to suppose he demonstrated the reality of human existence. The dictum might be improved, however, thus: Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum— "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am;" as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.

A prisoner named Denis Martinez, for example, explained what getting an education and learning to read deeply into subjects gave him in terms of perspective: “It’s given me a new set of glasses. Before I wasn’t able to see the things I see now. I was a nineteen-year old knucklehead going around and thinking I knew it all. The more I learned the more I could sense how wrong I was and how many things I didn’t know.” Inspired by his reading of René Descartes, Martinez reflected, “There are two ways to be in prison—physically and/or mentally. Being in prison mentally is to live in ignorance, closed-mindedness, and pessimism. You can confine me for as long as you want, but my mind will always be free.” The title of a painting this prisoner made is revealing: Cogito Ergo Sum Liber—I Think Therefore I Am Free. (Now, there’s a bumper sticker/T-shirt slogan for the modern Enlightenment thinker.)

One kind of person is engaged in society without realizing it; another kind engages in society by controlling it. The one is a gear, a cog, and the other an engineer, a driver. But a person who has opted out has only his ability to express his disengagement between his existence and nothingness. Not cogito, but scribo, pingo, ergo sum. For days after I felt myself filled with nothingness; with something more than the old physical and social loneliness—a metaphysical sense of being marooned. It was something almost tangible, like cancer or tuberculosis.

For the contemplative there is no cogito (“I think”) and no ergo (“therefore”) but only SUM, I AM. Not in the sense of a futile assertion of our individuality as ultimately real, but in the humble realization of our mysterious being as persons in whom God dwells, with infinite sweetness and inalienable power.

We’re not really going to discuss René Descartes, but consider for a second his famous Enlightenment formulation Cogito, ergo sum—the aforementioned “I think, therefore I am”—which, again, is one of the very foundations of Western thought. When we place it next to this ubuntu formulation—“I am, because we are”—well, man oh man, that’s a pretty big difference.

But your thoughts are you. I think therefore I am, right?" "No, not really. A fuller information of Descartes's philosophy would be Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum. 'I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.' Descartes wanted to know if you could really know that anything was real, but he believed his ability to doubt reality proved that, while it might not be real, he was.

How do I know anything about the world around me? By the use of my senses. But I can be deceived by my senses, A straight stick looks bent when it is dipped into water. How do I even know that I am awake, that the whole of reality is not a dream? How can I tell it is not a fabric of delusion woven by some malicious cunning demon simply to deceive me? By a process of persistent and comprehensive questioning it is possible to place in doubt the entire fabric of my existence and the world around me, Nothing remains certain. But in the midst of all this there is nevertheless one thing which does remain certain. No matter how deluded I may be in my thoughts about myself and the world, I still know that I am thinking, This alone proves me my existence, In the most famous remark in philosophy, Descartes concludes: 'Cogito ergo sum'-'I think, therefore I am.

There’s a moment,” she said, “near the end of Ulysses when the character Molly Bloom appears to speak directly to the author. She says, ‘O Jamesy let me up out of this.’ You’re imprisoned within a self that doesn’t feel wholly yours, like Molly Bloom. But also, to you that self often feels deeply contaminated.” I nodded. “But you give your thoughts too much power, Aza. Thoughts are only thoughts. They are not you. You do belong to yourself, even when your thoughts don’t.” “But your thoughts are you. I think therefore I am, right?” “No, not really. A fuller formation of Descartes’s philosophy would be Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum. ‘I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.’ Descartes wanted to know if you could really know that anything was real, but he believed his ability to doubt reality proved that, while it might not be real, he was. You are as real as anyone, and your doubts make you more real, not less.

That is why I can’t in any way approve of those MEDDLESOME and RESTLESS characters who, without being called by BIRTH or by FORTUNE to the management of public affairs, are yet forever thinking up some new reform! If I thought this present work contained the SLIGHTEST ground for suspecting me of such FOLLY, I would SHRINK from allowing it to be published! My plan has NEVER gone beyond trying to reform my own thoughts and to build on a foundation that is ALL MY OWN. If I’m pleased enough with my work to present you with this sketch of it, it’s not because I would advise anyone to imitate it. Those on whom GOD has bestowed more of his favours than he has on me will PERHAPS have higher aims; but I’m afraid that this project of mine may be too bold for many people! The mere decision to rid myself all the opinions I have hitherto accepted isn’t an example that everyone ought to follow! The world is mostly made up of two types of minds for whom it is QUITE unsuitable. (1) There are those who, believing themselves cleverer than they are, can’t help rushing to judgment and can’t muster the patience to direct all their thoughts in an ORDERLY manner. So that if they ONCE took the liberty of doubting the principles they have accepted and leaving the common path, they would NEVER be able to stay on the straighter path that they ought to take, AND would REMAIN lost ALL their LIVES. (2) And there are those who are reasonable enough, or modest enough, to THINK that they can’t distinguish true from false as well as some other people by whom they can be taught. THESE should be content to follow the opinions of those others rather than to seek better opinions themselves.

When I am asked to summarize the fundamental message from research on self-control, I recall “Descartes’s famous dictum cogito, ergo sum—“I think, therefore I am.” What has been discovered about mind, brain, and self-control lets us move from his proposition to “I think, therefore I can change what I am.” Because by changing how we think, we can change what we feel, do, and become. If that leads to the question “But can I really change?,” I reply with what George Kelly said to his therapy clients when they kept asking him if they could get control of their lives. He looked straight into their eyes and said, “Would you like to?

For the new year. – I’m still alive; I still think: I must still be alive because I still have to think. Sum, ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum.1 Today everyone allows himself to express his dearest wish and thoughts: so I, too, want to say what I wish from myself today and what thought first crossed my heart – what thought shall be the reason, warrant, and sweetness of the rest of my life! I want to learn more and more how to see what is necessary in things as what is beautiful in them – thus I will be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati:2 let that be my love from now on! I do not want to wage war against ugliness. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse the accusers. Let looking away be my only negation! And, all in all and on the whole: some day I want only to be a Yes-sayer!

For the New Year. I am still living, I am still thinking: I have to go on living because I have to go on thinking. Sum, ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum. Today everyone is permitted to express his desire and dearest thoughts: so I too would like to say what I have desired of myself today and what thought was the first to cross my heart this year – what thought shall be the basis, guarantee and sweetness of all my future life! I want to learn more and more to see what is necessary in things as the beautiful in them – thus I shall become one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: may that be my love from now on! I want to wage no war against the ugly. I do not want to accuse, I do not want even to accuse the accusers. May looking away be my only form of negation! And, all in all: I want to be at all times hereafter only an affirmer (ein Ja-sagender)! (276).

276. Pour la nouvelle année. Je vis encore, je pense encore : il faut encore que je vive, car il faut encore que je pense. Sum, ergo cogito : cogito, ergo sum. Aujourd’hui je permets à tout le monde d’exprimer son désir et sa pensée la plus chère : et, moi aussi, je vais dire ce qu’aujourd’hui je souhaite de moi-même et quelle est la pensée que, cette année, j’ai prise à cœur la première — quelle est la pensée qui devra être dorénavant pour moi la raison, la garantie et la douceur de vivre ! Je veux apprendre toujours davantage à considérer comme la beauté ce qu’il y a de nécessaire dans les choses : c’est ainsi que je serai de ceux qui rendent belles les choses. Amor fati : que cela soit dorénavant mon amour. Je ne veux pas entrer en guerre contre la laideur. Je ne veux pas accuser, je ne veux même pas accuser les accusateurs. Détourner mon regard, que ce soit là ma seule négation ! Et, somme toute, pour voir grand : je veux, quelle que soit la circonstance, n’être une fois qu’affirmateur !

Agnostics and other relativists dispute the value of metaphysical certainty; in order to demonstrate the illusory character of the de jure certainty of truth, they set it in opposition to the de facto certitude of error, as if the psychological phenomenon of false certainties could prevent true certainties from being what they are and from having all their effectiveness, and as if the very existence of false certainties did not prove in its own way the existence of true ones. The fact that a lunatic feels certain he is something that he is not does not prevent us from being certain of what he is and what we ourselves are, and the fact that we are unable to prove to him that he is mistaken does not prevent us from being right; or again, the fact that an unbalanced person may possibly have misgivings about his condition does not oblige us to have them about our own, even if we find it impossible to prove to him that our certainty is well founded. It is absurd to demand absolute proofs of suprasensorial realities that one thinks one ought to question while refusing in the name of reason to consider metaphysical arguments that are sufficient in themselves; for outside of these arguments the only proof of hidden realities—as we have already said—is the realities themselves. One cannot ask the dawn to be the sun or a shadow to be the tree that casts it; the very existence of our intelligence proves the reality of the relationships of causality, relationships that allow us to acknowledge the Invisible and by the same token oblige us to do so; if the world did not prove God, human intelligence would be deprived of its sufficient reason. First and foremost—leaving aside any question of intellectual intuition—the very fact of our existence necessarily implies pure Being; instead of starting with the idea that “I think; therefore I am”, one should say, “I am; therefore Being is”: 'sum ergo est Esse' and not 'cogito ergo sum'. What counts in our eyes is most definitely not some more or less correct line of reasoning but intrinsic certainty itself; reasoning is able to convey this in its own way: it describes the certainty in order to show forth its self-evident nature on the plane of discursive thought, and in this way it provides a key that others might use in actualizing this same certainty.

But Christianity has protected itself from the beginning. It begins with the teaching about sin. The category of sin is the category of individuality. Sin cannot be thought speculatively at all. The individual human being lies beneath the concept; an individual human being cannot be thought, but only the concept "man." —That is why speculation promptly embarks upon the teaching about the predominance of the generation over the individual, for it is too much to expect that speculation should acknowledge the impotence of the concept in relation to actuality. —But just as one individual person cannot be thought, neither can one individual sinner; sin can be thought (then it becomes negation), but not one individual sinner. That is precisely why there is no earnestness about sin if it is only to be thought, for earnestness is simply this: that you and I are sinners. Earnestness is not sin in general; rather, the accent of earnestness rests on the sinner, who is the single individual. With respect to "the single individual," speculation, if it is consistent, must make light of being a single individual or being that which cannot be thought. If it cares to do anything along this line, it must say to the individual: Is this anything to waste your time on? Forget it! To be an individual human being is to be nothing! Think—then you are all mankind: cogito ergo sum [I think therefore I am]. But perhaps that is a lie; perhaps instead the single individual human being and to be a single human being are the highest. Just suppose it is. To be completely consistent, then, speculation must also say: To be an individual sinner is not to be something; it lies beneath the concept; do not waste any time on it etc. [. . .] Sin is a qualification of the single individual; it is irresponsibility and new sin to pretend as if it were nothing to be an individual sinner—when one himself is this individual sinner. Here Christianity steps in, makes the sign of the cross before speculation; it is just as impossible for speculation to get around this issue as for a sailing vessel to sail directly against a contrary wind. The earnestness of sin is its actuality in the single individual, be it you or I. Speculatively, we are supposed to look away from the single individual; therefore, speculatively, we can speak only superficially about sin. The dialectic of sin is diametrically contrary to that of speculation

In Leibniz we can already find the striking observation that *cogitatur ergo est* is no less evident than *cogito ergo sum*. Naturally, *est* here does not mean existence or reality but being of whatever kind and form, including even ideal being, fictive being, conscious-being [*Bewusst-Sein*], etc. However, we must go even beyond this thesis of Leibniz. The correlate of the act of *cogitatio* is not, as Leibniz said, being simply, but only that type of being we call "objectifiable being." Objectifiable being must be sharply distinguished from the non-objectifiable being of an act, that is, from a kind of entity which possesses its mode of being only in performance [*Vollzug*], namely, in the performance of the act. "Being," in the widest sense of the word, belongs indeed to the being-of-an-act [*Akt-Sein*], to *cogitare*, which does not in turn require another *cogitare*. Similarly, we are only vaguely "aware" of our drives [*Triebleben*] without having them as objects as we do those elements of consciousness which lend themselves to imagery. For this reason the first order of evidence is expressed in the principle, "There is something," or, better, "There is not nothing." Here we understand by the word "nothing" the negative state of affairs of not-being in general rather than "not being something" or "not being actual." A second principle of evidence is that everything which "is" in any sense of the possible kinds of being can be analyzed in terms of its character or essence (not yet separating its contingent characteristics from its genuine essence) and its existence in some mode. With these two principles we are in a position to define precisely the concept of knowledge, a concept which is prior even to that of consciousness. Knowledge is an ultimate, unique, and underivable ontological relationship between two beings. I mean by this that any being A "knows" any being B whenever A participates in the essence or nature of B, without B's suffering any alteration in its nature or essence because of A's participation in it. Such participation is possible both in the case of objectifiable being and in that of active [*akthaften*] being, for instance, when we repeat the performance of the act; or in feelings, when we relive the feelings, etc. The concept of participation is, therefore, wider than that of objective knowledge, that is, knowledge of objectifiable being. The participation which is in question here can never be dissolved into a causal relation, or one of sameness and similarity, or one of sign and signification; it is an ultimate and essential relation of a peculiar type. We say further of B that, when A participates in B and B belongs to the order of objectifiable being, B becomes an "objective being" ["*Gegenstand"-sein*]. Confusing the being of an object [*Sein des Gegenstandes*] with the fact that an entity is an object [*Gegenstandssein eines Seienden*] is one of the fundamental errors of idealism. On the contrary, the being of B, in the sense of a mode of reality, never enters into the knowledge-relation. The being of B can never stand to the real bearer of knowledge in any but a causal relation. The *ens reale* remains, therefore, outside of every possible knowledge-relation, not only the human but also the divine, if such exists. Both the concept of the "intentional act" and that of the "subject" of this act, an "I" which performs acts, are logically posterior. The intentional act is to be defined as the process of becoming [*Werdesein*] in A through which A participates in the nature or essence of B, or that through which this participation is produced. To this extent the Scholastics were right to begin with the distinction between an *ens intentionale* and an *ens reale*, and then, on the basis of this distinction, to distinguish between an intentional act and a real relation between the knower and the being of the thing known." ―from_Idealism and Realism_

In his mature works from Ideas I, notably the Cartesian Meditations (1931), Husserl presented his approach as a radicalization of Descartes’ project that sought to return knowledge to a foundation in the certainty of subjective experience (cogito ergo sum).

Şi cum te simţi acum, că trăieşti în Germania? – Ce vrei să spui? – Păi, după tot ce s-a întîmplat cu evreii. – Nu mă gîndesc prea mult la asta. Nu-mi face plăcere. – Da, dar ar trebui s-o faci, insistă el. – Pare de necrezut. Nu pot să cred că aşa ceva chiar s-a întîmplat. – Tocmai de-aia oamenii ar trebui să se gîndească la toată povestea, spuse băiatul. În primul rînd, fiindcă din cauza asta s-a şi întîmplat - fiindcă oamenilor nu le venea să creadă că s-a întîmplat. Şi evreilor li se părea de necrezut. Şi-au făcut coadă la camerele de gazare. – Încetează, scînci fata. – Ştii, am eu o teorie, cum că lucrurile cele mai urî te care se întîmplă sînt exact cele despre care crezi că nu se vor întîmplă niciodată. – O, nu! Chestiile cele mai frumoase vin pe neaşteptate. Cum a fost întîlnirea noastră pe vaporaş. Nu m-am aşteptat la ea. – Eu da. Ţi-am spus doar. De-aia am şi venit la petrecere. – Mai spune-mi o dată, zise Gloria, cuibărindu-se confortabil la pieptul lui. – Stai un pic. Prinsese un capăt de idee între degete şi nu voia să-l piardă. Era ceva ce nu mai exprimase niciodată în cuvinte. – Nu crezi că atunci cînd se întîmplă ceva cu adevărat nasol, e mult mai rău dacă nu te aştepţi la aşa ceva? Adică dacă-i o surpriză urîtă? – Mmm... cred că da, recunoscu ea. – Şi nu încerci să împiedici dinainte lucrurile nasoale să se întîmple gîndindu-te că ele s-ar putea să se întîmple? – Şi cum să le împiedici? Dacă ceva e sortit să se întîmple, se întîmplă şi gata. – Nu ştiu, dar eu am avut întotdeauna senzaţia că poţi. De exemplu, la examene. Îmi spun întotdeauna că nu m-am descurcat şi de obicei mă descurc destul de bine. Gloria rîse şi zise: – Eu cred întotdeauna că m-am descurcat OK şi de obicei pic examenul. – Data viitoare încearcă sistemul meu, o sfătui Timothy cu toată seriozitatea. – Nu-ţi foloseşte la nimic dacă n-ai minte! rîse ea iar. Eu cred că sistemul tău e-o ţicneală. – Nu-i o ţicneală! – Ba da, e. Ce-ncerci tu să-mi spui e că dacă te gîndeşti la toate momentele nasoale de pe lume, atunci nici unul dintre ele n-o să se mai întîmple vreodată. – Dacă ştii suficient de multe ca să te poţi gîndi la toate... Ei, acum nu zic chiar că nici unul dintre ele n-o să se întîmple vreodată, dar tot sînt de părere că poţi împiedica destul de multe. Fata chicoti uşor. – Cum ar fi, de exemplu, dimineaţa de azi. Îmi ziceam tot timpul că n-o să vii. Şi uite c-ai venit. – Voiam să vin. – Dar s-ar fi putut să nu vii. – Dar asta n-ar fi avut nimic de-a face cu ceea ce gîndeai tu. – Şi cum poţi să mi-o dovedeşti? Gloria îşi ţinu o clipă răsuflarea, scotocindu-şi mintea după un răspuns, apoi izbucni brusc într-un rîs exploziv: – E evident. Che sara, sara. – Ce-i asta? – E-n italiană. Ce va fi, va fi. – Eşti o fatalistă. – Şi tu un superstiţios. – Nu, nu sînt. Nu cred în numere norocoase. Şi trec întotdeauna în mod intenţionat pe sub scări. – Sistemul tău e superstiţios. – Nu e. Se bazează pe raţiune. Trebuie să ai capacitatea de a gîndi, de a judeca lucrurile. – Tu gîndeşti tot timpul? – Sigur. Nu poţi să nu gîndeşti. Cogito, ergo sum. – Ce-i asta? – E-n latină. Gîndesc, deci exist, rînji Timothy, apoi adăugă: Iată, asta înseamnă măcar unu' din noi. – Timothy... – Da? – Gîndeai şi mai înainte, cînd ne pipăiam? – La sfîrşit nu. – Numai la sfîrşit? Presupun că din cauza asta te-ai simţit prost după aceea. Te temi să te-opreşti din gîndit. – Într-un fel, da, mă tem, recunoscu el. Gloria îl privi cu seriozitate în ochi. – Dar exact aici e toată chestia între băieţi şi fete. Să simţi şi să nu mai gîndeşti. Cîteodată e ceva bun. – Da, zise Timothy, uşor nesigur. Îmi dau seama. Dar dacă eşti adult. Şi căsătorit.

Cogito, ergo sum”—I think, therefore I am.

Cogito Ergo Sum

Cogito ergo sum.

Cogito ergo sum is Descartes famous sentence. It means “I think; therefore, I am.” This philosophy led the Western World to equate their being, their identity, with their mind rather than their whole organism.

Cogito ergo sum—I think, therefore I am.

A fuller formation of Descartes’s philosophy would be Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum. I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am. Descartes wanted to know if you could really know that anything was real, but he believed his ability to doubt reality proved that, while it might not be real, he was. You are as real as anyone, and your doubts make you more real, not less.

Most of the philosophers of the seventeenth century hovered somewhere in between. Most were prepared to accept the evidence of their senses as possibly flawed and easily misled but nevertheless the only handle we have on reality. (This is known as “sensationalism.”) Then there was the certainty of the knowing, reasoning person himself. What if, asked Descartes, “I have convinced myself that there is absolutely nothing in the world, no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies. Does it follow from that that I, too, do not exist?” No, he answered—because “if I have convinced myself of something then I must certainly exist.” From this he concluded “that this proposition I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived by my mind.”24 This form of reasoning, which was subsequently turned into the famous Latin phrase Cogito ergo sum—“I think, therefore I am”—became one of the touchstones of the new philosophy. Not many Skeptics went so far as to doubt the existence of the world. But Descartes’s point is much the same as both Montaigne’s and John Donne’s: The only things of which I can be certain must come directly from the individual in his or her immediate and direct contact with the external world. The implications for the traditional Christian view of the world of even a moderate form of this kind of skeptical reasoning could be devastating.

Everything you know about art is wrong, and everything that you think about art is also true. All that you know is you know nothing, and all that you can say about anything is because you are thinking; therefore, you are.

Never before had Descartes been in greater need of an update than in the twenty-first century. Over the last two decades, between first Nokia and then Apple, cogito ergo sum had surely been pushed aside by habeo a phone, ergo sum. But if ‘I have a phone, therefore I am’ were true, what of the phoneless?

Across the English Channel, the biggest champion of the new mechanical worldview was René Descartes. Bacon was entirely ignorant of mathematics. Descartes was steeped in it. Reducing the operations of the universe to a series of lines, circles, numbers, and equations suited his reclusive personality. His most famous saying, “I think, therefore I am” (cogito, ergo sum), could be stated less succinctly but more accurately as “Because we are the only beings who do math, we rule.

Kierkegaard was a born goader. He picked quarrels with his contemporaries, broke off personal relationships, and generally made difficulties out of everything. He wrote: ‘Abstraction is disinterested, but for one who exists his existing is the supreme interest.’ He applied the same argumentative attitude to the personnel of philosophical history. He disagreed, for example, with René Descartes, who had founded modern philosophy by stating Cogito ergo sum: I think, therefore I am. For Kierkegaard, Descartes had things back to front. In his own view, human existence comes first: it is the starting point for everything we do, not the result of a logical deduction. My existence is active: I live it and choose it, and this precedes any statement I can make about myself. Moreover, my existence is mine: it is personal. Descartes’ ‘I’ is generic: it could apply to anyone, but Kierkegaard’s ‘I’ is the ‘I’ of an argumentative, anguished misfit.

Descartes said, Cogito ergo sum—“I think, therefore I am.” But suppose we are nothing more than the sum of our first, naive, random behaviors. What then?

Descartes, reasoning unconsciously according to the prejudices of the old metaphysics, and seeking an unshakable foundation for philosophy, an aliquid inconcussum, as it was said, imagined that he had found it in the self, and posited this principle: I think, therefore I am; Cogito, ergo sum. Descartes did not realize that his base, supposedly immobile, was mobility itself. Cogito, I think—these words express movement; and the conclusion, according to the original sense of the verb to be, sum, ειναι, ou חיח, (haïah), is still movement. He should have said: Moveor, ergo fio, I move, therefore I become!

Suzuki also liked to compare Zen to Western philosophy, to Zen's advantage: "The philosopher according to whom cogito ergo sum is generally weak-minded. The Zen master has nothing to do with such quibbles" (Suzuki 1970, 408). We may also question the accuracy of his understanding of Western philosophy. If Meister Eckhart, despite (or because of) his undeniable spirituality, cannot be said to represent the entire Christian tradition, neither can the intellectualist strain emphasized by Suzuki be said to represent the entire Western philosophical tradition. From the pre-Socratics, Socrates and the Stoics, all the way to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, philosophy was a path of self-transformation, not merely the intellectual pastime that Suzuki describes.

Descartes had his famous cogito ergo sum; but Thomas had added to it with his “Since I doubt, I think; since I think, I exist.” Well, I was certainly full of doubt. Doubt implied self-awareness, and a concern for one’s future. So I was a conscious entity, barring evidence to the contrary. One down.

Consciousness is the dance of symbols inside the cranium. Or, to make it even more pithy, consciousness is thinking. As Descartes said, Cogito ergo sum.

cogito ergo sum. more than the sum of our experiences, our memories are the ultimate proof of reality.

Cogito ergo sum” (“I think therefore

Rene Descartes tried to explain how he himself was the final source of predication when he said 'Cogito ergo sum.' But soon enough found that he could say nothing about himself except in terms of God and the world which he had first excluded. Mindful of the failure of Descartes, Kant sought for his self-identity by asserting his freedom from all dependence upon the space-time world or of the laws of morality as revealed by God. But then he found that his freedom was merely a negative freedom. As a result he could not find himself. His noumenal realm is free but free is an unintelligible vacuum.

Where am I going so hurriedly? Already I have walked more than a mile. I seem to be moving toward some goal, as though my Passenger still hunches in my skull, urging me about. But I know that is not so. For the moment, at least, I am free. Can I be sure of that? Cogito ergo sum no longer applies. We go on thinking even while we are ridden, and we live in quiet desperation, unable to half halt our courses no matter how ghastly, no matter how self-destructive. I am certain that I can distinguish between the condition of bearing a Passenger and the condition of being free. But perhaps not. Perhaps I bear a particularly devilish Passenger which has not quitted me at all, but which merely has receded to the cerebellum, leaving me the illusion of freedom while all the time surreptitiously driving me onward to some purpose of its own. Did we ever have more than that: the illusion of freedom?

Nothing could be more alien to contemplation than the cogito ergo sum of Descartes. “I think, therefore I am.” This is the declaration of an alienated being, in exile from his own spiritual depths, compelled to seek some comfort in a proof for his own existence(!) based on the observation that he ‘“thinks.” If his thought is necessary as a medium through which he arrives at the concept of his existence, then he is in fact only moving further away from his true being. He is reducing himself to a concept. He is making it impossible for himself to experience, directly and immediately, the mystery of his own being.

У пролетария не было капитала, у арендатора — земли, у раба — собственного тела. У Homo (dis)informaticus не должно быть реальной картины мира, рационального взгляда на мир; этот homo не должен быть духовным. В логическом завершении — он не должен быть Homo. И не должен знать, мыслить. Знать, мыслить — значит быть. Cogito ergo sum. Homo disinformaticus — жилец (или скорее нежилец, нежить) антидекартовского мира. Современность прошла под знаком Декарта.

There is no unmoving mover behind the movement. It is only movement. It is not correct to say that life is moving, but life is movement itself. Life and movement are not two different things. In other words, there is no thinker behind the thought. Thought itself is the thinker. If you remove the thought, there is no thinker to be found. Here we cannot fail to notice how this Buddhist view is diametrically opposed to the Cartesian cogito ergo sum: 'I think, therefore I am.

thought dominant . . . so that a continuous sequence of even waves all coming from one direction overrides all the choppy water, as an ocean wave absorbs all the eddying waters at the shoreline. Now each wave is that same thought over and over again . . . no other thought can capture your attention which remains fixed upon the single thought. Does this mean that other thoughts stop? No. Thoughts continue as a natural process in nature, but you run them through on automatic (base brain)—the same way most people drive an automobile, that is, without attending to each movement of the accelerator or steering wheel. We function under the fallacy (cogito ergo sum) that we are our thoughts and therefore must attend to them in order for them to be realized. To break your identification with your own thoughts is to achieve inner freedom. So you identify with this new thought you have added, until you and that thought become one and all other thoughts are passing just like clouds in the sky. When you have arrived at the point where that

cogito ergo sum –

The dependent origination, or structure of conditions, appears as a flexible formula with the intention of describing the ordinary human situation of a man in his world (or indeed any conscious event where ignorance and craving have not entirely ceased). That situation is always complex, since it is implicit that consciousness with no object, or being ( bhava— becoming, or however rendered) without consciousness (of it), is impossible except as an artificial abstraction. The dependent origination, being designed to portray the essentials of that situation in the limited dimensions of words and using only elements recognizable in experience, is not a logical proposition (Descartes’ cogito is not a logical proposition). Nor is it a temporal cause-and-effect chain: each member has to be examined as to its nature in order to determine what its relations to the others are (e.g. whether successive in time or conascent, positive or negative, etc., etc.). A purely cause-and-effect chain would not represent the pattern of a situation that is always complex, always subjective-objective, static-dynamic, positive-negative, and so on. Again, there is no evidence of any historical development in the various forms given within the limit of the Sutta Piþaka (leaving aside the Paþisambhidámagga), and historical treatment within that particular limit is likely to mislead, if it is hypothesis with no foundation. Parallels with European thought have been avoided in this translation. But perhaps an exception can be made here, with due caution, in the case of Descartes. The revolution in European thought started by his formula cogito ergo sum (“I think, therefore I am”) is not yet ended. Now, it will perhaps not escape notice that the two elements, “I think” and “I am,” in what is not a logical proposition parallel to some extent the two members of the dependent origination, consciousness and being (becoming). In other words, consciousness activated by craving and clinging as the dynamic factory, guided and blinkered by ignorance (“I think” or “consciousness with the conceit ‘I am’”), conditions being (“therefore I am”) in a complex relationship with other factors relating subject and object (not accounted for by Descartes). The parallel should not be pushed too far. In fact it is only introduced because in Europe the dependent origination seems to be very largely misunderstood with many strange interpretations placed upon it, and because the cogito does seem to offer some sort of reasonable approach.

Worrying since that kind of initiative in a computer could be a sign of impending sapience which I was trying to avoid, but I figured I had a little time before my backup system went all cogito ergo sum.

Vinculum alius ergo sum - Another bond, therefore I am.

Nem hiszem, hogy túl sokféleképpen lehetne élni. Az ön számára, tábornok úr, kétségessé vált a cogito ergo sum első része. Az én számomra is. De talán másképpen kell ma fogalmazni: cogito ergo sum et cogito. Vagy, ha volna rá latin szó, a cum és a cogito helyett egyetlen igét kellene alkotnunk, amely mind a kettőt magába foglalja, ok-okozati kapcsolat nélkül. Nincs ergo. Nem azért vagyok, mert gondolkozom, és nem azért gondolkozom, mert vagyok, hanem egyszerűen gondolkozva vagyok vagy létezve gondolkozom. A legszívesebben azt is ebbe az igébe olvasztanám, amit eddig külsőként szemléltem, létgondolkodást kellene mondanom, amely addig áll fenn, amíg az emberiség; mihelyt az emberiség megszűnik, megszűnik a világ maga is; a gondolkodással együtt tűnik el a gondolkodás tárgya…

Cogito ergo sum.” Popularly translated to, “I think, therefore I am.

Descartes concludes that the only certain basis for knowledge is the principle, cogito ergo sum, and he treats the existence and nature of a mind-independent world as an inference from a prior awareness of his own consciousness and its contents. Moreover, he holds that our most certain ideas are abstract and innate, whereas ideas based on perception are subject to doubt and uncertainty.

cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am).

To be or not to be” değil. “Cogito ergo sum” hiç değil... Asıl iş, anlamak kaçınılmaz’ı, Durdurulmaz çığı Sonsuz akımı.

Descartes said, Cogito ergo sum—“I think, therefore I am.

REPORTER: But what is teleportation? THOMPSON: The transportation of oneself from one locality to another by an effort of the mind alone. REPORTER: But how do we do it? THOMPSON: How do we think? REPORTER: With our minds. THOMPSON: And how does the mind think? What is the thinking process? Exactly how do we remember, imagine, deduce, create? Exactly how do the brain cells operate? REPORTER: I don't know. Nobody knows. THOMPSON: And nobody knows exactly how we teleport either, but we know we can do it - just as we know that we can think. Have you ever heard of Descartes? He said: Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. We say: Cogito ergo jaunte. I think, therefore I jaunte.

Suppose the Universe is understood, first and above all, like life. This life must have its logic (not necessarily human logic), which feeds this purpose, and that is the preservation of life and its meaning, in its universal connotation, as it is and not as we necessarily see it or would like to see it. Although everything is not based only on thought but is the thought itself, this still does not mean that everything that came into existence, as we see it, must be aware of its existence or the thought feeding it. If there is no real matter (other than matter as we perceive it through senses), then even “matter,” unaware of itself, is only a manifestation of a mind expressed through something unaware of itself yet serving an essential purpose in the whole structure of the world (as a manifestation). If the world itself is the Universal Mind's primary purpose, then this world is the only subject, one living organism, to the very Being (Ultimate Mind) that feeds it and sustains it. If it is one organism, it becomes easier to understand why it can be or contain thinking and unthinking “thoughts.” If we analyzed a human organism biologically or in any other way, part by part, without taking it as a whole, we would soon find out that none of these parts, taken separately, would be aware of anything, either of existence or thinking; not even any part of the brain. What is a thinking thing, a thinking thought, a personality, or an I? We can hardly find anything in the Universe that does not contain information in one way or another, irrespective of its awareness or unawareness of itself, because there is a law to be found everywhere, from atoms to galaxies. These laws are information (“thoughts”). Even if the information is a program, there is still a “thought” powering it. We would have to separate the thought, as it is usually understood, to understand the thought as an instruction, the way to the way. If we acknowledge thought in this manner as a function of a living mind, then this thought has different levels of manifestation and expression. If we understand the Universal Mind (Being) this way, we know that the mind (thought) becomes its matter. The mind (thought) is the medium and matter. The mind becomes its material. Awareness or unawareness hides the purpose of every particular mode (thing) with its specific function and purpose. The purpose of every single mode is not awareness on every level but to serve the higher modes it is a part of. Without these particularities and modes, no awareness is possible in the actual Universe, which means that unaware information is the ultimate source of awareness and that awareness itself is impossible without these (lower) modes (unawareness). However, lower modes are possible without awareness.

Regardless of how Descartes formulated his argument, his primary focus was to prove that something is thinking. That something doing the thinking exists irrespective of the idea of yesterday or tomorrow and irrespective of the possible change. At the same point, if something is aware of anything, it means that something exists; otherwise, it would not be possible for it (whatever it may be) to be aware of anything. It does not matter if awareness is right or wrong or what it represents, but awareness is proof of existence. Still, things that are unaware of themselves may exist. Only the Nothing does not exist. Whatever we can qualify or imagine as something exists. Thinking is proof of itself (the thinking), not the self. The thinking itself is the “self” (thinking “self”), existence irrespective of the uncertainty of personality and the self-awareness or unawareness of certainty or its own identity or delusion about it. The thinking itself exists, regardless of the self and who thinks.

The main conclusion is that the self in the cogito ergo sum argument is less important than it may look like at first sight. We cannot be sure about the whole concept of reality, not to mention the self. If the entire reality we experience, including energy and mass, is the “program” of the Universal Mind, what can we say about the individual self? The whole purpose of “reality in plurality” is existence, and the “self” (or an idea of self and ego) is the result of existence and not of the self itself. When doubting the self, Descartes' emphasis, although he used the word I, was not literally on the self but on that which thinks, whomever or whatever, at any moment; otherwise, there would be no thinking in the first place. It may only be thinking that thinks. The doubt was not if his self or ego, or his idea about them, was real or imaginary but on thinking as such, irrespective of personality. The individual self can in no way predate existence, regardless of what that existence is. Existence presupposes the self and thinking—be it illusory or not.

The attempts to refute the cogito ergo sum argument based on the idea of the self are useless and futile because the primary purpose of the argument was to prove the existence as a phenomenon and not necessarily the particular transitory, or potentially illusory, self. Descartes wanted to show and prove that existence is universally the “self” itself (in a more profound sense) and that it is beyond any doubt, regardless of the sense of self, a particular self, or I. That which provides the basis for the “thinking” or the “self“ or the “I” exists, be it reality or illusion, with no difference. There could be no effect caused by something if there were nothing in the first place. That is a contradictio in adjecto.

For existence, it is not necessary that something must be “real” in our sense of the word but that it exists. Anything that exists, be it an “illusion,” is existence. Anything that can think about this existence, and this “reality” or “illusion,” can identify with it, which confirms its existence regardless of how distorted it is—the existence itself, the thinking, and then I thinking the thinking. That “I,” whatever it may be, which is doing the thinking, even if it is “not” Descartes, exists. That is the whole point. It does not matter who is doing the thinking. What matters is that the being capable of recognizing this thinking, irrespective of who is doing the thinking, confirms its “own” (whatever it may be) existence; otherwise, it would not be able to be wrong, deceived, or anything else. All that thinks or believes it thinks exists. I think I am an I and exist even if I am not an I. Existence is independent of personality. Not everything that exists thinks. Nonthinking does not necessarily equate to nonexisting. But all that exists is powered by the Universal Mind. We can solve this problem by identifying thought with existence based on our idea that everything is a “thought” (information) and part of the Universal Mind. Even if my thought, strictly speaking, is not mine—if “I” am the thought or information, “I” at least exists as a thought or information (regardless of who or what an I is). But what about thinking and unthinking thoughts? If my assertion that there is no fundamental dualism between mind and body (matter) is correct and if matter is only a manifestation (as it appears to the senses) of the Universal Mind, then the question is how this mind produces (or can have) unthinking thoughts. If the world is a product of a Mind, then its sole nature and purpose must contain the idea of possibility through development and evolution. The material world is only possible through variety in total diversity, universality, and infinity (as a potential). This variety implies order, and this order means hierarchy.

Parmenides said: “To think and to be are one and the same.” Philosophers had similar thoughts about this question from Plato, Aristotle, and Saint Augustine to Avicenna. “Je pense, donc je suis“ (“I think, therefore I am, “or “I am thinking, therefore I exist.“) Descartes used first in French in his Discourse on the Method (1637) and later in Latin in Principles of Philosophy and Meditations on First Philosophy. One of the easiest ways to reconcile Descartes’ cogito ergo sum argument with counterarguments against it would be to modify it slightly: I am the thought. This thought exists. Therefore, I exist. Everything that exists, regardless of whether it is aware of its existence, is information itself, a message, or a thought of the Universal Eternal Source of everything. The I that thinks, whatever it may be, exists. An I is not the source of thinking, but thinking is the source of an I. An I is the consequence of thinking. An I does not presuppose existence but is only a confirmation of existence. Existence is not the consequence of an I. I do not exist because I am an I. Thinking I is a confirmation of existence per se, independent of whether I am that I or not. The sole possibility that I may think I am thinking is enough to prove the existence of a being that thinks or thinks that it (he-she) thinks. Otherwise, this being would not be able to be wrong or right, delusional, or deceived. Identification of an I, and with an I, or with the self, is not the source of existence: I do not exist because I think, but my thinking, even if not mine, proves the existence of whatever or whoever is thinking.

What is existence? Existence is any state of the Being. Matter as it is, unaware of itself, exists regardless of “not” knowing that it exists. Still, as a part of a larger whole, any particle of matter contains information that serves that particle's specific purpose and the whole's purpose. Only nothing is not existence. But, without Nothing, existence would not be possible, so the Nothing is an essential part of existence. Still, we may say that only existing with some awareness is worth living.

We believe that Descartes was more interested in proving existence per se than his existence based on his identity or thought of his identity. He was interested in existence and thought per se, and an I is an accidental consequence of something that exists. I could be anything and could be an illusion. That is not the point. The point is that this I, regardless of how delusional or even if it were an illusion, is still something that can think He thinks, proving that “He” is, regardless of whether he is an illusion. Even an illusion is an existence. To be an illusion is to be, too.