Cogito — Abbreviation of Descartes’s phrase: “Cogito, ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I am”). The Archimedean point of Cartesian philosophy: in attempting to doubt everything, Descartes discovers that the very act of doubting proves the existence of the doubter. The cogito inaugurates modern subjectivism — the certainty of the thinking self as the foundation of knowledge — and generates the problem of mind-body dualism.
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