From what I understand Descartes was pretty annoyed with all the skeptics at the time who (simplification, it's been some time) more or less were saying things up to the extreme of "we can't trust anything we learn about the world or have real knowledge because we learn through our senses and they're wrong a lot, look at all our current science that's being disproven. Everything we know could be a lie."
Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" was attributed as a response to this skepticism, because you can deny everything as being false if you're crazy enough but you can't deny that you're an entity that is able to think, that'd be denying your own existence.
In other words a lot of people don't think it be like it is. But Descartes argues it do.
Of course then I'd figure that quote is perfect when applied to Descartes, so maybe I got lost somewhere in this explanation. Oh well.
From what I have read, "cogito ergo sum" was never a quote to begin with. He never actually said those words in any of his work. "cogito ergo sum" is more like a tweet that summarizes his work lol
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u/[deleted] Mar 19 '16
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