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"Cogito, ergo sum" (Latin "I think, therefore I am") or Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum (Latin "I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am") is a philosophical statement used by René Descartes, which became a foundational element of Western philosophy. The simple meaning of the phrase is that if someone is wondering whether or not he exists, that is in and of itself proof that he does exist. Descartes's original statement was "Je pense donc je suis," from his Discourse on Method (1637). He uses the Latin "Cogito ergo sum" in the later Principles of Philosophy (1644), Part 1, article 7 "Ac proinde hæc cognitio, ego cogito, ergo sum, est omnium prima & certissima, quæ cuilibet ordine philosophanti occurrat.", by which time it had become popularly known as 'the "Cogito Ergo Sum" argument'. Although the idea expressed in Cogito ergo sum is widely attributed to Descartes, many predecessors offer similar arguments — particularly St. Augustine of Hippo in De Civitate Dei "Si […] fallor, sum" ("If I am mistaken, I am") (book XI, 26), who also anticipates modern refutations of the concept. Another predecessor was Avicenna's "Floating Man" thought experiment on human self-awareness and self-consciousness.[1] The phrase Cogito ergo sum is not used in Descartes's most important work, the Meditations on First Philosophy, but the term "the cogito" is (often confusingly) used to refer to an argument from it. Descartes felt that this phrase, which he had used in his earlier Discourse, had been misleading in its implication that he was appealing to an inference, so he changed it to "I am, I exist" (also often called "the first certainty") in order to avoid the term "cogito."
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