Eli5 the term “I think, therefore I am” I know it’s some what of a term about self awareness
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“I think, therefore I am” is the first premise of an argument made by Rene Descartes, and it’s a translation to English from French by way of the Latin “cogito ergo sum.” Although “ergo” is included in that phrase, it’s generally simpler to consider it a single positive statement that “I exist as a thinking thing.” Descartes used variants of that phrase in both French and Latin, so you shouldn’t bother thinking you have an exact quote. The phrase is often referred to simply as “the cogito.”
When Descartes was making the argument that uses this as a first premise, his goal was to prove *anything at all* without external evidence. There are two terms that make this faster to talk about, those being *a priori* knowledge and *a posteriori* knowledge. A posteriori means that you experienced something, and you obtained knowledge from that experience. Any knowledge you have of the world outside of your own mind is a posteriori knowledge. A priori knowledge is knowledge that could be obtained by thought and reason alone, without ever experiencing the world. To reduce the possibility that he would clumsily guess at a priori things while actually coming up with stuff that required experience to understand, he went as simple as he possibly could: thought alone.
There is a term for this level of skepticism regarding reality for the sake of a thought experiment- Cartesian doubt. He wanted to doubt everything, to the point of “brain-in-a-vat” Matrix-style stuff, to ensure he did not believe something in error. Keep in mind here that in this case, there is a difference between casual belief and “capital B” Belief. Casual belief is all the little things we accept without thinking about them, whereas Belief is for things we *know for certain.* At the time (and for most people still), “capital K” Knowledge is a belief you have that is both true and justified.
How can a philosopher like Descartes prove to himself that he exists, as a first premise, without any evidence from experiencing a world that he knows to be true? He thinks. By being a source of thought, he must exist. As a first premise, he exists, because he thinks. If he didn’t exist, he couldn’t possibly produce thoughts, but there he is, thinking away!
He went go on to talk about how even if he was in a permanent illusion, the fact of his existence would always be a logical necessity resulting from the fact that he is thinking. ~~Centuries later, George Gershwin would pen his legendary showtune, “I Got Existence”,~~
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