Maybe I’m just small brained but I’ve never understood this phrase
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Here’s a more modern variation on the same thing. This happens in the original Jumanji movie. If you haven’t seen it it’s about a boardgame with deadly consequences for its players.
> _Alan gets startled by a clock and drops the dice he was holding. Automatically, his game piece moves forward by the rolled amount on the dropped dice._.
> Alan: “I didn’t roll, the game thinks I rolled those dice.”
> Sarah: “What do you mean, the game _thinks_?”
> _Ominous silence as Alan and Sarah stare at each other and then at the board game in fear of what’s to come._
The key point that Sarah is getting across here is that the game clearly made a judgment call that what happened to the dice constitutes a player taking their turn, which implies that the game has both awareness of its surroundings (to observe the dice and who rolled them) and the ability to have thoughts (i.e. to decide whether that was a roll by the right player whose turn it is). This implies that the game is a living entity and not just a wooden board.
The movie later establishes that the game really does judge these things: it punishes someone who manipulates the roll, it refuses to budge when one of the players isn’t present (and it’s their turn), the game allows a roll made by the right player spitting the dice out their mouth, and the game allows the final roll even though the two dice were rolled separately with a long time inbetween, and went _well_ beyond the direct vicinity of the game board.
Descartes is saying the same thing more tersely. He has thoughts, therefore he must have the capacity to reason, which in turn is proof that he is a living entity, not just a meat puppet controlled by external impulses. He can choose to act differently, not because the external impulses are different, but because something within him makes him capable of thinking and deciding.
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