Maybe I’m just small brained but I’ve never understood this phrase
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There’s a famous question in philosophy of what knowledge you can be sure of, and what knowledge you can legitimately doubt. So for example, I can’t be sure I have hands even though I can see them, because I could be an amputee having a vivid dream.
Descartes contributed to that discussion by saying (in Latin) “Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum.” The second half of that sentence is often translated as “I think, therefore I am.” What Descartes meant is that in the process of doubting his knowledge, he had to think, and people who don’t exist don’t think, so he couldn’t legitimately doubt his knowledge that he existed. A better translation might be something like “I doubt, so I think, and therefore I exist.”
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