Maybe I’m just small brained but I’ve never understood this phrase
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DeCartes was a philosopher, and he decided to apply the scientific method to philosophy, doubting every assumption we have about the world, and only accepting things as truth when there can be no alternative.
He doubted the existence of God, he doubted that any of his senses accurately represent the world around him, but there is one thing he could not come up with an alternative solution for. He was doubting those things, he was thinking about them. How could he think about those things if he didn’t exist? So his first concrete conclusion was “I can think, therefore I must exist”
This doesn’t disprove that he isn’t just a hallucinating brain in a jar somewhere, but it does prove that there is a thing that exists and it is doing thinking. The rest of DeCartes’ work builds up from here, and he knows he isn’t working off of any false assumptions.
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