Maybe I’m just small brained but I’ve never understood this phrase
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You know how you learn by building on past experiences as a foundation? Example, you’ve touched a hot stove and it hurt, you’ve touched a hot car seat and it also hurt, so you know that if something you’ve never touched is very hot, that it will hurt to touch it. This is called a conclusion.
You can apply this process of drawing conclusions based not on experiences, but assumptions. I’ve never kicked a donkey, but I assume they would react violently. If I assume this to be true, then I conclude I should not kick a donkey if I don’t want to be around an angry donkey.
This assumption may be wrong: maybe there’s a special way to kick a donkey that WON’T cause it to react violently. In fact, you can, by kicking it softer in a fleshy part of its body. So really my assumption is not entirely right: someone can argue with me and prove me wrong on my assumption. My assumption is weak.
“I think, therefore I am,” is considered a foundational assumption of the study of the mind, the individual, and social interactions, aka Philosophy. Unlike my assumption that donkeys always hate to be kicked, there is no other philosophical assumption you can make as strongly, and nobody can argue against it.
You can use logic to build off of strong assumptions, and “I think, therefore, I am” is considered as strong an assumption as anyone can make.
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