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“I think I am, therefore, I am... I think.”
― George Carlin

“Some care is needed in using Descartes' argument. "I think, therefore I am" says rather more than is strictly certain. It might seem as though we are quite sure of being the same person to-day as we were yesterday, and this is no doubt true in some sense. But the real Self is as hard to arrive at as the real table, and does not seem to have that absolute, convincing certainty that belongs to particular experiences.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy

“When people say that animal rescuers are crazy, what they really mean is that animal rescuers share a number of fundamental beliefs that makes them easy to marginalize. Among those is the belief that Rene Descartes was a jackass.”
― Steven Kotler, A Small Furry Prayer: Dog Rescue and the Meaning of Life

“If the people of Europe had known as much of astronomy and geology when the bible was introduced among them, as they do now, there never could have been one believer in the doctrine of inspiration. If the writers of the various parts of the bible had known as much about the sciences as is now known by every intelligent man, the book never could have been written. It was produced by ignorance, and has been believed and defended by its author. It has lost power in the proportion that man has gained knowledge. A few years ago, this book was appealed to in the settlement of all scientific questions; but now, even the clergy confess that in such matters, it has ceased to speak with the voice of authority. For the establishment of facts, the word of man is now considered far better than the word of God. In the world of science, Jehovah was superseded by Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler. All that God told Moses, admitting the entire account to be true, is dust and ashes compared to the discoveries of Descartes, Laplace, and Humboldt. In matters of fact, the bible has ceased to be regarded as a standard. Science has succeeded in breaking the chains of theology. A few years ago, Science endeavored to show that it was not inconsistent with the bible. The tables have been turned, and now, Religion is endeavoring to prove that the bible is not inconsistent with Science. The standard has been changed.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses

“No hay nada repartido de modo más equitativo en el mundo que la °ù²¹³úó²Ô: todo el mundo está convencido de tener suficiente.”
― Descartes

“There are some men who are counted great because they represent the actuality of their own age, and mirror it as it is. Such an one was Voltaire, of whom it was epigrammatically said: 'he expressed everybody's thoughts better than anyone.' But there are other men who attain greatness because they embody the potentiality of their own day and magically reflect the future. They express the thoughts which will be everybody's two or three centuries after them. Such as one was Descartes.”
― Thomas Henry Huxley

“I think therefore I am, right?"
"No, not really. A fuller formation of Descartes's philosophy would be Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum. 'I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.' Descartes wanted to know if you could really know that anything was real, but he believed his ability to doubt reality proved that, while it might not be real, he was.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“Is it possible that the Pentateuch could not have been written by uninspired men? that the assistance of God was necessary to produce these books? Is it possible that Galilei ascertained the mechanical principles of 'Virtual Velocity,' the laws of falling bodies and of all motion; that Copernicus ascertained the true position of the earth and accounted for all celestial phenomena; that Kepler discovered his three laws—discoveries of such importance that the 8th of May, 1618, may be called the birth-day of modern science; that Newton gave to the world the Method of Fluxions, the Theory of Universal Gravitation, and the Decomposition of Light; that Euclid, Cavalieri, Descartes, and Leibniz, almost completed the science of mathematics; that all the discoveries in optics, hydrostatics, pneumatics and chemistry, the experiments, discoveries, and inventions of Galvani, Volta, Franklin and Morse, of Trevithick, Watt and Fulton and of all the pioneers of progress—that all this was accomplished by uninspired men, while the writer of the Pentateuch was directed and inspired by an infinite God? Is it possible that the codes of China, India, Egypt, Greece and Rome were made by man, and that the laws recorded in the Pentateuch were alone given by God? Is it possible that Ʋõ³¦³ó²â±ô³Ü²õ and Shakespeare, Burns, and Beranger, Goethe and Schiller, and all the poets of the world, and all their wondrous tragedies and songs are but the work of men, while no intelligence except the infinite God could be the author of the Pentateuch? Is it possible that of all the books that crowd the libraries of the world, the books of science, fiction, history and song, that all save only one, have been produced by man? Is it possible that of all these, the bible only is the work of God?”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses

“...Although the term Existentialism was invented in the 20th century by the French philosopher Gabriel Marcel, the roots of this thought go back much further in time, so much so, that this subject was mentioned even in the Old Testament. If we take, for example, the Book of Ecclesiastes, especially chapter 5, verses 15-16, we will find a strong existential sentiment there which declares, 'This too is a grievous evil: As everyone comes, so they depart, and what do they gain, since they toil for the wind?' The aforementioned book was so controversial that in the distant past there were whole disputes over whether it should be included in the Bible. But if nothing else, this book proves that Existential Thought has always had its place in the centre of human life. However, if we consider recent Existentialism, we can see it was the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre who launched this movement, particularly with his book Being and Nothingness, in 1943. Nevertheless, Sartre's thought was not a new one in philosophy. In fact, it goes back three hundred years and was first uttered by the French philosopher René Descartes in his 1637 Discours de la Méthode, where he asserts, 'I think, therefore I am' . It was on this Cartesian model of the isolated ego-self that Sartre built his existential consciousness, because for him, Man was brought into this world for no apparent reason and so it cannot be expected that he understand such a piece of absurdity rationally.''

'' Sir, what can you tell us about what Sartre thought regarding the unconscious mind in this respect, please?'' a charming female student sitting in the front row asked, listening keenly to every word he had to say.

''Yes, good question. Going back to Sartre's Being and Nothingness it can be seen that this philosopher shares many ideological concepts with the Neo-Freudian psychoanalysts but at the same time, Sartre was diametrically opposed to one of the fundamental foundations of psychology, which is the human unconscious. This is precisely because if Sartre were to accept the unconscious, the same subject would end up dissolving his entire thesis which revolved around what he understood as being the liberty of Man. This stems from the fact that according to Sartre, if a person accepts the unconscious mind he is also admitting that he can never be free in his choices since these choices are already pre-established inside of him. Therefore, what can clearly be seen in this argument is the fact that apparently, Sartre had no idea about how physics, especially Quantum Mechanics works, even though it was widely known in his time as seen in such works as Heisenberg's The Uncertainty Principle, where science confirmed that first of all, everything is interconnected - the direct opposite of Sartrean existential isolation - and second, that at the subatomic level, everything is undetermined and so there is nothing that is pre-established; all scientific facts that in themselves disprove the Existential Ontology of Sartre and Existentialism itself...”
― Anton Sammut, Paceville and Metanoia

“What Comfort can the Vortices of Descartes give to a Man who has Whirlwinds in his bowels!”
― Benjamin Franklin, Fart Proudly: Writings of Benjamin Franklin You Never Read in School

“Those whom nature destined to make her disciples have no need of teachers. Bacon, Descartes, Newton â€� these tutors of the human race had no need of tutors themselves, and what guides could have led them to those places where their vast genius carried them? Ordinary teachers could only have limited their understanding by confining it to their own narrow capabilities. With the first obstacles, they learned to exert themselves and made the effort to traverse the immense space they moved through. If it is necessary to permit some men to devote themselves to the study of the sciences and the arts, that should be only for those who feel in themselves the power to walk alone in those men's footsteps and to move beyond them. It is the task of this small number of people to raise monuments to the glory of the human mind.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Sciences and Arts and Polemics

“It is difficult, almost impossible, in fact, for the scientific community to recognize the fact that Cartesian bifurcation is a philosophic postulate, for which there is absolutely no scientific basis [...] It is not that they can conceive or imagine a scientific proof of that hypothesis; it is rather that they are unable to conceive that it might not be true.”
― Wolfgang Smith

“The aim of modern science is power over nature, and Descartes, who formulated the mechanistic/scientific world-view said that man is to become the master and possessor of nature. It should be noted that this is a religious faith that takes the place of Christian faith. Even the rationalist Descartes who said that the whole of nature is nothing but a great machine and gave thus the mechanistic/scientific outlook which exists, even today predominates in scientific research â€� he himself in his youth had strange dreams and visions, and after he had devised his new science he had a vision of the angel of truth. Descartes. This angel of truth commanded him to trust his new science which would give him all knowledge. And knowledge, of course, had the purpose of making man the master and possessor of nature. This religious nature of scientific faith can be seen today when the breakdown of scientific faith, which has been dominant these last centuries, is leading now to a new crisis in religion. Because now men come to the question: what can one believe if even science, which is supposed to be the ultimate certainty, if it gives no certainty? And so, new irrational philosophies are born and the wish to believe in new gods.”
― Seraphim Rose, Orthodox Survival Course

“C.S. Lewis zauważa, że Apulejusz którego dzieÅ‚ko De Deo Socratis znaczÄ…co wpÅ‚ynęło a konstruktorów Modelu - gÅ‚osiÅ‚ dwie zasady: triady i peÅ‚ni. Wedle pierwszej z nich, pochodzÄ…cej z PlatoÅ„skiego Timajosa, "jest rzeczÄ… niemożliwÄ…, żeby dwie rzeczy poÅ‚Ä…czyÅ‚y siÄ™ bez trzeciej. Musi istnieć jakiÅ› wÄ™zeÅ‚ miÄ™dzy nimi, żeby siÄ™ zetknęły". Wedle drugiej - we WszechÅ›wiecie nie ma miejsc pustych. „JeÅ›li miÄ™dzy eterem i ziemiÄ… znajduje siÄ™ pas powietrza, Apulejuszowi wydaje siÄ™, że sama ratio wymaga, żeby byÅ‚o on zamieszkany". Można zresztÄ… spekulować, że obie te zasady wywodzÄ… siÄ™ z przedfilozoficznego, potocznego poglÄ…du na Å›wiat - wszak doÅ›wiadczenie wywierania wpÅ‚ywu na rzeczy, gÅ‚Ä™boko zakorzenione w schematach motorycznych naszego mózgu, pod powiada, że nie jest możliwe oddziaÅ‚ywanie na odlegÅ‚ość.
Co ciekawe, sam Newton wydawaÅ‚ siÄ™ dostrzegać problematyczność swego rozumienia attractio i wielokrotnie podkreÅ›laÅ‚, że siÅ‚y przyciÄ…gania i odpychania to nie prawdziwe przyczyny rzeczy, a jedynie,,siÅ‚y matematyczne". W liÅ›cie do Bentleya zauważaÅ‚: "Jest nie do pojÄ™cia, ażeby nieożywiona, martwa materia dziaÅ‚aÅ‚a na innÄ… materiÄ™ bez poÅ›rednictwa czegoÅ›, co nie jest materialne(...)”
― Bartosz Brożek, Granice interpretacji

“The frequency domain of mind (a mind, it must be stressed, is an unextended, massless, immaterial singularity) can produce an extended, spacetime domain of matter via ontological Fourier mathematics, and the two domains interact via inverse and forward Fourier transforms. An inverse Fourier transform converts a frequency (mind) function into a spacetime (material) function, and a forward Fourier transform does the opposite. So, mind can causally affect the material world, and matter can inform mind about its condition, its state. This is thus the long-sought answer to the world-historic problem of Cartesian substance dualism.”
― Dr. Cody Newman, The Ontological Self: The Ontological Mathematics of Consciousness

“What was exorcised was the Machine not the Ghost.”
― Noam Chomsky

“Fuit in Cartesio major librorum usus quam ipse videri volebat: hoc stylus et res ipsae
docent.”
― Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

“Descartes, reasoning unconsciously according to the prejudices of the old metaphysics, and seeking an unshakable foundation for philosophy, an aliquid inconcussum, as it was said, imagined that he had found it in the self, and posited this principle: I think, therefore I am; Cogito, ergo sum. Descartes did not realize that his base, supposedly immobile, was mobility itself. Cogito, I think—these words express movement; and the conclusion, according to the original sense of the verb to be, sum, ειναι, ou ×—×™×—, (haïah), is still movement. He should have said: Moveor, ergo fio, I move, therefore I become!”
― Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, The Philosophy of Progress

“More radically, how can we be sure that the source of consciousness lies within our bodies at all? You might think that because a blow to the head renders one unconscious, the ‘seat of consciousnessâ€� must lie within the skull. But there is no logical reason to conclude that. An enraged blow to my TV set during an unsettling news programme may render the screen blank, but that doesn’t mean the news reader is situated inside the television. A television is just a receiver: the real action is miles away in a studio. Could the brain be merely a receiver of ‘consciousness signalsâ€� created somewhere else? In Antarctica, perhaps? (This isn’t a serious suggestion â€� I’m just trying to make a point.) In fact, the notion that somebody or something ‘out thereâ€� may ‘put thoughts in our headsâ€� is a pervasive one; Descartes himself raised this possibility by envisaging a mischievous demon messing with our minds. Today, many people believe in telepathy. So the basic idea that minds are delocalized is actually not so far-fetched. In fact, some distinguished scientists have flirted with the idea that not all that pops up in our minds originates in our heads. A popular, if rather mystical, idea is that flashes of mathematical inspiration can occur by the mathematician’s mind somehow ‘breaking throughâ€� into a Platonic realm of mathematical forms and relationships that not only lies beyond the brain but beyond space and time altogether. The cosmologist Fred Hoyle once entertained an even bolder hypothesis: that quantum effects in the brain leave open the possibility of external input into our thought processes and thus guide us towards useful scientific concepts. He proposed that this ‘external guideâ€� might be a superintelligence in the far cosmic future using a subtle but well-known backwards-in-time property of quantum mechanics in order to steer scientific progress.”
― Paul Davies, The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Finally Solving the Mystery of Life

“More radically, how can we be sure that the source of consciousness lies within our bodies at all? You might think that because a blow to the head renders one unconscious, the ‘seat of consciousnessâ€� must lie within the skull. But there is no logical reason to conclude that. An enraged blow to my TV set during an unsettling news programme may render the screen blank, but that doesn’t mean the news reader is situated inside the television. A television is just a receiver: the real action is miles away in a studio. Could the brain be merely a receiver of ‘consciousness signalsâ€� created somewhere else? In Antarctica, perhaps? (This isn’t a serious suggestion â€� I’m just trying to make a point.) In fact, the notion that somebody or something ‘out thereâ€� may ‘put thoughts in our headsâ€� is a pervasive one; Descartes himself raised this possibility by envisaging a mischievous demon messing with our minds. Today, many people believe in telepathy. So the basic idea that minds are delocalized is actually not so far-fetched. In fact, some distinguished scientists have flirted with the idea that not all that pops up in our minds originates in our heads. A popular, if rather mystical, idea is that flashes of mathematical inspiration can occur by the mathematician’s mind somehow ‘breaking throughâ€� into a Platonic realm of mathematical forms and relationships that not only lies beyond the brain but beyond space and time altogether. The cosmologist Fred Hoyle once entertained an even bolder hypothesis: that quantum effects in the brain leave open the possibility of external input into our thought processes and thus guide us towards useful scientific concepts. He proposed that this ‘external guideâ€� might be a superintelligence in the far cosmic future using a subtle but well-known backwards-in-time property of quantum mechanics in order to steer scientific progress.”
― Paul C.W. Davies, The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life

“…Sartre, expanding on Descartes, wrote that the reason we know others exist is because when they look at us, we feel looked at. He called the entity that was staring back at us the Other. From that meeting of the eyes, everything else in our fragile human universes blossomed forth. But! Think of how easily human status is taken away—by war, by hospitals, by arguments about whose turn it is to take out the recycling. How easily we can turn people into things. And now Tanya had turned me into a thing.”
― Adrian Barnes, Nod

“Questions and debates related to the distinction between primary and secondary qualities, starting with Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Boyle, and culminating with Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, although we can go back to Democritus and his conventions, arise not only from these qualities per se but also from the lack of clear and precise definitions of these terms, including the terms “sensiblesâ€� (“sensible qualitiesâ€�) and “proper and common sensibles.â€� For the philosophers of old, since Aristotle, proper sensibles were the same as secondary qualities for the philosophers since Locke. Common sensibles would be primary qualities based on Locke’s classification. The main distinction shall be sought between the essence of the Being as a singularity, in its ultimate mode, and its manifestation, appearance, in and through plurality. We can further postulate that there is a distinction between the essence of singularity and its appearance or manifestation in (through) plurality.

The next question is whether Plurality saves the essence of singularity. Although singularity is saved even in plurality, this essence hides beyond appearance, and the senses cannot experience it. The senses experience only the appearance of plurality, not its essence as a singularity.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, ABSOLUTE

“Parmenides said: “To think and to be are one and the same.â€� Philosophers had similar thoughts about this question from Plato, Aristotle, and Saint Augustine to Avicenna. “Je pense, donc je suisâ€� (“I think, therefore I am, “or “I am thinking, therefore I exist.â€�) Descartes used first in French in his Discourse on the Method (1637) and later in Latin in Principles of Philosophy and Meditations on First Philosophy.

One of the easiest ways to reconcile Descartes� cogito ergo sum argument with counterarguments against it would be to modify it slightly:

I am the thought.
This thought exists.
Therefore, I exist.

Everything that exists, regardless of whether it is aware of its existence, is information itself, a message, or a thought of the Universal Eternal Source of everything. The I that thinks, whatever it may be, exists. An I is not the source of thinking, but thinking is the source of an I. An I is the consequence of thinking. An I does not presuppose existence but is only a confirmation of existence. Existence is not the consequence of an I. I do not exist because I am an I. Thinking I is a confirmation of existence per se, independent of whether I am that I or not. The sole possibility that I may think I am thinking is enough to prove the existence of a being that thinks or thinks that it (he-she) thinks. Otherwise, this being would not be able to be wrong or right, delusional, or deceived. Identification of an I, and with an I, or with the self, is not the source of existence: I do not exist because I think, but my thinking, even if not mine, proves the existence of whatever or whoever is thinking.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, ABSOLUTE

“We have to ensure we understand what existence is and what an I is in the context of an accepted consensus about these terms and definitions. Our reasoning and arguments may be correct if we know more deeply what existence or an I is. The most important thing is to go beyond words or literal expressions to catch the real intentions of philosophers and thinkers rather than to catch potential linguistic errors. We may temporarily win arguments and make personal gains if we only pursue linguistic errors. Still, we would produce confusion and lead the sincere search for scientific or philosophical discoveries astray.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, ABSOLUTE

“The majority of contra arguments, from Pierre Gassendi, Georg Lichtenberg, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, John Macmurray to Bernard Williams, come from the idea that Descartes presupposes an I doing the thinking, although this may not be true. (Another significant counterargument, relating to the Decartesâ€� method in general, is that he never questioned the doubt itself.)”
― Dejan Stojanovic, ABSOLUTE

“What is existence? Existence is any state of the Being. Matter as it is, unaware of itself, exists regardless of “notâ€� knowing that it exists. Still, as a part of a larger whole, any particle of matter contains information that serves that particle's specific purpose and the whole's purpose. Only nothing is not existence. But, without Nothing, existence would not be possible, so the Nothing is an essential part of existence. Still, we may say that only existing with some awareness is worth living.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, ABSOLUTE

“We believe that Descartes was more interested in proving existence per se than his existence based on his identity or thought of his identity. He was interested in existence and thought per se, and an I is an accidental consequence of something that exists. I could be anything and could be an illusion. That is not the point. The point is that this I, regardless of how delusional or even if it were an illusion, is still something that can think He thinks, proving that “Heâ€� is, regardless of whether he is an illusion. Even an illusion is an existence. To be an illusion is to be, too.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, ABSOLUTE

“We cannot be sure we know what reality is. We must find out what reality is. The majority of what we see is an illusion. The foundation of reality is our illusions about it, regardless of how paradoxical this sounds. Reality is an illusion, which does not make it any less real or valuable. In this reality, there is no Cartesian dualism since the underlying reality of everything is a Universal Mind. Matter is just a construct of the Universal Mind and is a valuable illusion; it is more useful and realistic if we know this.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, ABSOLUTE

“For existence, it is not necessary that something must be “realâ€� in our sense of the word but that it exists. Anything that exists, be it an “illusion,â€� is existence. Anything that can think about this existence, and this “realityâ€� or “illusion,â€� can identify with it, which confirms its existence regardless of how distorted it is—the existence itself, the thinking, and then I thinking the thinking. That “I,â€� whatever it may be, which is doing the thinking, even if it is “notâ€� Descartes, exists. That is the whole point. It does not matter who is doing the thinking. What matters is that the being capable of recognizing this thinking, irrespective of who is doing the thinking, confirms its “ownâ€� (whatever it may be) existence; otherwise, it would not be able to be wrong, deceived, or anything else.

All that thinks or believes it thinks exists.
I think I am an I and exist even if I am not an I.
Existence is independent of personality.

Not everything that exists thinks.
Nonthinking does not necessarily equate to nonexisting.
But all that exists is powered by the Universal Mind.

We can solve this problem by identifying thought with existence based on our idea that everything is a “thought� (information) and part of the Universal Mind. Even if my thought, strictly speaking, is not mine—if “I� am the thought or information, “I� at least exists as a thought or information (regardless of who or what an I is).

But what about thinking and unthinking thoughts? If my assertion that there is no fundamental dualism between mind and body (matter) is correct and if matter is only a manifestation (as it appears to the senses) of the Universal Mind, then the question is how this mind produces (or can have) unthinking thoughts. If the world is a product of a Mind, then its sole nature and purpose must contain the idea of possibility through development and evolution. The material world is only possible through variety in total diversity, universality, and infinity (as a potential). This variety implies order, and this order means hierarchy.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, ABSOLUTE

“The main conclusion is that the self in the cogito ergo sum argument is less important than it may look like at first sight. We cannot be sure about the whole concept of reality, not to mention the self. If the entire reality we experience, including energy and mass, is the “programâ€� of the Universal Mind, what can we say about the individual self? The whole purpose of “reality in pluralityâ€� is existence, and the “selfâ€� (or an idea of self and ego) is the result of existence and not of the self itself. When doubting the self, Descartes' emphasis, although he used the word I, was not literally on the self but on that which thinks, whomever or whatever, at any moment; otherwise, there would be no thinking in the first place. It may only be thinking that thinks. The doubt was not if his self or ego, or his idea about them, was real or imaginary but on thinking as such, irrespective of personality. The individual self can in no way predate existence, regardless of what that existence is. Existence presupposes the self and thinking—be it illusory or not.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, ABSOLUTE