Abstract: Decartes' maxim Cogito, Ergo Sum (from his Meditations) is perhaps the most famous philosophical expression ever coined. The author of this book, Joseph Almog, is a Descartes scholar whose last book What Am I? focused on the second half of this expression asking who is the “I”, who is thinking, and how does this entity somehow incorporate both body and mind? This book looks at the first half of the proposition — cogito. The book calls this the “thinking man's paradox”: how can there be, in and part of the natural world, a creature that thinks? Descartes' proposition declares that such a fact maintains and is self-evident; but as this book points out, from the point of view of Descartes' own skepticism it is far from obvious. How can it be that a thinking human can be both part of the natural world and yet somehow distinct and separate from it? How did “thinking” arise in an otherwise “thoughtless” universe and what does it mean for beings like us to be thinkers? The book goes back to the Meditations, and using Descartes' own methodology — and his naturalistic, scientific worldview — tries to answer the question.

Keywords: Descartes, Meditations, I, body and mind, paradox, think