cogito

plural cogitos

1. capitalizedsometimesuncountableusuallyoften preceded by thehuman sciencesThe argument "cogito, ergo sum" ("I think therefore I am") from the philosophy of René Descartes; the mental act of thinking this thought; a conscious being which performs this mental act.

   But are there not as many consciousnesses or cogitos as there are individuals?

   1966 Dec, Geoffrey Hartman, “Beyond Formalism”, in MLN, volume 81, number 5, page 551

   4 more examples

   The Cogito of Descartes and Husserl is an apprehension of fact. […] Such a Cogito is performed by a consciousness directed upon consciousness, a consciousness which takes consciousness as an object.

   1957, Jean-Paul Sartre, translated by Forrest Williams and Robert Kirkpatrick, The Transcendence of the Ego, Noonday Press, pages 43–44

   An obvious candidate for this class of propositions would be the cogito, whose evidence, Descartes insisted, is not founded on inference.

   1984 Jan, Charles Larmore, “Descartes' Psychologistic Theory of Assent”, in History of Philosophy Quarterly, volume 1, number 1, page 65

   Benhabib proposes a […] "recognition that the subjects of reason are finite, embodied and fragile creatures, and not disembodied cogitos or abstract unities of transcendental apperception".

   2000 Spring, Linnell Secomb, "Fractured Community," Hypatia, vol. 15, no. 2, p. 138

   It may be thought that this leads to an even more radical skepticism than that envisaged by Descartes, since now even the cogito may be questioned.

   2009 May, Ernest Sosa, “Précis of A Virtue Epistemology”, in Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition, " vol. 144, no. 1, p. 109 n11