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cogito

cogito noun: the 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.

Noun

cogito (usually uncountable, plural cogitos)

  1. (capitalized, sometimes, usually, often preceded by the) The 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.
    • 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
    • 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

Examples of cogito in a sentence

  • 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...

Forms of cogito

pluralcogitos

Questions about cogito

What does cogito mean?
Cogito means the 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.
How do you use cogito in a sentence?
An obvious candidate for this class of propositions would be the cogito, whose evidence, Descartes insisted, is not founded on inference.
What part of speech is cogito?
Cogito is a noun.
What is the plural of cogito?
The plural of cogito is cogitos.

Words near cogito in the dictionary

  1. cogitatively
  2. cogitativeness
  3. cogitativity
  4. cogitator
  5. cogitators
  6. cogito
  7. cogitos
  8. cogless
  9. Cogley
  10. Cogleys
  11. Coglianese

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cogito (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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