I think, therefore i am, i think.

"Cogito ergo sum", Rene Descartes (1596-1650). That's "I think therefore I am." in whatever language i couldn't be bothered to find out, coz Rene Descartes isn't a beautiful girl : p

I'll talk about Rene Descartes's famous Meditations without going into how some of the various parts are logically fallacious. Meditations begin by assuming that nothing can be believed as existential. Descartes then proceeds to say that everything that his senses acknowledge could be false. He gives a couple scenarios, one of which was that some great entity could be deceiving him with false sensory inputs.

Descartes then rationalize that for him to be deceived, he has to in the first place be existential. For only existing entities could be deceived. Being able to conceptualize deception supports the existence of the thinking entity. Thus Meditations lay the foundation for existence, that is, thinking beings exists, sum up by the famous quote "I think therefore I am.". Descartes then goes on to prove the existence of God and all objects of physical dimensions, including himself.

Another scenario which Descartes brought up is that everything could be the dream of a greater entity yet to wake up. Such a scenario is indeed mind boggling. What possible meaning is there in our existence if we're just mere figments of a dream of some other beings? An interesting question, but i'll digress first.

People who chatted with me on msn lately would have heard me asking a question that goes like: "'This sentence is false.', what do you have to say about that sentence?". There are those who could go into lengthy details into how "This sentence is false." is mathematically fallacious or linguistically fallacious or even using physics to explain the instability of the entropic conditions.

The simplistic approach would be to question the sentence itself. How meaningful is such a sentence to us? Given the logical loop it presents, the sentence has little value in meaning other than to serve as fuel for rhetorical discussion.

So is there any meaning in existence if we're mere figments of a dream? To put ourselves in the scope of the dreaming entity then, would indeed be meaningless, for our scope would have been limited to the dream itself. The fact that we could affect things/beings and expect reliable responses, that are within the scope, makes existence meaningful in the scope.

An analogy would be that of imminent destruction. What if i knew that a meteor is going to tear Earth in half tomorrow? Would i still go to work as per normal? Or would i use whatever meager savings i have to purchase as much nookie as i can get? The question to ask if i decide to choose the later option is that, what if the meteor didn't hit?