Cogito?

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