Cartesian Other Cartesian Other In philosophy, the Cartesian Other, part of a thought experiment, is any other than the mind of the individual thinking about the experiment. The Other includes the individual's own body. According to the philosopher Descartes, there is a divide intrinsic to consciousness, such that you cannot ever bridge the space between your own consciousness and that of another. This "other" is in essence theoretical, since one cannot ever be empirically shown such an "other." Put differently, Descartes concluded "cogito ergo sum", "I think, therefore I am," that is, that the presence of a self of which to speak
Cogito, ergo sum in the former case, and an objective thinker in the latter. He argues, first, that it is impossible to make sense of "there is thinking" without relativizing it to "something." However, this something cannot be Cartesian egos, because it is impossible to differentiate objectively between things just on the basis of the pure content of consciousness. The obvious problem is that, through introspection, or our experience of consciousness, we have no way of moving to conclude the existence of any third-personal fact, to conceive of which would require something above and beyond just the purely subjective contents of the mind.