Descartes' first principals are wrong, of course. Thought does not constitute existence. A character in a play or a novel thinks, but does not really exist; at least, not in the sense that most people would except as true existence. The key here, of course, is that a fictional character doesn't really think; he or she merely "thinks" that he or she thinks. This line of reasoning, unfortunately, creates a slippery slope logic that will drive a person insane eventually. Maybe I'm a fictional character myself and my thoughts are not really thoughts, but merely close facsimiles of thought placed on the page by another mind. Maybe we're all just fleeting impressions in the mind of God. This, of course, is the ultimate intellectual cop-out. Still, it isn't something you can logically disprove.
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