- Two key intuitions: cogito ergo sum and esse est percipi. See them first as embodying pure intuitions and not as mere historical assertions or hypotheses. And then see them as exactly the same intuition, now seen from cognition and now from perception. See how perfectly they correspond, or put them together in endless mutual reference. The thought you are thinking for the former is the latter, which exposes the being which it indicates, and so on. The statement and its quotation are in the same field, are that field. The 'I' and the it are identical, tat tvam asi.