Really? I interpret this as a cheap way for Descartes to attack the status of people who don’t spend as much time thinking as he did (“Look at those boring merchants. They spend all their time buying and selling stuff, they hardly ever do any real thinking—they might not even exist”). Obviously this trick was useful to subsequent philosophers as well, so they rallied to his banner.
Really? I interpret this as a cheap way for Descartes to attack the status of people who don’t spend as much time thinking as he did (“Look at those boring merchants. They spend all their time buying and selling stuff, they hardly ever do any real thinking—they might not even exist”). Obviously this trick was useful to subsequent philosophers as well, so they rallied to his banner.
The context in which the cogito occurs makes this interpretation extremely implausible, in my opinion.
Bracketing the historical and phenomenological silliness, this also comes perilously close to the fallacy of denying the antecedent.
You should take my class, then! We could discuss whether or not this view is right, in light of what Descartes says in the Meditations.