In ‘The Simplest Mathematics’ (1933), C.S. peirce elaborated:
It is a fundamental mistake to suppose that an idea which stands isolated can be otherwise than perfectly blind. He professes to doubt the testimony of his memory; and in that case all that is left is a vague indescribable idea. There is no warrant for putting it into the first person singular. "I think" begs the question. "There is an idea: therefore, I am," it may be contended represents a compulsion of thought; but it is not a rational compulsion. There is nothing clear in it. Here is a man who utterly disbelieves and almost denies the dicta of memory.
He notices an idea, and then he thinks he exists. The ego of which he thinks is nothing but a holder together of ideas.
But if memory lies there may be only one idea. If that one idea suggests a holder-together of ideas, how it can do so is a mystery.
Much has been published on this site regarding the cogito. Notably, I’ve seen in my surfing that users such as Conifold and Alexander S. King, as well as others, make note of minds who objected to the cogito with the likes of Kant and Nietzsche, who argued against the unity of the I, or the self, but didn’t object as hard to the proposition (or conclusion) that “there is thinking”, or that “thinking is occurring” as a base epistemological certainty.
Did Peirce come to the same conclusion as they did when he said “there is an idea?” … “A vague, indescribable idea?” Despite not giving any credence to the idea of the ‘I’, as many others have done in dissecting Descartes’ cogito?