Descartes
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Renee Descartes was a French philosopher, probably the greatest philosopher of all time (although Kant, Aristotle and Ayn Rand also lay claim to this title).
Descartes locked himself in a stove and meditated, arriving at the unsurprising conclusion that nothing existed. He then used Anselm's proof of the existence of God to decide that perhaps he wasn't deluded, and perhaps things did exist after all. He thought the soul lived in the pineal gland, and when you lift your arm it's just an accident because your brain doesn't control your body, God does. This "god-robot" theory of consciousness got him into ferocious arguments with Hobbes, but then Hobbes loved a good argument and was usually wrong.