  In a related vein, Descartes's cogito reasoning also undergoes close scrutiny. Gassendi understands this reasoning as one person's inference from his or her indubitable recognition of cognitive activity, to the claim that he or she exists as the selfsame seat of such activity. Against such an inference he points out that recognition that one has a set of thoughts does not imply that one is a particular thinker or another. Were we to move from the observation that there is thinking occurring to the attribution of this thinking to a particular agent, we would simply assume what we set out to prove, namely, that there exists a particular person endowed with the capacity for thought (O III (DM) 289a-290a; R 82-86). Descartes is in dangerous waters at this point, for if indeed the only claim that is indubitable here is the agent-independent claim that there is cognitive activity present, then he can be fairly associated with Averroist panpsychism, and its considerable taint. At a minimum, the argument requires a significant leap of reasoning, and for Gassendi, this is further evidence that Descartes places altogether too much faith in his criterion and the work he thinks it can do.