 It is generally agreed that most rationalists claim that there are significant ways in which our concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience. To be a rationalist, however, does not require one to claim that our knowledge is acquired independently of any experience: at its core, the Cartesian Cogito depends on our reflective, intuitive awareness of the existence of occurrent thought. Rationalists generally develop their view in two steps. First, they argue that there are cases where the content of our concepts or knowledge outstrips the information that sense experience can provide. Second, they construct accounts of how reason, in some form or other, provides that additional information about the external world.