"I raise, therefore I am." - Howard Lederer

[QuikSand]

I read it as:

Descartes wanted to say that the act of thinking is itself proof of existence. In an epistemological argument, defining existsnce is a tough thing to do -- Descartes's argument is basically that "if I didn't exist, I wouldn't be capable of doing something so profound as generating these thoughts." Sounds simple, but it caught on -- more than many other Latin phrases, for certain.

Lederer is taking this approach to epistemology and saying that if Descartes needed to find something profound about existence to verify itself (just breathing wasn't enough, it took thinking to be self-demonstrating) -- then we must find something equally profound in poker as an analogy. Essentially, he's saying that (using "raising" as a euphemism for solid, aggressive play):

--breathing is to thinking as calling is to raising--


Probably just the sort of bullshit that you've already been warned about earlier in the thread.