Rene Cartes: The Wax Argument: Rene Descartes

René Descartes believed that the mind and body are separate; that the senses could not always be trusted, but that because we as humans are able to think about our existence, we possess some sort of entity separate than our fleshly body. I believe this separate entity to be a soul”an immaterial and

Descartian dualism is one of the most long lasting legacies of Rene Descartes’ philosophy. He argues that the mind and body operate as separate entities able to exist without one another. That is, the mind is a thinking, non-extended entity and the body is non-thinking and extended. His belief elicited a debate over the nature of the mind and body that has spanned centuries, a debate that is still vociferously argued today. In this essay, I will try and tackle Descartes claim and come to some conclusion as to whether Descartes is correct to say that the mind and body are distinct.

The purpose of the wax argument is designed to provide a clear and distinct knowledge of “I”, which is the mind, while corporeal things, “whose images are framed by thought, and which the senses themselves imagine are much more distinctly known than this mysterious ‘I’ which does not fall within the imagination” (66). Through the wax argument, Descartes’ demonstrates that corporeal things are perceived neither through our senses nor imagination, but through our intellect alone. In this argument, you will see that there is cause to doubt Descartes’ analysis of the wax and his method of philosophical reasoning.

     This is where the wax argument comes into play. All the properties of the piece of wax that we perceive with the senses change as the wax melts. This is true as well of its primary properties, such as shape, extension and size. Yet the wax remains the same piece of wax as it melts. We know the wax through our mind and judgement, not through our senses or imagination. Therefore, every act of clear and distinct knowledge of corporeal matter also provides even more certain evidence for the existence of Descartes as a thinking thing. Therefore his mind is much clearer and more distinctly know to him than his body. At this

He then tells us his final perspective on how he perceives the wax. “It remains then for me to concede that I do not grasp what this wax is through the imagination; rather, I perceive it through the mind alone.” (Descartes, 22) He ends his argument on how he perceives the wax with telling us that it is not our imagination that grasps all of the perceptions of the wax, but the mind that does it.

The way Descartes believes that was can be perceived through intellect alone is that it can define or acknowledge the existence of the wax with out the use of things like senses. He thought that there are many times when our senses or perceptions deceive us (332 AT VI). Even if we believed it was a certain truth it can often be proven against and wrong, thus senses and perception are not reliable (386 AT VI). The way in which this is done is you must think of the wax and realize that regardless or how its physical appearance and smell may have altered it is still in fact wax. With this being said the way that you realize that this is the case is not through senses because they would say it is no longer the same, but knowledge. Through knowledge you realized that it is still in fact wax. The way, in which this was realized is through analyzing the wax it was envision in the mind, thus you saw yourself analyzing the wax. This showed that the wax was real and not a figment or manipulation because you yourself are there. Your presence in the mind is what verifies that this is the truth. The reason being that you know yourself more than anything, thus if you were there in the thought then whatever truth was acquired is in fact real.

Descartes eliminates the possibility of relying solely on perception through senses. He claims that if we take away all of the attributes that do not belong to the wax, we are left with something that is “extended, flexible and changeable” (1). Descartes clarifies that when uses the terms flexible and changeable, he is referring to what his psychological capacities are capable of doing with the wax in his imagination. He can change the shape of the wax, the colour and the smell. This means that he understands that there are “endlessly many changes” that the wax can go through therefore, making it clear that it is not the imagination that he relies to understand the wax either.

As a result, Descartes concludes that the wax is capable of changing into many dimensions and that we cannot produce all the possible changes making it unlikely that it is our imagination that allows us to recognize the wax. The perception of the mind is neither seeing, touching or imagining, but rather perceived by the mind alone. Our minds judge the wax to be what is there. By whatever means the wax comes into our minds, only reaffirms that we exist, and we also know that it is our intellect that recognizes external bodies rather than our senses. It is clear in the Wax Argument that our senses are not nearly as crucial to our understanding of something as our

Rene Descartes, born in France on March 31st, 1596 contributed immensely to philosophy, science and math. As an extremely accredited French Philosopher, he formulated many hypotheses that some individuals still use today. Some deemed Rene Descartes the father of modern philosophy while others simply appreciate the importance of his findings. Descartes argued that the senses are not to be trusted due to the fact that they are subject to deceit. He addressed the deceit within senses issue with a idea that he called Method of Doubt.

Rene Descartes decision to shatter the molds of traditional thinking is still talked about today. He is regarded as an influential abstract thinker; and some of his main ideas are still talked about by philosophers all over the world. While he wrote the "Meditations", he secluded himself from the outside world for a length of time, basically tore up his conventional thinking; and tried to come to some conclusion as to what was actually true and existing. In order to show that the sciences rest on firm foundations and that these foundations lay in the mind and not the senses, Descartes must begin by bringing into doubt all the beliefs that come to him by the senses. This is done in the first of six

Some have suggested that René Descartes argues that sense perception relies on the mind rather than on the body. Descartes asserts that we can know our mind more readily than we can know our body. In support of this idea he gives the example of a piece of wax which is observed in its solid form and its liquid form. After pointing out the difficulties of relying on the senses of the physical body to understand the nature of the wax he makes this claim: [P]erception ... is neither a seeing, nor a touching, nor an imagining. ... [R]ather it is an inspection on the part of the mind alone (Section 31). 1 This quote is perhaps the most direct statement of the author's thesis on this subject.

Rene Descartes, a rationalist, said that each person contains the criteria for truth and knowledge in them. Finding truth and knowledge comes from the individual themselves, not necessarily from God. Descartes also believed that reason is the same for every single person. Descartes believed that nothing could be true unless we as humans could perceive it. He also believed that you could break down things into smaller simpler parts. Descartes also believed that there was a relationship between the mind and body. He also believed that the idea of being perfect originated from God since God himself was perfect. He also integrates his mathematical concepts into his methodology. Descartes also applied doubt to his ideas before he

Rene Descartes Meditations is known to be one of his most famous works, it has also shown to be very important in Philosophical Epistemology. Within the meditation’s he provides many arguments that remove pre-existing notions, and bring it to the root of its foundation which Descartes, then will come up with his indubitable foundation of knowledge to defeat any doubt and to prove God is real. Descartes was a “foundationalist”, by introducing a new way of knowledge and with clearing up how people thought about things prior. Descartes took knowledge to its very foundations, and from there he can build up from it. In this essay, I will be discussing Descartes, and analyzing his first two meditations and arguing that he does indeed succeed in his argument.

He finds it plausible that we are all living in a dream and we have never experienced reality. He can no longer give any credence to his senses and finds himself in a place of complete uncertainty. Descartes comes to the conclusion that nothing can be perceived more easily and more evidently than his own mind. He has discovered that even bodies are not accurately perceived by the senses or the faculty of imagination, and are only accurately being perceived by the intellect. He also realizes that they are not distinguished through being touched, smelled, or tasted, but by being understood alone. (An apple is an apple because our mind tells us that it is an apple.) It is the faculty of reason that gives the knowledge and lets the mind know the truths and essences of objects. Descartes assumes that all of us can be decided by our senses, someone can see something far away, and then discover that is not what we thought it was. Or even a oar when is immerse half in water attempt to be bent, but instead is straight. Descartes think that we cannot always be sure of what we sense, and gives the example of himself seated by the fire.

Upon talking about the history of modern philosophy, one of the most important philosophers, who is considered as the father of the philosophy in this period, is Descartes. He was a pioneer for the movement of the new trend of philosophy and became a break between the medieval philosophy and the modern philosophy. Being educated in the environment of medieval philosophy, specifically in the school of Jesuits, Descartes received the system of scholastic philosophy as his foundation for making a new start into the history of philosophy. In his life, Descartes tried to establish a system of philosophy which was suitable to the development of society and science. To do that, he did not collapse pre-philosophical systems, but somehow he ignored their values. In his Meditations he says “Once in my life I had to raze everything to the ground and begin again from the original foundations, if I wanted to establish anything firm and lasting in the sciences.” Therefore, he just could begin a new system of philosophy which, he thought, would be a certain and firm foundation to get knowledge. However, to build up the principles for this foundation, Descartes had to use the concept of God in his arguments. The existence of God became an important means for the construction of his new philosophical system. Hence, I will emphasize on the importance of God in this paper by discovering the role of God as a means in Descartes’ main points of reasoning, particularly God with the method of