Descartes' Meditations: Debunking Trust in Sensory Perception

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In Descartes Meditations he utilizes that the sensible properties of a piece of bees wax do not define inherently what the wax is because if the wax changes according to its sensible properties it is still the same piece of wax and the only way to come to that conclusion is through the mind. Furthermore, what we know about the wax, whether there are characteristics that change or do not change, does not alter the fact that it is the same piece of wax, which further reiterates Descartes main point in Meditations which is that the senses cannot be trusted and that we must rely solely on the mind which we know exists because "[We] think, therefore [we] are."
Throughout Meditations Descartes continually states that he will cast aside anything …show more content…

Descartes then decides to strip away all sensible properties of the wax leaving only the base characteristics which are that "…it is something extended, flexible, and mutable." (Med. II.12) Descartes goes into detail asking what it means to be flexible, mutable, and extended. Wondering whether these characteristics which the wax is comprised of could come from his senses or from his mind. He states that "…the wax is capable of innumerable changes of this sort, even though I am incapable of incapable of running through these innumerable changes by using my imagination." (Med. II.12) What he means by this is that he cannot imagine every sort of shape the wax could melt or form in to and that the only way to be able to perceive that a piece of wax, which could form into any infinite shapes, is the same piece of wax is through the mind. He concedes that his imagination is simply not able to think about every single instance of the wax and that he cannot "…grasp what this wax is through the imagination; rather, [he perceives] it through the mind alone." (Med. II.12) It is this profundity through which Descartes realizes that he cannot perceive the wax through the senses or through imagination because the mind is the only thing capable of doing

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