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What do descartes mean about a piece of wax
Descartes meditations
Critical analysis on Descartes meditation 2
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In Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes does and experiment with wax to try to prove that things actually exist in this world. This essay is going to prove how we can tell that things actually exist and what can perceive the wax. Rene Descartes starts off with a description of the wax so he can prove to us the changes that will happen throughout his experiment. “Let us take, for instance, this piece of wax. It has been taken quite recently from the honeycomb; it has not yet lost all the honey flavor. It retains some of the scent of the flowers from which it was collected. Its color, shape, and size are manifest. It is hard and cold; it is easy to touch. If you rap on it with your knuckle it will emit a sound” (Descartes, 21) Rene Descartes experiment is to melt the wax to try to prove existence. Rene Descartes also shares with us what is happening to the wax while it is close to fire. “I am bringing it close to the fire. The remaining traces of the honey flavor are disappearing. Its scent is van- ishing; the color is changing; the original shape is disappearing. Its size is increasing; it is becoming liquid and hot; you can hardly touch it. And now, when you rap on it, it no longer emits any sound.” (Descartes, 21) Rene Descartes explained to us in his book how wax changes its forms so quickly when it is close to fire. But yet when we are done melting the wax, we still call it wax even though its forms have completely changed. The question Rene Descartes was asking himself three questions after his experiment. The first was, what was grasped by the changing of the wax? “So what was there in the wa... ... middle of paper ... ...y doing the grasping to perceive the wax. “For since I now know that even bodies are not, properly speaking, per- ceived by the senses or by the faculty of imagination, but by the intellect alone, and that they are not perceived through their being touched or seen, but only through their being understood, I manifestly know that nothing can be perceived more easily and more evidently than my own mind.” (Descartes, 23) The final decision is that the mind is what grasps and can perceive the wax. Rene Descartes just proved to us two things throughout this essay. One being how we can tell that things actually exist and the other was how the mind can grasp and perceive the wax. Works Cited Descartes, René. Meditations on First Philosophy. Trans. Donald A. Cress. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub., 1993. Print.
7 - What is the point of Descartes ' discussion of the piece of wax? That is, why does he talk about it?
He uses this argument to enforce how complex the mind is. It goes beyond what is usually known. He says “It is hard and cold; it is easy to touch.” (pg. 67) This is the state that comes to mind when one thinks of raw wax. However, the argument gets broken down further when he says “I am bringing it close to the fire… the original shaped is disappearing, it is becoming liquid and hot; you can hardly touch it.. For whatever came under the senses… has changed yet the wax still remains.”(pg. 67) One asks themselves, what allows us to still say the wax is still itself even though the familiar shape has changed? Descartes says the answer is intellect. These points all help guide to the conclusion that senses are not where human minds
Descartes spends a great deal of time examining what we know in his book Meditations on First Philosophy. By performing a series of meditations he challenges the very idea of previously known philosophical truth in an attempt to prove them as true or false. He spends a great deal of time discussing the idea of objects, how we can understand their existence, and how we perceive objects in the world. This is achieved by using two key examples to prove his views of the nature of objects; the wax example and the example of people walking outside of his window. Both of these examples can be used to show how Descartes sees the role of objects in the world around us.
Now, because the wax’s essential properties are not to be found among its sensory characteristics, we discard them to see what is left. Descartes specifies that only ...
Descartes does not put experiences to his philosophy like the other philosophers, Bacon and Hobbes. He believes that we have some innate ideas that self, identity, substance and God are in us as we are born “most part on the truths contained in the mind”. He proposed an observations from the wax. Whatever he heats or cools the wax, it would still remain the same substance. He concludes that the mind is capable of performing “acts of intellection” in order to know what kind of substance. Therefore “the acts of intellection” here represents those innate ideas and Descartes describes them as the existence of God has given us the ability to intellect
Descartes, Rene, and Donald Cress. Mediations on First Philosophy In Which The Existence of God And the Distinction of the Soul from the Body Are Demonstrated. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1993. Print.
The next very important step for Descartes is to establish a criterion of certainty. By examining the truths which he discovered in the course of his second meditation, he decides that all of them have in common the properties of being clear and distinct. Descartes says, “So, I now seem to be able to lay it down as a general rule that whatever I perceive very clearly and distinctly is true.” Descartes adds another item to the list of things which he knows clearly and distinctly---ideas.
...hich I perceived by the senses are the same. Descartes concludes that our senses allow us to know the accidental properties of wax. The wax itself – the thing that exists throughout the changes – the wax as a substance, is not something I know by senses. Rather, by mind or intellect. This means that everything we see and touch is most directly grasped by the mind. The mind is needed to perceive anything. So it really isn’t so strange that the mind should be better known that ordinary physical things. On the contrary, intellect may be in error. Maybe there is no wax itself, no substance “out there.” But that just goes to reiterate that my mind must exist, forever if I am in error, it is that my or I is in error. In conclusion, there is nothing better known to me than one’s own mind. Certainly not body or sense organs or the attributes perceived by them (Bailey 127).
Descartes is hopeful to prove subsistence of the external world (physical objects located in space), and so he returns to a very basic stage and acknowledges the existence of minds as an immaterial substance and God. He then accepts that matter exists as long as it is not a projection of his own mind or God. As Descartes previously established the existence of God as a perfect being, he therefore has concluded that God is not a deceiver. This very clear concept leads him to accept his clear and distinct sensory experiences are a result of external objects of material nature. Once these corporeal things (objects of a tangible, material nature) can be considered as self-evident ideas, they can no longer be products of the mind or God.
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.
Descartes makes a careful examination of what is involved in the recognition of a specific physical object, like a piece of wax. By first describing the wax in a manner such that “everything is present in the wax that appears needed to enable a body to be known as distinctly as possible” (67), he shows how easily our senses help to conceive our perception of the body. But even if such attributes are modified or removed, we still recognize the changed form, as the same piece of wax. This validates Descartes’ claim that “wax itself never really is the sweetness of the honey, nor the fragrance of the flowers, nor the whiteness, nor the shape, nor the sound” (67), and the only certain knowledge we gain of the wax is that “it is something extended, flexible, and mutable” (67). This conclusion forces us to realize that it is difficult to understand the true nature of the wax, and its identity is indistinguishable from other things that have the same qualities as the wax. After confirming the nature of a human mind is “a thinking thing” (65), Descartes continues that the nature of human mind is better known than the nature of the body.
(12) Explain, in your own words, Descartes’ analogy between the heat in or of an object and the idea of heat. (§41)
When he imagines things he seems to hear and see things. The Meditator realizes that he can exist without his imagination so then imagination must rely on something other then the mind. Imagination is connected to the body, which allows the mind to picture objects. With this being said the mind turns outward towards the body. He knows that his body experiences involuntary things like pain, hunger, pleasure, emotion, and thirst. He also understands that other bodies have s certain shape, movement, color, smell, and taste. The Meditator uses an example of a piece of wax coming from a honeycomb to help explain how we come to know what is really true. He first realizes what he knows about the piece of wax. He uses his senses to see the color, shape, and size of the honeycomb. He also uses his senses of taste and smell to actually know the taste of the piece of wax and the way it smells. If you place the piece of wax near a hot surface like a fire all the sensible qualities change so fast. The knowledge of the melted piece of wax cannot have come through the same senses because the properties that he has once seen have changed. He knows now that the wax is that it is extended, flexible, and changeable. He did not come to that conclusion through his senses but he didn’t come to it through his imagination either. He knows the wax has thee
But his habitual ideas and opinions are still present no matter how hard he tries not to present them, to solve this problem he decides that all of his opinions are false. Descartes finds himself certain about one thing that nothing is certain. Resorting back to the idea that his senses are the only way he is able to obtain the truth in life, he believes that his senses are apart of his mind and body. He uses a honeycomb to examine this topic that the body and mind are one. The wax changes shape therefore he uses imagination to understand it
René Descartes’s interest in a piece of wax demonstrates his ideas about powers of the mind to see through what the senses cannot recognise, as wax changes when melted so greatly yet is still seen as the same wax. Images or examples can be used to challenge this idea of sustained identity through change; such as a ship, larvae or the self. Descartes sought an indubitable idea to secure his foundations for finding certain knowledge. This idea relates to the mind or the self being the starting point for knowledge, leading to investigation of its nature. As a rationalist, Descartes’s views clash greatly with empiricist David Hume. Hume’s example of the self seems far truer and does not appeal to the conventional Western idea of Descartes’s self. This directly challenges the notions of sustained identity in Descartes’s philosophy.