Meditation II: Overall Summary
The second meditation continues Descartes's search for one thing he can be certain of - even if it turns out to be merely the fact that he cannot be certain of anything.
Firstly, having rejected sense experience as a source of reliable information, he turns inwards towards the mind itself in search of certainty.
Who produces these perceptions of an external world in his mind? God? Descartes? A malignant demon? Could such a being deceive him as to everything?
However, even if his perceptions are false, then he can be sure of his existence, for in order to be deceived he must at least exist.
But what exists? Descartes concludes that he is a thinking thing.
This new knowledge at first seems less clear than his knowledge of the world. However, as with a piece of wax, the qualities it possesses are changeable. Therefore, the real nature of the wax is known through the mind (not the senses). Ultimately, then, the mind and its contents are more clearly known than any external physical things.
The Arguments:
The CogitoDescartes rejects the evidence of the senses as untrustworthy and incapable of yielding absolute certainty. Continuing his search, he attempts to find something of which he can be absolutley sure - even if it is the fact that nothing is certain.
His first port of call is to try to find out who is responsible for the perceptions he receives through his senses. It may be God, a malignant demon, or even Descartes himself who is responsible. Even in the worst case scenario of the malignant demon, however, Descartes is assured of one truth: in order to be deceived, the thing deceived (i.e. himself) must at least exist.
This argument is called the cogito after the first word of the Latin phrase cogito ergo sum, meaning 'I think, therefore I am'. This phrase, perhaps the most famous and most quoted utterance in the history of philosophy, does not actually appear in this form in the Meditations where we find only the phrase 'I am, I exist'. Its full form appears in the earlier text, A Discourse on the Method.
A Thinking ThingAttempting to define what he is, Descartes finds only words that require further definition - such as 'man', 'rational animal', etc. He rejects these because they lead to further questions (What is a man? What do we mean by 'rational'?) which seem to have no end, and be merely squabbles over definition. He also rejects the idea that he is merely the body, or alternatively a spirit 'like wind or fire' spread throughout his body.
The acts of walking, eating, etc., which he considers as pertaining to the body, are called into question because they are too closely bound up with the world of the senses. The act of thinking, however, Descartes decides is the only thing which can properly be said to belong to the soul (or mind, which appears to be the same thing for Descartes). Therefore, Descartes concludes, his essense is defined in the fact that he is a thinking thing.
In this way, Descartes arrives at two main propositions:
- Mind and body are separate and distinct.
- The activity that defines his existence is that of thinking.
Even after his cogito argument, Descartes is still unsure as to how clear and reliable his knowledge is. The external world, it seems to him, still seems more distinct and real than the perception that he exists.
As an experiment, Descartes takes a piece of wax and examines it: its smell, texture, shape, colour - all these seem to Descartes to be the essential qualities of the wax. However, after subjecting it to the heat of a candle flame, the wax melts before his eyes, leaving him to ask, 'What, then, was it I knew with so much distinctness in the piece of wax?'
Descartes's argument here is that the melted wax - although apparently the same substance as it was before it was melted - retains almost none of the qualities which he previously considered as defining it. Furthermore, he argues, the wax seems capable of other changes - of shape, volume, etc. - which would make it still more alien to its original state (e.g. we could heat it until it became vapour). It seems then that the wax, and by comparison all other physical things, are in reality nothing beyond this rational knowledge that we have of them.
The only thing, therefore, which gives physical objects reality, according to Descartes, is the understanding that the mind has of them (the rational principles that phsyical objects embody). So, the wax as perceived by the senses is unreal, changing; but the wax as understood by the intellect abides by certain laws, changes according to certain conditions, and can be understood through scientific experiment. It is the mind, therefore, which allows us real access to knowledge, and the contents of the mind (thoughts, principles, ideas) which can be separated from external sense impressions, are most clear and trustworthy, and therefore better known than the physical body or external world.
Share this Page
Click on one of the icons below to share this page using any of the listed sharing sites (it inserts the link for you, so you don't need to add it manually). Let me know if any sharing sites you commonly use aren't here, and I will add them.
