Descartes Second Meditation Essay

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In Descartes’ second meditation, he explains how the senses alone and the imagination alone cannot fully perceive material objects. What is required to fully perceive material objects, he explains, is the mind. This is because the mind is able to make judgments about based on sensory observations, while the senses and imagination can only take in sensory data and contemplate it, respectively. While convincing, Descartes argument has one flaw: the fact that the mind relies on sensory data. If the mind relies on sensory data, how can one be sure that the mind makes a judgment independent of the sensory data? In order to fully comprehend Descartes’ claim, sufficient knowledge of where he is drawing his knowledge is needed. At this point in his meditations, Descartes is only certain that he exists to the extent that he is thinking. Thus, only the existence of his mind is certain. He explains, “But what …show more content…

A physical object, as Descartes describes, is “something extended, flexible, [and] mutable” (31). This definition, he describes, is most accurate for the wax and can only be reached once all of the alterable characteristics of the wax are stripped away. These characteristics include the wax’s smell, sound, taste, size, shape, texture and temperature. For the solid piece of wax, Descartes describes how it smells of flowers, makes sound when tapped, tastes of honey, possesses a definite shape and size, is hard and is cold to the touch. For the melted piece of wax, he describes how it is in a liquid form, makes no sound when tapped, has no scent whatsoever, is larger than the solid piece, forms no definite shape, is soft to the touch and is warm to the touch. Referring to this sensory data, Descartes then proceeds to describe how the senses alone cannot make a valid judgment about the true identity of the

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