Term Paper on "Descartes Second Meditation"

Term Paper 4 pages (1519 words) Sources: 2 Style: APA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Descartes 2nd Meditation

In his "Second Meditation," Rene Descartes makes the argument in his subtitle: "the nature of the human mind; how it is known better than the body" (Descartes, p. 255). He makes this point because he wants to find one point in which to base everything; at least something in his meditations he must fully realize before anything else can be realized. At the end of this meditation, he arrives "back where he wanted to be," meaning he believes he has made his point that he knows his mind more easily than anything else (Descartes, p. 263). He grounds this belief in the logic that he is aware of his own mind before everything and anything else. His wax example is primary evidence to prove his point that because he cannot perceive the wax through his senses but only his mind, his mind is better known than the body. However, Descartes' "Second Meditation" ignores the crucial aspect that it is his senses first and foremost that allows the mind to perceive and make intellectual decisions. Without the body, and what the senses perceive, the mind would have nothing to know; in other words Descartes' arguments fail to account for the fact that the mind can only know and make decisions based on what the body perceives through its senses. Thus it is easier to know the body than the mind, because the body is known before the mind.

Descartes' bases his premise on the notion that because he has a mind, he therefore exists. Because he "persuaded himself of anything, then certainly" he exists (Descartes, p. 256). By proving he exists, Descartes is proving he knows he exists through the existence of his mind, even if his mind is being deceived. In doing so, Descartes is overlooking the fact that his mind is part of the body and in thinking, he is thinking of what he is. Descartes asks, "But what is a man?" In trying to decipher what he is that thinks (Descartes, p. 256). He cannot refer to himself as anything else because that involves sensory perception, and that "thinking is the only quality" that he can maintain he has (Burnham & Fieser, 2006). By thinking, Descartes is using his brain, by acknowledging his body, he is accepting his body. While he may exist solely because he is a thinker, the basic premise of his argument in the "Second Meditation" that he exists because he can think is flawed, because he can think because he can exist as a body. Even if that body is not a person, it is a body. The "Second Meditation" is linear from the beginning to this point and to the end. Descartes attempts to find a point on which to base his assumption, and he finds it, but this point ignores the necessity of the body. The body may be defined by the mind, and the body itself may be indefinable, but Descartes does not exist outside the body.

Descartes inadvertently goes on to demonstrate the importance of the body when he defines it. He maintains in his definition of the body that it is something that "can be sensed" in trying to describe his "mental conception of it" (Descartes, p. 257). However in his attempt to define the body, Descartes says he "thought I knew its nature distinctly," which means that he thought about the body in his attempt to define what it is (Descartes, p. 257). This in itself is a contradiction, because in attempting to think about the body, Descartes is ignoring that his definition is dependent on the body's existence regardless of what he thinks. So no matter how he defines the body, it will exist and continue to sense and perceive. Even if he does not think about the body, it still will exist in the same way he has defined it as a "determinable shape" with a "definable location" (Descartes, p. 257). Thus the body is known, or rather the body exists before the mind, and by trying to define the body he is subjecting it to the whims of the mind. But the whims of the mind do not deny the existence of the body.

Descartes also maintains that he is not a body, but is rather a mind. If all other attributes are in doubt, he thinks, and cannot exist without thinking. Yet, I shall argue he can exist without thinking, and his body can and does exist without the mind. If for a second his mind does not think, his body still is in existence. Descartes goes on to define himself further as "a thing that thinks" (Descartes, p. 259). This thing means he has a body; he cannot think without a body. It cannot be switched around; the body must exist before he can think. Therefore one must know the body before one can know the mind, and without the body there is nothing for the mind to know. Furthermore, there would be no mind without the body.

In the second half of the "Second Meditation," Descartes uses the example of wax and its changing properties in an attempt to make his point, however the point he makes is backwards in its logic. He believes that the changes in the properties of wax after it is melted are conceived by the mind. The imagination is not capable to imagine the "infinite changes" of the wax (Descartes, p. 260). To Descartes, neither is the body because the senses that perceive the wax have been tricked by the wax which has changed its form. Only "mental scrutiny" defines his "perception" of what the wax is (Descartes, p. 261). Here Descartes contradicts his point because his perception is only what the senses perceive the wax to be, because the mind cannot conceive the wax changing shape and form without first the shape and form being recognized by the body. The body and its perception of the wax is critical to the mind's understanding of the wax, and if the mind perceives the wax to be anything, it is because the body has first determined the wax's existence and the characteristics of the wax. To borrow from Descartes' example of the people in the street; the mind may determine the people to be people, but it is first the body that sees hats that the mind then uses to determine that they are people. The mind makes the connection to what it is the body perceives, that is true, but it is first perceived by the body and thus the body is known before the mind. Whether or not what is perceived to exist really exists does not matter, the mind is responding to the body and thus knows the body before the mind.

A counter-example helps to disprove Descartes' argument. If the eyes are shut, the mind thinks, and the mind thinks whether the eyes are open. The mind exists; however, the mind's thoughts are dependent on what the eyes see. The first thought that will come to the mind will be whether the eyes perceive something through sight, or whether they are shut and perceive nothing. The body is thus known first before the mind as the mind recognizes what the body perceives instinctively. Descartes' claim that his "perception.. Of any body, cannot but establish even more effectively the nature of my own mind," is rooted in the premise of the knowledge of the body (Descartes, p. 263). While it is may true that the intellect of the mind makes judgments, the mind's judgments are based on the perceptions of the body. The mind only knows so much as the body can perceive, so the mind knows the body's senses in order to make its judgments. It therefore knows the body well,… READ MORE

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