Hey all,
I was wondering if anyone could give me a detailed analysis of why this argument works. I love the Cogito, but then we get to this argument and I don’t feel like it withstands the objections of the empiricists. It doesn’t seem to me that wax has any special “essence” or “waxness” that we don’t come to understand through our sense perceptions of touch, sight, taste, etc. Can anyone explain to me why it would / does? Thanks muchly!
Empiricists vs Rationalist…
People could estimate temporatures on the moon without having to physically feel them.
I’m not sure I am following.
…I grasp that the wax is capable of innumerable changes of this sort, even though I am incapable of running through these innumerable changes by suing my imagination. Therefore this insight is not achieved by the faculty of imagination. What is it to be extended? Is this thing’s extension also unknown? For it becomes greater in wax that is beginning to melt, greater in boiling wax, and greater still as the heat is increased. And I would not judge correctly what the wax is if I did not believe that it takes on an even greater variety of dimensions than I could ever grasp with the imagination. It remains for me to concede that I do not grasp what this wax is through the imagination; rather, i perceive it through the mind alone… But I need to realize that the perception of the wax is neither a seeing, nor a touching, nor an imagining. Nor has it ever been, even though it previously seemed so; rather it is an inspection on the part of the mind alone. …
For since I now know that even bodies are not, properly speaking, perceived 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 (p. 33-34)
Basically, Descartes cannot know the wax through the senses, since hard wax fresh from the honeycomb smells like honey,it is hard,it makes a sound when you tap it, it is compact…yadda,yadda. When you heat the wax, all of these perceived physical properties change a great deal (it’s why he used wax as an example) So, if he cannot know what wax is through what his senses tell him, how does he know wax? His imagination isn’t the key,because he “would not judge correctly what the wax is if I did not believe that it takes on an even greater variety of dimensions than I could ever grasp with the imagination.” He understands the essence of wax through reasoning/intellect alone.
It don’t work. Who told you it does. They lied. CDP is nonsense.
wax on and wax off…
if you look at his argument you might think he is a solipisist…
peernet.lbpc.ca/Philosophy/Solip … ds_000.htm
"For the foundations of solipsism lie at the heart of the view that the individual gets his own psychological concepts (thinking, willing, perceiving, etc.) from ‘his own cases’, i.e. by abstraction from ‘inner experience’. And this view, or some variant of it, has been held by a great many, if not indeed the majority of, philosophers, since Descartes elevated the egocentric search for apodeictic certainty to the status of the primary goal of critical epistemology. In this sense, then, it is at least contestable that solipsism is implicit in many philosophies of knowledge and mind since Descartes, and that any theory of knowledge which adopts the Cartesian egocentric approach as its basic frame of reference is inherently solipsistic.
The second reason why the problem of solipsism merits close examination is that it is based upon three widely entertained philosophical presuppositions, which are themselves of fundamental and wide-ranging importance. These are:
(a) That what I know most certainly are the contents of my own mind - my thoughts, experiences, affective states, etc.;
(b) That there is no conceptual or logically necessary link between the mental and the physical, between, say, the occurrence of certain conscious experiences or mental states and the ‘possession’ and behavioural dispositions of a body of a particular kind; and
(c) That the experiences of a given person are necessarily private to that person.
These presuppositions are of unmistakable Cartesian provenance, and are, of course, very widely accepted by philosophers and non-philosophers alike. In tackling the problem of solipsism, then, one finds oneself immediately grappling with fundamental issues in the philosophy of mind - however spurious the problem of solipsism per se may strike one, there can be no questioning the importance of these latter issues. Indeed, one of the merits of the entire enterprise may well be the extent to which it reveals a direct connection between apparently unexceptionable and certainly widely-held common sense beliefs and the acceptance of solipsistic conclusions. If this connection does indeed exist, and we wish to avoid those solipsistic conclusions, we shall have no option but to revise, or at least to critically review, the beliefs from which they derive logical sustenance. "
-Imp
I don’t buy Descartes’ philosophy for that reason. This,(from iep.utm.edu/s/solipsis.htm) Thus does God, in Descartes’ philosophy, bridge the chasm between the solitary consciousness revealed by methodic doubt and the intersubjective world of public objects and other human beings. is such a cop-out. Sure, throwing God into the equation can explain away any logical inconsistencies.
It’s why you just can’t trust religion. 
There is a connection between mental,physical and other. Mass is energy.
You have a wonderful dry sense of humour by the way, Imp.
I agree, but Kid probably needs to write an argumentative essay and wanted help understanding the concept. I’m just assuming here, Kid. If I’m wrong, I owe you a Coca Cola.
You’re wrong and you owe me a bottle of water (I wouldn’t put that shit in my body unless there were no other liquids around).
Anyway, I am pretty new to the study of philosophy, and this argument makes little to no sense to me. Especially because it occurs before he establishes the existence of God. Therefore, we are still in the realm of the evil genius. And if this is so, why should we trust our “natural light” any more than our senses.
By the way, I write all my own papers and get all my own A’s.
That’s funny, you’re alright. It was a Simpson’s quote, Mr. Burns uses it quite often. Also, it is an old saying…more from my Mother’s time than mine, but there you are.
As well you should. However, research comes in many forms,and (citable or not) all should be utilized. I commend you on your self-guided interest in Philosophy. Have you studied critical thinking (the structure of argument)? If not, I recommend that you do so, as it greatly aids in the interpretation of Philosophical writings.
I appreciate the tip! Are you also a hobbyist or are you an academic / professional?
I have a few years of Philosophy under my belt, but I’m more of a Philosophy OCD victim.
This is one of those places where a little historical information helps a lot. Descartes was engaging with the Scholastic notion of “essence,” thought to be a property of things – THE property of things that make them what they are. It’s an important idea, in the sense that it’s the gateway to classical Idealism.
His conclusion is that the “whatness” of a thing is in the understanding of the percipient, and not in the thing itself. That is, what we think about the meaning of something is not the thing itself. It’s a pivotal insight on which much modern epistemology is based.