Wax

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Descartes makes a striking claim in the Second Meditation ...

‘even bodies are not strictly perceived by the senses or the faculty of the imagination but by the intellect alone’

(Meditation 2)

Let’s start by contrasting this claim with the view he opposes, that of the Aristotelians ...

recall from lecture 1 ...

How can we acquire knowledge about the essential nature of the bodies located outside us?

Each body has a form, which is its essential nature.

When a body is perceived, your sensory perception resembles the body’s form.

Thanks to this resemblance, your sensory perception acquaints you with the forms (essential natures) of bodies.

Which of these claim’s does Descartes claim about the proper purpose of sensory perceptions justify us in rejecting?

wax

‘I can grasp that the wax is capable of countless changes, yet I am unable to run through this immeasurable number of changes in my imagination… The nature of this piece of wax is in no way revealed by my imagination, but is perceived by the mind alone’

(Meditation 2).

Sensory perceptions change.

The essential nature does not.

Therefore the senses cannot inform us about its essential nature.

Argument sketch: \begin{enumerate} \item Sensory perceptions of the wax change. \item The essential nature of the wax does not. \item Therefore the senses cannot inform us about its essential nature. \end{enumerate}

‘The Stoics claimed that each of us has many cognitive impressions, typically sense impressions of a particular sort, and that these cognitive impressions are in one way or another the basis for everything that we can know. A cognitive impression is one that “[1] arises from what is and [2] is stamped and impressed exactly in accordance with what is, [3] of such a kind as could not arise from what is not.”’ (Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians 7.248 (1997, 132–33) cited by \citealp[p.~72]{broughton:2003_descartes}).

Is this argument convincing?

‘Something which I thought I was seeing with my eyes is in fact grasped solely by the faculty of judgement which is in my mind’

(Meditation 2).

recall from lecture 1 ...

How can we acquire knowledge about the essential nature of the bodies located outside us?

Each body has a form, which is its essential nature.

When a body is perceived, your sensory perception resembles the body’s form.

Thanks to this resemblance, your sensory perception acquaints you with the forms (essential natures) of bodies.

Which of these claim’s does Descartes claim about the proper purpose of sensory perceptions justify us in rejecting?

So the wax refutes the idea that we can gain knowledge of things through the senses?

‘even bodies are not strictly perceived by the senses or the faculty of the imagination but by the intellect alone’

Meditation 2

Descartes uses the example of seeing the hat of someone and saying that you have seen a man walk past.

The point isn’t that you might be wrong. The point is that the senses do not get you to the person.

Sensory impressions of wax

Judgement that this is wax

Seeing hats and coats

Judgement that those are people

‘But then if I look out of the window and see men crossing the square, as I just happen to have done, I normally say that I see the men themselves, just as I say that I see the wax. Yet do I see any more than hats and coats which could conceal automatons? I judge that they are men. And so something which I thought I was seeing with my eyes is in fact grasped solely by the faculty of judgement which is in my mind’ \citep[p.~21; AT VII: 32]{descartes:1985_csm2}.

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