Descartes Philosophy On Existence
Rene Descartes was a French mathematician and philosopher. In “Meditations on First Philosophy,” he went into a series of meditations and doubted everything with the purpose of finding certainty and stability. To distinguish a good belief from a bad belief, he created a rule: if in doubt, throw it out. Descartes believed that everything was flawed from mathematics to the five senses while happening to prove his own existence. Eventually, he came into a conclusion that he exists because he thinks in his famous quote, “Cogito, ergo sum” which means “I think, therefore I am.” In paragraphs 23-25, Descartes uses a wax example and its physical state to prove that a person can determine what they know by using their minds, rather than their senses. I, however, disagree with Descartes’ theories in doubting the senses and only using the mind mainly because a person can not think about that certain object first without observing or feeling it first.
Descartes states that everyone thinks they understand their physical nature best and that they have confidence within their senses in that it will help them guide their way in anything. Our body is an external object and Descartes states that the properties and identity of our mind are actually more clear and fundamental than perception of external objects. He proves his theory by comparing two physical states of wax: one at a solid state and one at a liquid state when melted by fire. At its solid state, the wax is “hard, cold and can be handled without difficulty” (Descartes 350), but in its liquid state, the wax is hot, the “smell goes away, the color changes, the shape is lost, the size increases, it becomes liquid.” (Descartes 350). He then questions how does one know the body of the wax is still a wax despite its changes since our senses alone cannot identify that the wax is the same substance. Wax cannot be confirmed through imagination since the wax is “capable of countless changes of this...
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