Rene Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy - 1234 Words

In Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes does and experiment with wax to try to prove that things actually exist in this world. This essay is going to prove how we can tell that things actually exist and what can perceive the wax. Rene Descartes starts off with a description of the wax so he can prove to us the changes that will happen throughout his experiment. â€Å"Let us take, for instance, this piece of wax. It has been taken quite recently from the honeycomb; it has not yet lost all the honey flavor. It retains some of the scent of the flowers from which it was collected. Its color, shape, and size are manifest. It is hard and cold; it is easy to touch. If you rap on it with your†¦show more content†¦He then tells us his final perspective on how he perceives the wax. â€Å"It remains then for me to concede that I do not grasp what this wax is through the imagination; rather, I perceive it through the mind alone.† (Descartes, 22) He ends his argument on how he perceives the wax with telling us that it is not our imagination that grasps all of the perceptions of the wax, but the mind that does it. Rene Descartes just proved to us that our imagination is not able to grasp all of the perceptions of the wax but the mind is. After proving that theory he suddenly starts to doubt his proof. â€Å"But meanwhile I marvel a t how prone my mind is to errors.† (Descartes, 22) He states that his mind is prone to making errors. For example; â€Å"For we say we see the wax itself, if it is present, and not that we judge it to be present from its color or shape.† (Descartes, 22) He thinks a mistake our minds make is when we judge that it is wax by just looking at it and not paying any attention to any of the forms. For this reason he is claiming that he still is not sure that the mind can actually perceive the wax due to it making mistakes. Back to what Rene Descartes said earlier about the imagination not being able to grasp all of what we need to perceive about the wax. He told us the imagination was unable to grasp it all but nowShow MoreRelatedMeditations On First Philosophy By Rene Descartes Essay839 Words   |  4 PagesPrà ©ciso of Meditations on First Philosophy Through his series of books, Meditations on First Philosophy, Renà © Descartes enlightens his philosophical ideas about knowledge in which we should discard all belief we aren’t absolute certain about and establishes what we know for sure. 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In these meditations, Descartes tries to develop a strong foundation, which all knowledge can be built upon. In the First Meditation, Descartes begins developing this founda tion through the method of doubt. He casts doubt upon all his previous beliefs, including â€Å"mattersRead MoreAnalysis Of Rene Descartes s Meditations On First Philosophy 1399 Words   |  6 PagesPhilosophy Essay 1 Rene Descartes was born in in La Haye, France, in 1596 and he studied at La Fleche Jesuit College and University of Poitiers. Descartes also lived in Germany, Holland and Sweden. He then worked in the army as a private councillor and then as a court philosopher. Descartes book ‘Meditations on First Philosophy’ was first published in 1641. The edition used to write this essay was edited by John Cottingham and was published by the Cambridge University Press in 1996. Descartes wasRead MoreAnalysis Of Rene Descartes s Meditations On First Philosophy1066 Words   |  5 Pageswhat is reality? Among these writers were Renà ¨ Descartes and George Berkeley, who respectively argued that everything perceived must be real due to God being unable to deceive, and that the physical world only exists in one’s mind. In my view, it is not certain that the physical world is real, but one should act as if it is. Renà ¨ Descartes, in Meditations on First Philosophy, wrote each section after successive â€Å"meditations.† In Descartes’s first meditation, he claims it is unable to be proven whether