Month: April 2020

Using the example of a lump of wax in different states, Descartes attempts to demonstrate that our understanding of objects such as the wax is derived from our intellect rather than our senses. He points out that a piece of wax can change dramatically in physical characteristics when heated, but we can still understand that it is the same wax as before. The quality that allows for this understanding, he argues, “could certainly be nothing of all that the senses brought to my notice, since all these things which fall under taste, smell, sight, touch, and hearing, are found to be changed, and yet the same wax remains.” Therefore, it must be the mind’s cognition that allows us to perceive the wax as being essentially the same even after it is transformed. While thought is certainly an important part of our understanding of the wax, Descartes oversimplifies in arguing that it is the only component. The mind can only come to its understanding because of the series of sensory perceptions which connect the memory of the solid wax and the current melted wax and indicate that it was not swapped out. On a different level, if Descartes had access to a microscope he could directly perceive the essential similarities in the molecular structure of the wax even after its transformation.

Descartes also argues that not only is the mind the sole force behind our understanding of the world, it is separate from the physical body. He arrives at this conclusion primarily through the argument that we can know the mind exists because we directly experience its thinking process, but the body could be an elaborate fiction with no basis in reality. This is a convincing argument in itself, but it does not necessarily support a dualist theory of mind and body. If the body really is an illusion, then the mind is independent and the whole question becomes moot. However, if the body is real, our lack of certainty in its reality does not prove that it is separate from the more existentially certain mind. The mind could still be an inextricable property of the body, and no real evidence exists against this possibility. At some point, one has to move beyond absolute certainty and accept concepts like materialism which are impossible to definitively prove from the confines of a human mind but are consistently very useful in dealing with the world.

Princess Elisabeth raises the important issue of how a separate, immaterial mind or soul like the one Descartes conceives can physically operate a material body. Movement requires physical energy or contact of some kind, she argues, so how could an ethereal mind direct the movements of human body? Descartes’ answer is a cop-out of the worst kind, in which he employs a lot of complex linguistic maneuvering to essentially say that the relationship between mind and body is a unique one which is impossible to understand through the lenses applied to other concepts. Therefore, he argues, the typical rules governing physical movement that Elisabeth draws on in her objection cannot be applied to the mind-body relationship. I find this sort of black box explanation totally unsatisfying. Saying that something is a separate “notion” to which other ideas cannot be applied is merely a curiosity-stopper which contributes nothing to real understanding of the phenomenon in question. Of course, in this case there is no phenomenon, because an immaterial soul cannot move a physical object.

(575 words)