This essay was for an Intro to Philosophy class my freshman year.
Descartes: Meditation II
In Meditation Two, Descartes examines the differences in sense and the mind involving how both objects and people are perceived. While one is able to sense an object by touch, smell, and sight, a change in its physical shape is a change in the way the senses perceive it. The mind, however, is able to recognize the person or object despite physical change.
Wax taken straight from the honeycomb emits sound when rapped upon, traces of the flower can be still be smelt, it felt as being hard and visually seen as white by Descartes. These are all properties that the senses are able to employ to determine that this is wax. Yet, when the wax is heated, it looses all the properties that made it previously identifiable as wax by the senses. It is hot to the touch, is no longer able to be rapped upon and emit sound as a result, and loses its form (21). The heated wax no longer falls under the previous perceptions of senses, and if one were to solely make basis according to the senses, then the object would no longer be wax. Despite all of these changes, intellect still identifies this object as wax, regardless of its present state of being because the underlying object remains being wax.
Analogous to the wax example, Descartes uses an example of automata. When looking from a window, Descartes sees men crossing the square. He sees merely clothing and not the men’s faces. Depending only on the senses, the sight sees clothing, hats, and jackets, all of which could be placed on any object—even an automata, or machine, could don such attire. The intellect perceives the underlying object to be a man. Taking away the clothing and hats and jackets would reveal the underlying human being, which is hidden from the senses by the clothing. In taking away the clothing, the object, once again, would be perceived differently by the sense. In changing the outer attire of a man, or taking the attire away completely, the fact that this object is still a human being would not change-- though it is being perceived differently by the senses-- underlying it exist, and has existed as a human being, and this is what the intellect is perceiving. The wax changed the way it was perceived by the senses when it was melting and the human would change the way he is perceived if he was fully undressed, both affecting the senses, but both being able to be intellectually perceived as what has existed as.
These two examples are also disanalogous, though this disanalogy does not take away from the argument. The wax was once a secretion from the bees, which once before was nectar, which was derived from a flower while a human changes size and shape, but has existed in the physical world only as a human being. Several forms of sense is used to perceive the wax, olfactory, sight, hearing, and touch, while Descartes only saw the men, and saw them from a distance and from an altitude.
In his analogy of wax and humans, Descartes effectively concludes that the sense is only able to perceive an object according to what is seen, heard, smelt, seen, or felt of it. The intellect, unlike the senses, perceives an object by what it exists as, and not what it appears or by the substantial properties it currently displays.
© Caroline Alicia Harris
post script If you are the copyright owner of anything metioned in the above essay, I do have the bibliography os my sources if you need to see them. I choose not to post them on this site, in the hopes nothing will be reused.