Don't Walk Away, René
ii.
After formally rejecting everything that can be doubted, Descartes finally comes upon something that cannot: himself. He must exist, if only to be the one who is deceived about everything else. But he can still doubt whether he is a man, or a creature at all. He is only, essentially, "a thing that doubts, understands, [conceives], affirms, denies, wills, refuses;
that imagines also, and perceives."
But among these he makes a distinction between, on the one hand, sensation and imagination, which have to do exclusively with the senses (since to imagine is to create sensible images); and, on the other, thinking as such, the intellect. He demonstrates the primacy of intellect over sensation and imagination in the production of knowledge using the example of a piece of wax that, in being melted near the fire, loses all its original sensible qualities; yet is still recognized by the mind as having persisted as one thing.
The nature of a thinking thing, likewise, is recognized by the intellect and not the senses or the imagination.
I gather that "clear and distinct" images are privileged somehow beyond the present text, though I don't yet see how. Possibly he is referring to a previous articulation of this same argument and counter-argument from the mists of the history of philosophy, which is largely unknown to me. I know that Augustine covered some of this same territory.
Because I could not quite make sense of this part of the Second Meditation, I have sent up a philosophical flare, so to speak, to notify my friend Muad'Dib of the impasse, and await his aid.
But among these he makes a distinction between, on the one hand, sensation and imagination, which have to do exclusively with the senses (since to imagine is to create sensible images); and, on the other, thinking as such, the intellect. He demonstrates the primacy of intellect over sensation and imagination in the production of knowledge using the example of a piece of wax that, in being melted near the fire, loses all its original sensible qualities; yet is still recognized by the mind as having persisted as one thing.
The nature of a thinking thing, likewise, is recognized by the intellect and not the senses or the imagination.
I gather that "clear and distinct" images are privileged somehow beyond the present text, though I don't yet see how. Possibly he is referring to a previous articulation of this same argument and counter-argument from the mists of the history of philosophy, which is largely unknown to me. I know that Augustine covered some of this same territory.
Because I could not quite make sense of this part of the Second Meditation, I have sent up a philosophical flare, so to speak, to notify my friend Muad'Dib of the impasse, and await his aid.
