Descartes Second Meditation Essay

Descartes views in the Second Meditation is that he tries to clarify the nature of the human mind and how it is better known than the body. He has this theory of we’re just “existing” as in we’re just dreaming or being deceived by an evil demon of some sort. With that happening, he still concludes that we can imagine, hear, and see things. Although our sensory perceptions can be false, they’re still a part of our mind and our thinking. Descartes believes we should doubt our senses because they cannot be trusted and that you also cannot trust your imagination. As many people have experienced or probably don’t know they experienced, our mind and imagination can come up with all sorts of things that are not real. Therefore, it can’t be the guide to knowing our own essential nature. We can’t trust our mind and all the crazy things that come from it so that is why we must doubt everything until we have certainty about it. Something you saw with your own eyes can be grasped by your mind and may cause you to think you “saw” something else. Once again, you can’t always trust
You might see the wax, but we refer to the wax as how the mind sees it instead of saying we see the wax with our eyes and by its shape or color. Our intellect rather, judges that we see the wax and not some unknown object in front of us. Descartes states that our mind is far better known than our body because any concept of our body can be deceived as false but also because we can’t rule out the fact if we can completely trust our senses to distinguish if we’re really dreaming or not. With the wax experiment, Descartes does in fact prove that he does exist, that this “I” exists. He cannot doubt that he is seeing this piece of wax in front of him and is taking apart all the parts that make up this wax by using his intellect. And with this, he does, in fact, proves his