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    <h1 id="descartes-second-meditation-f5d3426ef9ee">Descartes, Second Meditation</h1>
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      Posted on Mon 20 September 2010 in <a href="./category/random.html">Random</a>

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    <p>In Descarte's second meditation, he moves onto classification of the
mind and body. The initial argument is that he must exist, even if there
is absolutely nothing in the world he must exist, even if all existence
is presented by a deceiver, he still must exist to be deceived. He runs
into an interesting question of what defines existence and he
me. This is a good starting point, but doesn't entirely answer the
question of self. For example, Determinism may entirely circumvent the
essence of self. He also seems to belittle the affects of sensory
perception. If everything I perceive through the senses is a deception,
are my thoughts truly my own or am I being led by a deceiver? Is my
definition of self as a thinking thing even valid? For example, Descarte
effectively defines imagination as "simply contemplating the shape or
image of a corporeal thing". In essence stating that even imagination
can be corrupted by the deceiver. He closes off the imagination as
superfluous to perception of your own nature. Essentially Descarte is
cutting off any contact to the physical world, even imagination that
begins with a perceived event or corporeal object. However, the mental
acts involved in say sensory perception or imagination, these can be
considered real.</p>
<p>Eventually after repeated questioning he boils down to the reasonable to
"I am a thinking thing". He separates the corporeal with the mental by
de-construction a piece of wax and stating, surely we cannot be
naturally aware of all states of wax, we use perception through the mind
alone. It is a mental cognitive judgement on the nature of wax, which of
course is prone to error. Descarte has built up the importance of
'mind', and more specifically judgements and understanding over say
imagination. He cuts us off with reality and predicates all
understanding of anything(real or not) with the self. So, in every act
of understanding we establish the nature of our own minds a little
further, where his reasoning for this is, I don't know. Descarte draws
the line at comprehension so overcomes the deceiver argument. If a
deceiver gave me a sample of wax to play with, my comprehension of the
ultimate nature of this wax would be proof of self, not the imagining of
wax and not the physical contact with the wax. Essentially, the
foundation of all comprehension is 'self'.</p>
<p>Though I find myself agreeing with many sections of this chapter, it's
never through Descarte's reasoning, but purely I agree that they are
acceptable starting points. The question remains, I do not understand
the nature of existence, nor do I understand the true nature of
thoughts, yet we've made an inference anyway. Maybe the appearance of
thought is simply the motion of the deceiver, or a computing simulation
in action.</p>
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