Descartes Meditations On First Philosophy

Over the six day reading of Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes uses his meditator to raise questions, explain, and give reasoning regarding our mind and it’s capabilities. One question that gets raised is how our mind and our body are connected or work together, if at all. Through Descartes’s systematic, day-by-day exercises the meditator and the reader of the meditations are supposed to follow the reasoning that he lays out for the meditator throughout each meditation to arrive at a conclusion after finishing the Sixth Meditation. Having read the Meditations in their entirety, I believe that our mental capacities fully allow us to accurately represent aspects of the world that we live in. In the First Meditation, Descartes uses

Descartes has the meditator conclude that she is a thinking thing, because regardless of whether she is being deceived or not, for even if she was being deceived, it means that there is a thinking thing, that is her, to be deceived in the first place. Having said this, it does not necessarily mean that there is anything beyond that such as a soul, a body, or anything beyond her mind as a thinking thing. What can be known from understanding that the meditator is a thinking this is that she can not only think, but understand, will, imagine, and sense. Because these are just types of thinking, the meditator cannot trust any of them such as imagination. If she were to use her imagination for something, her mind has the ability to conjure images of non-real things, such as mythical creatures. Because the mind has the capability to do this it is safe to say that the imagination cannot be used to accurately describe the world around us. Although we cannot trust the mind and its capabilities in full, it is still better known than a body. Understanding intellect is easier for the mind than understanding bodies. Descartes uses the wax argument to prove his point in that the same piece of wax can have infinitely many forms and yet be the same piece of wax. Our senses, supposing we have any, cannot be used to tell us that the piece of wax has not changed because according to the senses, everything about the wax may have changed. It is through intellect alone that we can understand that the wax is the same piece of wax, no matter what form it has taken on. This is an important step to ultimately showing how the world can be shown accurately with our mental capabilities because it begins to show that clear and distinct perceptions come from our intellect alone, and not from our