Previously to the Meditation Six, Descartes proved the existence of God and came to the conclusion that he was a thinking thing. Meditation Six brings a very important new conclusion, that is the thinking thing that he is is actually "tightly joined" (136) to the body and together with it "constitute one single thing" (136).
The way Descartes explains this is by saying if the mind and the body were not one single thing then the sensations that are experienced by the body would not be perceived by the mind. If we recall Descartes disregarded sense perceptions for the fact that they are not reliable and can deceive us, thus the first step was for him to doubt in all senses. Here however Descartes gives the sense perceptions some more credibility "as reliable rules for immediately discerning what is the essence of bodies located outside us," (137) however admittedly he thinks that they do it "obscurely and confusedly" (137). The way it works is first to establish that corporeal things exists, as the sense perceptions come from corporeal things and can be perceived by the mind without any work on the mind's part. They could be false since the mind can be deceived, but God was proven not to be a deceiver then the conclusion can only be one - corporeal things do exist. However Descartes also recognizes that the sense perceptions are not always correct, not entirely false but rather misleading in some cases, for example a square tower seen from afar might appear round.
Moreover Descartes identifies the connection between the mind and the body to be the brain, or rather "just one small part of the brain" (139). However the sensations are transmitted to the mind through this brain, but if two different sets of things can produce the same movement in the brain then the mind would still get the same information as if they were the same and only one. This is the main reason why the sense perceptions can be so unreliable.
Nevertheless Descartes reaches the conclusion that even though unreliable the senses through the body parts can be generally trusted and we are not merely thinking things anymore but thinking things contained within bodies. This sounds definitely better than having to doubt all sense perceptions and regard the world around as an illusion.
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3 comments:
I agree with everything said, but I have a few points that I think are important to add. Descartes discusses in detail how the body and the "thinking thing/mind are conjoined and make one thing. He says, "For if this were not the case, then I, who am only a thinking thing, would not sense pain when the body is injured; rather, I would perceive the wound by means of the pure intellect" (136). Yet, he also says that while the body is always divisible, the mind isn't. No parts can be distinguished from the mind, and the entire mind is united to the entire body, but if the body were somehow harmed, nothing would be taken away from the mind because of that. Descartes ends by saying that its important to notice all of the errors in which human nature is liable, so you can correct or avoid them easier
james Petronio.
Paige makes good points, but I think it's important to go into the causes of error in human nature. As we discussed in class, intellect allows the mind to believe something true or false and will allows the mind to affirm or deny these beliefs. The cause of human error occurs when the will wrongly affirms or denies something true or false before intellect can determine it to be true or false. According to Descartes, the will can affirm and deny multiple things at once where as the intellect cannot. The difference the power of the will and of the intellect is what cause this error.
As you mentioned Descartes recognizes perception as continually changing. Because of its apparent faults, Descartes does not completely rely on perception and is left with thought. Although it may seem that our bodies are concrete while our thoughts are abstract, one must note the temporal limitation of our bodies and the eternal existence of our thoughts. Because of this, thoughts are more reliable in comparison to the body.
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