PHILOS 25B Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Adventitiousness, Astronomical Object, Medieval Philosophy
Document Summary
Descartes says that thought alone cannot be separated from me. I am therefore nothing but a thinking thing. : however, for all descartes knows, he could have a body, and a body might also be an essential property of himself. For all he knows, a body might be necessary for him to have thought. So descartes doesn"t really know if thought is the only essential property, but he knows it is an essential property. He doesn"t see how he could have acquired this knowledge from his senses, because his senses are giving him different information about the wax then they were before. His senses can show him the changes but they cannot give him the knowledge that the wax now is the same as the wax before. Only the intellect gives him this knowledge. Therefore, descartes reasons that some of our knowledge about the world around us comes from our intellect.
