PHL200Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Sensory System
Document Summary
In meditation ii, descartes uses the example of wax as a support of his rationalism. First of all, he uses his sense to perceive the color, figure, size, shape, odor, sound of that piece of wax; then follow by this, he places the wax near the fire and it melted. All the appearance perceived by the sense are changed, but we still can know that wax is the same wax as before by our mind. He argues, therefore, what we know is through our mind alone our senses can deceive us. Sense perception can only gather the information from various appearances, but the perception by our mind can tell us what it is no matter how the appearance changes. In this essay, i will argue that the wax example made by descartes is a invalid argument, because the premises that descartes stated cannot guarantee his conclusion, which is that corporeal things are perceived through our mind alone.
