#wax argument

[existentialcomicsfeed]

The Amazing Descartes

[doubtlr]

And so something which I thought I was seeing with my eyes is in fact grasped solely by the faculty of judgment which is in my mind.

Descartes proceeds with what is known as the Wax Argument. He considers a piece of wax; his senses inform him that it has certain characteristics, such as shape, texture, size, color, smell, and so forth. When he brings the wax towards a flame, these characteristics change completely. However, it seems that it is still the same thing: it is still the same piece of wax, even though the data of the senses inform him that all of its characteristics are different. Therefore, in order to properly grasp the nature of the wax, he should put aside the senses and use his mind. 

[logical-realist-blog]

My Take on Descartes' Wax Argument

The foundation for this Wax argument is to refute Aristotle’s theory that states that all of our knowledge comes from our senses, giving little to no credit to the mind. Instead of taking the same approach and bashing the senses completely, Descartes provided the example with the wax, giving credit to the senses as being able to give us a general synopsis of external entities, but not being able to give a critical analysis of the same. This is where our perception from the mind comes into play at, because it gives us the root of the object. The senses looked at the physical attributes of the wax, but what happens when those physical features are altered? How can we know that this is the same object when it clearly does not match the physical description that was initially described? These questions seem to reveal that it is not the power of our senses that allows us to distinguish the wax. Although we can make our senses adapt to the changing features of the wax, it’s impossible to be able to conceive all of the possibilities, so with that being said, it is highly unlikely to say that it’s our senses that allow us to identify the wax. The answer is simple; our intellect tells us what the object is, unbiased to sensory perceptions of it. So from the Wax Argument, we recognize that there has to be some function in our mind’s intellect that allows us to conclude that something is “clear and distinct”, and Descartes refers to this theoretical entity as the “pure intellect”. This declaration not only grounds his argument, but it also lays down the theory to fall back on throughout the remainder of the Meditations. The Wax argument, in theory, does actually shed a new light on Aristotelian thoughts about the theory of knowledge through the senses.