Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy Read Online Free PDF Page B

senses.
    If this is a good reconstruction, we should notice that Descartes is
not denying that it is by means of the senses that I know that the
wax is there in the first place (assuming we have got rid of the Evil
Demon, and are back to trusting our senses). In fact, he goes on to
say as much. Rather, he is suggesting that the senses are like messengers that deliver information that needs interpreting. And this interpretation, which is here a question of identifying the one object amongst the many successive appearances, is the work of the
understanding. It is a matter of employing principles of classification, or categories, whose credentials we can also investigate.

    So, all we can understand by the wax is that it is some elusive
thing' that can take on different bodily properties, such as shape,
size, colour, taste. And we understand by the self, the `I , just some
equally elusive `thing' that at different times thinks different
thoughts. So maybe the self should not he regarded as especially
mysterious, compared with everyday things like the ball of wax.
Perhaps selves are no harder to understand than bodies, and we
only think otherwise because of some kind of prejudice. We return
to the wax in Chapter 7.
    CLEAR AND DISTINCT IDEAS
    The first two Meditations deserve their place as classics of philosophy. They combine depth, imagination, and rigour, to an extent
that has very seldom been paralleled. So one is left with bated
breath, waiting for the story to unfold. Here is Descartes left perching on his one minute rock, surrounded by a sea of doubt. But it
seems he has denied himself any way of getting off it. Life may still
be a dream. To use the metaphor of foundations: he is down to
bedrock, but has no building materials. For the very standards he
set himself, of`demon-proof' knowledge, seem to forbid him even
from using`self-evident' or natural means of reasoning, in order to
argue that he knows more than the Cogito. There is nothing diffi cult about the Demon deceiving us into listening to delusive pieces
of reasoning. Our reasonings are apt to be even more fallible than
our senses.

    Curiously, he does not see it quite like that. What he does is to reflect on the Cogito, and ask what makes it so especially certain. He
convinces himself that it is because he has an especially transparent
`clear and distinct' perception of its truth. It is generally agreed that
Descartes, the mathematician, had a mathematical model of clarity in mind. Suppose, for instance, you think about a circle. Imagine a diameter, and draw chords from the opposite ends to a point
on the circumference. They meet at a right angle. Draw others, and
they always seem to do so. At this point, you might have a not very
clear sense that perhaps there is a reason for this. But now, suppose
you go through a proof (drawing the line from the centre of the circle to the apex of the triangle, and solving the two triangles you create). After that you can just see that the theorem has to hold. This
may come as a'flash': a blinding certainty, or insight into this particular piece of geometrical truth. This is just a random geometrical example of a procedure that can make you `see' something that
you might only dimly have grasped. But if only we could see the
rest of reality, mind, body, God, freedom, human life, with the
same rush of clarity and understanding! Well, one philosophical
ideal is that we can. This is the ideal of rationalism: the power of
pure unaided reason. For the rationalist can see from her armchair
that things must he one way and cannot be other ways, like the
angle in the semicircle. Knowledge achieved by this kind of rational insight is known as `a priori': it can be seen to be true immediately, without any experience of the way of the world.

    THE TRADEMARK ARGUMENT
    Trusting clarity and distinctness, Descartes indulges a piece of reasoning. Looking into his own `self, which is all that he has at this