In the sixth chapter, Descartes talks about the existence of material things and the real difference between the body and mind. He questions the existence of material things but says he knows that they do exist since they are the objects of pure mathematics. The reason Descartes believes they exist is that the philosopher can distinctly and clearly perceive them. Descartes claims that God is capable of bringing anything that he can perceive in such a way. There is no single doubt about that. The only thing that can make him doubt that God is capable of doing anything is when he isn’t able to perceive something.
The sixth meditation has two primary objectives. The first target is to prove that material things exist. The second prove is to show that both the mind and body are distinct from one another. The arguments in this meditation are said to be beneficial not because they prove about what a sane person would deny i.e. the existence of material things. Instead, it’s because they are not as transparent and compelling as the arguments which take us to the knowledge of our minds. Descartes faces a task of proving that material things exist alongside himself and God. He has already proven the existence of God in Meditation two and confirmed his presence in meditation three.
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The possibility of the existence of material things doesn’t show that material things exist in the same way that the possibility of Gods existence implies that He exists. Descartes needs some other reasons to come to a conclusion that material things exist. He also accesses the faculty of imagination which he is aware of the moment he turns his mind to stuff. He concludes that imagination is simply an application of the body’s cognitive faculty, so he pause an argument wondering what if imagination is what it seems to be. It would mean that material things do indeed exist.
Proof of the Existence of Material Things
“ Probable conjecture,” is the first reason to believe that material things exist rather than “necessary inference”. The reasonable guess viewed from the explanation that distinction between imagination and understanding. Descartes explains by saying that he possesses a body which he (a thinking thing) joins with to a body. He says understanding works by turning itself towards the mind and its idea. On the other side, imagination works by rotating itself to the body. It looks at something that exists in the body that conforms to an idea that is in mind or an idea perceived by senses. He, therefore, concludes that that is the simple explanation on how imagination works given that bodies exist. He doesn’t find any other suitable way of explaining it. He is thus able to make a probable conjecture that objects exist.
He further considers the other inference to the existence of bodies. He does this by comparing ideas that don’t originate from understanding. For instance, sounds, color, pain, taste, etc. He urges that senses perceive things like pain, tone, etc. The imagination receives them from senses with the help of memory (Almog, 2001). He, therefore, focuses on sensory perception to see whether it can give conclusive evidence on whether material things exist. As he puts it in meditation two, sense perception refers to being aware of things or seeming to feel, hear and be warned. He thus feels it’s reasonable for him to think that the items its body perceived through senses were things that were entirely distinct from his thought i.e. bodies that produced the ideas.
Factors that made the conclusion that objects exist reasonable
The ideas were coming without his consent. It meant that they were present to his senses. It was also impossible to avoid perceiving them when they are present.
These ideas are more vivid and lively than other ideas. They were distinct in their ways.
With the above evidence, Descartes didn’t find any possibility of these ideas coming from within him. The only option was that they originated from other things. It was thus a clear prove that material things exist.
Separate Existence of Mind and Body
In this meditation, Descartes comes up with an argument that there is an independent existence of body and mind. He says that if he can understand two things as different from one another, then they are distinct. They are distinct because God has made them different. He can understand his himself and other bodies to be different thus they are different. He refers to himself as thinking and no extended while bodies are extended and unthinking though they may be joined firmly joined. The body and mind are thus joined but may be distinct according to Descartes. He refers to it as a “teaching of nature” that he is joined to a body tightly thus forming a unit. It is called the “diffusion” model of the relationship between body and mind. He tries to contrast his relation to his body with that of a ship and a pilot. He claims that if his mind were a pilot, he would only know what is happening in his body. It compares to the way a pilot knows what is going on the ship by sight. In this case, he wouldn’t feel what happens in his body (Ayer, 1963).
One of the strongest arguments that he gives to support his perception is by contrasting the divisibility of bodies with the indivisibility of the mind. The whole mind gets united with the entire body. However, when one a part of the body is detached, the whole mind remains. It means that the mind is entirely different from the body.
The Distinction between the Intellect and the Imagination
Descartes claims that the act of imagining involves mental seeing of things as if they used to exist before he existed. It follows the intellectual thought of a thing. He says even though that particular thing may be clear, their imagination is obscure. The claim gets clearly illustrated by the view of a normal thousand-sided plane called a chiliagon. The figure is very well understood, but when imagined it’s simply a confusion that gets constructed in the form of a number. In some instances, imagination is capable of producing an image that corresponds to what is understood by the intellect. A good example is the idea of a Pentagon. Imagining the existence of a Pentagon just entails applying one’s mind to visualize its five sides and the area that gets contained within. The main difference between understanding and imagining a Pentagon is that in, you need some strange effort of your mind. You don’t need to put any effort to understand. Descartes, therefore, concludes that this difference is what clearly shows the difference between real understanding and imagination. The distinction between imagination and comprehending runs further than the effort that is needed to produce them. Descartes feels that imagining is not essential in his life. The reason why he feels this way is because he would remain the same person even if he never imagined. There is no justification for this claim. He thinks that since imagination isn’t important to him, it depends on something that is different from him.
My thesis and defense about the distinction between the Intellect and the Imagination
In my opinion, the difference between real understanding and the act of imagining is explainable in some ways. The first way of looking at the time one takes to understand something as compared to imaginations. For you to understand certain complex issues such as how medicine works in the human body to relieve it from ailments, you need to concentrate and find more about it. That is why a lot of research is usually done to understand how to approach issues in life. A lot of dedication is needed to figure out the how medicine works. It means spending time researching on books, consulting specialists, etc. for you to understand how that process works. On the contrary, imagination doesn’t take much time. You can imagine about so many things at a go, and that will qualify to be called imagination. Most of the time, we get into imaginations even without knowing that we are doing it. Understanding is not always an obvious thing. Some issues and objects need time for one to understand.
Another distinction between clear understanding and imagination can come out regarding their memorability. There are high chances of remembering the details of something that you understood as compared to something that you imagined. You can remember something that you understand more because you did it with an intention. There is a reason as to why we try to understand things like how robots work. It, therefore, becomes easier for use to recall what we learned. It is unlike imaginations which behave like dreams.
Descartes would try to object to my view about imagination by his argument that imaginations need a mental effort thus it is more likely to be memorable than real understanding. He would argue that since some energy gets applied in imagining, it takes the time to process what you imagine thus all the details are recorded in your brain for future reference. Descartes would also object to my view that understanding takes more time than imagination. According to him, imaginations require a mind’s eye. It means seeing things in a different way from the norm. He would, therefore, claim that this is likely to take quite some time, unlike understanding. According to him, there is no mental effort needed in understanding. Understanding just happens automatically (Rodis, 1992).
References
Almog, J. (2001). What am I? Descartes and the Mind-Body Problem, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ayer, J. (1963). ‘ The concept of a person’, in The Concept of a Person and other Essays , London: Macmillan , 82–128.
Rodis, L. (1992) " Descartes' life and the development of his philosophy". In Cottingham, John. The Cambridge Companion to Descartes. Cambridge University Press . p. 22. ISBN 978-0-521-36696-0.
