In Descartes second meditation he uses fresh beeswax melting as a metaphor to get his point across. He demonstrates how we use our mind to determine what an object is, not entirely our senses since an object can change properties. To be specific, if you are holding beeswax it tastes, smells, and feels like beeswax, but if it melts, it feels different. However just because it now has a different property, our mind can still detect the primary essence of an object.
This example supports Decrates dualism argument because what we can perceive from the senses with our body then has to be formulated into thoughts in our head. We don’t notice this transition but it happens. Dualism is the argument that the mind is separate from the body, which rings true when you take into account that sensory information has to be translated into thoughts in our head, and even when this sensory information changes, we can still determine the primary essence of the object to know what it is. Take for example when you pour water into an ice cube tray and wait a few hours, when you check it again it will be hard, it will be ice, and even though the ice doesn’t look clear and feels different, we can still use our mind to determine it is water. That is how we know the mind is separate from the body.
Princess Elizabeth asks Descartes to explain how since the human soul is a thinking being, how does it affect the body to create voluntary actions. He answers this by explaining sensations belong to both the body and the mind, so they are united in a sense however still distant and different from the other. He explains that you need your senses (the body) and the mind to make sense and get around the world we live in. And this all makes perfect sense to me, however I don’t feel as if he did an adequate job explaining how distant the mind and the body are, but he created a good understanding of their togetherness. “But I shall rather stop here to consider the thoughts which of themselves spring up in my mind, and which were not inspired by anything beyond my own nature alone when I applied myself to the consideration of my being. In the first place, then, I considered myself as having a face, hands, arms, and all that system of members composed on bones and flesh as seen in a corpse which I designated by the name of body. In addition to this I considered that I was nourished, that I walked, that I felt, and that I thought, and I referred all these actions to the soul: but I did not stop to
consider what the soul was, or if I did stop”
Philosophy? 