Descartes Wax Paradox

Descartes uses his reflection on the piece of wax as a way to argue what our senses and imagination lack. Descartes’ argument is that our senses and imagination lack the ability to grasp the extendibility, flexibility, and changeability of wax, specifically in his explanation, but more generally any body “we touch and see” (30). Ones intellect is the only thing that can perceive the nature of a body, such as the wax. The observation of the wax from the original state to the state after being placed near the fire brings up the question “But does the same wax remain”(30). Descartes knows that the senses cannot distinguish that the two different states of the wax are the same wax, “Evidently none of the features which I arrived at by means of the senses: for whatever came under taste, smell, sight, touch or hearing has now altered- yet the wax remains”(30). The wax is “extendable, flexible, and changeable”(31). The imagination can picture the wax in different basic shapes, but it cannot picture the unlimited different forms the wax can take. “I would not be making a correct judgment about the nature of wax unless I believed it capable of being extended in many more different ways than I will ever encompass in my …show more content…
The reasoning and thinking that since the wax exist because it can be touched, so must ones self for the same reasoning (33). His argument is, in my opinion, a strong one with very valid points and comparisons, but it is not sound. “bodies are not strictly perceived by the senses or the faculty of imagination but by the intellect alone, and that this perception derives not from their being touched or seen but from their being understood”(34). The senses allow a person to be aware of bodily things, without being aware of such a thing, the mind does not have anything to understand (29). Descartes argument is a good one, but all of the premises are not