Analysis Of Descartes's Meditation

Human beings are thinking creatures but they are more than that. They live their lives with different memories and experiences to guide them along the way. To prove that a person knows whom they are by proving that they think is nonsensical. Within Descartes’s meditation is the nature of humans will be shown through the thinking thing or cogito but this is not accurate at all because humans are more complex beings than just thinking things. First, I will demonstrate what the second meditation, its fifth objection, and Descartes reply are instructing on. Then I will address the cogito and how it does not prove the existence of the nature of humans, as Descartes’s believes it does. Finally, I will show how the reply does not meet the requirements …show more content…
However, Descartes never states in the cogito what the inner substance or the mind is what makes people think. It is already known that people are thinking creatures along with many other types of types of beings. What is unknown is how things have this capacity to think. Descartes tries to use the cogito to answer where the thinking in humans comes from but can not due to the fact that the cogito is no new information rather just a new way to look at an older idea. Thinking is not the question asked but rather, “What we are unclear about, what we are looking for is that inner substance of yours whose property is to think,”(Fifth Objection, 71). What Descartes was meant to solve with his meditation was the true purpose of thinking and how humans think. With the cogito, all he showed was that he was a thinking thing, something that has been known for almost all of human history, that all humans are thinking …show more content…
This is due to the fact that the two are directly related to one another and cannot be found without finding out both. Descartes believes that the various attributes of a substance can tell use that the mind creates attributes that can be determined by the object and the knowledge of the object in the mind. (Fifth Replies, 72). All of this according to Descartes, all of this is to prove that humans understand the nature of the mind and use it to create the true knowledge of the world due to the fact that it is the mind that creates the attributes that identity common objects. Those attributes allow humanity to understand and interpret the world to their own unique understanding along with creating the basis for