Mind your own beeswax

A piece of wax seems so simple. The residual taste of honey, a sweet fragrance, yellowish appearance, sticky and solid: that’s all there is to it, no source of complication just thoughts of buzzing bees and honey spread on toast. Oh how naïve of me. In this passage Descartes uses the piece of wax as an example that will show us two important and crucial aspects key in establishing truth: the true power of perception and what it means to be human. Suddenly this simple substance has become the seed of something much bigger.

Descartes leads the meditator to establish how best to perceive and understand the properties and nature of an object. First he grants her the senses, which reveal color, taste, texture, etc. He tears these sense-based conclusions down when the wax is melted and no longer contains the formerly held features. So, what is left of the nature of wax outside of that which is perceived by our senses is that it is extendable, flexible, and changeable. But how do we come to this knowledge? Even with the use of our imagination we cannot know the wax in all its infinite possible shapes it could be formed into. Thus, the senses and our imagination are not adequate in the perception of the nature of wax. It is the mind that reveals to us the true nature of wax. This use of the mind in discovering nature is “mental scrutiny” and the mind’s use of the intellect in creating an understanding of a thing.

This new idea of mental scrutiny, use of the intellect, and perceiving objects through understanding brings the meditator to a more important understanding, which is how the mind is better known than a body. It is this, although from a slightly different angle, that reaffirms the cogito in our knowledge of our own existence. For our experimentation with the wax and its nature could be false and does not matter. What the exploration of the wax does do is aid us in better knowing our own mind. And it is this use of our intellect and mind to perceive the nature and understanding of a thing that separates us from animals.

I am left with a slight buzzing in my ears for I am not qute sure about all of Descartes argument. One of the quesitons I have with these two conclusions is that how are we sure that our perception of the wax previous and post-melting is enough evidence to discount the senses and imagination all together. Couldn’t it be that our sense-perception and imagination contain the knowledge of wax when it was hard and after it is melted? Our senses do not perceive things as one image alone. Our imagination and senses could contain the knowledge that wax can change from one form to another. So this idea that wax is hard, sweet smelling, etc. and then when it is liquid and no longer smells the same are contained in the same knowledge. It is if it is not heated it is like this and if it is heated it is like this. Or is this ability to grasp shifting states of objects part of the mind and not a resource of our sense and imagination? I don’t know if that quite makes sense, but it seems slightly unclear to me. What is judgment’s role in determining the nature of things for we may judge things incorrectly and therefore wouldn’t the conclusion from these judgments be incorrect?