Meditations on First Philosophy - Meditation II

Overview

Meditation II opens in the aftermath of Meditation I. Descartes is swimming in doubt; practically everything has been cast aside as potentially false. But from this chaos, he finds solid ground.

He arrives at another "I think, therefore I am" moment, but articulated more carefully. If everything deceives you, then either a supremely powerful being is trying to deceive you, in which case you must exist to be deceived, or you persuaded yourself of these doubts, in which case you still exist as the one doing the persuading. Either way, existence is certain. Thought exists, and it cannot be separated from you. As long as you think, you exist.

But what is this "I" that exists? Descartes investigates. The "I" is not dependent on others, so it can be conceived of individually. But he cannot rely on imagination to define it, since imagination is tied to the senses, which remain untrustworthy. Instead, "I" am simply something that thinks, doubts, hopes, believes, wills, and perceives. The self is known through its mental activities.

He then turns to the famous wax argument. A piece of wax has certain qualities: a color, a scent, a shape. But when you melt it, all these change. Yet it remains wax. The senses tell you nothing stable about it. The wax can only be grasped by the mind, not the senses. And here Descartes draws his conclusion: he knows his own mind (the thing doing the grasping) more certainly than he knows any physical object.