Meditation VI: Concerning the Existence of Material Things, and the Real Distinction between Mind and Body#
Meditations on First Philosophy in Which the Existence of God and the Distinction between the Soul and the Body Are Demonstrated
Ariew, Roger & Eric Watkins (eds). (2019). Modern Philosophy: An Anthology of Primary Sources. 3rd Ed. Hackett.
[P]
It remains for me to examine whether material things exist.
Indeed I now know that they can exist, at least insofar as they are the object of pure mathematics, since I clearly and distinctly perceive them.
For no doubt God is capable of bringing about everything that I am capable of perceiving in this way.
And I have never judged that God was incapable of something, except when it was incompatible with my perceiving it distinctly.
Moreover, from the faculty of imagination, which I notice I use while dealing with material things, it seems to follow that they exist.
For to anyone paying very close attention to what imagination is, it appears to be simply a certain application of the knowing faculty to a body intimately present to it, and which therefore exists.
Does res extensa exist?
It is possible to the extent that I C&D perceive res extensa.
God can create anything that I C&D perceive.
The faculty of imagination is just the faculty of understanding applied to res extensa.
[P]
To make this clear, I first examine the difference between imagination and pure intellection.
IMAGINATION VS INTELLECTION
So, for example, when I imagine a triangle, I not only understand that it is a figure bounded by three lines, but at the same time I also envisage with the mind’s eye those lines as if they were present; and this is what I call “imagining.”
to imagine the triangle is both to intellect its definition and to picture it
On the other hand, if I want to think about a chiliagon, I certainly understand that it is a figure consisting of a thousand sides, just as well as I understand that a triangle is a figure consisting of three sides, yet I do not imagine those thousand sides in the same way, or envisage them as if they were present.
to imagine the chiliagon is to intellect its definition, but not to picture it
And although in that case, because of force of habit I always imagine something whenever I think about a corporeal thing, I may perchance represent to myself some figure in a confused fashion, nevertheless this figure is obviously not a chiliagon.
picturing seems to go along with intellecting, even when the picture is not accurate
For this figure is really no different from the figure I would represent to myself, were I thinking of a myriagon or any other figure with a large number of sides.
Nor is this figure of any help in knowing the properties that differentiate a chiliagon from other polygons.
But if the figure in question is a pentagon, I surely can understand its figure, just as was the case with the chiliagon, without the help of my imagination.
But I can also imagine a pentagon by turning the mind’s eye both to its five sides and at the same time to the area bounded by those sides.
At this point I am manifestly aware that I am in need of a peculiar sort of effort on the part of the mind in order to imagine, one that I do not employ in order to understand.
This new effort on the part of the mind clearly shows the difference between imagination and pure intellection.
[P]
Moreover, I consider that this power of imagining that is in me, insofar as it differs from the power of understanding, is not required for my own essence, that is, the essence of my mind.
For were I to be lacking this power, I would nevertheless undoubtedly remain the same entity I am now.
Thus it seems to follow that the power of imagining depends upon something distinct from me.
imagination is not essential to res cogitans, but accidental
intellection as essential to res cogitans depends on res cogitans
imagination as accidental to res cogitans depends on something else other than res cogitans
And I readily understand that, were a body to exist to which a mind is so joined that it may apply itself in order, as it were, to look at it any time it wishes, it could happen that it is by means of this very body that I imagine corporeal things.
imagination of bodies is a product of the association between mind and body
As a result, this mode of thinking may differ from pure intellection only in the sense that the mind, when it understands, in a sense turns toward itself and looks at one of the ideas that are in it; whereas when it imagines, it turns toward the body, and intuits in the body something that conforms to an idea either understood by the mind or perceived by sense.
intellection is an activity of the mind by itself
imagination is an activity of the mind in relation to body
To be sure, I easily understand that the imagination can be actualized in this way, provided a body does exist.
And since I can think of no other way of explaining imagination that is equally appropriate, I make a probable conjecture from this that a body exists.
But this is only a probability.
And even though I may examine everything carefully, nevertheless I do not yet see how the distinct idea of corporeal nature that I find in my imagination can enable me to develop an argument which necessarily concludes that some body exists.
[P]
But I am in the habit of imagining many other things, over and above that corporeal nature which is the object of pure mathematics, such as colors, sounds, tastes, pain, and the like, though not so distinctly.
And I perceive these things better by means of the senses, from which, with the aid of the memory, they seem to have arrived at the imagination.
Thus I should pay the same degree of attention to the senses, so that I might deal with them more appropriately.
I must see whether I can obtain any reliable argument for the existence of corporeal things from those things that are perceived by the mode of thinking that I call “sense.”
the secondary qualities are imagined via the faculties of sensation and memory
[P]
First of all, to be sure, I will review here all the things I previously believed to be true because I had perceived them by means of the senses and the causes I had for thinking this.
Next I will assess the causes why I later called them into doubt.
Finally, I will consider what I must now believe about these things.
[P]
So first, I sensed that I had a head, hands, feet, and other members that comprised this body which I viewed as part of me, or perhaps even as the whole of me.
I sensed that this body was found among many other bodies, by which my body can be affected in various beneficial or harmful ways.
I gauged what was opportune by means of a certain sensation of pleasure, and what was inopportune by a sensation of pain.
In addition to pain and pleasure, I also sensed within me hunger, thirst, and other such appetites, as well as certain bodily tendencies toward mirth, sadness, anger, and other such affects.
And externally, besides the extension, shapes, and motion of bodies, I also sensed their hardness, heat, and other tactile qualities.
I also sensed light, colors, odors, tastes, and sounds, on the basis of whose variety I distinguished they sky, the earth, the seas, and the other bodies, one from the other.
Now given the ideas of all these qualities that presented themselves to my thought, and which were all that I properly and immediately sensed, still it was surely not without reason that I thought I sensed things that were manifestly different from my thought, namely, the bodies from which these ideas proceeded.
For I knew by experience that these ideas came upon me utterly without my consent, to the extent that, wish as I may, I could not sense any object unless it was present to a sense organ.
Nor could I fail to sense it when it was present.
certain sensations are forced on the mind without the mind's consent
And since the ideas perceived by sense were much more vivid and explicit and even, in their own way, more distinct than any of those that I deliberately and knowingly formed through meditation or that I found impressed on my memory, it seemed impossible that they came from myself.
these nonconsensual sensations are more distinct than the consensual sensations that the mind can imagine
Thus the remaining alternative was that they came from other things.
the nonconsensual sensations cannot come from the mind; therefore, they must come from somewhere else
Since I had no knowledge of such things except from those same ideas themselves, I could not help entertaining the thought that they were similar to those ideas.
Moreover, I also recalled that the use of the senses antedated the use of reason.
And since I saw that the ideas that I myself fashioned were not as explicit as those that I perceived through the faculty of sense, and were for the most part composed of parts of the latter, I easily convinced myself that I had absolutely no idea in the intellect that I did not have beforehand in the sense faculty.
intellection and imagination rely upon sensation
Not without reason did I judge that this body, which by a certain special right I called “mine,” belongs more to me than did any other.
For I could never be separated from it in the same way I could be from other bodies.
I sensed all appetites and feelings in and on behalf of it.
Finally, I noticed pain and pleasurable excitements in its parts, but not in other bodies external to it.
But why should a certain sadness of spirit arise from the sensation or other of pain, and why should a certain elation arise from a sensation of excitement, or why should that peculiar twitching in the stomach, which I call hunger, warn me to have something to eat, or why should dryness in the throat warm me to take something to drink, and so on?
I plainly had no explanation other than that I had been taught this way by nature.
For there is no affinity whatsoever, at least none I am aware of, between this twitching in the stomach and the will to have something to eat, or between the sensation of something causing pain and the thought of sadness arising from this sensation.
But nature also seems to have taught me everything else as well that I judged concerning the objects of the senses, for I had already convinced myself that this was how things were, prior to my assessing any of the arguments that might prove it.
[P]
SENSATION IS UNRELIABLE
Afterwards, however, many experiences gradually weakened any faith that I had in the senses.
Towers that had seemed round from afar occasionally appeared square at close quarters.
Very large statues mounted on their pedestals did not seem large to someone looking at them from ground level.
And in countless other such instances I determined that judgements in matters of the external senses were in error.
And not just the external senses, but the internal senses as well.
For what can be more intimate than pain?
But I had sometimes heard it said by people whose leg or arm had been amputated that it seemed to them that they still occasionally sensed pain in the very limb they had lost.
Thus, even in my own case it did not seem to be entirely certain that some bodily member was causing me pain, even though I did sense pain in it.
To these causes for doubt I recently added two quite general ones.
DREAM ARGUMENT
The first was that everything I ever thought I sensed while awake I could believe I also sometimes sensed while asleep, and since I do not believe that what I seem to sense in my dreams comes to me from things external to me, I saw no reason why I should hold this belief about those things I seem to be sensing while awake.
EVIL DEMON
The second was that, since I was still ignorant of the author of my origin (or at least pretended to be ignorant of it), I saw nothing to prevent my having been so constituted by nature that I should be mistaken even about what seemed to me most true.
As to the arguments that used to convince me of the truth of sensible things, I found no difficulty responding to them.
For since I seemed driven by nature toward many things about which reason tried to dissuade me, I did not think that what I was taught by nature deserved much credence.
And even though the perceptions of the senses did not depend on my will, I did not think that we must therefore conclude that they came from things distinct from me, since perhaps there is some faculty in me, as yet unknown to me, that produces these perceptions.
[P]
But now, having begun to have a better knowledge of myself and the author of my origin, I am of the opinion that I must not rashly admit everything that I seem to derive from the senses; but neither, for that matter, should I call everything into doubt.
[P]
First, I know that all the things that I clearly and distinctly understand can be made by God such as I understand them.
For this reason, my ability clearly and distinctly to understand one thing without another suffices to make me certain that the one thing is different from the other, since they can be separated from each other, at least by God.
The question as to the sort of power that might effect such a separation is not relevant to their being thought to be different.
For this reason, from the fact that I know that I exist, and that at the same time I judge that obviously nothing else belongs to my nature or essence except that I am a thinking thing, I rightly conclude that my essence consists entirely in my being a thinking thing.
And although perhaps (or rather, as I shall soon say, assuredly) I have a body that is very closely joined to me, nevertheless, because on the one hand I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, insofar as I am merely a thinking thing and not an extended thing, and because on the other hand I have a distinct idea of a body, insofar as it is merely an extended thing and not a thinking thing, it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and can exist without it.
C&D perception of mind, C&D perception of body
[P] THE PROOF OF THE EXISTENCE OF BODY
Moreover, I find in myself faculties for certain special modes of thinking, namely the faculties of imagining and sensing.
I can clearly and distinctly understand myself in my entirety without these faculties, but not vice versa: I cannot understand them clearly and distinctly without me, that is, without a substance endowed with understanding in which they inhere, for they include an act of understanding in their formal concept.
imagination and sensation are special kinds of thinking and they include thinking in their activity
Thus I perceive them to be distinguished from me as modes from a thing.
substance: mind
modes: (the faculties of) imagination, sensation
I also acknowledge that there are certain other faculties, such as those of moving from one place to another, of taking on various shapes, and so on, that, like sensing or imagining, cannot be understood apart from some substance in which they inhere, and hence without which they cannot exist.
substance: body
modes: (the faculties of) motion, shape, etc.
But it is clear that these faculties, if in fact they exist, must be in a corporeal or extended substance, not in a substance endowed with understanding.
For some extension is contained in a clear and distinct concept of them, though certainly not any understanding.
Now there clearly is in me a passive faculty of sensing, that is, a faculty for receiving and knowing the ideas of sensible things; but I could not use it unless there also existed, either in me or in something else, a certain active faculty of producing or bringing about these ideas.
But this faculty surely cannot be in me, since it clearly presupposes no act of understanding, and these ideas are produced without my cooperation and often even against my will.
Therefore, the only alternative is that it is in some substance different from me, containing either formally or eminently all the reality that exists objectively in the ideas produced by that faculty, as I have just noted above.
Hence this substance is either a body, that is, a corporeal nature, which contains formally all that is contained objectively in the ideas, or else it is God, or some other creature more noble than a body, which contains eminently all that is contained objectively in the ideas.
But since God is not a deceiver, it is patently obvious that he does not send me these ideas either immediately by himself, or even through the mediation of some creature that contains the objective reality of these ideas not formally but only eminently.
For since God has given me no faculty whatsoever for making this determination, but instead has given me a great inclination to believe that these ideas issue from corporeal things, I fail to see how God could be understood not to be a deceiver, if these ideas were to issue from a source other than corporeal things.
And consequently corporeal things exist.
Nevertheless, perhaps not all bodies exist exactly as I grasp them by sense, since this sensory grasp is in many cases very obscure and confused.
But at least they do contain everything I clearly and distinctly understand–that is, everything considered in a general sense, that is encompassed in the obejct of pure mathematics.
[P]
God is no deceiver
the secondary qualities exist, also
As far as the remaining matters are concerned, which are either merely particular (for example, that the sun is of such and such a size or shape, and so on) or less clearly understood (for example, light, sound, pain, and the like), even though these matters are very doubtful and uncertain, nevertheless the fact that God is no deceiver (and thus no falsity can be found in my opinions, unless there is also in me a faculty given me by God for the purpose of rectifying this falsity) offers me a definite hope of reaching the truth even in these matters.
And surely there is no doubt that all that I am taught by nature has some truth to it; for by “nature”, taken generally, I understand nothing other than God himself or the ordered network of created things which was instituted by God.
By my own particular nature I understand nothing other than the combination of all the things bestowed upon me by God.
[P]
There is nothing that this nature teaches me more explicitly than that I have a body that is ill-disposed when I feel pain, that needs food and drink when I suffer hunger or thirst, and the like.
Therefore, I should not doubt that there is some truth in this.
[P]
By means of these sensations of pain, hunger, thirst, and so on, nature also teaches that I am present to my body not merely in the way a sailor is present in a ship, but that I am most tightly joined and, so to speak, commingled with it, so much so that I and the body constitute one single thing.
For if this were not the case, then I, who am only a thinking thing, would not sense pain when the body is injured; rather, I would perceive the wound by means of the pure intellect, just as a sailor perceives by sight whether anything in his ship is broken.
And when the body is in need of food or drink, I should understand this explicitly, instead of having confused sensations of hunger and thirst.
For clearly these sensations of thirst, hunger, pain, and so on are nothing but certain confused modes of thinking arising from the union and, as it were, the commingling of the mind with the body.
[P]
Moreover, I am also taught by nature that various other bodies exist around my body, some of which are to be pursued, while others are to be avoided.
And to be sure, from the fact that I sense a wide variety of colors, sounds, odors, tastes, levels of heat, and grades of roughness, and the like, I rightly conclude that in the bodies from which these different perceptions of the senses proceed there are differences corresponding to the different perceptions–though perhaps the latter do not resemble the former.
And from the fact that some of these perceptions are pleasant while others are unpleasant, it is plainly certain that my bdy, or rather my whole self, insofar as I am composed of a body and a mind, can be affected by various beneficial and harmful bodies in the vicinity.
[P]
Granted, there are many other things that I seem to have been taught by nature; nevertheless it was not really nature that taught them to me but a certain habit of making reckless judgments.
And thus it could easily happen that these judgmenets are false: for example, that any space where there is absolutely nothing happening to move my senses is empty; or that there is something in a hot body that bears an exact likeness to the idea of heat that is in me; or that in a white or green body there is the same whiteness or greenness that I sense; or that in a bitter or sweet body there is the same taste, and so on; or that stars and towers and any other distant bodies have the same size and shape that they present to my senses, and other things of this sort.
But to ensure that my perceptions in this matter are suffciently distinct, I ought to define more precisely what exactly I mean when I say that I am “taught something by nature.”
For I am taking “nature” here more narrowly than the combination of everything bestowed on my by God.
For this combination embraces many things that belong exclusively to my mind, such as my perceiving that what has been done cannot be undone, and everything else that is known by the light of nature.
That is not what I am talking about here.
There are also many things that belong exclusively to the body, such as that it tends to move downward, and so on.
I am not dealing with these either, but only with what God has bestowed on me insofar as I am composed of mind and body.
Accordingly, it is this nature that teaches me to avoid things that produce a sensation of pain and to pursue things that produce a sensation of pleasure, and the like.
But it does not appear that nature teaches us to conclude anything, besides these things, from these sense perceptions unless the intellect has first conducted its own inquiry regarding things external to us.
For it seems to belong exclusively to the mind, and not to the composite of mind and body, to know the truth in these matters.
Thus, although a star affects my eye no more than does the flame from a small torch, still there is no real or positive tendency in my eye toward believing that the star is no larger than the flame.
Yet, ever since my youth, I have made this judgment without any reason for doing so.
And although I feel heat as I draw closer to the fire, and I also feel pain upon drawing too close to it, there is not a single argument that persuades me that there is something in the fire similar to that heat, any more than to that pain.
On the contrary, I am convinced only that there is something in the fire that, regardless of what it finally turns out to be, causes in us those sensations of heat or pain.
And although there may be nothing in a given space that moves the senses, it does not therefore follow that there is no body in it.
But I see that in these and many other instances I have been in the habit of subverting the order of nature.
For admittedly I use perceptions of the senses (which are properly given by nature only for signifying to the mind what things are useful or harmful to the composite of which it is a part, and to that extent they are clear and distinct enough), as reliable rules for immediately discerning what is the essence of bodies located outside us.
Yet they signify nothing about that except quite obscurely and confusedly.