Some Thoughts on Descartes' Wax Argument

In his second Meditation, Descartes elucidates the famous wax argument. In this argument, Descartes asks the reader to imagine that there is a ball of wax and then he goes on to list the properties that this ball would have such as “its color, its figure” and “its size,” (Meditations II). He then asks the reader to imagine that wax is placed near a fire; he writes: “while I speak and approach the fire . . . the color alters, the figure is destroyed, the size increases, it becomes liquid, it heats, scarcely can one handle it,” (Meditations II). Descartes then uses this to point out how the change to the wax means that the wax, at a fundamental level, “could certainly be nothing of all that the senses brought to my notice, since all these things which fall under taste, smell, sight, touch, and hearing, are found to be changed, and yet the same wax remains,” (Meditations II). Descartes then uses this to point out that what one can know about the essence of the wax is knowledge that can only be accessed through the mind as the fact that the wax is fundamentally “a certain extended thing which is flexible and movable” is something that cannot be accessed through the senses or imagination. This leads Descartes to conclude “that it is” the “mind alone which perceives it,” (Meditations II). 


So, the purpose of the wax argument is to show how the knowledge one receives through the senses and imagination is much less certain than the knowledge that is gained purely through the mind. Indeed, Descartes argues that it is ultimately the mind “which perceives,” (Meditations II). This is all done to bolster his supposition earlier in the second mediation that the knowledge of one's self, which is the knowledge of one’s mind for Descartes, is the best foundation for philosophy.


One objection to Descartes’ argument would be from the way in which the substance of the wax is inferred from the accidents of the wax. The objector responds to Descartes by pointing out that the only way one has access to the substance of the wax is through the conception of its accidents. This undermines Descartes argument as he argues from the mutability of the accidental features of the wax to the fact that only the mind has access to the substance of the wax as something distinctly conceived from its accidents, which Descartes then uses to show how much more certain one’s knowledge of one’s mind is compared to one’s knowledge of the external world. In sum, simply because the substance of the wax can be abstracted from accidents of the wax, it does not follow that the substance of “the wax is itself distinctly conceived,” from its accidents (Objections and Replies). This objection attacks the very core of Descartes' argumentation as Descartes is trying to use the wax to show that the knowledge acquired purely through the mind is significantly more certain than the knowledge one acquires from the senses. However, if the objector is right and the conception of the substance of the wax is indistinct from the conception of the accidents of the wax, then it is hard to see how Descartes can make such an inference.


Source:

https://eclass.uoa.gr/modules/document/file.php/PHS414/Meditations%20on%20First%20Philosophy_%20With%20Selections%20from%20the%20Objections%20and%20Replies.pdf

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