The "meditator" in Rene Descartes' "Meditations on First Philosophy" believes that whatever you perceive clearly and distinctly must be true. But what does perception ultimately mean? Perception, according to dictionary.com, is the "the act or faculty of apprehending by means of the senses or of the mind; cognition; understanding." This is ultimately true; it is how we understand and reason through the senses or the mind. This plays a huge role, according to the meditator, in determining what an "I" is. By an "I," he is ultimately asking what clearly defines existence. He concludes that an "I" is a thing that thinks, understands, wills, imagines, and senses. Note that none of these things are physical or tangent things. By stating this, he is saying that an "I" is something that perceives. Perception defines existence. We can now see what a huge role perception has upon us.
The meditator states that "..even bodies are not, properly speaking, perceived by the senses or by the faculty of imagination, but by intellect alone, and that they are not perceived through their being touched or seem, but only through their being understood, I manifestly know that nothing can be perceived more easily and more evidently than my own mind," (Pg 23, paragraph 34).He breaks down perceptions into two groups; imperfect/confused and clear/distinct. He shocked to reveal "how prone my mind is to errors," (Pg 22, paragraph 32). It is easy to be deceived, especially through sensible and imaginative qualities. What defines sensible qualities? They are what we feel, what we taste, what we hear, what we see, and what we smell. Imaginative qualities are what we imagine, or ultimately make up through things in real life. Mermaids, for example, are half woman and half fish. He believes that whatever we perceive through these two qualities will ultimately be imperfect and confused perceptions. He provides us with the "wax" example. Through our senses, we can conclude that wax is hard and cold. This is an example of how easy a mind could be deceived. As we move the wax towards something that emits heat, a fire for example, the wax loses its structure and becomes liquid. We can imagine the several different shapes that it can become, but still it does not provide us with a clear definition of what wax is. It is only through our cognitive abilities and careful mental scrutiny that we determine the lasting qualities on wax, which are that they are "extended, flexible, and mutable," according to the meditator. He states that "insight is not achieved by the faculty of imagination," (pg 22, paragraph 31). Thus he concludes that sensible and imaginative qualities provide us with imperfect/confused perceptions, while careful mental scrutiny provides us with clear/distinct perceptions. In his third meditation, he elaborates more on the idea of perception. He believes that when examining tangible and corporeal things, you can only clearly perceive size, extension, shape, motion, duration, number, and substance. But as a thinking thing, there are no limitations. Whatever you perceive clearly and distinctly must be true.
The meditator is clearly true when it comes to clear and unclear perceptions. We must depend on our sensible and imaginative qualities, but they only provide us with indefinite answers. From there, we must rely on our reasoning and cognitive abilities to provide us with clarification. The meditator believes that what defines an "I," or existence in this case, depends strictly on one's ability to think. This is clearly true. Form does not determine existence, our ability to think does. Look at God for example. God has no "true" form, but most of us still know that he exists. The same is true with us; even without a body, if we still continue to think, we still exist.
