Philosophy

Rene Descartes The Nature of Human Mind, and how it is better known than the Body
Rene Descartes (2010-2015) meditated in six terms where he  started from his first meditation on doubt, followed by the human mind and the body, then by discussion on God, truth and falsity, the essence of material things, and the existence of God, lastly, the existence of materials things, and the real distinction between mind and body. Overall the study reduced to the existence of God and the distinction between human body and the mind.

Descartes delimited existence from doubting and hoping. The only thing that he grasped certain was the uncertainty. In the course of doubting the existence something was made clear. He proposed and defined the human mind as something that thinks, that imagines, doubts and understands things. This was further exemplified through his argument on the I and the mind. The I and the mind that doubted certainly, understood almost everything, affirmed the existence of the thinking I that denied, that hungered for knowledge, rejected lies, imagined involuntarily, and was aware of objects or occurrences that were brought by the senses.

Since senses were distinguished by the human mind, therefore the existence of the body came after the recognition of the human mind. The human mind could determine why such thing exist and subsist- not just mere illusions that were produced by mere imaginations. The mind, therefore, was larger than or higher than the body. The body was composed of the following senses of taste, smell, sight, touch, and hear(Descartes, 2010-2015, p.6), which can all be altered through inevitable or natural changes.
The mind is better known than the body was illustrated through the wax. The body was the wax, not just a body that we know of. He took this as a representation of body. A wax that was produced by the honeycomb, which if the human mind perceived, even when taken out of its original form or from the wax, like how it tasted as honey, smelled like a flower, still it would be the wax that it had been (Descartes, 2010-2015, p.6). Like a body, a body that was known for its perfect form that has the characteristics and attributions of what the mind know as the body. A body that was changeable- meaning something that had no original form (Descartes, 2010-2015, p.6), which meant, a wax fired changed from being a wax into something different but still was a wax as the mind perceived it to be. A wax that was flexible (Descartes, 2010-2015, p.6), meaning from a wax into a different body but still was perceived as a wax by the human mind.

Therefore the I, like the wax that was defined, characterized and identified by the human mind was one characteristic of the mind that made it better known than the body because of its capacity on perceiving things that the body cannot function as such. Unless enquired by the human mind a thing could not exist as such, therefore that human mind belonged to whom that had a higher perceptions and judgments.

A mind was better known than the body because it was what shaped the I or who or what someone was. The manner by which the mind doubted and all its nature made the existence of the mind concrete. Rene Descartes had thought of that the existence of the body was not drawn by the senses that belonged to the body, but by how the mind understood it and how the mind perceived. His last statement even appeared as, I now know that even bodies are perceived not by the senses or by imagination but by the intellect alone, not through their being touched or seen but through their being understood and this helps me to know plainly that I can perceive my own mind more easily and clearly than I can anything else.