Meditation, Descartes seeks "to find at least one thing that is certain and indubitable" (17). He begins with the pure doubt that his senses can be relied upon to report to him the truth, for his senses have deceived him in the past. He considers that the "evil genius" is deceiving him, but even in that case there is something---himself---which exists because it must exist to be deceived. Who, then is the "I" which exists? He considers and rejects again that the body with its senses can be the basis of a truthful philosophy. He discovers that all of his considerations---even doubt---are expressions of his thought: "Here I discover that "thought is an attribute that really does belong to me. . . . I exist . . . for as long as I think. . . . I am therefore precisely only a thing that thinks" (19). The imagination as well as the senses cannot be trusted. The mind (or soul, or intellect, or reason) must be separated from all deceiving forces external or internal. "Sensing" and "imagining" are seen by Descartes to be "nothing other than thinking" (20). He examines the nature of wax, its changes and his perceptions of those changes. He discovers little of solid truth about wax, but does concludes that the mind in its thinking about the wax can be further accepted as a basis for his philosophy. Even thinking inaccurately about the wax proves further that the mind exists.
In the Third Meditation, Descartes explores the reality of God and His power to deceive. He argues that ideas do relate to external things accurately, and that some of these ideas seem to b
...