DESCARTES WAX PASSAGE: ORIGINAL READING RECORD Read Meditation II in your chosen version. This record is a reading aid, not a claim that the argument establishes the whole Cartesian system. What is the wax argument trying to show? Notes: ____________________ Locate the passage inside Meditation II Notes: ____________________ Step 1: compare the wax before and after heating Notes: ____________________ Step 2: separate observations, judgments and conclusions Notes: ____________________ Step 3: distinguish extension from an imagined shape Notes: ____________________ Read one short phrase, then reconstruct the argument Notes: ____________________ Step 4: follow judgment back to the thinking self Notes: ____________________ Test three objections without changing the target Notes: ____________________ CLAIM CHECK Reported sensory change: ______ Accepted identity judgment: ______ A pictured shape versus understood possibilities: ______ Object claim versus occurrence of thinking: ______ Conclusion and missing premise: ______ OBJECTION What I grant: ______ What I question: ______ Best reply and unresolved issue: ______ EIGHT PRACTICE QUESTIONS 1. A student says the wax keeps exactly the same volume, so extension is unchanged. What needs correcting? My repair and reason: ______ 2. The wax looks different after heating. Does that alone prove that a different object has replaced it? My repair and reason: ______ 3. You picture a circle, a square and a triangle. Have you thereby represented every possible shape of the wax? My repair and reason: ______ 4. Someone describes the conclusion as: the senses always lie, so every sensory report is false. Is that faithful? My repair and reason: ______ 5. An essay says: because the wax is grasped intellectually, it certainly exists outside the mind. What step is missing? My repair and reason: ______ 6. A critic agrees that perception involves judgment but says the relevant concepts were learned from repeated experience. What does the disagreement concern? My repair and reason: ______ 7. If the meditator mistakes a dream of wax for real wax, is the judgment itself therefore absent? My repair and reason: ______ 8. Your conclusion reads: the wax argument proves that mind and body are two distinct substances. How should it be revised? My repair and reason: ______ READING LOCATIONS Descartes, Meditation II; Bennett modernized English, printed pages 6–8 (PDF pages 7–9). https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/descartes1641_1.pdf SEP Descartes Epistemology, sections 1.4 and 9.1. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-epistemology/ SEP Rationalism vs Empiricism, introduction and opening section 1. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/