Philosophical Works · Chapter
LXXI explained
Descartes identifies the chief cause of human error as the prejudices acquired in childhood, when the mind was so closely tied to the body that it mistook sensory perceptions for objective truths, attributing to external objects qualities l
What happens
Descartes identifies the chief cause of human error as the prejudices acquired in childhood, when the mind was so closely tied to the body that it mistook sensory perceptions for objective truths, attributing to external objects qualities like tastes, smells, and colors that exist only in the mind, and later forming false beliefs about the size, motion, and substance of things based on bodily impressions.
Themes in this chapter
Skepticism and Certainty
Descartes argues that childhood prejudices, formed from sensory impressions, are the primary source of error, undermining the certainty of knowledge derived from the senses.
Mind-Body Dualism
The chapter describes the early union of mind and body, where the mind's perceptions were tied to bodily states, leading to confusion between subjective sensations and objective reality.
Characters to notice
- Narrator
The narrator describes the early life of the mind and the origin of prejudices.
- René Descartes
Descartes is the author presenting his analysis of the causes of error.
Key passages
“In early life the mind was so closely bound to the body that it attended to nothing beyond the thoughts by which it perceived the objects that made impression on the body; nor as yet did it refer these thoughts to anything existing beyond itself, but simply felt pain when the body was hurt, or pleasure when anything beneficial to the body occurred, or if the body was so highly affected that it was neither greatly benefited nor hurt, the mind experienced the sensations we call tastes, smells, sounds, heat, cold, light, colours, and the like, which in truth are representative of nothing existing out of our mind, and which vary according to the diversities of the parts and modes in which the body is affected.”
In infancy, the mind was so fused with the body that it only registered bodily impressions—pain, pleasure, and sensations like taste, smell, sound, heat, cold, light, and color—without recognizing that these sensations do not correspond to anything outside the mind, but instead vary with the body's state.
Descartes explains how early sensory experiences are misinterpreted as external realities.
“Hence arose the belief that there was more substance or body in rocks and metals than in air or water, because the mind perceived in them more hardness and weight.”
This led to the false conclusion that rocks and metals contain more substance than air or water, simply because they feel harder and heavier.
An example of how bodily impressions create erroneous judgments about the nature of matter.