Doubtful Analogies?

"But then were I perchance to look out my window and observe men crossing the square, I would ordinarily say I see the men themselves just as I say I see the wax. But what do I see aside from hats and clothes, which could conceal automata? Yet I judge them to be men. Thus what I thought I had seen with my eyes, I actually grasped solely with the faculty of judgment, which is in my mind (Meditation 2, 32)."

Descartes often uses fascinating, brief analogies to illustrate his points. I wonder to what degree they work as well as to what degree he intends them to work. This particular analogy picks up on a question I have lingering from last class.

I will treat the question first. Basically, last class I got hung up on how (as it appeared to me) Descartes switched methods when he got to the superspecific fields of dioptrics and meteors (Discourse, 77). When the object of his inquiry got overly messy or practical or minute, I think that he (knowingly) started to rely on a posteriori effects to prove causes, rather than his standard use of a priori reasoning from causes to effects. To me, this reversal seems important precisely because it is not his main point--it seems to challenge his established method of finding certainties without empirical evidence.

What the quote is supposed to illustrate is how the apriori reasoning is what gives the certainty of what the thing is. In other words, Descartes knows the man is a man by a judgment of his mind, not because he saw their clothes. Similarly, he knows the wax is wax (whatever that is) by a judgment of his mind, and not because he touched, saw, felt, or smelt it. Is it actually possible to know what the wax is by thought alone? That is my question.

I will now examine the analogy. The first hurdle is that he sees the clothes. The clothes seem to be signs of the man that lies within. Are the qualities of the wax signs that point to the quantities that make up the essence of the wax, and which are only known by thought? From what Descartes has been saying all along about his method, it seems that the mind would have no need for signs. Should he be able to know that there are men crossing the street without even looking?

Perhaps a solution is to carry over the word see as a metaphor for the insight of the mind that grasps the wax's quantifiable essence. If we do this, then perhaps the mind "sees" the quantitative essence of the wax by adding up qualitative sensory information, a sort of mental equation, done (astoundingly) "silently and without words" (32).

But then where does the sensory information come from, if not the world? But he "has supposed [the world] to be nothing" (27). Yet he has also supposed the world to be mechanical and quantitative matter (20). I am confused. The point is that by relocating the analogy of the clothed men into the mind does not seem to have eliminated the need for some impact from the outside world.

Perhaps he simply means, "I judge them to be men" in spite of the possible deception of the appearence (i.e. that they could be robots. By the way, he probably meant the irony that is obvious with his conception of the mechanical body). But even so, how else could he judge them to be men unless he had the possibly deceptive appearance?

Unless some others of you "see" it better, it seems this analogy does not carry through far enough to be a help. It illustrates what can happen when one tries to use sensory processes to make an analogy to a process of the mind. Descartes seems to see the danger of this move; speaking in the synopsis of the third meditation, he writes, "Since my intent was to draw the minds of readers as far as possible from the senses, I had no desire to draw upon comparisons based upon corporeal things" (14). Is this one example simply a consequence of his brief laxity of the "reins" of the "confines of truth" (29-30)? Do any of you interpret this analogy in a different way that sheds better light upon my original question, or are there other analogies at key moments that should be called into question? How much is he relying on them and for what purpose? Do they help us beyond making us feel as if we understand something he said better? If so, how should we read them so as to get the truth without being mislead?