 Resolving the Trust of the Senses and the Fact of Being Physical in Meditation 6 of the Meditations on First Philosophy.
In this closing discussion that the philosopher Descartes presents in his landmark essay, Meditations on First Philosophy, Meditation 6 comes full circle to apply what has been discovered in this long discussion to an objection brought early on in his book. Descartes began his exploration of what can be considered true long before Meditation 6 with the assertion that the reason the intellect must examine the nature of reality and what can be known intellectually is because what is reported by the senses is unreliable.
The very fact that the senses can be deceived and that we are bombarded with input from dreams, imagination and false reports from the senses is why the nature of what is true dominates Meditation 6 and all of the reflections that brought us to this point in the essay. That doubt gives us good reason to question the nature of truth and, as we have witness in previous chapters or "meditations", leading up to Meditation 6, that questioning can even effect our ability to assume that God exists. Thankfully, through a meticulous process of intellectual logic, Descartes does resolve many of these doubts in the preceding discussions.
In many ways, Meditation 6 is the most vital to the average person because that conflict between what we understand from the senses and what we can accept or believe can have a great deal of impact on daily life. We senses the conflict particularly when we are setting out to participate in the physical and spiritual act of meditation because the influence of physical sensation has a great deal of impact on our success.
If we were pure intellect, as the chapters before Meditation 6 explores, we could turn that reporting on and off and dwell in that quiet mental state for the entire time of our meditation session. But the physical condition of the body, the appetites and that constant stream of information coming to us through the senses cannot be denied.
In Meditation 6, Descartes comes to terms with the fact with that stream of information and the fact that it should not be ignored even if we could. This is something we understand intuitively. But without a serious and somber reflection on the conflict between the mental, spiritual and physical nature, the conflict can create anxiety and keep us from reaching higher states of understanding.
That is why Meditation 6 of Meditations on First Philosophy is an important conclusion to the essay. It brings us back to the physical and resolves philosophically the inevitability of physical life and the truth of some of what we learn from the senses. Meditation 6 is not a surrender because the problem of interpretation remains. The problem of interpretation is that unless we use the intellect to filter what the senses tell us, we will be constantly deceived. And if that deception becomes chronic, we are pushed back into a philosophical crisis, which is where Meditation on First Philosophy begins. Thankfully, Meditation 6 revisits the question and resolves the conflict in a satisfactory manner, which closes out Descartes phenomenal philosophical treatise beautifully.
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