Am I really typing this?

Descartes, in his six meditation, examines the existence of corporeal things insofar as he is a thinking thing and his body is an extended thing. In order to prove the existence of material things, the mind seem to be of use through the imagination. For, in one's mind, a triangle must exist because of its arithmetic properties such as it has three sides but also through the imagination which seems to give a triangle the appearance of truly existing. For one can imagine the lines connecting the three angles and the space in between them.

However, when thinking of a chiliagon (a thousand side figure) one can not imagine the figure but simply understand it logically. Hence, Descartes is "aware that [he] is in need of a peculiar sort of effort on the part of the mind in order to imagine, one that [he] does not imply in order to understand" (p. 48). Meaning, that one does not need the imagination in order to understand external bodies for his logical mind can define them as existent through mathematics.

Therefore, it could be deduced that the imagination is part of the body, for it's images come from external corporeal. However, although one could live without the imagination and the body, one still feel “particular” sensations (i.e size of the sun) or “less clearly understood” thoughts (i.e hunger or thirst) but they still may be false. However, “by means of these sensations of pain, hunger, thirst and so on, nature also teaches not merely that I am present to my body in the way a sailor is present in a ship, but that I am most tightly joined and, so to speak, commingled with it, so much so that I and the body constitute one single thing” (pg 53). The evidence of the mind feeling bodily sensations indicate that the two are tightly related and must both therefore exist as a single thing.

Nevertheless, although body and mind are closely related they are each an independent thing of one another. It is evident through the fact that the mind could not be divided into parts while a corporeal thing can (even in the imagination). If a limb is taken off our body the mind does not alter and therefore is independent from the body. The second observation regards this idea of separation between body and mind, is that sensation occurs in the nerves and brain but only turn into action after logic is applied to them. The sensation of pain is not enough in order to stop it from happening. Instead, Descartes believes that the sensation of pain “provokes the mind to do its utmost to move away from the cause of the pain, since it is seen as harmful” (pg 57). Hence, considering that one is only a thinking thing, one still has a body. It is separated from the mind by its being a non-thinking thing while the mind (and oneself) is the source of our thoughts.