Does Matter Exist?
Table of Contents
1. Why we know that bodies exist
Firstly, everything that we sense comes from something other than our own minds.
- This is because we cannot create these sensations by ourselves.
- Instead, these depend on something that touches our senses.
Could our sensations of a thing come from God or something else?
Our senses often make us clearly perceive a thing with:
- length, width, and depth
- shapes
- movements
- colors, odors, pain, etc.
If God gave us these sensations directly without our senses, then it means He delights in deceiving us.
Yet we know that this thing is different from God and from our own mind.
Our idea of this thing is formed in us by external bodies [animal spirits] similar to it.
God’s nature is not to deceive us.
Then it follows that there is a certain substance with length, breadth, and depth, which exists at present in the world with all the properties that it has.
We call this extended substance as body, or the substance of material things.
Superphysics Note
2. How we know that our mind is joined to a body
Our body is more closely united to our mind than all others because we clearly perceive the pain and many other sensations from it.
Our mind naturally knows that these sensations do not come from itself but from its union with the body.
3. Our senses do not teach us the nature of things, but only how they are useful or harmful to us
Everything that we perceive through the mediation of our senses relates to the intimate union between mind and body.
Through that union, we usually understand only what the external bodies can do to benefit or harm us, but not what their true nature is.
For after this reflection, we can abandon all prejudices from our senses, and rely only on our understanding.
For it is in the mind alone that the first notions or ideas—the seeds of all truths we are capable of knowing—are naturally found.