d distinctlyperceives it as wax. He notes that this perception is not any sort of sensed thing, but rather something known bywhat Descartes calls the light of nature. He then states that his perception of the wax seems free fromdeception, but, even if it were not, he would still have to exist to perceive it. He ends meditation two with a firmbelief in the Cogito. He may not know what he is, but he exists. The underlying thought behind Descartes doubts about the existence of small and universal elementsseems to stem from a couple assumptions about omnipotence and logic. He implies in the first meditation thatan omnipotent deceiver could make me believe that something cannot be both alive and not alive at the samemoment, and that in reality the omnipotent deceiver has made it so things can be both alive and not alive at thesame moment in time. For this to be true, an omnipotent being would have to be able to do that which is logicallyimpossible as well as that which is possible. The problem with this line of reasoning is that it is logicallyimpossible that such a being exist. Such a being would have to have the power to make himself not omnipotentwhile still being omnipotent. Since this cant be done, it must be the case that an omnipotent deceiver unboundby the laws of logic cannot, by definition of the word omnipotent, exist. Even assuming for the sake of argumentthat such a deceiver does exist, Descartes Cogito is still very much in trouble. If an omnipotent deceiver canfool him on the Law of Non-contradiction, what makes Descartes think that same evil deceiver cant fool him onhis own existence? True, it is most definitely logically impossible to doubt ones existence without existing, butthe omnipotent deceiver, according to Descartes, has the power to do the logically impossible. So it would seemthen, he could deceive us on the matter of our own existence. Descartes next tact might be to draw a distinctionbetw...
