René Descartes Evil Demon: Non-Existent

In the First Meditation, Descartes gives us the Evil Demon Hypothesis which serves to give him reason to doubt the existence of everything he perceives and believes. He describes a ‘malicious demon of the utmost power and cunning’ that has the sole purpose of deceiving Descartes (Descartes, 2010: 17). I will argue that his hypothesis has proven to be a strong one because only the cogito provides a way for us to frustrate or trick the evil demon.

Objective reality is the reality of ideas or thoughts, while formal reality is the cause of our ideas or thoughts. For example I see desk in our classroom. There could be a powerful being giving us the idea of desks, senses actually taking in desks, or I expect desks to be there so I create the idea of desks. When Descartes considers the example of God, he uses the same experiment to explain how we come to the idea of God or an all powerful being. I am not perfect, and I have never sensed or experienced perfection. Can the all powerful demon be giving me this image of perfection? No, because to deceive is an imperfection. The only possible explanation for the cause of our reason of perfection is God. "From these considerations it is quite obvious that he cannot be a deceiver, for it is manifest by the light of nature that all fraud and deception depend on some defect." ( Descartes 80) Also Descartes goes on to say that it is more perfect to exist than not to exist. Therefore if the definition of God is perfect, then God must exist.

This is Descartes’ Evil Demon argument. These two arguments are important as they bring up many queries about how we live our lives, and if we can really be certain of anything around us at all.

The cogito, “I think” is Descartes’ first certainty and his first step into knowledge. Descartes argues that there is one thing that he is most certain of and even the evil demon can manipulate and make him doubt. He cannot doubt that he thinks because even doubting of a form of thinking and that means that he will be thinking. Even if the demon made him doubt that he is thinking, he would be confident that he is thinking that the demon is making him doubt his thinking. He cannot also doubt that he exists and if he were to doubt of his existence, he would prove that he exists because of his thoughts, and thus his thinking means he exists and hence if he exists then he must be thinking of his existence. Therefore, Descartes extends his certainty

In his First Meditations, Descartes also forms the evil demon argument. Much like the dreaming argument, the evil demon argument also focuses on doubt and the extent to which we can trust our senses.

Descartes’ Evil Demon argument is the idea that instead of his God deceiving him- because he is too good to do so – that perhaps there is an evil being of a similar power to God who is in fact deceiving him to believe falsehoods as fact (Reason and Responsibility, Feinberg and Shafer-Landau, 2015, 242-244). The premises for this go like 1. If I am to be certain of anything I need to be certain I am not being deceived by a powerful evil demon, 2. I cannot be certain I am not being deceived by a powerful evil demon, therefore 3. I cannot be certain of anything. This is harder to argue against because there is no evidence for an evil demon existing- however this does not stop Descartes from believing in God. This is a valid argument because the premises do follow on from each other however, it is not a sound argument because premise 2 is

Descartes organised his ideas on knowledge and skepticism to establish two main arguments, the dreaming argument and the evil demon argument. The dreaming argument suggests that it is not possible to distinguish between having a waking experience and dreaming an experience. Whereas, the evil demon argument suggests that we are deceived in all areas of our experiences by an evil demon. This essay will investigate the validity of the arguments and to what extent the conclusion of these arguments is true. The soundness and the extent to which the premises are true will also be explored. After evaluating these arguments it will be concluded that the dreaming argument is valid, but is not sound. Whereas, the evil demon argument is both valid and sound.

After giving his first proof for the existence of God Descartes concludes by mentioning that this proof is not always self-evident. When he is absorbed in the world of sensory illusions it is not quite obvious to him that God’s existence can be derived from the idea of God. So to further cement God’s existence Descartes begins his second proof by posing the question of whether he could exist (a thinking thing that possesses the idea of an infinite and perfect god) if God itself did not exist.

Descartes’s attempt to prove the existence of God begins with the argument that he has the clear and distinct idea of God as the “most perfect being and that there must be at least as much reality in the efficient and total cause in the effect of that cause” (40). Therefore, this idea of God can’t be from himself, but its cause must be God. So God exists. In what follows I’ll explain these terms and why the premises seemed true to him.

This demon also leads you astray when attempted to make some abstract judgments something as trivial as math equation. According to Nagel, Descartes was sure of way to dispel his own demon theory, because he himself was not a skeptic but on a journey to find certain and absolute knowledge. He felt that to have found certain knowledge that he must doubt everything and if there was anything that could not be doubted then he would build his foundation of knowledge on top of that one thing. Descartes comes to the end of his doubting when he forms “Cogito Ergo Sum” (I think therefore I am). The way he answers this is even if you are questioning the fact that you yourself exist this very fact reaffirms that you in fact do

However, the Meditator realizes that he is often convinced when he is dreaming that he is sensing real objects. He feels certain that he is awake and sitting by the fire, but reflects that often he has dreamed this very sort of thing and been thoroughly convinced by it. On further reflection, he realizes that even simple things can be doubted. Omnipotent God could make even our conception of mathematics false. One might argue that God is supremely good and would not lead Descartes to believe falsely all these things. He supposes that not God, but some "evil demon" has committed itself to deceiving him so that everything he thinks he knows is false. By doubting everything, he can at least be sure not to be misled into falsehood by this demon.

You can find Descartes’ proof of the existence of God in the Third Meditation. Although to understand this argument you have to look at his previous meditation where he begins to build his argument with the notion that in order for him to think, he must exist. From this observation, Descartes’ sees that the idea of his existence is very clear and distinct in his mind. Based upon this clarity and the fact that he has just determined his own

Descartes makes an attempt to prove God’s existence throughout his third meditation. In his first premise he states that he has an idea of an infinitely perfect being. He uses the Principle of Sufficient reason to advance his argument; it states that everything must have a reason or cause. This put forth his second premise; that the idea of god must have a

His belief in God even affected his theories on reality. One of his theories was that he was being deceived by a conniving and mischievous demon that was hell-bent on distorting his reality. The demon could be comparable to the evil dictator and the memory replacing machine in Total Recall. Despite the evil demon, Descartes did manage to reveal one very true thing and that is that he must exist if he truly is being deceived by the evil demon because he needs to exist in order to be deceived. He later summarizes this into his famous phrase “I think, therefore, I am.”(Descartes 136).

Descartes’ first meditation, his main objective is to present three skeptical arguments to bring doubt upon what he considers his basic beliefs. Descartes believes this to be an intricate part of his complete epistemological argument. Descartes skeptical arguments are not intended to be a denial of his basic beliefs. On the contrary, he uses these arguments to help prove one of his main theses, which is the existence of God. One of the main premises that Descartes uses in his proof for the existence of God comes from the evil demon argument, which he proposed, in the first meditation. It is this evil demon argument, which will be the topic of the following discussion.