Descartes' Evil Demon Argument
Essay Choice 1
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.
The Evil Demon Hypothesis is an important component of the Method of Doubt. Descartes used the Method of Doubt to find what is true by withholding assent from all beliefs that are dubitable. However, if Descartes was to scrutinise everything he believed, he would be left with an endless and impossible task. So instead of going through each opinion one by one, he went ‘straight for the basic principles on which all his former beliefs rested’ (Descartes, 2010:15). He grouped his beliefs into the faculties from which they are derived, such as the senses, imagination and reason. He then used increasingly stronger hypotheses to find whether the faculties can be doubted. He began by using the sceptical hypothesis that senses deceive us at a distance. For instance, a person standing under a tree a kilometre away from where you are could mistakenly be interpreted by you as a boy with a golf club when really it is an old woman with a walking stick. But what cannot be doubted are the objects nearby, such as the keypad I’m typing on and that I’m sitting on a chair. So Descartes went to the next argument, the Dream Hypothesis, which claims that our senses are dubitable because when we dream, we are convinced that we are having real life experiences as a wizard or driving to the shops, not asleep in bed. However, with that hypothesis we cannot doubt the laws of physics and mathematics and that we use knowledge from our senses when we are awake to create those dreams. To doubt physics, maths and the most simple things
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.
The Evil Demon Hypothesis is an important component of the Method of Doubt. Descartes used the Method of Doubt to find what is true by withholding assent from all beliefs that are dubitable. However, if Descartes was to scrutinise everything he believed, he would be left with an endless and impossible task. So instead of going through each opinion one by one, he went ‘straight for the basic principles on which all his former beliefs rested’ (Descartes, 2010:15). He grouped his beliefs into the faculties from which they are derived, such as the senses, imagination and reason. He then used increasingly stronger hypotheses to find whether the faculties can be doubted. He began by using the sceptical hypothesis that senses deceive us at a distance. For instance, a person standing under a tree a kilometre away from where you are could mistakenly be interpreted by you as a boy with a golf club when really it is an old woman with a walking stick. But what cannot be doubted are the objects nearby, such as the keypad I’m typing on and that I’m sitting on a chair. So Descartes went to the next argument, the Dream Hypothesis, which claims that our senses are dubitable because when we dream, we are convinced that we are having real life experiences as a wizard or driving to the shops, not asleep in bed. However, with that hypothesis we cannot doubt the laws of physics and mathematics and that we use knowledge from our senses when we are awake to create those dreams. To doubt physics, maths and the most simple things
References: Cottingham, J. 1976. Descartes on ‘Thought’. The Philosophical Quarterly. Vol. 28, No. 112: pp. 261-263. Descartes, R. 1988. Meditation 1 and the beginning of meditation 2 in: Cottingham, J (ed), Descartes: Selected Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 73—76. Kennington, R. 1971. The Finitude of Descartes’ Evil Genius. Journal of the History of Ideas. Vol. 32, No. 3: pp. 442. Kierkegaard, S. 1985. Philosophical Fragments. Trans. Hong. Princeton. pp. 38-42. Smith, Kurt. 2010. Zalta, E. (ed), Descartes’ Life and Works. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2010/entries/descartes-works/ [29/03/2012] SparkNotes Editors