Descartes The Evil Spirit Argument

First Evaluative Paper
Samuel Rogers
Intro to Philosophy 100 In this paper, I will explain and evaluate Descartes doubts that he raises on both about the external world as well as these disciplines on the basis of the Evil Spirt Argument. The first thing that I am going to do is to explain what Descartes’s project of the Meditations and the role of the method of doubt in that project. Then I will explain the Evil Spirit Argument in depth about each of the premises. Once I explain the argument I will then go onto evaluate all of the premises. Finally, I will end with a conclusion on how my evaluation of the argument bears on Descartes’s project, and whether or not Descartes succeeded in using the method of doubt to accomplish his aims. Descartes’s
project in the Meditations was looking for the foundation of knowledge (Meditations, pg. 10). His main way of trying to find the foundation of knowledge was through the method of doubt. The method of doubt allowed Descartes to start from the beginning when trying to find this foundation of knowledge. In other words, he was starting with a clean slate. Descartes realized that we as humans have many false perceptions and because of this our foundation is according to Descartes “shaky” and can only be highly doubtful (Mediations, pg. 13) The method of doubt allowed Descartes to throw away everything that he previously thought he knew. Going into this Descartes knew that he would not be able to prove everything he knew false, but only enough to find reason in doubting each one (Meditations, pg. 13). The Evil Spirit Argument has two premises.
The first premise is Descartes brings into this argument is that he can only know something about the external world, arithmetic, and geometry only if he can know that there is not an evil spirit deceiving him (Meditations, pg. 15-16). In other words, Descartes is trying to get at the fact that this so to say God is giving him false perception of the external world, and deceiving him in what he thought he knew was certain. Descartes conception of knowledge is broken into different parts one being truths that can only be known by reason alone, also those that are not known by reason alone, and the other is the empirical part in the natural sciences (Ludwig, 2017). What is meant by the natural sciences are those of arithmetic, geometry, and others of this nature (Meditations, pg. 15). For these they were simple and general things, and contained things that were certain and indubitable (Meditations, pg. 15). The second premise is that Descartes has no way of knowing if he is being deceived by an evil demon (Mediations, pg. 16-17). Descartes is pretty straight forward on this one and that is that there is no possible way for him to know whether or not he is in fact is being feed false information about everything. With this idea in mind, Descartes’s conception of knowledge would not allow him to know anything at all because of the idea that he has been feed false information his entire life. The conclusion that Descartes comes to was
that he cannot know anything about the external world, arithmetic, and geometry (Meditations, pg. 16-17). Looking at the premises that are presented to us we see that the first one lets us know that we cannot know something if we do not know if our God is a deceiver, which then takes us to the second premise and that is that we cannot know if we are being deceived by an evil spirit. Because of these two premises we are lead straight to the conclusion. I believe the reason why Descartes came up with premise one was that we have been taught all of these things growing up, and not only when we are taught these things ideas and beliefs are then based off of these things that we are taught.
When you start to think about the fact that I can know something about the external world, arithmetic, and geometry only if I can know that I am not being deceived by an evil spirit you start to wonder where what we know comes from and how we know what we know is true because we were told that it was true from the beginning. So, one reason for doubting premise number one would be that we as individuals have been given no reason to think that we are being deceived. This holds up for our knowledge of our external world, as well as applying to mathematical knowledge. A second reason for doubting premise one would be that we have lived our entire lives out till the present day. We would not know if we are being deceived or not and it does not matter if we are or not simply because we have lived without knowing up to present day. The reasons for and against accepting premise one are great to me, but I would say that reasons for premise one triumph those of those going against it. My reasoning behind agreeing with premise one is that we cannot know something if in fact we are being deceived by an evil
spirit.
I believe that Descartes came to premise two because we do not know if there is an evil spirit deceiving us. Because of the possibility of an evil spirit there is not any possible way to say that something is true because the evil spirit has the ability to deceive us without knowing. An example of this would be the dreams that we have. How do we know if we are or are not dreaming? For example, in class we talked about the Brain in a vat situation. How do we know that we are not a brain in a vat that is being stimulated to perceive everything that seems to be going on around us right now? We do not know. We also see this in the idea of The Matrix, which we also mentioned in discussion section and is similar to the brain in a vat situation. One reason for doubting premise two is that we have no reason to believe that we are being deceived by an evil spirit. What good is an evil spirit getting from deceiving us? A second reason for doubting premise two is that we as individuals have lived out our lives thus far with nothing wrong happening to us. So, why not just continue to live the lives we live. The reasons for agreeing with premise two seem to outweigh those that go against. My reasoning behind this is that we do not know if we are being deceived. If we are then what is the true reality like? Is everything we know false or does some of what we know still stand? These are some of the questions that come to mind that support premise two.
I believe that the Evil Spirit Argument is deductively sound. What this means is that it is a deductively valid argument (impossible for its premises to be true and it conclusion false). For an argument to be sound it must be valid, and its premises are true. The premises for this argument are true if you ask me: we can only know something about the external world, arithmetic, and geometry only if we can know if we are not being deceived by an evil spirit, and We cannot know that we are not being deceived by an evil spirit. Both of these premises are true to the fact we have no ability to know whether or not we ae being deceived. I accept the conclusion of the Evil Spirit Argument. The conclusion is as follows: I cannot not know anything about the external world, arithmetic, and geometry. I have many reasons for agreeing with this. Say we are being deceived by an evil spirit and in reality, we could be none the less in a deep sleep. How are we supposed to know what is real and what is not? We have no way of knowing if we are being deceived for the fact we are being deceived. You cannot trust anything if you were being deceived whether that be past knowledge or even your own senses.
My evaluation of the Evil Spirit Argument does not support Descartes’s project. Again, his project was to find the foundation of knowledge through the method of doubt. I agreed with the argument that Descartes presented before us. There is no possible way of knowing whether we are being deceived by an evil spirit, and because of this Descartes would not be able to find the foundation of knowledge. Descartes would not be able to come to know the foundation of knowledge because he would not know if he is being deceived by an evil spirit. I believe that Descartes did not succeed in using the method of doubt because he brought up the fact that we could have been deceived our entire lives not knowing what is real and what is. Even if he were to go onto find means of accomplishing his project, he may think he accomplished something but what if he was being deceived. Which brings us back to that there is no way of knowing if there is an evil spirit deceiving us. (1567)