Evil demon

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The evil demon, also known as evil genius, and occasionally as malicious demon or genius
malignus, is a concept in Cartesian philosophy. In his 1641 Meditations on First Philosophy,
René Descartes hypothesized the existence of an evil demon, a personification who is "as
clever and deceitful as he is powerful, who has directed his entire effort to misleading me."
The evil demon presents a complete illusion of an external world, including other minds, to
Descartes' senses, where there is no such external world in existence. The evil demon also
presents to Descartes' senses a complete illusion of his own body, including all bodily
sensations. Some Cartesian scholars opine that the demon is also omnipotent, and thus
capable of altering mathematics and the fundamentals of logic, though omnipotence of the
evil demon would be contrary to Descartes' hypothesis, as he rebuked accusations of the evil
demon having omnipotence.[1][2]

It is one of several methods of systematic doubt that Descartes employs in the Meditations.[1]

Contents
[hide]

 1 Deus deceptor
 2 See also
 3 References
 4 Further reading

Deus deceptor[edit]
Further information: Theodicy and Dystheism

Another such method of systematic doubt is the deus deceptor (French dieu trompeur), the
"deceptive god". Cartesian scholars differ in their opinions as to whether the deus deceptor
and the evil demon are one and the same. Among the accusations of blasphemy made against
Descartes by Protestants was that he was positing an omnipotent malevolent God.

Kennington[3][4] states that the evil demon is never declared by Descartes to be omnipotent,
merely to be not less powerful than he is necessarily deceitful, and thus not explicitly an
equivalent to an omnipotent God. The evil demon is capable of simulating an external world
and bodily sensations, but incapable of rendering dubious things that are independent of trust
in the senses, such as pure mathematics, eternal truths, and the principle of contradiction.

However, this was not the view of Descartes' contemporaries. Voetius accused Descartes of
blasphemy in 1643. Jacques Triglandius and Jacobus Revius, theologians at Leiden
University, made similar accusations in 1647, accusing Descartes of "hold[ing] God to be a
deceiver", a position that they stated to be "contrary to the glory of God". Descartes was
threatened with having his views condemned by a synod, but this was prevented by the
intercession of the Prince of Orange (at the request of the French Ambassador Servien).[2]

The accusations referenced a passage in the First Meditation where Descartes stated that he
supposed not an optimal God but rather an evil demon "summe potens & callidus" (translated
as "most highly powerful and cunning"). The accusers identified Descartes' concept of a deus
deceptor with his concept of an evil demon, stating that only an omnipotent God is "summe
potens" and that describing the evil demon as such thus demonstrated the identity. Descartes'
response to the accusations was that in that passage he had been expressly distinguishing
between "the supremely good God, the source of truth, on the one hand, and the malicious
demon on the other". He did not directly rebut the charge of implying that the evil demon was
omnipotent, but asserted that simply describing something with "some attribute that in reality
belongs only to God" does not mean that that something is being held to actually be a
supreme God.[2]

That the evil demon is omnipotent, Christian doctrine and Descartes' denial of that accusation
notwithstanding, is seen as a key requirement for Descartes' argument by Cartesian scholars
such as Ferdinand Alquié, Beck, Émile Bréhier, Chevalier, Frankfurt, Étienne Gilson,
Anthony Kenny, Laporte, Kemp-Smith, and Wilson. The progression through the First
Meditation, leading to the introduction of the concept of the evil genius at the end, is to
introduce various categories into the set of dubitables, such as mathematics (i.e. Descartes'
addition of 2 and 3 and counting the sides of a square). Although the hypothetical evil genius
is never stated to be one and the same as the hypothetical "deus deceptor," (deceptive god) the
inference by the reader that they are is a natural one, and the requirement that the deceiver is
capable of introducing deception even into mathematics is seen by commentators as a
necessary part of Descartes' argument. Kenney exemplifies Cartesian scholarship on this
point, stating that the reason that Descartes introduces a second hypothetical, beyond the
original hypothetical of the deus deceptor, is that it is simply "less offensive. The content of
the two hypotheses is the same, namely that an omnipotent deceiver is trying to deceive."
Scholars contend that in fact Descartes was not introducing a new hypothetical, merely
couching the idea of a deceptive god in terms that would not be offensive.[2]

Janowski points out one reason for not accepting this interpretation, the same as given by
Kennington, namely that the set of things that the evil demon is stated as rendering dubious
("the heavens, the air, the earth, colours, figures, sounds, and all external things") is only a
subset of the things that the deus deceptor is stated as rendering dubious (earth, heavens,
extended things, figure, magnitude, place, and mathematics). The omission of mathematics
implies either that the evil demon is not omnipotent or that Descartes retracted Universal
Doubt. Janowski notes that in The Principles of Philosophy (I, 15) Descartes states that
Universal Doubt applies even to "the demonstration of mathematics", and so concludes that
either Descartes' Meditation is flawed, lacking a reason for doubting mathematics, or that the
charges of blasphemy were well placed, and Descartes was supposing an omnipotent evil
demon.[2]

W. Teed Rockwell, claiming to be a Deweyan pragmatist, argues that instead of being dualists
or Cartesians, "philosophers should realize that the human conscious self is not reducible to
the brain, nor to the nervous system, nor even to the human body. The thinking, conscious self
is a nexus--or a "behavioral field"—of the brain, the nervous system, the body, and the
world."[5] Rockwell contends that his position "can allow for solutions to certain philosophical
problems such as the 'brain in a vat,' . . . a contemporary, materialist version of the problem
introduced by Descartes's 'Evil Genius'".[5] "Both thought experiments are supposed to show
us that human consciousness is plausible even though there might be no world in which
consciousness exists," but Rockwell argues "that even in a vat the brain would have to be
stimulated by some world, if only a world of electronic gizmos, and that such a world would
have to produce a continuous experience. The brain, hence, would have to be embodied in
some way.[citation