Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Evil demon
Summary
The evil demon, also known as Deus deceptor, malicious demon, and evil genius, is an epistemological concept that features prominently in Cartesian philosophy. In the first of his 1641 Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes imagines that a malevolent God or an evil demon, of "utmost power and cunning has employed all his energies in order to deceive me." This malevolent God or evil demon is imagined to present a complete illusion of an external world, so that Descartes can say, "I shall think that the sky, the air, the earth, colours, shapes, sounds and all external things are merely the delusions of dreams which he has devised to ensnare my judgement. I shall consider myself as not having hands or eyes, or flesh, or blood or senses, but as falsely believing that I have all these things."
Some Cartesian scholars opine that the malevolent God or evil demon is also omnipotent, and thus capable of altering mathematics and the fundamentals of logic, though omnipotence of the malevolent God or evil demon would be contrary to Descartes' hypothesis, as he rebuked accusations of the evil demon having omnipotence. It is one of several methods of systematic doubt that Descartes employs in the Meditations.
Prior to the Meditations proper, Descartes gives a synopsis of each Meditation and says of Meditation One that "reasons are provided which give us possible grounds for doubt about all things, especially material things" and that whilst the usefulness of such extensive doubt may not be immediately apparent, "its greatest benefit lies in
freeing us from all our preconceived opinions, and
providing the easiest route by which the mind may be led away from the senses.
The eventual result of this doubt is to
make it impossible for us to have any further doubts about what we subsequently discover to be true."
Descartes offers some standard reasons for doubting the reliability of the senses culminating in the dream argument and then extends this with the deceiving God argument.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.