C The Evil Demon Argument example essay topic

1) Descartes uses a method commonly referred to as Methodical Doubt (beginning with a doubt in hopes of arriving at a given certitude). With this skepticism, Descartes questions the inherit nature of what it is to be. It is his initial perception, upon beginning his piece, again, with "methodical doubt", which the world may not exist, but may be a facet of an individual's imagination. However, he quickly contests this argument with his face phrase, "cog ito ergo sum" which means "I think, therefore, I am"I. The Arguments for Universal Doubt: In order to show that science rested on firm foundations and that these foundations lay in the mind and not the senses, Descartes began by bringing into doubt all the beliefs that come to us from the senses. His aim in these arguments is not really to prove that nothing exists or that it is impossible for us to know if anything exists (he will prove that we can know external objects later), but to show that all our knowledge of these things through the senses is open to doubt. If our scientific knowledge came to us through the senses, we could not even be sure that anything outside of us existed.

The obvious implication is that, since we do know that external objects exist, this knowledge cannot come to us through the senses, but through the mind. Descartes uses three very similar arguments to open all our knowledge to doubt: The dream argument, the deceiving God argument, and the evil demon argument. The basis idea in each of these is that we never perceive external objects directly, but only through the contents of our own mind, the images the external objects produce in us. Since sense experience never puts us in contact with the objects themselves, but only with mental images, sense perception provides no certainty that there is anything in the external world that corresponds to the images we have in our mind. Descartes introduces dreams, a deceiving God, and an evil demon as ways of motivating this doubt in the veracity of our sense experience. A. The dream argument: 1.

I often have perceptions very much like the ones I usually have in sensation while I am dreaming. 2. There are no definite signs to distinguish dream experience from waking experience. therefore, 3. It is possible that I am dreaming right now and that all of my perceptions are false Descartes realizes that someone may not accept that all of the elements of our dreams may be illusory, so he introduces another mechanism to increase the scope of our doubt. B. The deceiving God argument: 1.

We believe that there is an all powerful God who has created us and who is all powerful. 2. He has it in his power to make us be deceived even about matters of mathematical knowledge which we seem to see clearly. therefore, 3. It is possible that we are deceived even in our mathematical knowledge of the basic structure of the world. For those who would hold (as Descartes himself will later) that God would not deceive us, Descartes introduces an evil demon instead. C. The evil demon argument: 1. Instead of assuming that God is the source of our deceptions, we will assume that there exists an evil demon, who is capable of deceiving us in the same way we supposed God to be able.

Therefore, I have reason to doubt the totality of what my senses tell me as well as the mathematical knowledge that it seems I have. Since the source of our knowledge cannot lie in the sense, Descartes must find a way to rebuild the edifice of knowledge upon material he can find within the contents of his own mind. The first thing he can be sure of on the basis of this alone is his own existence. II.

The argument for his existence (The 'Cogito' argument) 1. Even if we assume that there is a deceiver, from the very fact that I am deceived it follows that I exist. 2. In general it will follow from any state of thinking (e. g., imagining, sensing, feeling, reasoning) that I exist. While I can be deceived about the objective content of any thought, I cannot be deceived about the fact that I exist and that I seem to.