Descartes

The Malicious Demon

The Malicious Demon is often misrepresented by candidates.

Misrepresentation one

There’s the unreliability of the senses, then the dream argument, and then, because some things have still not been brought into doubt, Descartes introduces the malicious demon to bring everything else into doubt.

 

Misrepresentation two

There’s the unreliability of the senses, then the dream argument, and then, because some things have still not been brought into doubt, Descartes introduces the idea of a deceiving god. However, because god is all good and wouldn’t deceive us he then introduces the malicious demon to bring everything else into doubt.

 

To see that both of these accounts are incorrect does not require any detailed analysis of the text. All that is required is a straightforward reading of that part of the text which is often missed out.

A more accurate summary might read something like...

Even if everything is a dream some things cannot be doubted. However, perhaps god has created me so that I always go wrong in my beliefs about the world, beliefs about mathematics and even in simpler things. The objection that a good god wouldn’t do this fails because it is no more inconsistent for a good god to deceive me all the time than it is for god to deceive me some of the time and that clearly happens. Some might prefer to say god doesn’t exist but the less perfect my origin the more likely it is my beliefs are wrong. So, either god exists or he doesn’t (remember, that issue will not be addressed until Meditation Three). If god exists then everything is doubtful; if god doesn’t exist then everything is doubtful. Therefore, everything is doubtful. Although this is a well thought-out conclusion my old beliefs keep returning. Therefore, I will pretend there is a malicious demon...

 

The demon does not introduce any fresh doubts. In particular the demon is not introduced in order to bring doubt on mathematics as that has already been done by the deceiving god. Indeed, commentators often specifically note that when talking about the demon Descartes doesn’t even mention mathematics. It is probable that nothing too significant should be drawn from this. Presumably the demon can bring doubt on everything that the deceiving god can. They are, as one writer put it, ‘epistemologically equivalent.’ What it does reinforce, though, is that Descartes’ particular concern is not with doubting reason but with showing that the senses do not provide a reliable foundation. The emphasis with both the deceiving god and the demon is on bringing the evidence of the senses into doubt:

How do I know that he (god) has not brought it about that there is no earth, no sky, no extended thing, no shape, no size, no place, while at the same time ensuring that all these things appear to me to exist just as they do now? What is more...how do I know that God has not brought it about that I too go wrong every time I add two and three or count the sides of a square, or in some even simpler matter, if that is imaginable?

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 (the demon) 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.

And then in the summary at the beginning of Meditation Two:

I will suppose then, that everything I see is spurious. I will believe that my memory tells me lies, and that none of the things that it reports ever happened. I have no senses. Body, shape, extension, movement and place are chimeras.

More positively, the reasons Descartes specifically gives for introducing the demon are:

  • to sustain the doubts previously raised/to prevent his habitual opinions from returning
  • to stop himself from believing things just because they are highly probable
  • to enable himself to pretend for a time that his former opinions are utterly false
  • to ensure that the distorting influence of habit no longer prevents his judgement from perceiving things correctly

A straightforward reading of the text does leave one puzzle. Having introduced the deceiving god the meditator considers the objection that a supremely good god wouldn’t deceive him. The meditator rejects this objection saying,

But if it were inconsistent with his goodness to have created me such that I am deceived all the time, it would seem equally foreign to his goodness to allow me to be deceived even occasionally; yet this last assertion cannot be made.

However, when the meditator goes on to posit the existence of the malicious demon it is introduced with the words,

I will suppose therefore that not God, who is supremely good and the source of truth, but rather some malicious demon...

We can hardly suppose that the meditator is rejecting their previous conclusion which they described as, ‘not a flippant or ill-considered conclusion, but (one) based on powerful and well thought-out reasons.’ It isn’t credible that we are to suppose the meditator is thinking, ‘Hang on a minute, I‘ve just remembered God is supremely good...’

The answer to this puzzle is to remember that these are meditations and Descartes is setting a program to help the meditator break free from their preconceived opinions and their attachment to the senses. The demon isn’t the next step of an argument, it is the next stage of the process. It is a psychological device to help the meditator think clearly.

Even so the meditator tells us ‘this is an arduous undertaking’ and they will ‘happily slide back into (their) old opinions and dread being shaken out of them.’

For someone in the grip of their preconceived opinions (and at this stage of the Meditations belief in an omnibenevolent god is still a preconceived opinion) and their attachment to the senses it is extremely difficult to break free. That is why Descartes wants his readers ‘to devote several months, or at least weeks, to considering the topics dealt with, before going on to the rest of the book.’