Against The Evil Genius

4 Pages 903 Words

In Descartes¡¦ first meditation he spends the majority of his time in an attempt to disprove some fundamental beliefs. He argues that his senses are, at times, misguiding as they lead him to take some falsities for truths. He also states in his ¡§dream theory¡¨ that it is sometimes impossible to discern waking reality from dreaming reality. All of these instances of miscued reality lead Descartes to an alternative hypothesis, the evil genius argument.
This ¡§evil genius¡¨ argument states that there is an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-clever being causing us to believe in a false reality set up by himself, the evil genius. In the evil genius argument, Descartes abandons all previous beliefs of a benevolent, caring, and supremely good god and replaces it with this idea of an evil genius, whose sole purpose is to deceive Descartes.
Later on in Meditation VI Descartes makes a stand against his evil genius theory relying on the idea of God as backing. He makes the statement that God has given him reasons to believe in the physical existence of reality. However, there is no way to disprove that physical existence. If the external physical world familiar to Descartes did not exist, then that would make God a deceiver. Under our supremely good view of God, the notion of him being deceitful in nature would certainly be untrue. The conclusion of this would be that the external physical world is in existence, in essence disproving the evil genius argument.

P = No physical world exists. G = God is a deceiver.
If P „³ G
~G______
~P (Modus Tollens)


In defense of the evil genius argument, a problem is raised in regards to the second premise, stating that God is certainly no deceiver. Given that god is our omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and benevolent caretaker, anyone would certainly agree that he is as well, no deceiver. However, what if Gods characteristic of being perfectly good contradicted his ...