An attempt at refuting

Decartes’evil demon scenario

The evil demon sceptical argument is an idea proposed by Rene Descartes in his Meditations
on First Philosophy, an introspective text in which he tries to forgo all that he “knows” in
pursuit of undeniable, transient truth. The argument attempts an utmost distrust of all
empirical observations; it states that if we cannot know that we are not being deceived by an
evil demon in everything our senses perceive, then we cannot know anything that is based in
these empirical observations (Descartes, 1641). This is a valid argument and therefore to
refute it we will have to disprove the claim that we cannot know we are not being deceived
by an evil demon. Alternatively, we could attempt to refute scepticism in its entirety, and if
successful refute the Descartes argument in the process.

In our attempt to refute the proposition of the argument, we will try to prove that we can
know for certain that we are not being deceived by an evil demon in everything we observe.
When doing this instinctively we run into a catch twenty-two (Joseph Heller 1961), as it is
evident that it is impossible to claim we "know” anything as absolutely certain if it is possible
that this trickster demon exists, and it is impossible to disprove the existence of an all-
powerful entity if we cannot claim to be certain of anything. Therefore, it is impossible to
create an argument from any “knowledge” we have about our observations (Schönbaumsfeld,
2019). From this we can draw the conclusion that there must be a chance the demon exists,
however we can also draw a secondary conclusion Descartes’ sceptical demon is not a unique
scenario. If we use the logic Descartes does to claim that we cannot disprove the demon - the
catch twenty-two caused by a creating a hypothetical all powerful being - we can see that an
evil demon is not the only sceptical argument that can be made: one could make up infinite
hypothetical sceptical arguments which are not technically “disprovable.” Well known
examples of these are: the brain in a vat argument (H Putnam 1981), the simulation argument
(Nick Bostrom, 2003) and Descartes’ own dreaming argument (Descartes 1641). All the
above arguments describe situations in which what one is experiencing is not a definite
reality, but a story fed to you in which everything is controlled or determined by some all-
powerful entity. One could simply create a hypothetical situation like the above which would
be just as refutable as what Descartes wrote. For example, let us assume that we are all in fact
not humans but snails with a human brain inserted by an infinitely more advanced species
long in the future and our lives are fed to these snails by a technological implant that allows
them to experience what we call life. There is no concrete evidence to prove that this is not
the case, however there is no concrete evidence to prove that it is. It is irrefutable as is each
one of infinite similar scenarios - all as likely as each other.

This existence of infinite hypotheticals leads us to our first attempt at refuting what Descartes
wrote, or at least finding flaws in his logic. These are as follows: Given that multiple
hypotheticals cannot all be true at once, (inherent to Descartes' evil demon situation where he
refers to a specific evil demon not a selection of hypothetical situations (Descartes 1641)).
Descartes' theory is one out of an infinite number of hypothetical scenarios. One divided by a
number that tends to infinity gives a result that tends to zero (James Stewert 2015) and thus
the likelihood of Descartes’ evil genius scenario is practically nought. This line of rebuttal
does have an obvious flaw - it does not guarantee that the evil genius does not exist and
therefore does not fully refute Descartes’ claim that we cannot have any knowledge based in
the empirical (Descartes 1641). However, it does show that the likelihood of Descartes'
scenario is as close to zero as one can get, which makes it almost impossible. The next flaw
or attempt at rebuttal is based on the principle called Occam's razor, this principle asserts that
when one is deciding between many answers to a question the simplest one is the best choice
(Occam 1287-1347). When considering what is behind the life that we live all the
aforementioned hypotheticals exist as potential answers, the simplest among them is an
acceptance of the empirical as the only truth - the conclusion that all we have as reality is that
which we observe, that we are blank slates written on by our experiences (Robert G Mayors
2006). This line of argument, originally proposed by John Locke, is the simplest answer
(adding nothing more to reality than that which is observed) and thus according to the
principle of Occam's Razor is the one we should take as true. This rebuttal is also flawed, as it
is dependent on an intellectual principle that is not universally accepted (G Webb 1996) and
requires the assumption that there is no simpler explanation than empiricism. Both these
attempts at a refutation are clearly very theoretical, they do not have concrete basis and so do
not dispel Descartes’ evil demon completely. However, these attempts at rebuttal do show
how purely abstract Descartes’ evil demon is and how it is not a unique scenario but rather an
argument cut from the cloth of global scepticism (A Gallois 1993)
Our alternate attempt at rebuttal will link the evil demon scenario to global scepticism and
then use the idea that global scepticism is self-refuting to refute the evil demon argument.
Global scepticism can be defined as the idea that "no one is to any degree justified in holding
any belief” (A Gallois 1993), Descartes, in his first meditation uses his evil demon scenario
as a bulldozer to destroy all beliefs he held (L Newman 2023). The link between these two is
apparent and so we can see that Descartes evil demon scenario is a sceptic theory. The
rebuttal to global scepticism is well known it claims that if we cannot know anything for
sure-that no belief is justified, then we cannot know that that claim itself is justified and thus
global scepticism refutes itself (J Dancy 1986). When one applies this lens to the evil demon
argument one finds that if the evil demon exists then none of knowledge is justified and if
none of our knowledge is justified how can we know that none of our knowledge is justified.
In this way the evil demon argument is self-refuting. However, like the arguments before this
the rebuttal to global scepticism is not universally accepted and so this argument does not
discard Descartes evil demon entirely.

Our attempts at refuting the evil demon have found reason to believe that: the scenario is
highly unlikely, the scenario does not fit Occam's idea of an answer, and that if one believes
global scepticism to be refuted one can too consider the evil demon scenario invalid.
However, they have not found the evil demon to be an entirely implausible theory and so
have not fully discounted the potential for its existence. This leaves us with the conclusion
that Descartes hypothetical is not provable true or untrue and so whilst we may have put
Descartes conclusion in context as one of many hypotheticals in the realm of global
scepticism, we cannot rule it out entirely.
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