[Bups-dis] How 'Evil' is the Evil Demon?

[Reza Hadisi]

Hi. I liked the idea of
your argument and perhaps I would agree with most parts of the main idea.
However, regarding Descartes and why he found it so obviously evil to
think of a deception, I think you better consider Descartes's
perspective on “truth” and the relation of “truth” and
“peacefulness or insightful-ness”. Let me clarify a bit: 
 
 
In your
Nozick example,
for the sake of argument, let's imagine that it was possible to give
a whole lot of truth to the grandmother at once, in addition to the
news about the illness of her child. Imagine that it was possible to
give her a full philosophical “true” idea about the meaning of
life, death etc. and imagine that this “whole truth” would have
shown her that the illness of her child isn't a very saddening thing
after all. (Let's think with Descartes: there is a God, there is
afterlife, there is a meaning in life and death and it is not all
absurdity!!!!!!) 
 
Then compare the state
of her mind in the two different situations: in one, she doesn't know
the truth of her child's situation and she is in peace (may be, as
Descartes would want to put it: she is “fooled and happy”!)....
However in the other case, she knows that her child is sick, but she
also knows a lot more and she has such an insightful view  over the
whole thing! So perhaps we could say that she is much deeper in her
peace. (note that we have given her a whole “true” philosophical
set of beliefs -whatever it means!- which of course makes her so much
more of an insightful person!)
 
Well, the question for
Descartes (facing your objection) was: which one would God prefer?
Would He want a fooled happy Descartes or an insightful peaceful
Descartes?
 
I think, given that
Descartes would believe that “an insightful peaceful Descartes”
would somehow make sense with his philosophical tradition (I.e. the
“truth” philosophy is possible and accessible) he believed that it would have
been an evil act for God to want us as fooled happy people rather
than the insightful peaceful people with “knowledge” and “true
beliefs”. The rest of the story is known: hence He has given
me the right perceptive and rational faculties etc....

In short, I think this
was kind of a view that Descartes was trying to make:
- Because it is in
God's power to give us the truth and hence “insightful peace”,
any deception by God is an evil, because even if deception gives us
happiness, that would be a “foolish happiness”. (If God chooses
“foolish happiness” over “insightful happiness” He somehow
does some evil, I think we can agree.). Hence God would not (could
not?) deceive us.

Perhaps
most of us don't agree with many of Descartes's assumptions here.
However it seems to me that given these assumptions, this is not a very
surprising conclusion from him to think of a "deceptive God" as an
"evil God" and hence an "impossible God". 


Best,Reza Hadisi