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

[Tim Short]

Hi Josh -

Very interesting.

I think historically it almost looks as though Descartes got cold feet 
in the middle of writing, because he realized that he was on shaky 
ground with the Doctors of Divinity of the Sorbonne, whose approval he 
vainly sought, if he was postulating a deceptive deity.  So he almost 
appears to decide to invent the demon as a more palatable alternative 
immediately thereafter, but does not delete his initial mention of a 
deity because he wants to retain omnipotence, perhaps.  I think Reza 
touches on this point at the end of the previous response.

My view is that almost all deception is not beneficial.  I think people 
should be robust enough for it to be avoided.  Because that's the way it 
is, and so they had better be able to handle it.  Clearly the amount of 
damage done is fairly slight in the case of lying to a friend about the 
attractiveness or otherwise of a shirt they intend to wear, but even 
there, would it not be more useful to the friend to have an honest 
opinion that puce and lime polka dots just isn't going to cut it in the 
union bar these days?  To take your grandmother example, imagine that 
were she to know the true situation, she would modify her behaviour 
accordingly.  Perhaps she would cancel a foreign trip in order to spend 
time with the ill relative.  Perhaps she would accelerate an intended 
bequest to pay for medical treatment otherwise unavailable.  But in any 
case, does not that extension indicate that the grandmother has a right 
not to be deceived?

So I would draw the limits around 'acceptable deception' more tightly 
than you.  And I only want to do that to avoid being in the house with 
Kant, who gladly explains to the axe-wielding maniac who has been 
chasing me around the streets that I am indeed within.  Thanks Kant.  I 
suppose that this example would lead us in the direction of arguing that 
for the deception to be acceptable, the infringements of the rights of 
the deceptee (axe-wielding maniac) is outweighed by the reasonable view 
of the observer that the deceptee would misuse the accurate information 
were it given to the profound disbenefit of a third party...



josh seigal wrote:
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> How ‘Evil’ is the Evil Demon?
>  
> In the First Mediation, Descartes considers the skeptical hypothesis that he is being deceived by an ‘evil demon’ who renders everything that Descartes previously thought of as knowledge mere false belief. The evil demon is hypothesised as possessing the capacity to induce in Descartes all of the experiences that he previously took to be veridical. Now, presumably Descartes regards such a demon as ‘evil’ purely on the basis that the experiences that the demon induces do not accord with the reality of Descartes’s situation. I am interested in the extent to which a being such as Descartes’s evil demon really deserves the epithet ‘evil’. I have some very rough ideas; I would be most grateful for anyone’s views as to whether what I am saying is of any interest, what people’s own thoughts are, and what issues are really at stake.
>  
> Firstly, what is meant by ‘evil’? ‘Evil’ is a normative concept; an action that is described as ‘evil’ carries the implication that that the action ought not to have been performed. However, in the case of the ‘evil demon’ it is not an action that is being described as ‘evil’ but an agent. ‘Evil’ as applied to an agent could presumably mean one (or both) of two things:
>  
> 1.)    the actions that the agent performs are evil, or
> 2.)    the agent’s motives are somehow malicious or mean-spirited.
>  
> The first of these would imply that the actions of the agent are such that they should not have been performed (see above). In the case of the ‘evil demon’, I believe it to be plausible that neither 1.) nor 2.) necessarily apply. If this is the case, then Descartes’s demon may not justifiably be described as ‘evil’ after all.
>  
> The evil demon, according to Descartes, is bent on deception. In order to consider the ways in which such a demon may not be ‘evil’ in either of the two senses adumbrated above, let us take an analogy. Robert Nozick, in his ‘Philosophical Explanation’, considers the case of a grandmother who is deceived by her family into thinking that her grandson is healthy when in fact he is ill. This, I believe, presents us with a clear case of non-evil deception. The people who deceive the grandmother are not evil in the first sense because it is not clear that their actions should not have been performed: it is not clear that they shouldn’t have deceived the grandmother into thinking that her grandson is healthy, because such a deception brings with it a greater amount of overall good (the grandmother does not make herself ill with worry). Nor is it the case that the deceivers are evil in the sense that their actions were performed with malice – if anything, it is out of love for the grandmother that they deceive her.
>  
> So here we have a case of deception that is not evil in either of our two senses. Now, what of the evil demon? It may not be the case that the demon shouldn’t have deceived me into having all of the beliefs that I in fact have, since my state of being had these beliefs not been induced in me by the demon may have been worse than it is now. Descartes’s doesn’t actually say what life would have been like had the demon not operated upon me. Given the possibility that it could have been worse for me (like it would have been for the grandmother) to have been exposed to the reality of my situation than to have had the demon induce false beliefs in me, it is not clear that the demon ought not have induced such false beliefs in me. Thus, it is not clear that the demon is ‘evil’ in the first sense.
>  
> An agent can also be evil if he performs his actions with malice or ill-intent. Descartes only says that the evil demon deceives me; he doesn’t say that the demon’s motives are necessarily evil. The grandmother’s family also deceive her, but their motives are surely not malicious. The demon deceives me, but why should his motives be malicious? As we noted above, the grandmother’s family deceive her out of love for her. Perhaps the demon deceives me because I am better off deceived; perhaps the reality of my situation is worse than the state induced in me by the demon.
>  
> All of this shows that the deceptive demon need not be evil purely by dint of his deception, since we have other uncontroversial cases of non-evil deception, which demonstrates that there is no necessary connection between deception and evil. But the fact that he deceives me seems to be the only basis on which Descartes describes the demon as evil. Surely this is wrong.
>  What do people think? Is deception necessarily evil, or can shielding someone from the truth be a good thing? Is ‘truth’ the thing that is of ultimate importance to us, or can it be overridden? What is really at stake here? I would love to hear your thoughts
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