Christian Kaltwasser, Music & Poetry: August 2009

In Defense of Descartes' Malin Genie[1] Hypothesis

by Chris Kaltwasser

(OSU Philosophy Department Matchette Award Winner, 1996)

Suppose one day you walk into a room and see flowers in a pot on the table. Are those flowers real? How can you tell? Suppose you take a closer look. You reach your hand out and pick up the pot. You feel the weight of it press down on your palm. As you bring the flowers closer you can smell their pleasant fragrance. Reaching out your other hand, you touch the petals. They feel soft and delicate. Setting the pot by the open window, you observe as a lazy bee alights on one and then another of the blossoms, busy collecting pollen. Do you know these are real flowers now? Might they not be a clever illusion, designed to fool you into thinking you are seeing, holding, smelling, and touching flowers? René Descartes proposed just such a problem in his Meditations on First Philosophy: We know our senses can be mistaken—perhaps this is always the case. O. K. Bouwsma, many years later, suggested this hypothesis was itself a case of trickery. He argued that flowers you can see, hold, smell, touch, and so forth could not be an illusion, but instead that reality is what we should call them. However, Bouwsma is the one who is playing tricks with the words "illusion" and "reality."

In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes takes as his project to discover and defend a trustworthy basis for knowledge. For him, reality is the substance of existence and not mere perceptions or appearances to the senses. Two contradictory claims about reality cannot both be true. To have true knowledge means to have ideas which correspond accurately to reality. Knowing he has often been mistaken in his former beliefs, Descartes determines that he will systematically demolish his "house of knowledge," to find a solid foundation on which his knowledge can be built reliably. Believing that his mind will habitually fall into its old ways of error, Descartes determines that he will withhold assent from any of his former beliefs, as he employs a number of skeptical hypotheses to strip away all which is not manifestly true. He realizes that nothing which he formerly had believed is beyond reasonable doubt, because he finds that he has valid and well-considered grounds for doubt (Descartes, 4). By employing his method of doubt, he intends to discover some unshakable foundation for knowledge, something which he can know to be true without possibility of doubt.

Each of Descartes' skeptical hypotheses takes the form of a supposition that reality is in some way not as he has formerly believed, but instead some other reality accounts for his beliefs and perceptions. By a wave of three such hypotheses Descartes soon reduces his grasp of truth to mere elementary notions of extension, size, quantity, and number of things. He can doubt his beliefs of the external world, by supposing that all he senses of the world around him is pure fantasy, the product of his own dreaming mind independent of any reality, much as a painting might depict objects and creatures which never existed nor could exist in reality (Cottingham, 40-41). Then, as his ultimate hypothesis, by which he calls into doubt even these last elements of belief, Descartes supposes that his mind is deceived every time he contemplates even the simplest of ideas. When he adds two numbers, some mischievous agent insures that he produces the wrong sum without realizing his error. Not merely may he err, as he knows he sometimes does, but he is consistently deceived by the design of a malicious power:

I will suppose, then, not that there is a supremely good God who is the source of all truth, but that there is an evil demon, supremely powerful and cunning, who works as hard as he can to deceive me. I will say that sky, air, earth, color, shape, sound, and other external things are just dreamed illusions which the demon uses to ensnare my judgment. I will regard myself as not having hands, eyes, flesh, blood and senses—but as having the false belief that I have all these things (Descartes, 4-5).

Then, with a note of final triumph, Descartes handily smites his malin genie and establishes one truth which he asserts even this strongest of hypotheses cannot call into doubt: Descartes himself must exist, if he is deceived. As much deceptive power as he grants to this demon, Descartes cannot think himself to be nothing while he thinks that he is something (Descartes, 7). Armed with the unshakable knowledge that he exists as a thinking thing, Descartes proceeds with the rest of his Meditations to construct what he believes to be a framework for reliable knowledge.

We shall now briefly consider Descartes' theory of perception, of which the two central components are his concepts of causality and of ideas. Of the former, he holds that there must be as much reality in a cause as in an effect, and that the causal relation between things is a transfer of some formal or eminent reality from the cause to its effect. Hence, "it follows both that something cannot come from nothing and that what is more perfect—that is, has more reality in it—cannot come from what is less perfect or has less reality" (Descartes, 18). Of ideas, Descartes holds that ideas are modifications of thinking, which is the essential quality of his existence from which he cannot conceive himself to be separated. The view of perception that Descartes takes, then, is that there must be some archetypal reality which is the cause of all ideas. All ideas are like images of that formal reality from which they derive, and perceptions are representations of real things either from the mind itself or from things outside of the mind (Descartes, 19).

The validity of Descartes' arguments for a foundation of knowledge depends very significantly on the coherency of his skeptical hypotheses. By them he has toppled both his senses and his imagination as reliable means for attaining knowledge of reality, and builds instead on nothing but reasoning from his own existence and thought. If the illusions of the evil demon do not call all but his existence as a thinking thing into doubt, as Descartes claims, then his arguments are effectively crippled. If his supposition about the evil demon does violence to reason in some way, the consequence is that he has doubted what cannot reasonably be doubted and laid the foundations for knowledge far "below" where they ought to lie.

In his essay, "Descartes' Evil Genius," O. K. Bouwsma argues that Descartes' last hypothesis has in fact done violence to the concepts of illusion and reality. He submits the hypothesis to a trial by proposing two adventures for Descartes' evil demon. By the first of these exercises, Bouwsma proposes to show an ordinary illusion. It is one which can even be detected by the careful attention of one of the demon's victims. In his second exercise, Bouwsma proposes to reproduce exactly the scenario Descartes describes at the end of his first Meditation, and this, Bouwsma argues, is no illusion at all.

For the first adventure, Bouwsma supposes the evil demon is in the mood to exercise only some of his unlimited powers to deceive. He will construct a malicious deception, changing everything in the world to paper. Flowers, trees, sky, sun, and even human beings will be nothing but paper, carefully crafted to fool the unwary eye. This is the illusion Bouwsma proposes: that everything will appear very like normal, but in fact everything (except paper itself) will be changed. Bouwsma then supposes there is a young man named Tom who sees through the illusion. The flowers on the table are really paper. The young woman, Milly, is paper. The window, trees, houses, sky, sun, clouds, rain, and Tom himself are all paper. Tom experiences the illusion, but is not deceived because he knows the difference between paper and these other things, despite the fact that the paper illusions are carefully designed to fool him. An illusion, according to Bouwsma, is something that seems like something it is not. The given illusion is that the world is as we take it to be: flowers, trees, people, and paper, all distinct and real. The reality is that there is nothing but paper (Bouwsma, 30).

Ever cunning and malicious, the evil demon is not satisfied with his first attempt at deception. In what will be his second adventure, Bouwsma supposes that the evil demon now undertakes the project of constructing a world of illusions by which poor Tom will be thoroughly deceived. When Tom thinks he senses a thing, he will in fact be deceived, because there will be no such thing. To this end, first the demon must do away with all that is real in the world except for Tom himself, to which he restores his former life. Now the demon arranges things so that Tom believes everything is as it was before, that what seems to him solid and real is as it was before, just as solid and real. All this Tom believes, but all in fact are the products of the demon's deception.

Bouwsma now examines the illusion world created by the demon, and concludes that it is in fact reality, not illusion, which the demon has reproduced. The demon desires recognition for his cunning deception, and so decides to enter into Tom's perceptions and plant the seeds of doubt. Instead, Tom shows the demon that he has failed to deceive. The demon enters into Tom's experience, sharing with him the senses of seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling. Nothing is missing. The flowers are still as pretty to see, as delicate to touch, as sweet to smell. Tom can gather their pollen, send them to Milly, or do anything else one could normally do with flowers. It seems that the demon has not done away with flowers or Milly or Tom's body, but only with what it was the demon could sense of these things beyond human sight, hearing, touch, smell, or taste. Tom is not taken in by the demon's deceptions. To Tom, everything is as it was before. The flowers are still flowers, the sky is still sky, and Milly is still Milly.

How is this so? According to Bouwsma, Tom is a clever lad. The demon may say that the flowers are not real, that he has in fact destroyed all flowers, but there they are in front of Tom, as real as they ever were. They are real and not illusions, Bouwsma claims, because they do not differ from real flowers as far as Tom is concerned. Sight, smell, and touch all verify the existence of these flowers, so for Tom, what the demon is insisting are mere illusion are in fact what a human being would call reality without a second thought. The demon may be able to reach out with some extra sense and miss the presence of the flowers, but no human being could do this. So, the demon has in effect constructed his own illusion. The flowers and Milly and everything else are still present and real to Tom. It is only the demon who has removed what it was he sensed of the flowers and Milly and the rest beyond the senses available to a human being, and is left with a world of illusions.

But there seems to be a trap in Bouwsma's argument. What about Milly? Poor Milly has no life. She has no awareness and no senses. She has no existence. We have granted this demon unlimited power to do and to deceive, and he has done this terrible deed: he has killed Milly and replaced her with an illusion. The demon, even in his perverse desire for recognition, never thinks to tell Tom this fact, but only uses the flowers as an illustration of the deception. There is no Milly, just as there are no flowers. If Tom speaks to Milly, or touches her hair, or kisses her, she will not subjectively hear or feel or give that kiss in return. Tom is alive, but Milly is dead. Tom can sense everything he could before, including the flowers and Milly, but he is deceived if he thinks they exist in reality. All that exists in the world is Tom, Tom's perceptions, and the evil demon, and though the demon has insured that Tom's perceptions lack nothing they formerly contained, they clearly are illusions.

An illusion is something falsely believed to exist, or, it is a false belief about reality. Reality is what exists in the world. When Bouwsma argues that the paper world of the evil demon's first adventure is an illusion, he is correct. The paper flowers and people and sky are imitations designed to fool. Those who mistake the paper imitations for the things themselves are taken in by the illusion. When Tom discovers the truth, that there is nothing but paper in place of these things, there is no more illusion for him. When Bouwsma argues that the dream world of the second adventure is reality, he is mistaken. What Tom perceives may seem real to him, but they lack real existence. How, then, does this concept of reality differ from Bouwsma's?

When I see flowers in a pot, I suppose that there is something in those flowers which I call life. This life is what makes the flowers grow, and when that life is disrupted, the flowers wither and die. I can see the flowers, smell them, collect the pollen or send them to a friend, but if I suppose sight and odor and arrangement is all flowers are, I am thinking about something less than the flowers themselves. Flowers are more than just my collected perceptions of them.

Similarly, when I see my friend sitting across the room, I suppose that he is a real person who has life and senses and awareness. I believe that his life and senses and awareness are similar to mine. If I speak his name, he hears me and knows I have addressed him. If I give him the flowers, he subjectively sees, feels, smells, and enjoys them just as I do. If I recite a line of verse, he hears the words and remembers that what I am quoting is The Tempest. My friend, like the flowers, is more than just my collected perceptions of him.

In the case of both the flowers and my friend, I am supposing there exists something of which I have no immediate experience. In fact, I seem to be basing my knowledge of both the flowers and my friend not on some sensory impression immediately present to my mind for experience and reflection, but on the combination of all of my sensory perceptions, as well as my reasoning and my expectation that my perceptions are consistent with reality. That is, I trust that what I perceive through the combination of sight and hearing and the other senses is a true impression on my mind of some real thing outside of my mind. I seem to assume the representational theory of perception as Descartes does, supposing that my ideas are of something outside of my mind, and that unless my senses and reasoning are deceived, my perceptions are reflections of some objective reality beyond them. There are physical flowers in the pot, and there is another thinking, feeling person sitting in that chair.

What I mean by the words "flowers" or "person" or "sky" is not just my perceptions of these things, whether colorful or firm or bright, and I would argue this meaning is the common one. What is meant is the thing itself, which, if it possesses senses and awareness can likewise perceive the things around it. The distinction becomes transparent when the object of our speaking is another person. Perhaps the flowers can be said to have no objective reality, and their existence independent of my perceptions is something essentially unreal to me. Presumably they do not have feeling or experience. But, to say that my friend would have no objective reality is to likewise eliminate his own subjective reality. So, when Bouwsma argues that the word "flowers" applies to the perceptions of flowers, he is perhaps not taking any great liberty. When he argues that the name "Milly" applies only to Tom's perceptions of that person, he is surely mistaken. When I say "flowers" I may not draw a sharp distinction between my perceptions of flowers and objects outside of my mind, but if I say "friend" I most definitely mean a person who has ideas, subjective experiences, and perceptions just as I do.

In contrast to my view, which I take to be very like Descartes', Bouwsma's theory of perception might be characterized in terms of positivism[2]. That is, he considers only what can be conceived to be contingent on some set of criteria, and shown to be true by those criteria. In this view, what is true is what can be demonstrated to be so, and whatever cannot possibly be demonstrated is meaningless. So, to speak of objective existences which I cannot possibly know of by direct experience or by some other means is futile in such a view. I do not have experience of what I call "real flowers," and therefore I am speaking of what I know nothing about and can know nothing about, because I cannot directly demonstrate the existence I describe.

What then might Bouwsma say about poor Milly, who I have claimed he has abandoned to nonexistence? In his second illustration, he argues that Milly is present and has been reproduced in the "illusion" in her full reality. At least, so far as Tom seems to care, she is fully as real as ever. Briefly, the theory of behaviorism considers mind in terms of behavior, identifying mental phenomena with the activity of some material. Such a view seems to fit Bouwsma's argument well, for if we suppose that we know Milly only in terms of how she acts, the things she says, and so forth, then she is fully present and real for us if we have the full sensory appearances of her outward behavior. After all, we would hardly concern ourselves with the inner working of a person's nervous system when we say that person is happy or is feeling pain, just as we would never conjure images of chemical structures when we say a flower has a pleasant odor. Yet I do not think that when Tom sees Milly, talks to her, or gives her flowers, that this subjective reality of Milly in his mind thereby reproduces the subjective experiences of Milly herself. The notion is in fact totally inconsistent withwhat is meant by "subjective experience."

So, one might argue that all we can possibly have knowledge of is our perceptions of things, and this is a difficulty which Descartes faces in relation to his representational theory of perception. However, it is what I or any other speaker of the word "flowers" believes which is very much at issue in this matter. When I say "flowers" I probably mean what I judge to be the reality causing my sensations. When I say "friend" I definitely mean what I judge to be another person with whom I have an amicable relationship. If there is no such reality or no such person, I am quite fooled by an illusion, for this is what is meant by the word "illusion": a mistaken belief about reality.

Hence, I have shown that it is Bouwsma who has in fact done violence to the common concepts of "illusion" and "reality" in his critique of Descartes' evil demon hypothesis. When we speak of reality, we speak of more than mere appearances. Consequently, when Descartes supposes an evil demon has the power to cause him to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel all the things he presently does, and that in fact the demon is deceiving him by this means, this is a coherent hypothesis. If such a demon had such power and were using it in this way, the illusions he employed would truly be illusions, and Descartes truly would be quite deceived. So, apparently, is the philosopher who thinks that when we speak of "reality" all we mean is our perceptions.

Works Cited

Bouwsma, O. K. "Descartes' Evil Genius." Ed. Alexander Sesonske and Noel Fleming, Meta-Meditations: Studies in Descartes. Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, Inc., 1965.

Cottingham, John. The Rationalists. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Descartes, René. Meditations on First Philosophy. Trans. Ronald Rubin. 2nd ed. Claremont, California: Areté Press, 1986.

Malcolm, Norman. Problems of Mind: Descartes to Wittgenstein. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.

Notes

[1] malin genie

French, "evil genius." Descartes supposes that he is under the influence of a powerful and intelligent being that is capable of deceiving him at every instant." I will suppose, then, not that there is a supremely good God who is the source of all truth, but that there is an evil demon, supremely powerful and cunning, who works as hard as he can to deceive me."(Descartes, 4)

[2] positivism (logical)

Logical positivism, also known as logical empiricism, is a philosophical position which holds that there are only two sources of knowledge, logical reasoning and empirical experience, and that any statement of fact (e.g., "the grass is green") is only valid if it can be tested against empirical observation. Hence, logical positivism rules out any metaphysical hypotheses (synthetic a priori knowledge) or any inductive reasoning (analytic a posteriori knowledge). For a fuller discussion of this topic, see the Wikipedia article on logical positivism and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on behaviorism.

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