The Journey Towards Descartes’ Demon
Robin Peters
December 8, 2020
The first doubt of Descartes’ meditation is the doubt of the senses. Which, being that they deceive us, either in dreams or in contradicting each other, should not be trusted. This calls into doubt all sensory experience. All specifics become doubtful, the nature of my body or that of any object, the laws of the universe as I understand them, and as Descartes puts it “disciplines which depend on the study of composite things.”(Descartes, 20)
“Nonetheless, it must surely be admitted that the visions which come in sleep are like paintings, which must have been fashioned in the likeness of things that are real,”(Descartes, 19) so, our foundation, while shaken, still stands. It stands on the existence of a corporeal world, on shape, quantity, size, place, and time. I will call these attributes, which any object must have, the tools of form, or just form. These will be the tools from which I can build my world going into the second doubt. That I have a head, hands, or eyes, is doubtable. But that I have a body, that there is some physical object that is me, is not. And the same with other objects, an apple may be a deception, but it must hold some truth in it.
So, after the first doubt we are left with the tools of form as well as subjects which deal only with the simplest and most general things, such as math and geometry.(Descartes, 20) And, while a corporeal world remains intact, the nature of the world has been lost. We must now gather what we have left and set out, to find our footing ahead of the coming of the demon.
For any object to exist it must be created. But what is meant by creation? A god may create worlds, a demon lies, and so too a builder creates a house and a philosopher creates ideas. And for each act of creation there is a set of appropriate tools. And so, this is how we use the tools of form. I might create an object in my mind using these tools.
As an example, let’s create an apple. As a reminder, the tools are: shape, quantity, size, place, time, and a corporeal world, meaning it exists in the same space that I do. The apple then, it has shape, it is round with two dipolar craters, one much deeper and having a stem. It has quantity, there may be just one or a large pile. It has size, it may be smaller or larger. It has place, it may be in a tree or in a bowl. It has time, it may be ripe or rotten. And it is corporeal, it exists relative to me and I have a single perspective of it. In this way the tools and their use become the craft of strengthening and revealing the doubt.
But this deceiver has been alluded to for long enough. Descartes writes: “I will suppose therefore that not God, who is supremely good and the source of truth, but rather some malicious demon of the utmost power and cunning has employed all his energies in order to deceive me.”(Descartes, 22) Would this not be a god? Let us think back to our tools, would not a more intelligent, and wiser being, one that had a full understanding of its existence unclouded by doubt, would not this being have other tools at its disposal, tools that we lack the knowledge to use? And we might say that there is a tool called truth, a forge that whatever it produces is true. This forge is the tool of an omnipotent god, and must be kept out of the grasp of the demon, because one cannot deceive with the truth.
And so, Descartes must limit his scope in the service of his project. He must allow for truth to remain outside the grasp of the demon. However, this demon may have supreme knowledge of truth, and of how to rob one of it.
The role of this demon is to call into doubt those things that could not be doubted just by doubting the senses. Namely our thought, or our mind, for I may think that two and three make five but that may only be the deception of the demon. And just the same I may think that a square has four sides but again the demon may be using its tools of deception against me.
This is Descartes’ demon. However, I wonder if Descartes was able to conceive of the malicious demon deceiving his mind in the same way that I am able to conceive of the chair in front of me not existing. I find I have trouble with the demon, and trouble truly believing the doubt caused by it. And so, for a moment I will throw out the demon and see if I can doubt that two and three make five on my own.
There is one doubt from the demon that causes me no trouble, that is the doubt of my memories. Many times have I been deceived by them and so it is almost effortless to doubt them. This is not a doubt of math or geometry, my understanding of which may be, in a sense, memories, but rather a doubt of my experiential memory. Many times have I been certain of a line from a book only to find the words on the page in conflict with my recollection. This means the destruction of one of our tools of form, the tool of time. Though my present moment may have some truth in it I can no longer be sure of any in the past. The doubt grows larger, the fog grows thicker, but I must carry on.
I am able to doubt that there is a chair in front of me because I can conceive of this room without the chair in it. I might move the chair and reveal the floor underneath, so I can imagine the room without the chair. My task now is to see the floor of my mind, to rearrange the clutter of math and geometry so that I might conceive of my mind without them. I will begin by finding those concepts that I can conceive of my mind without.
Starting with zero. Zero is the absence of quantity. It makes no sense to speak of having zero of an object. Such an object would not exist, as it lacks one of our tools of form. To illustrate let’s revisit the apple. The apple has shape, and I can conceive of the shape, it has size and place, but if you say to me that this apple has no quantity then I lose the shape, the size, the place, it becomes incorporeal. I am unable to conceive of an object without quantity.
The second subject of my doubt is a third geometric dimension. Using the tools of form I may create in my mind a cube, six sided, each face equal to the others. The cube is corporeal just as I am. I have only my one perspective of it. In this way I may look at the cube and see an object with three dimensions but I might also understand it as an object with only two. From any angle I am able to conceive of the object as flat. So, the clutter is further cleared as more is called into doubt.
I have made my doubt stronger; I have seen more of the floor of my mind and there are cracks in it. But I still reject the demon. I must turn to a different framework.
In the 1999 film The Matrix, written and directed by Lana and Lilly Wachowski, the human race is enslaved by the machines. Are these machines not, in a sense, the malicious demon? But they only deceive the senses, and they are not perfect deceivers we see that with the black cat that gives Neo déjà vu. But the machines will be of some use yet in my quest for the demon. The machines provide me with a conceivable deception that the demon does not. If the machines can deceive my senses then why not my mind, why couldn’t they tell me that two and three are six. This is my way into the doubt.
So now have I reached my final demon? Do I understand Descartes’ state of mind? Maybe not, but I am able to conceive of the doubt on my own terms. I believe that I have reached the end of his first meditation. I can doubt my thoughts with confidence, and this after all is the purpose of the demon. But like Descartes I grow tired, the journey to this point has been long and I am in need of rest.
Work cited:
Descartes, René, and John Cottingham. 2012. René Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy : With Selections From the Objections and Replies. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Wachowski, Lana, and Lilly Wachowski. 1999. The Matrix. United States: Warner Bros.
