Final Philosophy #1 essay PDF

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simple essay for philosophy. Read on your own risk...

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THE EVIL DEMON VS JONATHAN VOGEL René Descartes uses the Evil Demon hypothesis to prove his point that there is little to no chance that we can prove that what we experience or what we know is real, that there will always be something like the evil demon that will say otherwise. This Evil demon challenges all our thoughts and beliefs about everything we know. What we thought was knowledge is all deceived and or false—the Evil Demon ties up to the Skeptical hypothesis. A philosopher named Jonathan Vogel tries to prove the Skeptical hypothesis wrong and gives us a better explanation about our experiences and knowledge. He does this by establishing the deceiver argument false and that what he calls the real-world hypothesis is a lot simpler and more comprehensive than the skeptical argument. Descartes introduces the Evil Demon Argument in his first Meditation, "... some malicious demon of the utmost power and cunning has employed all his energies in order to deceive me" (Page 44). The Evil Demon argument threatens all our common justifications and casts doubt over everything we generally consider to be knowledge. There is no physical world that a powerful Evil genius has caused our entire mental life and experiences. That all our sensory knowledge could be doubted and manipulated by the Evil Demon. As a result, our beliefs about the external world, such as our body, earth, and solar systems, are wrong. For example, you may believe and are almost a hundred percent sure that you are sitting down on a chair, drinking coffee, and holding this essay in your other hand. Still, in reality, you are running, and the Evil Demon is causing you to think you are sitting down and reading this essay. This is an example of how your senses can and are deceiving you, so according to Descartes, you cannot trust your senses as knowledge.

The Evil demon argument is an example of philosophical Skepticism. Skepticism is a concept that "we have no knowledge of the world around us" (Vogel. Page 284). Skepticism proposes a philosophical dilemma due to an argument known as the deceiver argument. The argument proposes that: 1. Our sensory experience could be because of ordinary perception, so what we know most about the world is true. But our sensory experience could be deceived, which means what we believe about the world is false. 2. We have no reason to believe that our sensory experience came from one way rather than the other. 3. Therefore, we have no knowledge of the world around us. (Vogel. Page 284-285) Vogel stated that if premise two could be argued to be wrong, then Skepticism is incorrect. Vogel tries to overcome the challenge of proving that there is a way to explain how we gather our knowledge and prove the Evil demon, or Skepticism, for that matter, wrong. Vogel does this by proving that there is a better way to explain our experiences and explain how the skeptical argument is false in a way that makes his argument better. Vogel introduces many philosophical explanations on the reason for believing that our sensory knowledge could not be deceived. Vogel introduces the Mooren concept that our sensory experience has a distinctive character and that having an experience about something supports us in having beliefs. Vogel's next idea is explanationism when we justify and adopt a hypothesis because they explain the data we have very well. For example, every time I go to the gym the very next day, my arm hurts. I came up with two hypotheses on why this happened: I have cancer or overworked my arm every time I went to the gym. I conclude that it must be because I overworked my arm. This decision of mine

is what Vogel explains as "inference to the best explanation"(Page 287). If one hypothesis gives us a significantly better explanation with the evidence given than the competitors, then that gives us a reason to accept the explanation and reject the competitors. The "real world hypothesis" is a "collection of your ordinary beliefs about the world"(Vogel. Page 287). It states that we have a visual experience of something because we see it. It provides a solid and broad explanation of why we have the experience we do. The real-world hypothesis explains the occurrence of our sensory experience a lot better than the Skeptical argument. So based on the inference to the best explanation, we should believe in the real-world hypothesis and reject the skeptical hypothesis. Vogel also argues that to have a reasonable hypothesis, you must explain your hypothesis, and your explanation must be effective. Vogel discusses that the Skeptical hypothesis is incompatible with the real world hypothesis because the skeptical hypothesis states that the deception causes your experiences by something other than what you think. According to Vogel, this little and defective explanation is called ad hoc explanation. The isomorphic skeptical hypothesis is an example of a hypothesis that could maybe match the real-world hypothesis. According to Vogel, "isomorphic skeptical hypothesis denies that your experience is caused by everyday objects with familiar properties. Your experience is caused instead by computer files with electronic properties"(Page 289). A hypothesis does not only need to have a good explanation; it should also contain the right amount of explanation. Vogel adds to his argument that real-world hypothesis "ascribes various familiar properties to ordinary objects" (Page 290). Vogel uses the example of a round peg, that when you see a round peg, you connect the property of being round to other objects. The round peg behaves like a round thing because it is round. On the other hand, the Isomorphic skeptical hypothesis, its computer files do not act like it is round because it's round. It has a more complex explanation of

why it is round. This complex explanation gives the real-world hypothesis another advantage. It gives a simpler and more comprehensive explanation, showing that the real-world hypothesis is better than the skeptical hypothesis explaining why we experience the experience we have and how it came about. Vogel concludes that premise two of the deceiver argument is wrong, and the skeptical argument is false. From learning about the evil demon argument and Skepticism, I can say that Vogel has in some way overcome the challenge of proving that the evil demon or even Skepticism hypothesis is wrong. I agree with Vogel that premise one of the deceiver arguments is true. That our ordinary perception could be how our sensory experience came about, so this means that what we believe about the world is true. But our sensory experience could also be deceiving, which makes them untrustworthy and false. An example is Descartes's Dream argument: you can dream about something so realistic, and you think, and you can sense that you are awake when you are simply sleeping. But as Vogel says, this skeptical hypothesis does not explain its reasoning properly and does not give a good enough reason on how these experiences come about. The evil demon argument says: P1: If I know that P, then I can say that there is no possibility that an evil demon deceiving me about P. P2: But I cannot prove that there is no possibility of an evil demon deceiving me. C: So I do not know P. But how does Descartes know that there is an evil demon? How does he really know that he does not know p? This is where and why I agree with Vogel that you can say that you know something. For example, the Moorean View that your sensory experience has a distinctive character and content. For example, it appears that you see a nice car. The sensory experience of

seeing the car proves in believing that there is a car right in front of you. Your beliving that you see a car proves that there is not an evil demon trying to deceive you. This, for me, makes much more sense than the evil demon hypothesis because it can also tie to the real-world hypothesis that it can connect various everyday properties to ordinary objects. Like my car example, I know that what I am seeing is a car because you can see that there are wheels and it is shaped like a car, it looks like a car to you and it fits a car description, and it does not need to be furtherly explain that what you are seeing is a car. This gives a better explanation of our sensory experience than the evil demon just telling us that it is all caused by an evil genius, which would make his argument an Ad hoc explanation. Descartes explains how he will need to develop a complex explanation of why a car is a car, not just because an evil demon makes it seem like it is. For me, I would believe a hypothesis more if they explain their reason more simply and convincingly than a hypothesis that states something and does not even give me a reasonable explanation on how it is what it is. Vogel also talks about how the skeptical hypothesis is flawed to back up the Moorean view and the real world view, which I agree with from my understanding. The Skeptical argument does not further explain why we can not know anything or why we should not trust our sensory experience. From what I have learned from Vogel about hypotheses, I agree that if there are two hypotheses. You have to choose between which one is better for you and what makes more sense. You should choose the one that makes more sense with the evidence given to you, and if they can explain their evidence in a way that you would understand and could accept, then that one is the hypothesis that we should believe. If we think about it, the Evil Demon argument does not explain anything other than an Evil Demon deceiving us. But unlike the real-world hypothesis, it explains in a simpler, more comprehensive way why we experience what we

experience and why we believe what we believe. Like Vogel's flat earth example, people believe that the earth is round more than the earth being flat because it makes much more sense for the world to be round. It also gives a better explanation of how the earth is round and different ways of proving it is round, unlike the flat earth theory, where it can not explain why it is flat. The Evil demon, like the flat earth, is just a theory or a flawed hypothesis. The Evil demon argument premise one may not be false. Still, Vogels' hypothesis proves that premise two is wrong. There is a way to prove the evil demon does not exist that there is a better way to explain why and how we gather our experiences. In the end, we all can argue with or against Vogel's reasoning. But for me, I understand more and see how and why we experience what we experience. It is not just because an evil demon makes us think this way but because we can always connect our senses like what we see to another object that looks just like it. I also conclude and agree that a hypothesis explanation is a key to making others believe what you are trying to convey. The Evil demon lacks this explanation which gives Vogels real-world hypothesis a better explanation of our experience about everything.

References Descartes, R. (2008). Meditation I. Of the things which may be brought within the sphere of the doubtful. In Meditations on first philosophy (p. 44). Oxford University Press. Vogel, J. (2014). Skepticism and Inference to the Best Explanation. In The Norton Introduction to Philosophy (pp. 284-290). Norton....