It is interesting that there is a natural human tendency to think of super-powerful evil beings in such a way that humans can defeat/misdirect them. Pascal Boyer talks about this a bit in his book 'Religion Explained'. In the face of such an unimaginably super-powerful being who wants to manipulate humans (whatever their motivation), humans would be powerless to resist. There can be no explanation why such a being couldn't simply manipulate your beliefs or ideas, for instance. So Descartes has to include an implicit claim that such a being would not be able to alter his mind, even though such a being is clearly doing this if it is altering his perception. Descartes would have to know the unknowable to properly entertain this idea. In the end, we can't know if we are being manipulated in such a way (however remote the possibility is), and we are still forced to act as if reality exists as we understand it. Which makes the whole exercise completely useless, since you can't *do* anything with whatever you ponder to effect change.
Thanks for doing what you are doing Sir! This Descartes Evil Genius is a brand new thing to me, but when you explained it briefly I realised that Gnostic texts are telling the same very thing. They use the word Archon to describe that. It could be more likely to be described as an entity, which has no form but works on vibration level and it gains its power from fear.
@@GregoryBSadler Are you familiar with the Archon concept? I would like to hear how those are not the same? As I see it, Evil Genius and Archons both have in common making illusions and deception of what is real. I see here same as what Loki is for in the Norse Mythology.
@@MrManhattan You would think being a student of philosophy, because we are all eternally students, that Professor Gregory here would have at least pointed you in a corrected direction rather than reiterating his experience in the field and saying no, you're wrong.
@@NOTurDADDY666 yeah, we are all learners. It is always a bit shame when the given answer is reasoned because how much time has been spent on that area. I have heard that time reasoning so many times. Example from the Physics teacher from the university where his statement was that nothing new can be found in that field because if there would be something new, it would be already found out. But yeah, that time argument is statement which is meant to stop going nowhere from there. 'the answer to that question is this(X) because I have done this area of life 20 years.' I also understand that this is TH-cam comment section where deep conversations might be difficult to have.
Thanks for all your work! I'm just starting out teaching philosophy to bachelor students at university and your channel is a massive inspiration in methods of teaching philosophy clearly without losing depth. Keep up the great work and looking forward to many more years of great explaining :)
Retrogamer71 Isn’t living our experiences, enough which may include education. Don’t you think overkill of anything is damaging. Research for a few years should suffice unless it’s one’s field.
You can't mold unconscious (it's so vast and unknown that such concept as molding would be absurd). But you can try to shape your consciousness to see things differently from previous. Remember that by Jungian thinking we see into unconscious (the ultimate objective reality) by our conscious minds, so the conscious filter is always there and our "job" is to shape that filter. Now, we most certainly shape the unconscious (such as cultural myths, lets say superiour western white race, superiority of male/female), but we are riding on a wave here, we can't really have a handle on it but we fumble our way forward in the darkness. Jung forexample tried to warn about dangers of Wotan in the Third Reich but if anything he added fuel to flames. So if trying to tie this to Descartes saying that he can combat the evil Demon: we can't tell are we winning or losing or against whom we are fighting. But we are taking our concieved notions and letting them being molded by the process into something new by contact with the unconscious, so in this sense Descartes' doubt and Jungian notion of unconscious isn't that different. The embhasis put on consciousness is where the rub is at. An example: Once i had Undead King who was waging war against my kingdom, but thru active imagination i discovered that he was long waited prince to it's throne and while i led him to throne he turned from wrinkled old once-dead man into young radiant golden messiah. From villain to saviour: He wasn't villain, i saw him as villain: my conscious perception was wrong, i was not cheated by Demon. I admited that i'm not the rightful ruler of my Kingdom but he is (writing this i understand how closely he is linked to Jesus). This likely had it's effects on my unconscius in a way that it didnt' need to hammer that point in anymore, but because i'm conscious creature i can't tell for certain what the effect was if there was any under the surface. all i knew was a sense of relief and joy once i found that out. Now there is moral judgements involved in here, you just don't take all that is given. This is one thing which protects one from psychosis, which comes from taking all the unconscious offers unfiltered. Jung's example: in dream the dreamer (woman) who was tasked to kill a vampire and did not but fell under it's embrace and thus dreamer fell in to psychosis from which Jung had to walk her out of (same could be said of my example above thou i'm not in psychosis, as far as i know of). In sense filter of conscious mind drops off and consciousness became unwilling "slave" to unconcious forces which comes in rushing. So unconscious definedly isn't some ideal mode of existence but possess both dangers and promises we have to try to weight with a conscious mind. So in this sense Descartes and Jungians might not be so different in the end. How to work with it: The idea is to use the inferiour acpects of one's life to deal with unconscious, so philosopher shouldn't (only) philosophize with dream-images, he should paint, meditate in mystic manner, try poems, music, gardening. Basically meaning that one should live as whole individual with all his weaknesses instead of being plain expert specialist (which is big problem nowdays: jack-of-all-trades aren't valued or needed, or breeded either). I would also add community work and politics to this sphere even if Jungians tend not to talk about worldly affairs (being so introverted). About the overkill: I come from James Hillman's side who scorned psychotherapy and wrote book 'we have had 100 years of psychotherapy and the world is getting worse'. I tend to think he hits many good things. Psychotherapy (Jungian, Freudian, Lacanian etc) is interested in solving problems, such as childhood issues with moms and dads. Hillman hated developemental idea and that we could reduce dream images into mere solvable problems of our everyday life. More old he grew less certain he was of anything, he crashed all main Jungian formalistic-concepts such as Ego, Self, Shadow and all major archetypes in favor of trying to stick with the image one has been given: Black snake is not to be formalistically reduced to the Great Mother but it has to remain as a Black Snake as was given. With me that approach resonates best. So in that sense overkill is possible and by Hillman's view is done by experts of the field all the time. Long winded asnwer to matter dear to my heart.
@@GregoryBSadler yeah, I imagine for a real philosopher (which I'm not) this would be a good argument to test other ideas. The problem is for popular culture (movies, games, even how we play games) this idea has stuck as a real possibility.
amazing channel, i just discovered it. Keep making such great content!
Will do - thanks!
It is interesting that there is a natural human tendency to think of super-powerful evil beings in such a way that humans can defeat/misdirect them. Pascal Boyer talks about this a bit in his book 'Religion Explained'.
In the face of such an unimaginably super-powerful being who wants to manipulate humans (whatever their motivation), humans would be powerless to resist. There can be no explanation why such a being couldn't simply manipulate your beliefs or ideas, for instance. So Descartes has to include an implicit claim that such a being would not be able to alter his mind, even though such a being is clearly doing this if it is altering his perception. Descartes would have to know the unknowable to properly entertain this idea.
In the end, we can't know if we are being manipulated in such a way (however remote the possibility is), and we are still forced to act as if reality exists as we understand it. Which makes the whole exercise completely useless, since you can't *do* anything with whatever you ponder to effect change.
Descartes brings it in simply as a tool to help him deepen doubt
Thanks for doing what you are doing Sir! This Descartes Evil Genius is a brand new thing to me, but when you explained it briefly I realised that Gnostic texts are telling the same very thing. They use the word Archon to describe that. It could be more likely to be described as an entity, which has no form but works on vibration level and it gains its power from fear.
They're not really the same thing
@@GregoryBSadler Are you familiar with the Archon concept? I would like to hear how those are not the same? As I see it, Evil Genius and Archons both have in common making illusions and deception of what is real. I see here same as what Loki is for in the Norse Mythology.
@@MrManhattan Buddy, I first started teaching about that stuff nearly 20 years back. Trust me, you're conflating stuff. Good luck with your studies
@@MrManhattan You would think being a student of philosophy, because we are all eternally students, that Professor Gregory here would have at least pointed you in a corrected direction rather than reiterating his experience in the field and saying no, you're wrong.
@@NOTurDADDY666 yeah, we are all learners. It is always a bit shame when the given answer is reasoned because how much time has been spent on that area. I have heard that time reasoning so many times. Example from the Physics teacher from the university where his statement was that nothing new can be found in that field because if there would be something new, it would be already found out. But yeah, that time argument is statement which is meant to stop going nowhere from there. 'the answer to that question is this(X) because I have done this area of life 20 years.' I also understand that this is TH-cam comment section where deep conversations might be difficult to have.
Thanks for all your work! I'm just starting out teaching philosophy to bachelor students at university and your channel is a massive inspiration in methods of teaching philosophy clearly without losing depth. Keep up the great work and looking forward to many more years of great explaining :)
Glad that the videos are useful for you. Where are you teaching?
Thank you for providing an attainable explanation of this argument. Much appreciated and well done!
You're welcome!
The genius evil demon is an argument of Saint Augustine .
Sort of. Not really. Read both texts closely again
Jungian psychology I believe accounts for an opposing personality in the unconscious mind.
May we have the power to mold the unconscious mind? Should we?
Something which is under expert influence under psychotherapy. Or a field of research for the advanced philosopher.
All forms of culture and self recognition lend to that formation, I believe.
Retrogamer71 Isn’t living our experiences, enough which may include education.
Don’t you think overkill of anything is damaging. Research for a few years should suffice unless it’s one’s field.
You can't mold unconscious (it's so vast and unknown that such concept as molding would be absurd). But you can try to shape your consciousness to see things differently from previous. Remember that by Jungian thinking we see into unconscious (the ultimate objective reality) by our conscious minds, so the conscious filter is always there and our "job" is to shape that filter. Now, we most certainly shape the unconscious (such as cultural myths, lets say superiour western white race, superiority of male/female), but we are riding on a wave here, we can't really have a handle on it but we fumble our way forward in the darkness. Jung forexample tried to warn about dangers of Wotan in the Third Reich but if anything he added fuel to flames.
So if trying to tie this to Descartes saying that he can combat the evil Demon: we can't tell are we winning or losing or against whom we are fighting. But we are taking our concieved notions and letting them being molded by the process into something new by contact with the unconscious, so in this sense Descartes' doubt and Jungian notion of unconscious isn't that different. The embhasis put on consciousness is where the rub is at.
An example:
Once i had Undead King who was waging war against my kingdom, but thru active imagination i discovered that he was long waited prince to it's throne and while i led him to throne he turned from wrinkled old once-dead man into young radiant golden messiah. From villain to saviour: He wasn't villain, i saw him as villain: my conscious perception was wrong, i was not cheated by Demon. I admited that i'm not the rightful ruler of my Kingdom but he is (writing this i understand how closely he is linked to Jesus). This likely had it's effects on my unconscius in a way that it didnt' need to hammer that point in anymore, but because i'm conscious creature i can't tell for certain what the effect was if there was any under the surface. all i knew was a sense of relief and joy once i found that out.
Now there is moral judgements involved in here, you just don't take all that is given. This is one thing which protects one from psychosis, which comes from taking all the unconscious offers unfiltered. Jung's example: in dream the dreamer (woman) who was tasked to kill a vampire and did not but fell under it's embrace and thus dreamer fell in to psychosis from which Jung had to walk her out of (same could be said of my example above thou i'm not in psychosis, as far as i know of). In sense filter of conscious mind drops off and consciousness became unwilling "slave" to unconcious forces which comes in rushing. So unconscious definedly isn't some ideal mode of existence but possess both dangers and promises we have to try to weight with a conscious mind. So in this sense Descartes and Jungians might not be so different in the end.
How to work with it:
The idea is to use the inferiour acpects of one's life to deal with unconscious, so philosopher shouldn't (only) philosophize with dream-images, he should paint, meditate in mystic manner, try poems, music, gardening. Basically meaning that one should live as whole individual with all his weaknesses instead of being plain expert specialist (which is big problem nowdays: jack-of-all-trades aren't valued or needed, or breeded either). I would also add community work and politics to this sphere even if Jungians tend not to talk about worldly affairs (being so introverted).
About the overkill:
I come from James Hillman's side who scorned psychotherapy and wrote book 'we have had 100 years of psychotherapy and the world is getting worse'. I tend to think he hits many good things. Psychotherapy (Jungian, Freudian, Lacanian etc) is interested in solving problems, such as childhood issues with moms and dads. Hillman hated developemental idea and that we could reduce dream images into mere solvable problems of our everyday life. More old he grew less certain he was of anything, he crashed all main Jungian formalistic-concepts such as Ego, Self, Shadow and all major archetypes in favor of trying to stick with the image one has been given: Black snake is not to be formalistically reduced to the Great Mother but it has to remain as a Black Snake as was given. With me that approach resonates best.
So in that sense overkill is possible and by Hillman's view is done by experts of the field all the time.
Long winded asnwer to matter dear to my heart.
Forerunner of Putnam's brains in vats and the more recent simulation theory.
Yes, though of course, this is just a small part of Descartes' larger philosophy, and he doesn't think there is any such evil demon or simulation
@@GregoryBSadler yeah, I imagine for a real philosopher (which I'm not) this would be a good argument to test other ideas. The problem is for popular culture (movies, games, even how we play games) this idea has stuck as a real possibility.
Crazy talk!