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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 5 page analysis of O.K. Bouwsma's essay 'Descartes' Evil Genius' and on Descartes' 'Meditations.' Bibliography lists 4 sources.
Page Count:
5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: KE9_99bodes.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
his sensory perceptions of the world were sometimes unreliable and reflective of the nature of reality. This caused Descartes to hypothesize about the existence of an "evil demon," an "evil
genius"?as powerful as God, but deceptive. In this essay, "Descartes Evil Genius," modern day philosopher O.K. Bouwsma took Descartes original conception and updated it, expressing it in modern terms,
which make it more accessible to the current day reader. Bouwsmas refreshing retelling of Descartes "genius" adds to the readers comprehension of Descartes philosophy through telling "two adventures" (86). In
doing so, Bouwsma tells his reader that he intends to "discover that the evil genius may very well deceive us, but that is we are wary, we need not be
deceived" (86). In the first of these stories, Bouwsma says that the evil genius changed everything in the world into paper, but that paper, itself, he left unchanged. One
young man, Tom, notices the difference. He is not deceived. Bouwsma states that this fantasy illustrates the "sort of situation which Descartes words might be expected to
describe" (89). He goes on to write that an illusion is something that "looks like or sounds like, so much like, something else that you either mistake it for something
else, or you can easily understand how someone might come to do this" (89). In this way, Bouwsma is recalling the words and the logic used by Descartes. Descartes
train of logic caused him to speculate on the very basis for what constitutes reality. How could he trust the sensory information, which he had demonstrated could easily be deceived?
For example, a stick stuck into water appears to be broken, when?in fact?it is still whole. This train of thought, in turn, caused him to postulate that he might
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