WHAT DOES THE PREMISE “A DECEIVER DECEIVES ME” CONCLUDE? －DESCARTES’ DECEIVER ARGUMENT RECONSIDERED

• Authors: Tamura Ayumu
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Descartes insists, “[...] there is a deceiver of supreme power and cunning who is deliberately and constantly deceiving me. In that case I too undoubtedly exist, if he is deceiving me [...]” (AT-VII, 25; CSM-II, 17). In what way can we draw evidence that our existence can be drawn from our being deceived? The interpretations that the earlier studies have shown are not a monolith. Then I will search for some inherent characteristics of deception, and analyse the construction of the reasoning, “if a deceiver deceives me, I exist.” To be concrete, I show: 1) that it is not “I exist” but “I think” that is concluded from the supposition “a deceiver deceives me/I am deceived by a deceiver”; 2) that the attributions of the self as a thinking thing, i.e. understanding, affirming, and denying (AT-VII, 28; CSM-II, 19), are discovered in the very supposition of a deceiver.

Keywords

EN

DESCARTES; DECEIVER ARGUMENT; SCEPTICISM

• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Filozofia (Philosophy)
• Year: 2019
• Volume: 74
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 308 – 317

Contributors

author

Tamura Ayumu

• University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan

Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.31577/filozofia.2019.74.4.4