The Evil Genius And The Ontological Argument For The Existence Of God Analysis
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Topic 1:
The Evil Genius and the Ontological Argument for the Existence of God
The Evil Genius figure created by Rene Descartes offers a claim that such a being could exist. He created such a deceiver in order to prove his own existence and to prove that if a doubt is germinating in his mind then for the doubt to exist he should too.
However, Descartes does not provide enough support for his claim of its possibility i.e. the evil genius exists.
I think that there is a self-defeating quest: The self-defeating quest is based on the words
Descartes uses which defeats his task of doubting all beliefs. Since language is a medium to express one’s doubt then why does Descartes not doubt the certainty of the words he is using to formulate the doubts .So, his attempt to doubt is self-defeating as he never questions the meaning of the words used by him to express his doubts.
Descartes wants to prove the existence of God because the possibility of being controlled by the evil genius makes him doubt everything about himself and whatever he perceives. When we say
"God is," logically we are really saying "for all x, if x is a God, then x exists. Therefore, when
Descartes predicates existence of God he is uttering a grammatically coherent sentence, but a very confusing logical proposition. To say "God exists" is to say "for all x, if x is a God, then x is existent" which is another way of saying "if God exists then He exists." Rather than predicate actual existence to God, this logical