Sun Yu Hsuan 3035362457

How can the Malignant Demon deceive me about my basic mathematical beliefs? Can
he make it false that 2+3=5?

The Malignant Demon is a being proposed by Descartes for his account on

skepticism in the meditations. However, to further assess the Malignant Demon
argument, we first need to investigate its predecessor, the Dream Argument.
According to Descartes, the Dream Argument is not sufficient enough to justify
skepticism, or as many like to call, Cartesian doubt. Things like mathematical beliefs
and corporeal nature of humans are the things that escape the Dream Argument in
Descartes mind. But why cant the Dream Argument, or perceptional illusions in
general, messes with my mathematical beliefs? Looking at the notion of the dream
possibility, what it provides us is the grounds to doubt our senses, as we could not
completely rule out the possibility of us not dreaming. Even so, it is quite intuitive for
many people, including Descartes, to believe that mathematical beliefs do not rely on
senses, but other means like rational reasoning.
Before we move on to the evil endeavors of the Malignant Demon, lets jump out
of Descartes thought process for a bit and examine whether perceptional illusions
could mess with ones mathematical belief by itself. It is hard to deny that
mathematics is fundamentally based on logical reasoning, but representation of
mathematics like equations ultimately still has to rely on symbols, and this is where
illusions might come in to play. Taking consideration of ideas from Descartes, other
philosophers and myself, I came up with an analysis between mathematics, logic and
perceptual illusions:

1.Mathematical concepts do not rely on senses.

1a. To present or conceive mathematical concepts, the process may be still affected
by perceptual illusions. (ie. The uses of symbols.)
2.We are now in a dilemma where we do not have a definite answer whether to
identify mathematical beliefs reliant on senses or not.
3a.If mathematical beliefs does not rely on senses, then we are done.
3b.Even if mathematical beliefs does rely on senses, there are other means to fiddle
with my mathematical beliefs.

Note that there is a significant difference when I mentioned mathematical

concepts and mathematical beliefs. While mathematical concepts have to be
universal, whether it is the same for mathematical beliefs is entirely judgmental since
I classify beliefs to be personal. Nevertheless, the beliefs, regardless of its truth, are
still based on those universal concepts. There are still many arguments surrounding
beliefs and meanings, including externalism and internalism, but for the sake of
the essay I will leave it here. Now lets talk about something more troubling than
perceptual illusions.......

Even if we could tell that we are awake, that doesnt stop the Malignant Demon
from fiddling with our experiences. Because the demon is capable of interfering
with our thoughts as well. There are a couple of potential ways the Malignant Demon
could deceive us through thoughts, including our reasoning capabilities and
meaning of things. I will go through each of them and explain how the Malignant
Demon could take advantage of it to deceive us, particularly in the mathematical
department. Also keep in mind that the Demon is also capable of deceiving me that
something incorrect is correct in my experience.

A. Reasoning Capacity
This is probably the more convincing answer to how the Malignant Demon could
deceive us. Take 2+3 for instance. Suppose the Demon messes up Maxs capacity of
mathematical reasoning and he now no longer knows how to do addition. So when
Max sees the equation 2+3, either he do not know the answer at all, or he throws out
and answer that is completely arbitrary.

To clear out the ambiguity of what reasoning actually is, lets define it as
conforming to universal laws like logic and axioms. Even when it comes to the fields
of sciences and mathematics, there are still axioms that did not came from proofs or
experiments, but from mutual acceptance between scholars. We will get back to the
argument relating to the foundation of reasoning later.

B.Meaning of things

There are still escapees for claiming reasoning capacity as the Demons method
of deception. Suppose Max claims that 2+3 is 9487. However, we could not rule out
the possibility that the Demon came in to create chaos and now Max believes that 2+3
implies Generate a random number starting from 9 and that is. This might seems
absurd at first, but you could not rule of the possibility of this scenario. The same goes
conversely if the Demon tries to make a true statement false.

Nevertheless, there is one major issue that this method of deception has to cope
with; that is by changing the meaning of certain objects in the context, you are only
changing the truth value of the sentence or claim, but not the ideology behind it.
Sure the Demon can make the sentence 2+3 is 9487 true, but that wont change the
fact that Bob and Mary has 5 apples in total if the former has 2 while the latter has 3
unless the Demon purposely does another wordplay on the context again. The same
situation may goes on and on until either we have nothing more to be deceived, or that
the demon defaults back to deceiving us on our reasoning capacity. This method
seems quite circular and tedious. Think about it, if humans are lazy, then it is quite
likely the same goes for the Malignant Demon too.

Now that we have analyzed the two possible ways the Demon could deceive us,
now it is time for the final piece of the puzzle: Can it 2+3=5 or other mathematical
concepts false? The good new to justice is that, the Demon seems only capable of
making a statement, but not the concept, changes its truth value or fiddling with an
individuals capability of reasoning. Unfortunately, one final issue remain for us to
repute that the Demon could not make mathematical concepts false, that is, what is
the foundation of those concepts and knowledge?

For mathematical theorems like the Pythagorean theorem, we could soundly

argue that the theorem is true through rigorous proofs. However, not all the concepts
of mathematics, most notably axioms, is backed up by proofs. Ultimately,
mathematics still have to based on axioms, which are not provable, at least within the
same mathematical systems. Here is a simple logical argument to prove that axioms
cannot be proved by simply using the definitions of axioms and theorems. Suppose
axioms could be proved, but then if that is the case, they would be considered as
theorems! Renowned mathematician and philosopher Kurt Gdel proved that all
attempts to prove axioms in a mathematics system would be inconsistent or circular.

There are no definite answers to the foundations of mathematics, and many

metamathematicians actually resorts back to claim that mathematics is a creation of
the human mind, or that mathematics is only a language and a game of formulas. And
of course, for many people, and possibly Descartes himself, would claim that those
foundations are a gift of god.

But recall that earlier in the essay, I claimed that mathematical concepts are
universal. However, this seems to contradict to the claims by many
metamathematicans. Some monotheists may take advantage of the opportunity to
prove that god exists. But think about it, if such a deity exists, why would it present
mathematics principles in the form of axioms that we could not further interpret? The
most common way to resolve the conflict, is to draw a line between mathematics
and metamathematics. While I have to admit this could be compared to what an
ostrich does when trying to hide from a prey, it does seemly get the job done.

Now lets turn our attention back to the Demon again. If we dive into the world of
metamathematics, it is possible that the Demon could take over and messes with our
fundamental understanding of mathematics, therefore making 2+3=5 false. However,
if we strictly talk about mathematics, then it is impossible for the demon to make
2+3=5 false. Because in the field of mathematics, our emphasis is only on how
those preexisting mathematical axioms and definitions build up to form a robust
series of theorems and corollaries. And by virtue of those axioms and theorems, etc.,
2+3=5 has to be true.

Things will certainly get more complicated when talking about the role of the god
and the Demon in metamathematics. However, we are in an amiable spot to defend
the Demon from falsifying 2+3=5 in the fields of mathematics.
References:
Gdel, Kurt. "Some metamathematical results on completeness and
consistency, On formally undecidable propositions of Principia Mathematica
and related systems I, and On completeness and consistency." From Frege to
Gdel: A source book in mathematical logic 1931 (1879).
Alistair Robinson: The Dream and The Malicious Demon (2010)
http://critique-of-pure-reason.com/the-malicious-demon/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamathematics