The Answer To Descartes' Evil Demon

By Leo Gura - March 27, 2025

I was asked the question: How would you respond to the Descartes evil demon argument?

The Descartes evil demon argument goes like this:

If we are doing truth-seeking, how can we ever know anything is true if there might be a very powerful evil demon manipulating our experience of reality outside our awareness? How can you claim God exists? If this evil demon has placed you into a fake, illusory external world, then your claim that God exists cannot be certain.

Here’s the answer:

This line of skepticism makes a crucial ontological mistake. It assumes that an external reality can exist at all. As it turns out, an external reality is ontologically impossible. The only reality which is possible is one that exists. If a reality does not exist, then it cannot have any ability to affect anyone or deceive anyone. But existence IS Consciousness. Existence is self-luminous by virtue of being Absolute Truth. So, even if there was an evil demon who tried to deceive me, the only way he could do so is by creating a reality which exists. But any reality which exists is illuminated in my Consciousness, since Consciousness IS existence. This means that any reality whatsoever must be an “internal” reality. It is always visible to itself (me) simply by virtue of being True.

Notice how profound this is: if an evil demon is deceiving me, it must still be true that an evil demon is deceiving me. If it is not true, then there is no evil demon. An evil demon’s existence requires Truth! And for his evil tricks to have any power whatsoever, it must be true that the tricks are real, since an unreal trick is not a trick at all!

A demon can create an illusion, but an illusion is still a real, existent thing! A mirage is not water, but the mirage still has existence as the appearance that it is. So a demon could fool me into thinking that a mirage is water when it isn’t. But a demon cannot fool me about the existence of the mirage itself. It is absolutely true that a mirage exists, if it does. And if it doesn’t, then it cannot fool me. Any illusion an evil demon creates must still absolutely exist. Even a fake copy of a genuine artwork still has existence. Even a hologram still has existence. Even an optical illusion still has existence. Even a lie still has existence. Even delusion has a kind of existence to it. So, the answer is that even if an evil demon has totally fooled me about the nature of objects in the world, he can never fool me that I exist, that I am conscious, that illusions appear to me, that existence is Absolute Truth, and that everything, including the evil demon, is God.

Notice that the evil demon still needs a medium through which to do his dirty work. That medium is the one and only medium there is: Consciousness. Consciousness can certainly be self-deceptive, it can fool itself, but it cannot ever disconnect from the fact that it is Consciousness. Consciousness cannot ever be anything other than Consciousness. This is what A=A means. A must equal A. This is Absolute. Even an evil demon, even God himself, cannot make A not equal to A. The evil demon is still bound by the absolute logic of existence. An evil demon cannot create things which do not exist. Anything an evil demon creates must have existence, just by the absoluteness of logic. And in this case logic is not just human thought or language, in this case logic is Reality itself.

There is absolutely no skeptical argument that can debunk God. Because God is existence and any kind of skepticism assumes and requires existence. If a skeptic is stupid enough to deny existence, then his own skepticism and he himself doesn’t exist and has no effect. But of course, even this is impossible because existence cannot not exist. What the skeptic fails to grasp, because he lacks the necessary consciousness, is that existence is Absolute Truth. Existence is an ontological tautology.

You can be deluded about anything whatsoever in life, but you cannot not exist. Delusion requires existence. And as long as you exist, you must be God because God is existence. Therefore, absolute skepticism is self-deception.

Descartes answer to the evil demon doubt was exactly correct: I think, therefore I am.

I can have foolish thoughts, but even in order to have foolish thoughts, I must exist. You can say that all of Actualized.org is stupid bullshit. But you cannot deny that Actualized.org exists.

Even if Satan tries to scam you, his scam must still be a real scam. And even if his scam is fake, it must still be a real fake scam. This is what gives God dominion over Satan. Satan cannot avoid Realness. For Satan to have any power, he must be Real. But Reality is God. So Satan must be God. Reality is the only power and all of its power belongs absolutely to God. God’s power is so absolute that even when Satan acts, it’s actually God. There can be nothing outside of God because God has no outside, because God is Infinite. There is nothing external. Everything is internal to God. God’s gaze is inescapable.

Such is the absolute logic of existence. This logic is unbeatable. You can’t defeat God with logic, because logic is God.

It took me 39 years to realize that logic is Absolute.

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