Descartes' Demon
The 2nd in my 'Imaginary Friends of Science' - after Maxwell's Demon is Descartes' Demon. Despite (or because) of his rationalism, René Descartes hypothesised the existence of an evil daemon, a personification who is "as clever and deceitful as he is powerful, who has directed his entire effort to misleading me." The evil d(a)emon presents a complete illusion of an external world, including other people, or even his own body, when perhaps they don't exist. This is a sort of thought experiment to test the very idea of empiricism.
The modern version of this is the "brain in vat" (i.e. how do we know we aren't just brains in vats of biochemicals being stimulated to simulate what we sense).
This lino cut print in green and black is 8 inches by 9 inches (20.3 cm by 22.9 cm) on Japanese kozo (or mulberry) paper. It is one of a first edition of 12. It combines Descartes' Demon (who bares a remarkable resemblance to Descartes himself) and the brain in a vat.
Descartes' Demon
The 2nd in my 'Imaginary Friends of Science' - after Maxwell's Demon is Descartes' Demon. Despite (or because) of his rationalism, René Descartes hypothesised the existence of an evil daemon, a personification who is "as clever and deceitful as he is powerful, who has directed his entire effort to misleading me." The evil d(a)emon presents a complete illusion of an external world, including other people, or even his own body, when perhaps they don't exist. This is a sort of thought experiment to test the very idea of empiricism.
The modern version of this is the "brain in vat" (i.e. how do we know we aren't just brains in vats of biochemicals being stimulated to simulate what we sense).
This lino cut print in green and black is 8 inches by 9 inches (20.3 cm by 22.9 cm) on Japanese kozo (or mulberry) paper. It is one of a first edition of 12. It combines Descartes' Demon (who bares a remarkable resemblance to Descartes himself) and the brain in a vat.