In this paper, I defend externalist accounts of justified belief from Cohen's new evil demon objection. While I think that Cohen might be right that the person is justified in believing what she does, I argue that this is because we can defend the person from criticism and that defending a person is a very different thing from defending a person's attitudes or actions. To defend a person's attitudes or actions, we need to show that they met standards or did (...) not violate norms. Intuitions about whether we can defend a person from criticism are a poor guide when it comes to determining whether norms were violated or standards were met. It turns out that even radical forms of externalism about justification are compatible with the intuitions that Cohen's example elicits. Properly understood, those intuitions show that the believer should be excused from criticism (and excused for failing to believe with adequate justification). (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to clarify Kierkegaard’s concept of demonic despair (and demonic evil) and to show its relevance for discussions of the guise of the good thesis (i.e. that in f-ing intentionally, we take f-ing to be good). Contemporary discussions of diabolic evil often emphasise the phenomena of despair and acedia as apparent counter-examples to the guise of the good. I contend that Kierkegaard’s analysis of despair is relevant to these discussions, because it reconciles demonic (extreme) despair (...) and acedia with the guise of the good. In The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard provides an influential, systematic account of despair that relates evil, despair, and acedia to each other. Michelle Kosch argues that this account goes beyond Kierkegaard’s German predecessors by introducing a concept of diabolic evil and despair. By contrast, the present paper argues that Kierkegaard takes diabolic evil to be impossible, although he offers a rich analysis of the demonic that resembles diabolic agency. Still, Kierkegaard’s analysis rests on ontological assumptions about the nature of the good that belong to a Platonico-Christian tradition that is controversial today. (shrink)

The demon is, in the thinker,s words, "supremely powerful and clever", and it is only the combination of these two traits with the demon's incessant deception that empowers Descartes to stage the radical doubt that will terminate in his attempted proofs of God and the material world. The reason the demon is necessary is that the thinker cannot prove that it would be wrong for God to allow us to be deceived occasionally. Thus, Descartes needed, methodologically and rhetorically, something more (...) than just an imperfect God or a lack of God altogether; he needed a being with exactly as much power as God but without God's goodness. In short, one should utilize philosophy for the everyday analogue to lucid dreaming. For those unfamiliar with the phenomenon, lucid dreaming involves training oneself, by a simple concentration exercise performed before falling asleep, to be able to become conscious of being in a dream while still in it and without thereby ending it. (shrink)

_Demons in the Consulting Room: Echoes of Genocide, Slavery and Extreme Trauma in Psychoanalytic Practice_ isthe second of two volumes addressing the overwhelming, often unmetabolizable feelings related to mourning, both on an individual and mass scale. Authors in this volume explore the potency of ghosts, ghostliness and the darker, often grotesque aspects of these phenomena. While ghosts can be spectral presences that we feel protective of, demons haunt in a particularly virulent way, distorting experience, our sense of reality and our (...) character. Bringing together a collection of clinical and theoretical papers, _emons in the Consulting Room_, reveals how the most extreme types of trauma can continue to have effects across generations, and how these effects manifest in the consulting room. Essays in this volume consider traumas that have affected multiple generations of people, such as the Holocaust, experiences in the gulags, and the experience of slavery. Authors here consider the clinical challenges of working with the demonic force in severe childhood abuse and the effects of serious and prolonged physical injury and illness. Inevitably, there is in such difficult clinical work, the combined effects of hauntings in the analysts and in patients and often in the surrounding culture. In this book, distinguished psychoanalysts explore the myriad forms of ghosts and the demonic, which interfere and disrupt the endlessly difficult psychic work of mourning. It will be of interest to psychotherapists and psychoanalysts, as well as social workers, family therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists. _emons in the Consulting Room _ill appeal to those specializing in bereavement and trauma and, on a broader level, to sociologists and historians interested in understanding means of coping with loss and grief on both an individual and larger scale basis. (shrink)

Goethe's philosophy of creativity revolves around what he called das Dämonische. This essay is not meant as a definition or an explanation of demonic creation, but instead presents a demonic work par excellence, as the term "demonic" is defined by Goethe in the Elegy from Marienbad. The process of the creation of this work, as it is described by Goethe, also represents a strange exorcism, as the entire daemonic creative force of the author is transposed in this lyrical masterpiece of (...) German and universal literature. After writing the Elegy Goethe, it is no longer demonic. (shrink)

In this text an overview is offered of some of the most significant categories of the demonic from the Mesopotamian beliefs – of hybridity and liminality – through some examples of the conceptions of the demons Pazuzu and Lamaštu. Firstly, the logicaldialectical relations of the sphere of the demonic as external and foreign, opposed to the homely, familiar and close sphere are sketched; as well as the relation of the demonic as terrifying and potentially menacing, as opposed to the ordered (...) civilized sphere with norms of conduct. Then, several representations of the concepts of Pazuzu as an ambivalent demon are listed – he is an evil fighting against evil, his nemesis, Lamaštu, and precisely because of the need for him to be efficient in his protective function, he has to be a horrifying, dangerous demon. This is shown through the descriptions of the available incantations and preserved rituals. The terrifying threat of Lamaštu against the most precious part of the communities – the new generations - through her snatching and destroying of the newborns, is shown through the representations of her hybridity and monstrosity, and mainly through the incantations for her removal and (permanent) expulsion. (shrink)

Demonic Warfare: Daoism, Territorial Networks, and the History of a Ming Novel. By Mark R. E. Meulenbeld. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015. Pp. vii + 273. $57.

Classical education includes an apprenticeship in the art of rhetoric. It also gives a central place to the study of major works of literature, philosophy, and theology. There is often, however, an assumed disconnection between the art of rhetoric and the study of great texts. This disconnection undermines students’ ability to hear the voices of these texts as conversation partners in ongoing debates. This article illustrates how historically-based rhetorical-poetic reading enables us to hear the voices in a given text and (...) to consider how they work together. The argument first outlines some modern assumptions about the relation between poetry and rhetoric. The second part explains what rhetorical-poetic reading involves when approaching John Milton’s epic, Paradise Lost. The final section focuses on the second book of Milton’s poem, establishing how layered persuasive purposes constitute the fabric of the work and what the poem reveals through its curious dramatization of demonic deliberation. (shrink)

I will argue that cases of massive deception, such as New Evil Demon cases, as well as one-off cases of local deception present challenges to views according to which epistemic reasons, epistemic warrant, epistemic rationality or epistemic norms are factive. In doing so, I will argue is that proponents of a factive turn in epistemology should observe important distinctions between what are often simply referred to as ‘bad cases.’ Recognizing epistemologically significant differences between deception cases raises serious challenges for those (...) who deny a central role for non-factive aspects of epistemology. (shrink)

This chapter describes Porphyry’s demonology, focusing specifically on the nature of the demonic body and Porphyry’s reliance upon it within his account in order to highlight certain difficulties in the demonology of Iamblichus, which, although denying the materiality of demons, nevertheless has to account for the very things that demonic bodies were understood to address. Through an examination of Porphyry’s demonology and his explanation of the classification of demons and their nature, this paper will raise questions needing to be answered (...) within Iamblichean demonology. In fact, these questions are more important for Iamblichus than they are for Porphyry; given the state of the entirely descended Iamblichean soul and its need for material forms and avenues of mediation and purification, the function of demons is more essential for Iamblichus than it is for Porphyry. We cannot speak of ‘demons’ in Iamblichus without qualification, or without at least making the distinction between the good and the evil, recognizing that whatever one says about the former, the same might not apply to the latter. (shrink)

In this classic work, best-selling author Harry Frankfurt provides a compelling analysis of the question that not only lies at the heart of Descartes's Meditations, but also constitutes the central preoccupation of modern philosophy: on what basis can reason claim to provide any justification for the truth of our beliefs? Demons, Dreamers, and Madmen provides an ingenious account of Descartes's defense of reason against his own famously skeptical doubts that he might be a madman, dreaming, or, worse yet, deceived by (...) an evil demon into believing falsely.Frankfurt's masterful and imaginative reading of Descartes's seminal work not only stands the test of time; one imagines Descartes himself nodding in agreement. (shrink)

Facts about justification are not brute facts. They are epistemic facts that depend upon more fundamental non-epistemic facts. Internalists about justification often argue for mentalism, which claims that facts about justification supervene upon one’s non-factive mental states, using Lehrer and Cohen’s :191–207, 1983) New Evil Demon Problem. The New Evil Demon Problem tells you to imagine yourself the victim of a Cartesian demon who deceives you about what the external world is like, and then asks whether you nevertheless have justification (...) for your beliefs about the external world. Internalists and externalists agree that there is something that is epistemically good or valuable about both your actual beliefs and your beliefs in the demon scenario. Internalists claim that the epistemic property which these sets of beliefs share most intuitively should be thought of as sameness of justification. Externalists, on the other hand, reject this claim, usually either by challenging the internalist intuition directly, or by arguing that there is a more plausible way to think about the epistemic property in question. Recently, both kinds of externalist objection have been raised against the argument from the New Evil Demon Problem for mentalism. The goal of this paper is to defend the argument against three prominent objections—a pair of which is offered by Littlejohn :399–434, 2009) and one by Williamson Rationality and the good: critical essays on the ethics and epistemology of Robert Audi, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007; in: Dutant J, Dohrn D The new evil demon, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016). (shrink)

The Demonic in the Political Thought of Eusebius of Caesarea explores how Eusebius of Caesarea's ideas about demons interacted with and helped to shape his thought on other topics, particularly political topics Hazel Johannessen builds on and complements recent work on early Christian and early modern demonology. Eusebius' political thought has long drawn the attention of scholars who have identified in some of his works the foundations of later Byzantine theories of kingship. However, Eusebius' political thought has not previously been (...) examined in the light of his views on demons. Moreover, despite frequent references to demons throughout many of Eusebius' works, there has been no comprehensive study of Eusebius' views on demons, until now, as expressed throughout a range of his works.The originality of this study lies both in an initial examination of Eusebius' views on demons and their place in his cosmology, and in the application of the insights derived from this to consideration of his political thought. As a result of this new perspective, Johannessen challenges scholars' traditional characterization of Eusebius as a triumphal optimist. Instead, she draws attention to his concerns about a continuing demonic threat, capable of disrupting humankind's salvation, and presents Eusebius as a more cautious figure than the one familiar to late antique scholarship. (shrink)

Peter Lombard lamented the abandonment of Augustine’s position affirming the materiality of demons and the demonic body, since by his time (some 700 years after Augustine), under the influence of the Pseudo-Dionysius, it was generally agreed within the Christian tradition that demons (and angels) are intelligible, disembodied substances. The principles that the cosmos is spatially and materially divided and stratified and that demons share ontologically in the nature of the part that they inhabit allowed figures such as Apuleius, Porphyry, and (...) Augustine to account for various aspects of demonic nature and activity that seemed to follow from reason, revelation, and practical experience. The material body of the demon and its relation to the pneuma, or vehicle of the soul, is often invoked to explain demonic agency and the extent of demonic knowledge and to distinguish between evil and good demons (or angels). The following paper weighs in on and clarifies Augustine’s demonic ontology. Although scholars generally recognise Augustine’s position maintaining that demons possess aerial bodies, nevertheless, the ambiguity surrounding Augustine’s opinion, attested to even by Peter Lombard, is overlooked, and Augustine’s conviction is often taken for granted and supported by citing the prominent City of God, the very work in which Augustine’s own views are suspect. This paper provides support to the assessment of Augustine’s doctrine of the demonic body by examining his cosmology, particularly his spatial and elemental division of the cosmos, and exhibits his adherence to the spatio-material principle according to which a creature’s bodily constitution is cognate with the elemental composition of the physical stratum of the cosmos in which they dwell. The paper concludes by indicating how Augustine’s explanations of demonic agency, far from being ambiguous on the nature of the demonic body, are in fact premised on their aerial corporeality, thereby demonstrating more definitively his conviction that demons possess material bodies. (shrink)

This spotlight article reflects on President Xi Jinping's handling of the COVID-19 epidemic and evaluates its specificities by making a brief incursion into the history of Chinese official responses to epidemics. This analysis shows that Xi Jinping's response to the COVID-19 epidemic differs from official responses to the 2003 SARS epidemic and the cerebrospinal meningitis epidemic of 1966–1967, and is used to assert his legitimacy on both the local and the international stage. By sharing data, even if it was not (...) as accurate as claimed, Xi Jinping has presented himself as a trustworthy international partner, leading a country that is at the forefront of scientific research, capable of vigorously implementing epidemic preparedness measures, and destined to become a major player in global health. On the Chinese stage, he showed that the central government has regained control over local public health organizations and that public health is once again a key government priority. As part of his response, Xi Jinping also honored gods of the Chinese pantheon, in a seeming contradiction with communism and science. I argue that, by combining the most advanced technology with a religious heritage, Xi Jinping is skillfully creating an image of himself not only as powerful and modern, but also as a leader undeniably rooted in Chinese tradition. (shrink)

Neoplatonic Demons and Angels is a collection of studies which examine the place reserved for angels and demons not only by the main Neoplatonic philosophers, but also in Gnosticism, the Chaldaean Oracles and Christian Neoplatonism.

This book is the first all-encompassing exploration of the role of demons in philosophical and scientific thought experiments. In Part I, the author explains the importance of thought experiments in science and philosophy. Part II considers Laplace's Demon, whose claim is that the world is completely deterministic. Part III introduces Maxwell's Demon, who - by contrast - experiences a world that is probabilistic and indeterministic. Part IV explores Nietzsche's thesis of the cyclic and eternal recurrence of events. In each case (...) a number of philosophical consequences regarding determinism and indeterminism, the arrows of time, the nature of the mind and free will are said to follow from the Demons's worldviews. The book investigates what these Demons - and others - can and cannot tell us about our world. (shrink)

Usually, the shape of the future is seen as the result of a cultural flow that, according to some privileged cultural variable, like technology, goes undisturbed towards its own outcome. This is a quite naive attitude that has been very rarely successful. Both conventional technology and technology of the artificial show that, within culture, ‘demons’ are always active trying to exploit or even bypass standards in order to give birth to unexpected novelties. This is true within the pure technology area (...) and even more in its artistic extensions. Therefore, no deterministic process is going on but, rather, a permanent remixing of chances that makes any prophecy impossible. (shrink)

The Demon said to the swordsman, "Fundamentally, man's mind is not without good. It is simply that from the moment he has life, he is always being brought up with perversity. Thus, having no idea that he has gotten used to being soaked in it, he harms his self-nature and falls into evil. Human desire is the root of this perversity." Woven deeply into the martial traditions and folklore of Japan, the fearsome Tengu dwell in the country's mountain forest. Mythical (...) half-man, half-bird creatures with long noses, Tengu have always inspired dread and awe, inhabiting a liminal world between the human and the demonic, and guarding the most hidden secrets of swordsmanship. In The Demon's Sermon on the Martial Arts, a translation of the 18th-century samurai classic by Issai Chozanshi, an anonymous swordsman journeys to the heart of Mt. Kurama, the traditional domain of these formidable beings. There he encounters a host of demon; through a series of discussions and often playful discourse, they reveal to him the very deepest principles of the martial arts, and show how the secrets of sword fighting impart the truths of life itself. The Demon's Sermon opens with The discourses, a collection of whimsical fables concerned with the theme of transformation-for Chozanshi a core phenomenon to the martial artist. Though ostensibly light and fanciful, these stories offer the attentive reader ideas that subvert perceived notions of conflict and the individual's relationship to the outside world. In the main body of work, The Sermon, Chozanshi demonstrates how transformation is fostered and nurtured through ch'i - the vital and fundamental energy that flows through all things, animate and inanimate, and the very bedrock of Chozanshi's themes and the martial arts themselves. This he does using the voice of the Tengu, and the reader is invited to eavesdrop with the swordsman on the demon's revelations of the deepest truths concerning ch'i, the principles of yin and yang, and how these forces shape our existence. In The Dispatch, the themes are brought to an elegant conclusion using the parable of an old and toothless cat who, like the demon, has mastered the art of acting by relying on nothing, and in so doing can defeat even the wiliest and most vicious of rats despite his advanced years. This is the first direct translation from the original text into English by William Scott Wilson, the renowned translator of Hagakure and The Book of Five Rings. It captures the tone and essence of this classic while still making it accessible and meaningful to today's reader. Chozanshi's deep understanding of Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto, as well as his insight into the central role of ch'i in the universe, are all given thoughtful treatment in Wilson's introduction and extensive endnotes. A provocative book for the general reader, The Demon's Sermon will also prove an invaluable addition to the libraries of all those interested in the fundamental principles of the martial arts, and how those principles relate to our existence. (shrink)

In this paper I will defend an approach to the thought experiment known as ‘Maxwell’s Demon’ based on a Maxwellian conception of statistical mechanics. Instead of assuming that thermodynamic descriptions depend reductively on the dynamics of molecular components, I will adopt a conception of thermophysics as a ‘resource theory’ in the Maxwellian line recently defended by Myrvold (2011) and Wallace (2017). From this interpretative stance, Maxwell’s demon would not lead directly to the plausibility of violating the second law of thermodynamics, (...) but to show the pragmatic impossibility of knowing deterministically the exact microscopic of thermal systems. (shrink)

This article engages with A’s “Crop Rotation” in Either/Or—the “boredom” essay—as a source for serious thought on the modern crisis of faith. Exploring A’s portrayal of the modern subject as isolated and self-enclosed, a “bored” condition linked to its radical autonomy and self-directed existence, it suggests that A’s explanation for this condition still holds today: modern humans’ self-assertion (and hence self-isolation) emerges as a response to a profound loss of meaning. Through an existential reading of A’s essay, it highlights A’s (...) notion of “demonic pantheism” as illuminating what lies behind boredom, namely, a relatable experience of disillusionment following the loss of meaning—in other words, “existential doubt” or a crisis of faith. (shrink)

An overview of the new evil demon problem.

In 1441, Eleanor Cobham, duchess of Gloucester, was arrested, together with three associates: Margery Jourdemayne, the ‘Witch of Eye’, Roger Bolingbroke, Oxford cleric and astrologer, and Thomas Southwell, MB, canon of St. Stephen’s, Westminster. They were accused of plotting to kill King Henry VI by necromancy, but contemporary chronicles differed on the precise nature of their crime: had they summoned demons or cast an astrological chart? This paper explores the relationship between astrology and demonic magic, focusing on feelings, rites and (...) apparatus, and perceptions that the more the practitioner’s body was implicated in the divinatory procedure, the more likely it was to be illicit. (shrink)

In my paper ‘Three Forms of Internalism and the New Evil Demon Problem,’ I argued that the new evil demon problem, long considered to be one of the biggest obstacles for externalism, is also a problem for virtually all internalists. In (McCain 2014a) and in his recent book (McCain 2014b), Kevin McCain provides a challenging and thought provoking reasons for thinking that many internalists do not have any such problem. In this paper, I’ll provide some replies to McCain. Of note, (...) I’ll show that a Frankfurt-style counterfactual intervener, who commonly appears in the free will literature, can also serve as a new evil demon in the epistemology literature. (shrink)

Two decades ago, Rolf Landauer (1991) argued that “information is physical” and ought to have a role in the scientific analysis of reality comparable to that of matter, energy, space and time. This would also help to bridge the gap between biology and mathematics and physics. Although it can be argued that we are living in the ‘golden age’ of biology, both because of the great challenges posed by medicine and the environment and the significant advances that have been made—especially (...) in genetics and molecular and cell biology—we feel that information as an essential aspect of life has been neglected, or at least misunderstood. We therefore summon Maxwell’s Demon and its distant relative the ratchet, and apply these to biology. (shrink)

Maxwell’s Demon is a thought experiment devised by J. C. Maxwell in 1867 in order to show that the Second Law of thermodynamics is not universal, since it has a counter-example. Since the Second Law is taken by many to provide an arrow of time, the threat to its universality threatens the account of temporal directionality as well. Various attempts to “exorcise” the Demon, by proving that it is impossible for one reason or another, have been made throughout the years, (...) but none of them were successful. We have shown (in a number of publications) by a general state-space argument that Maxwell’s Demon is compatible with classical mechanics, and that the most recent solutions, based on Landauer’s thesis, are not general. In this paper we demonstrate that Maxwell’s Demon is also compatible with quantum mechanics. We do so by analyzing a particular (but highly idealized) experimental setup and proving that it violates the Second Law. Our discussion is in the framework of standard quantum mechanics; we give two separate arguments in the framework of quantum mechanics with and without the projection postulate. We address in our analysis the connection between measurement and erasure interactions and we show how these notions are applicable in the microscopic quantum mechanical structure. We discuss what might be the quantum mechanical counterpart of the classical notion of “macrostates”, thus explaining why our Quantum Demon setup works not only at the micro level but also at the macro level, properly understood. One implication of our analysis is that the Second Law cannot provide a universal lawlike basis for an account of the arrow of time; this account has to be sought elsewhere. (shrink)

For three centuries, philosophers have mounted defenses against the melan genie with an obsessive intensity comparable to the Reaganite determination to squander American wealth on defenses against a Communist threat. And for three centuries, skeptics have argued for the futility of the expenditure of conceptual effort with no more success than critics of the Pentagon have had in stemming the flow of funds to the military and its industrial minions. My own sympathies are with the skeptics. However, their own intense (...) involvement with the obsessions of the epistemological fear mongers and their failure to address the analogue of the problem of conversion from military to civilian industry in an acceptable manner often deprive the skeptical position of the subversive force it ought to have. (shrink)

What knowledge is imperilled by sceptical doubt? That is, what range of beliefs may be called into doubt by sceptical nightmares like the Cartesian demon hypothesis? It is generally thought that demons have limited powers, perhaps only threatening a posteriori knowledge of the external world, but at any rate not threatening principles like the cogito. I will argue that there is a demon – the debasing demon – with unlimited powers, which threatens universal doubt. Rather than deceiving us with falsities, (...) the debasing demon would allow us true beliefs, but only as guesses. (shrink)

Belief in the existence of spiritual entities is an integral part of many people’s religious worldview. Angels appear, demons possess, ghosts haunt. But is belief that such entities exist justified? If not, are there conditions in which it would be? I will begin by showing why, once one clearly understands how to infer the best explanation, it is obvious that neither stories nor personal encounters can provide sufficient evidence to justify belief in spiritual entities. After responding to objections to similar (...) arguments I have published in the past, I will go on to show that there is at least an imaginable circumstance in which belief in spiritual entities would be justified but then point out that it is not reasonable to think that such conditions will ever be met. In short, if such entities were real, it would be theoretically possible to demonstrate their existence scientifically, and in doing so, one could make belief in their existence justified. But doing so would require and entail a scientific revolution equivalent to proving that the Earth is flat. (shrink)

Contemporary advanced technology seems to raise new and fundamental questions as it apparently provides a human subject with an infinite range of incoming possibilities. Accordingly, research on the implications of technology is massive and splits into hard critics and faithful supporters. Yet, technological activities cannot be defined in terms of their products alone. Indeed, every technological behaviour unfolds the very same tension against what would have been naturally impossible, in absence of that same behaviour. Thus, the debate on technology appears (...) to be independent from any level of technological sophistication, and so its roots can be traced back in the dawn of Western thought. In this article, I argue that the faithful and sceptic views today at stake on hard-technology can be explained as a revival of the twofold attitude towards demons, developed in the history of Western thought. I show how demons have always embodied the human natural limits and the incomprehensible aspects of reality. Exactly as in the case of demons, hard-technology is now seen as a fearful destroyer of both nature understood as a complex system and human naturalness or as a trustful way to save humanity from decay, which complements what is naturally imperfect and, then, perfectible. Yet, none of these irreducible approaches opens a satisfactory path towards the solution of the contemporary issues on technology. On the contrary, by drawing upon ancient Greek neutral demonology the debate on technology may be definitively returned to its teleological and ethical dimension. (shrink)

During the era in which the Spanish first encountered public religious practices that they perceived to be idolatrous in the Americas, the study of Hermetic and Platonic texts in Europe was reactivating interest in the power of images and idols, and in the agency of demons. In the Americas, Spanish newcomers encountered idolatry, the cult of deities present to their worshippers in material objects of various kinds, as part of daily religious practice. The resulting battle over idols and the beliefs (...) surrounding them is in one sense only an outcrop of debates over idols and demons in the ancient Mediterranean and in medieval and Renaissance Europe. Yet while ancient beliefs about idols were reiterated in Peru, arguments shifted in this new context. At question is whether these arguments achieved anything beyond imposing European ideas and cognitive models on the Andean world? (shrink)

Skepticism is both a historical and foundational problem in epistemology. Jonathan Schaffer (2010) has provided a new expression of its threat. The Debasing Demon appears to generate a novel form of radical doubt, one that has gained prominence in recent debates. Instead of targeting the connection between belief and truth, it undercuts the link between belief and evidence (or reasons). This contribution presents the Debasing Demon Problem, analyzing its reach. It will provide an account for explaining how its threat is (...) raised, explore its relationship to classical varieties of skepticism, and assess some of the main objections against it. It will be argued that Schaffer’s Demon institutes a consistent epistemic threat, one that might represent the main variety of skepticism to be tackled in epistemology. Some consequences of this analysis are then presented concerning how to face this open problem. (shrink)

How are we to explain the sort of evil exemplified by Shakespeare's Richard III? Some authors argue that we can only understand this sort of evil as undertaken for its own sake and, in this sense, as ‘diabolical’. Michelle Kosch has argued that Kierkegaard is such an author. In this article I have two aims. My first is to argue that Kierkegaard's analysis of what he calls ‘demonic evil’ offers a psychologically nuanced and compelling account of a distinctive quality of (...) evil without ever abandoning the idea that action is always performed under the guise of the good. My second aim is to connect Kierkegaard's psychological analysis with his broader ethico-religious concerns and, in this way, to do justice to the unity of his ethico-religious psychology as anatomical, diagnostic and therapeutic. To this end, in the second half of this article I aim to show how Kierkegaard's psychology of the demonic is the basis for his valuation of silence as an ethico-religious ideal. (shrink)

The reason Descartes cites for invoking the demon argument in addition to the dream argument is that the demon argument is intended to broaden the scope of Descartes’ scepticism, to subsume additional beliefs under it. I present an additional, unfamiliar reason. There is, I argue, an important difference between the two sceptical arguments. It pertains not to their scope, but to their “depth”, to the kind of scepticism they are capable of inducing.

Abstractabstract:The purpose of this article is to map the points of contact, as well as the irreducible differences, between the Catholic tradition of victim soul spirituality and the Tibetan practice of gcod (chod). Victim soul spirituality develops in the framework of an Anselmian theology of the atonement, where the individual practitioner offers herself as an expiatory victim to God's wrath so to appease God's justice that requires reparation for the sins of humanity. A practice that knew its heyday in the (...) Counter-Reformation period and enjoyed its highest degree of popularity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, victim soul spirituality, has virtually disappeared from contemporary Catholicism in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. At the same time, many Western practitioners of Buddhism have grown more interested in the practice of gcod (chod), which consists of a symbolic offer of one's body to demons and other malevolent beings that seek to thwart one's progress toward nirvāna. Developed originally by the female mystic Machig Labdron (1055–1149), gcod is analogous to victim soul spirituality as it reflects a sacrificial dialectic where individual practitioners can appease supernatural entities that can sustain or thwart our spiritual progress. At the same time, a close analysis of the two practices will reveal significant points of divergence, as the two traditions rest on radically distinct claims concerning individual subjectivity, soteriology, and the nature of ultimate reality. (shrink)

In The Gay Science §341, the thought of eternal return is introduced as the announcement of a “demon.” Two possible hearers are described: one is crushed by the demon’s speech, while the other is overjoyed. This article argues that these responses are different because they are responses to different messages. One is conveyed in plain words by the demon’s speech; the other is implied by a final reference to “this ultimate eternal confirmation and sealing.” While that confirmation is provided by (...) what the demon says, not everyone will be aware of it: rather, only someone for whom the value of life has become problematic will be aware of it. Further, it seems that the demon does not understand his own message, since he personifies a will to knowledge that is indifferent to such concerns. Thus, only a human being can gain insight into the value and meaning of life from the thought of eternal return. (shrink)

The New Evil Demon Problem is often seen as a serious objection to externalist theories of justification. In fact, some internalists think it is a decisive counterexample to externalism. Recently, Moon has argued that internalists face their own New Evil Demon Problem. According to Moon, it is possible for a demon to remove one’s unaccessed mental states while leaving the justificatory status of her accessed mental states unaffected. Since this is contrary to the claims of many forms of internalism, Moon (...) maintains that his New Evil Demon Problem for Internalism shows that internalists face a problem that is just as troubling as the original NEDP. I argue that moderate internalists have nothing to fear from Moon’s demon. (shrink)

A laboratory-testable, solid-state Maxwell demon is proposed that utilizes the electric field energy of an open-gap p-n junction. Numerical results from a commercial semiconductor device simulator (Silvaco International–Atlas) verify primary results from a 1-D analytic model. Present day fabrication techniques appear adequate for laboratory tests of principle.

In 1956, the Swedish Parliament decided to invest in a national nuclear energy program. The decision rested on the conviction that it would be in the interest of the nation to use the assets of natural uranium, the advanced reactor technology, and the expertise on nuclear physics that the country had at its disposal. Since the decision concerned the largest investment ever in Swedish industrial politics, the scientists and engineers had to promise that it would lead to a prosperous future. (...) In this article, the utopian discourse and the rhetoric that were developed to support the Swedish nuclear energy program are analyzed. An important conclusion is that the scientific, technological, political, economic, and moral discourse was not sufficient to create political and civil support. Instead, the scientists and engineers had to turn to the world of myths. Thereby, the conflicts between nuclear physics and magic, scientific objectivity and demons, and rationalistic belief in progress and irrational ideas of faith were dissolved. In Sweden, as in many other Western countries during the 1950s, the world was not disenchanted, but re-enchanted. (shrink)

In Plato’s texts, and especially in the Apology, the Platonic Socrates refers to a daimonion, or daimonion sēmeion that appears only to contradict Socrates in some course of action on which he is about to embark. Socrates infers, as well, that its not interfering is a sign that what he is doing is right. I argue that the Socrates’ daimonion is not a divine spirit in its own right, i.e., the Greek daimōn. Daimonion is used in an adjectival or diminutive (...) sense, describing Socrates’ sign; it is a human reflection of a divinity, the divine in the human, the culmination of Socrates’ participation in the reasoning of the divine. As a “demonic man”, Socrates maintains a relation to the divine, having become habituated to the same reasoning. (shrink)

The New Evil Demon Problem presents a serious challenge to externalist theories of epistemic justification. In recent years, externalists have developed a number of strategies for responding to the problem. A popular line of response involves distinguishing between a belief’s being epistemically justified and a subject’s being epistemically blameless for holding it. The apparently problematic intuitions the New Evil Demon Problem elicits, proponents of this response claim, track the fact that the deceived subject is epistemically blameless for believing as she (...) does, not that she is justified for so believing. This general strategy—which I call the “unjustified-but-blameless maneuver”—is motivated, in part, by the assumption that the distinction between epistemic justification and blamelessness is merely an extension of the familiar distinction between moral justification and blamelessness. In this paper, I consider three ways of drawing the distinction between justification and blamelessness familiar from the moral domain: the first in terms of a connection with reactive attitudes, the second in terms of the distinction between wrongness and wronging, and the third in terms of reasons-responsiveness. All three ways of drawing the distinction, I argue, make it difficult to see how an analogous distinction in the epistemic domain could help externalists explain away the intuitions which underwrite the New Evil Demon Problem. Motivating the unjustified-but-blameless maneuver, I conclude, is a much less straightforward task than its proponents tend to assume. (shrink)

This article treats the verbal and physical altercation between the disguised Odysseus and the local beggar Iros at the start of Odyssey 18 and explores the overlapping ritual and generic aspects of the encounter so as to account for many of its otherwise puzzling features. Beginning with the detailed characterization of Iros at the book's start, I demonstrate how the poet assigns to the parasite properties and modes of behavior that have close analogues in later descriptions of pharmakoi and of (...) famine demons expelled from communities in rites that are documented from different parts of the Greek world from the archaic period on; so too the account of Iros' ejection from the house and of his subsequent fate conforms to the patterns observable in these rituals. The second part of the discussion examines the ways in which the beggars' quarrel anticipates the enmities that the Ionian iambographers would construct with those whom they cast as their echthroi and rivals, and suggests that we see in the Homeric scene an early instance of an iambic-style confrontation presented in poetic form for performance at the symposium. The iambographers' own deployment of the scapegoat and famine demon paradigms for the vilification of their targets promotes the overlap between the epic and iambic material. In both portions of the argument, the discussion observes how the several frames informing the episode in Book 18 coincide with and promote the Odyssey's larger themes. (shrink)

To Wrestle With Demons offers a rare glimpse of a psychiatrist's innermost thoughts about how his work affects patients, deeply move him, and reflects the society in which we live. Describing the unconscious as music, "a silent and explosive score," Dr. Ablow recalls the process of helping patients ferret out the past from the deep recesses of their minds. In so doing, he becomes enchanted with "the subtlety and power of human interaction." He describes the lonely gentleman who, gaining a (...) sense of security from hearing voices, refuses the medication that would take them away...the depressed woman whose extreme dependence on others is rooted in a violent and abusive childhood...the doting husband whose obsessive devotion to his ill wife harks back to the tragic loss of a childhood friend. In delving into the minds of his patients, Dr. Ablow must also wrestle with his own demons. He speaks with unabashed candor about the guilt he feels exchanging empathy for money, his struggle to help a homeless veteran, and the embarrassment of warning a mother of her son's intent to kill her. Through his eyes, the reader confronts a patient's suicide and a close colleague's murder. While sharing these private revelations, Dr. Ablow provides to us all a looking glass to society. Discussed here, among many issues are poverty, the insanity defense, patients' rights, sexual malpractice, and changing medical economics. Captured is the critical moment which psychiatry now finds itself - attempting to integrate technology with spirituality, science with the soul, and economics with empathy. To Wrestle With Demons offers anyone who has ever wondered whether psychiatrists are touched by the lives of their patients a resounding yes. (shrink)

Augustine asserted that demons (and angels) have material bodies, while Aquinas denied demonic corporeality, upholding that demons are separated, incorporeal, intelligible substances. Augustine’s conception of demons as composite substances possessing an immaterial soul and an aerial body is insufficient, in Thomas’s view, to account for certain empirical phenomena observed in demoniacs. However, Thomas, while providing more detailed accounts of demonic possession according to his development of Aristotelian psychology, does not avail of this demonic incorporeal eminence when analysing demonic attacks: demonic (...) agency is still confined to the material body. Aquinas’s account of demonic possession need not, on the face of it, require an immaterial cause. In his renouncement of the strong Christian tradition affirming demonic corporeality, Aquinas either conflates the need for a demonic agent with a requirement for a super corporeal one, or subordinates his demonology and angelology to a deeper, more fundamental Dionysian metaphysical principle of creative diffusion to which these adhere in a secondary way. (shrink)

This paper defends reliabilism against the classic demon world victim thought experiment. In doing so, I underscore two of its key alleged intuitions. I then articulate a host of varied responses open to the reliabilist, arguing that these readily available responses provide the reliabilist with a way to either accommodate or reject these initial intuitions about the demon world victim thought experiment, and in a way consistent with reliabilism. Thus, I conclude that the demon world thought experiment does not undercut (...) reliability as the hallmark of epistemic justification. (shrink)

The Demon Women and Their Masquerades – a Few Symptoms of Japanese Cinema. The demon woman is a frequent theme in Japanese cinema, pertaining to more than an imaginary hypostasis of femininity. Jacques Lacan, in his brief and rare references to Japanese Cinema and particularly to Nagisa Oshima’s Realm of the Senses, points out the specific power of feminine eroticism which goes beyond the masquerade. This unanalysible power of japanese women is stated by Lacan within the context of what he (...) calls the sinthome in his analysis of James Joyce’s oeuvre. This paper is a psychoanalytical approach of Kenji Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu Monogatari based on the aforementioned concepts and elaborations. Wakasa, the main feminine character, is thus connected to Lacan’s views on Woman (femme), on the relation between the Phallus and the feminine masquerade and, ultimately, to the Real dimension of the phantom. (shrink)

L’article étudie les théories scolastiques de l’ obstinatio des démons chez certains théologiens de la seconde moitié du xiii e siècle et du début du xiv e. On analyse, en particulier, comment ces auteurs ont caractérisé l’état de la volonté des créatures damnées : contrairement à la volonté des viatores, qui peut être bonne ou mauvaise, et à la volonté des anges, qui ne peut plus pécher, la volonté des damnés se trouve dans la situation paradoxale de causer librement, entièrement (...) ou en partie, l’acte même qui constitue leur punition et dont ils voudraient se libérer. (shrink)