ed by it because he recognizes the difference between paper and everything that is not paper, even though everything has been carefully crafted to fool him. Bouwsma's point of this is to use Tom's recognition of the difference between a flower made out of paper and a real flower, and consequently his recognition that everything but paper had changed its nature, to introduce his idea that people have a solidly formed concept of what things are, that a flower is a flower, and not paper. In the second adventure Bouwsma introduces a thick illusion, where everything is as it would normally be experienced, in which the evil demon exerts his full power and submerses Tom into a "dream" world, because the first adventure failed to fully take into account Decartes' statement "And all other external things are nought but illusions." The evil demon destroys everything, but creates illusions in order to mislead Tom into assuming that everything is as it was, that flowers are flowers and may be smelled and felt and have their blossoms plucked and so forth. The problem that this illusion creates is that it has become too real. Bouwsma is arguing that since to Tom the illusions have become indistinguishable from what Tom previously knew as reality, the new dream world of the evil demon has become reality. The demon's illusion has become so real to Tom that when the demon, in order to gain the admiration which he feels he deserves for such a brilliant deception, begins to plant doubt in Tom's mind, Tom immediately refutes the demon-derived suspicion and insists that what he is experiencing is reality. Only the evil demon is able to perceive that the dream world in which Tom is ensconced is not reality, and this is only because the evil demon possesses an extra sense which humans lack. For all intents and purposes, Tom's new world has become real. So what has Bouwsma accomplished? Well, by showing that the "thick illusions" of the evil d...
