Menschenfresser asked:

Granted that demons exist and that they do possess people, I am wondering, from the framework of
what I assume to be a vast amount of literature that is out there on the subject, both religious and not,
why would a demon want to possess a human being?

I admit, this may be a question better suited for the "Ask a Catholic Cardinal" site, but I can't seem to
find its url.

Ok, this question does beg for the definition of what demons are, what they want, their motives, etc,
but so what....let it beg. — Any ideas?

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This question might be better directed to James Randi, the American skeptic who offers a million
dollars to any individual that can prove something about the supernatural in a 'controlled setting'. I
suppose this prize would go for demoniacs and exorcisms too. Since this is a philosophical site, I'm
going to tell you what a philosopher might pick up on.

I take it that a demon is an evil spirit of some sort that would want to possess a human being to bring
evil into the world or to steal their soul. I'm not sure I have demons in my ontology, as I have never
found much evidence for demons in my everyday experiences of things. Demons are not a necessary
postulate in order to make better sense of the world, or to live more coherently with the way the world
appears — even when people appear to be possessed by demons! So attributing certain types of
behaviour to demonic possession would be enormously question begging for a philosopher. It would
violate the principle of Occam's Razor, which effectively states that simpler explanations are usually
better. What this means is that even if some behaviour were difficult to explain. an explanation in
terms of demonic possession would not be economical. It would require an enormous amount of extra
work to be done in order to show that demons could be real and could possess people. A reasonable
man would therefore choose a simpler explanation. In ancient writings such as the Bible, cases of
demonic possession are generally explained as likely cases of epilepsy, which had not yet been
diagnosed or understood (see Luke 4, 31ff and Mark 1, 21ff).

There is a school of thought in philosophy that 'inner' motives and desires in a mental theatre are not
the type of thingone refers to in explaining actions or in attributing attitudes to people. This would
apply to demons too. Rather, we apply mental concepts like desire and intention to others against a
background of received practises, experiences and language. Since demons play no role in our
everyday lives — and hence no part in our background experience and received practises — there is
nothing we can really say to answer your question about what might motivate a demon. 'Pure evil' is
as good a guess as any!

Adam Gatward