Doubt and certainty › What Survives Doubt?

What if everything you believe is wrong? Your memories, your perceptions, your reasoning, even the existence of the physical world around you. What if you are being systematically deceived by a malevolent force so powerful that even mathematics could be an illusion? This is where René Descartes begins. In the *Meditations on First Philosophy*, first published in Latin in 1641, Descartes suspends assent to beliefs that admit doubt. His aim is to find a secure starting point for knowledge. This is a deliberate philosophical exercise: doubting a belief does not establish that the belief is false. The book asks you to distinguish what seems obvious from what survives an attempt to doubt it. A perception can feel immediate and still be mistaken. Even a persuasive argument can depend on an assumption that has escaped attention. Descartes makes those possibilities the starting point of his inquiry.