1. The motivation for the project: Many opinions have seemed secure – both to individuals and collectively – that turned out to be false. Can we, therefore, find a method for deriving beliefs which will guarantee their truth?
2. The approach will be to first doubt every belief it proves possible to question. Knowledge will then be reconstructed, by argument, from whatever survives the first step.
3. Can we doubt the evidence of our senses about everyday things? Surely; after all, in dreams we think we perceive things that we’re not.
4. But can we doubt the general ideas – numbers, shape concepts, colors – which are the basis for all thinking about particular things?
5. Could not God, who can do anything, not deceive me about even the general ideas?
6. Objection: Such massive and systematic deceit would be inconsistent with God’s goodness.
7. So suppose the God that created people and their minds isn’t perfect, but is still powerful enough to engineer wholescale deception.
8. “I should withhold and suspend my judgment about these matters, and guard myself no less carefully from believing them, than I should from believing what is manifestly false, if I wish to find any certain and assured knowledge in the sciences” (p. 21).
9. To enforce this attitude, let’s imagine we are deliberately deceived by an evil demon who systematically presents us with illusions and induces us to accept false beliefs. Then let’s see if, against the background of this general and radical doubt, we can recover anything.
10. Note science here setting off down the path that is the opposite of a typical religious one. We begin not from faith but from its contrary, doubt.