He discusses this in terms of its truth even in the face of the omnipotent, evil demon (Descartes, 1995). He basically says that the demon cannot make him nothing as

can be sure. As he begins Meditation III, Descartes describes himself as "a thing that thinks." While Descartes grants that what he perceives or imagines may be nothing apart

reality. This system of checks and balances helps to equalize what man truly knows and that which he thinks he knows, serving as "forever an inherent aspiration of the

thing that thinks" (Descartes, 2001). He affirms that he is a thinking being who is capable of doubt and affirmation, denial and knowledge. He is certain that he thinks and

as a certainty when all such deceptions have been removed. In this way he examines the falseness of perception and the notion of consciousness before finally arriving at the concept

doubt about that knowledge. It is a matter of taking an absolute position and stripping it of its dogmatic stand and imposing the question on it: What else is possible?

conjectures. The Sixth Meditation In his Sixth Meditation, which is titled "Of the Existence of Things Material, and of the Real Distinction Between the Mind and Body of Man,"

Meditations demonstrates how Descartes went about reconciling the existence of God to what he observed about the unreliability of his senses and the nature of reality. Descartes states that

acknowledges the fact that at times he acknowledges the truth and reality of a tangible thing, or an emotion or a feeling and then later he finds out that his

arguments ...). However, if science rests on things of the mind and not the senses, then it is necessary to show that things we learn through our senses can be

of the idea of God (also infinite reality) and therefore God exists. His stepped process of deductive reasoning begins with the assumption "Ex

the separation of body and mind are indeed just beliefs or whether there is indeed such a separation. He recognizes, in other words, that it is indeed possible for

is still whole. This train of thought, in turn, caused him to postulate that he might have been deceived by some "evil genius," who influenced his senses to provide

were to show him evidence--or absence of evidence--that he exists, he would not agree. Some seem to think that this is a contradiction. On one hand, Descartes says that

ideas and the design and manufacturing processes, comes before the knife is actually in existence.