Assignment task: By the end of the First Meditation, Descartes has sunk into a skeptical abyss. It seems he has called into doubt pretty much everything. Since Descartes wants us to meditate along with him, this means that I can't be sure there's an external world independent of my mind and its perceptions. I can't be sure because maybe there's a deceiving God that makes me think there's a world independent of my mind and its perceptions. Even a mathematical truth like 2+3 = 5, which seems so certain and indubitable in the moment that I perform the operation of adding two and three, becomes less certain when I reflect on the possibility that God might have made me such that I reason incorrectly whenever I add 2 and 3. But why is it that I cannot doubt 2+3 = 5 when I'm adding two and three, but that I can doubt that mathematical truth when I turn my mind away from that truth and consider the fact that God might have made me such that I go wrong every time I add two and three? What's the difference between these two thoughts, and why is doubt impossible for the former but possible for the latter? Finally, do we need a deceiving god in order to doubt mathematical truths? How might evolution perform the same role as a deceiving god? Please refer to 'The Evil Demon' a short (2.5pages) piece by Julian Baggini.