Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

Imagine yourself stepping into a quiet, dimly lit room, where the air is thick with uncertainty. You begin to question everything you have ever believed: the solidity of the chair beneath you, the colors that paint the walls, the very existence of this room itself. This is not mere worry or fleeting doubt; this is radical doubt, a profound methodical skepticism that strips away all assumptions until nothing remains but the barest certainty. It is the starting point of a journey to find what can be known beyond all challenge.

In this mental voyage, you entertain the unsettling thought that a powerful deceiver, a malevolent force, might be manipulating your senses, feeding you illusions so convincing that the world you perceive is nothing but a grand deception. This is the Evil Demon hypothesis — a chilling possibility that tests the limits of your trust in experience. This thought experiment forces you to ask: can anything be known for certain if all perception might be false?

Yet, amid this fog of doubt, you find a rock of certainty. Even if all else is uncertain, the very act of doubting confirms that there must be a self doing the doubting.