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privileged access and the mark of the mental get to acquire them in the same way as I can. Since this cognitive faculty and what it reveals are not specifically related to the existence and identity of the subject in the way introspection and its subject matter are, we should put it aside, together with its subject matter. Here I better issue a warning about the difference between using the demon hypothesis as a device in the sceptical argument, and using it as a device to establish the list of mental phenomena. Descartes’s intention is probably to do the first, and mine is certainly the second, so I have to apologize for appropriating the device for my own purposes. If the demon is used as a device in the sceptical argument, and we allow the demon’s deceptive powers to extend to our a priori reasoning capacities concerning simple conceptual truths, we take a dangerous step. If I may go wrong even in thinking that, say, a square has four sides, then this seems to undermine the credibility of the very capacities that are needed to make any progress in the project of the Meditations. If my simple reasoning capacities are unreliable to this extent, then there is no point in meditating about them—or indeed about anything—any further, because meditation itself becomes pointless. In fact, we should become suspicious even about the road travelled so far: why should we pay any attention to the reasoning of the sceptical argument, if reasoning itself is subject to general doubt? Total scepticism is self-destructive, since it subverts both the sceptical reasoning and its promised antidote, and reduces us to mental inaction. Therefore I do not think it advisable to bring this consideration into the epistemological project, or, if we do, we should proceed with extreme care. On the whole, I wish to dissociate myself from Descartes’s general epistemological views, and his attempt to deal with scepticism. I agree with those who say that, once the sceptical challenge is allowed to rise in its full-blown form, it becomes virtually impossible to answer. It is better not to allow the challenge to arise. This means that the demon test cannot be used quite straightforwardly for my purposes: we cannot simply say that mental
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