Sort the following items into the correct order.

• But now a fresh doubt arises: 'How often asleep at night, am I convinced of just such familiar events - that I am here in my dressing-gown, sitting by the fire - when in fact I am lying undressed in bed!' If it is possible that I am now dreaming, then even such seeming straightforward judgements as 'I am now sitting by the fire may be open to doubt.
• Firstly, Descartes rejects the testimony of the senses: 'From time to time I have found that the senses deceive, and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once.
• But dreams are presumably composed of elements originally drawn from real life, just as paintings of imaginary objects are made up of elements based on reality. So the world must presumably contain such general kinds of things as heads, hands and eyes.
• Yet it seems that even the most fictitious compositions must conform to certain very simple and universal categories, such as extension, shape, size, number, place and time; these items, at least, must surely be real.
• Perhaps, however, just as a painter may produce a wholly imaginary creation, so the items which appear in my dreams may be utterly imaginary and unreal.
• But this doubt is limited in scope: the senses may deceive concerning tiny or distant objects, but there are some sense-based judgements which it seems I would be mad to doubt, e.g. that I am holding this piece of paper, or that I am sitting by the fire.
• Yet now an even more worrying doubt occurs: could not God, since he is omnipotent, make me go wrong every time I add two and three or count the sides of a square?
• Or perhaps there is no God. But in that case I was created not by a perfect God but from a series of chance events or some other imperfect chain of causes; and if my origins are so imperfect, it seems I have even less reason to be confident that my judgements are free from error.
• From this it seems that ‘arithmetic, geometry and other subjects of this kind which deal only with the simplest and most general things, regardless of whether they exist in nature or not, contain something certain and indubitable. For whether I am awake or asleep, two and three added together are five, and a square has no more than four sides.'
• As an aid to maintaining his suspension of belief, Descartes therefore proposes to imagine that there is a 'malicious demon of the utmost power and cunning' who employs 'all his energies' in order to deceive him. Thus the whole external world may be a sham: 'the sky, the air, the earth, colours, shapes, sounds and all external things are merely the delusions of dreams which he has devised to ensnare my credulity. The conclusion of the Meditation sees everything in doubt. In the metaphor which opens the Second Meditation, the whirlpool of doubt is all engulfing and bottomless - until Descartes manages to find his first firm foothold, the proposition 'I exist'.
• In the closing stages of the Meditation, Descartes reflects that although, in the light of his reasoning so far, he ought to suspend all his previous beliefs, this is easier said than done: 'my habitual opinions keep coming back and despite my wishes they capture my belief which is at it were bound over to them as a result of long occupation and the law of custom.'
• The conclusion is that 'there is not one of my former beliefs about which a doubt may not be properly raised.'

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