 Descartes’ official position is that the Evil Genius Doubt is merely one among multiple hypotheses that can motivate the more general hyperbolic doubt. (See Cunning 2014, 68ff, and Hatfield 2006, 126, for variations on this theme.) Fundamentally, the more general doubt is about our cognitive nature, that is, about the possibility our minds are flawed. The First Meditation texts are somewhat ambiguous on this count. But later passages are very clear (a theme we’ll develop more fully in  Section 4.3).