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SHOULD YOU BE AFRAID? ALONENESS SCEPTICISM AND DESCARTES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2018

Stephen Hetherington
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Abstract

Philosophers routinely claim that sceptical arguments are not only intellectually but also emotionally confronting. When students first meet these arguments, though, no fear arises. This article presents aloneness scepticism: you never know that other people are not aiming to deceive you or at least not caring about being truthful. Imagine raising this possibility in a classroom by directing it at a single student. He or she should feel fear.

Type
Research Article
Information
Think , Volume 17 , Issue 50 , Autumn 2018 , pp. 15 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2018 

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References

Notes

1 Luckily so, too: surely some university ethics rule would be at risk of being broken if such a situation was deliberately induced by a philosophy teacher, or if it was wilfully allowed by her to persist once it had arisen.

2 It could do so if, say, she is reading at night, honestly unsure of whether she is dreaming. But that is a rare case.

3 Thanks to Brent Madison for helpful comments on a draft of this article.