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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 September 2018
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.
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.