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Heresy

Taming the Skeptical Dragon

Toni Vogel Carey on a misunderstanding between her Aunt Polly and René Descartes.

When I began studying philosophy, my Aunt Polly, who had a head more for business than for abstract ideas, wanted to know just what philosophy is. Instead of doing the sensible thing, though, and giving an explanation she might readily understand, I waxed Cartesian. “How can we be certain,” I asked, tapping on her dining table, “that what looks and feels to us like a table, or a hand, is not just an illusion created by an evil demon to deceive us?” Sorry she had ever asked, she suggested, “I guess you could test it with acid.”

The Cambridge philosopher G.E.

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