It is the second class of an introductory philosophy course. The first class where the stage for the semester is set is over. It is now time to dive into the philosophy. The reading for the day: Descartes' First Meditation. The Professor begins: "We ordinarily think there is a world external to us. But is there? What if it is all an illusion? Perhaps we are dreaming? Maybe there is an evil demon deceiving us? If we can't know there is an external world, how we can know anything else? Therefore before we can claim to know anything, we need to address this doubt." A challenge has been laid down. The implication has been made that if the students don't take on the challenge, they are being dogmatic; willing to rest content with their beliefs without really questioning them. The students' response to the challenge varies: some feel the force of the challenge and are excited, some are skeptical, some are bored, some don't understand. Which is the right response to have? Is there a right response to have to the professor's comments? The students look to the professor to see how to respond, and seek to follow the professor's actions. So they nod along. The professor interprets the nodding as affirmation from the students that they see the intrinsic worth of the questions. So the professor continues, confident that the doubt which has been introduced is shared by everyone in the room.
She begins again, "Let us turn to page 2 of The Meditations, and see how Descartes addresses the doubt of whether there is an external world...." Another example of pretend doubt.
No one stops the professor and says, "But, professor, I am already hooked by the doubt. How do we even know that Descartes' book is real? That there is even a book in front of me? That even Descartes was real? Oh my God, are you even real? Are you only a robot without a mind? Maybe you are the creation of the evil demon controlling my mind? Is this really a classroom, or am I dreaming? I don't know what to believe!" Call this taking the doubt personally.
I have been in countless philosophy classrooms where Descartes's text was discussed; as a student, as a teaching assistant and as a professor. Not once did I see any student respond in this way. Not even by the students who are most gripped by Descartes' text. I certainly didn't respond this way as a student. Even more, in those classes it seems altogether natural that no one would respond in this way. It never seems like a relevant possibility. Why?
Because a student who takes the doubt personally dislodges the assumption in the classroom that the professor knows something which the students don't, and that the professor will pass on some of that knowledge in due time. For a professor raising the Cartesian Doubt on the second day of class is part of a well rehearsed narrative, one which is like a play with 25 parts (one part for each day of class in the semester). Preparing for class is part of the professor's job, and the preparation partly consists of fine tuning the narrative so that each class session links naturally together. In part a good profession is one who takes the effort to tell a coherent narrative.
Unconsciously the students know this. The professor knows this more consciously, though she brackets it from the students while rehearsing the Cartesian doubt. Everyone in the room knows that what is being introduced in the second lecture is a set up for the third lecture, and so on; that the materials from these lectures will be on the essays or the exams for the class, and that what is happening in this second class is part of something larger --the class as a whole. And that the class is part of something ever larger--a college education which takes place on campuses.
The class functions because it has an order, and the professor is in charge of maintaining the pace and rhythm of that order. Like a conductor with an orchestra. The trouble with the student who takes the doubt personally is that he disrupts this order. Someone for whom the Cartesian doubt becomes real is like a member of the orchestra who ignores the conductor and insists on playing solo. He becomes a hurricane in the room--an unpredictable force which threatens to take over the content for that class. And the professor will then fall behind a day in the syllabus, and the narrative for the semester will have to be adjusted accordingly.
The planned rhythm of the class is: press the Cartesian doubt for half an hour or one hour; get the students into a state of admitted perplexity; and then introduce Descartes' knowledge of himself as a thinking thing in the Second Meditation as the purported solution. Do that for one class. Then move on to the proof of God's existence in the Third Meditation, cover the normal objections to it, and so on. The student who takes the doubt seriously in the second class comes across as a trouble maker because he is disrupting this flow. If the student persists in affirming the doubt, the only recourse for the professor is to say, "You are asking good questions. Let's talk after class." In this way the professor is forced to admit that she has a narrative planned. This can be embarrassing, since the professor's planned task for that class is to stroke the Cartesian doubt and not to down play it.