(Un)reasonable doubt as affective experience: obsessive–compulsive disorder, epistemic anxiety and the feeling of uncertainty

• Published in: Synthese (Dordrecht) Vol. 198; no. 7; pp. 6917 - 6934
• Main Author: Vazard, Juliette
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.07.2021; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Anxiety; Disorders; Drought; Education; Epistemology; Logic; Metaphysics; Patients; Phenomenology; Philosophy; Philosophy of Language; Philosophy of Science; Rain; Reasonable Doubt; Reasonable Doubt: Theoretical and Practical Perspectives; Obsessive–compulsive disorder; Feeling of uncertainty; Epistemic anxiety; Adaptive doubt; Reasonable doubt
• ISSN: 0039-7857; 1573-0964
• DOI: 10.1007/s11229-019-02497-y

How does doubt come about? What are the mechanisms responsible for our inclinations to reassess propositions and collect further evidence to support or reject them? In this paper, I approach this question by focusing on what might be considered a distorting mirror of unreasonable doubt, namely the pathological doubt of patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). Individuals with OCD exhibit a form of persistent doubting, indecisiveness, and over-cautiousness at pathological levels (Rasmussen and Eisen in Psychiatr Clin 15(4):743–758, 1992; Reed in Obsessional experience and compulsive behaviour: a cognitive-structural approach, Academic Press, Cambridge, 1985; Tolin et al. in Cogn Ther Res 27(6):657–669, 2003). I argue that the failure in OCD is of an affective nature, involving both excessive epistemic anxiety and hyperactive feelings of uncertainty . I further argue that our adaptive disposition to inquire about the right matters—that is, about propositions which are both epistemically risky and imply harmful possibilities—might depend on these affective mechanisms.