This article aims at characterizing how the problem of scepticism about other minds
appears in anthropology. To do so, I offer a close reading of Nils Bubandt's book,The Empty Seashell(2014), a study of witchcraft and doubt on the North
Maluku Island of Halmahera. Through its deep engagement with issues revolving around
scepticism, I take the book to be an example of the tendency to consider the problem of
sceptical doubt about others as a problem of access to the inner thoughts and feelings of
other people. By looking closely at its attempts to respond to this problem, I endeavour
to shed light on the ways in which, in working the problem of scepticism out, we may be
doing exactly the reverse: giving into the sceptical impulse. How does a certain way of
asking questions about scepticism nourish the drive to it? I am interested in the drift
towards scepticism that precisely takes the form of a claim against it. In showing that
such a drift is prompted by a certain use of language, I hope to elucidate some ways in
which scepticism is lived and is thus not merely an intellectual conundrum, but an
ordinary human condition.