Skepticism in philosophy: concept and basic ideas

One of the most important sections of philosophy is epistemology - a discipline that studies knowledge, its methods, capabilities and theoretical limits. There is such a direction in it as epistemological pessimism - the concept according to which human cognitive capabilities are limited and will never allow us to fully understand the true nature of reality.

The pessimistic approach includes 2 branches:

Agnosticism. Within the framework of this concept, the world is considered unknowable to humans. In other words, there will always be questions to which reliable answers cannot be obtained using the means and methods at our disposal.
Skepticism. This concept questions the very possibility of a reliable understanding of how correct our ideas about the world and the objects in it are.

Today we will talk in detail about skepticism, consider its main ideas, list its most famous supporters, find out why it is criticized, and examine how it differs from agnosticism.

What is skepticism?

In simple terms, skepticism is a direction in philosophy that considers doubt to be the main principle of thinking. In particular, skepticism questions the reliability of truth (that is, it denies the ability to confidently assert that the knowledge we have about the world around us corresponds to objective reality).

Skepticism arose in the 4th century BC. Its founder is considered to be the ancient Greek philosopher Pyrrho (approximately 360-275 BC), whose ideas were later developed by Sextus Empiricus (years of life unknown, approximately 2nd-3rd centuries AD).

An interesting feature of skepticism is its tolerance towards any religious and philosophical concepts and views. Supporters of this direction proceed from the fact that no statement can claim to be the only and unshakable truth. At the same time, it is impossible to both affirm something with absolute certainty and deny it.

Links


Skeptical organizations	Australian Skeptics • Commission Against Pseudoscience (Russia) • Committee of Skeptical Inquiry (USA) • Skeptics Society (USA) • James Randi Foundation (USA) • Harry Houdini Prize (Russia)

Skeptical publications	In Defense of Science (Russian) • Skepticism (Russian) • Encyclopedia of Delusions (English) • Society of Skeptics (Russia) (Russian) • Cults of Unreason (English) • The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (English) • Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience (English) • Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (English) • Free Inquiry (English) • Quackdown (English) • Skeptic (USA, English) • The Skeptic (UK, English) • The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience (English) • Skeptical Inquirer (English) • Skepticality (English) • What's The Harm? (English) • Snopes.com (English)

Basic ideas of skepticism

The main ideas of skepticism include the following theses:

even if knowledge looks achievable and reliable, it cannot be recognized as such;
both absolute knowledge and any reliable knowledge in general are inaccessible to man (since it was obtained through empirical knowledge, which cannot be considered an absolutely reliable source);
a person does not have access to reliable knowledge about any metaphysical phenomena and objects (God, the world, causality, etc.);
any hypothesis needs to be tested, and no test can be considered sufficient or final;
none of the methods of scientific knowledge can provide reliable knowledge about objective reality;
all knowledge available to mankind is only assumptions and hypotheses that cannot be proven;
the philosopher must refrain from making any final judgments.

Skepticism considers all our knowledge relative and requires its critical rethinking. In this sense, it is opposed to dogmatism - an uncritical way of thinking that is based on dogma. Despite the fact that dogmatism is characteristic primarily of religions, ancient skeptics called all philosophers who put forward and defended any statements as dogmatists.

Everyday concept

In everyday life, we often use the words “skeptic” and “sceptical” to talk about a person who is not inclined to take other people’s word for it, in other words, about a person who cannot be convinced of something without providing confirmation and evidence.

Children's knowledge of the world is partly based on skepticism - they cannot take everyone's word for it, because they need to be convinced in practice that the water is wet, the snow is cold, the fire burns, and if you walk without a hat in cold weather, you can catch a cold.

The so-called “ healthy skepticism ” is the basis for safe interaction with the outside world. Common doubt can protect a person from scammers, rash actions, excessive trust, and so on: before giving your consent to participate in any enterprise, it would be reasonable to ask for evidence that what you are undertaking will not harm anyone. On the one hand, this approach can slow down progress, but on the other hand, it works to ensure the reliability of the result.

Skepticism also refers to the principle that causes people to refrain from making categorical statements, as well as the general state of uncertainty or doubt about something. This concept may even be confused with pessimism - after all, it is pessimists who are not ready to blindly believe in a good outcome of any undertaking.

Pyrrho's skepticism

The creator of this philosophical movement is considered to be the ancient Greek philosopher Pyrrho (approximately 360-275 BC). He is notable for the fact that, on principle, he did not write books or treatises, so his ideas were preserved only thanks to his students and followers. In particular, his ideas were developed by such thinkers as Aenesidemus, Agrippa and Sextus Empiricus.

Ancient skeptics identified the teachings of Pyrrho and skepticism, and in their works the words “skeptical” and “Pyrrhonian” were often used as synonyms. In some cases this created confusion, since not all of Pyrrho's ideas were associated exclusively with skepticism.

Today we have an idea of ancient skepticism mainly thanks to the works of Sextus Empiricus. He described in detail the ideas of Pyrrho, Timon, Carneades, Aenesidemus and other supporters of this teaching.

Pyrrho believed that a philosopher is a person striving for happiness, the achievement of which requires calm calm, the absence of all anxiety and suffering. To achieve this state, you need to find answers to 3 questions:

What are things and what properties do they have?
How should we treat them?
What will such an attitude give us?

Pyrrho himself believed that attempts to find reliable answers to these questions would never be successful, and therefore could not lead to happiness. Therefore, he suggested answering them as follows:

We can't know this.
We must refrain from judging things.
By intentionally suspending judgment, you can avoid anxiety.

Thus, he believed that philosophical happiness could be achieved by denying the very possibility of knowledge and understanding of the nature of things. The state of peace that arises due to the renunciation of knowledge was positioned by Pyrrho as the highest degree of bliss and called “ataraxia.” He himself, and after him other skeptics, condemned the desire for reliable knowledge, considering it a source of anxiety and suffering.

Sources

A Greek-English Lexicon
, Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, revised and expanded by Sir Henry Stuart Jones with the assistance of Roderick Mackenzie, Clarendon Press, Oxford, UK, 1940. Online, perseus.tufts.edu.
Buchvarov Panayot, Skepticism about the External World
(Oxford University Press, 1998).
Daniels, M.D., D.; Price, Ph.D. (2000), The Basic Enneagram
, New York: HarperCollins
Richard Henigswald, Die Skepsis in Philosophie und Wissenschaft
, 1914, new edition (ed. and introduction by Christian Benne and Thomas Schirren), Göttingen: Edition Ruprecht, 2008, ISBN 978-3-7675-3056-0
Keaton, Morris T., "Skepticism", pp. 277–278 in Dagobert D. Runes (ed.), Dictionary of Philosophy
, Littlefield, Adams and Company, Totowa, New Jersey, 1962.
Le Morvan, P. (March 2011). "Healthy Skepticism and Practical Wisdom" (PDF). Logos and episteme
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Institute of Economic and Social Research. 2
(1):87–102. Doi:10.5840/logos-epsteme20112151. ISSN 2069-0533. Archived (PDF) from the original on September 4, 2021.
Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, Second Edition, Unabridged
, W. A. Neilson, T. A. Knott, P. W. Carhart (eds.), G. & C. Merriam Company, Springfield, Massachusetts, 1950.

Skepticism of Sextus Empiricus

Sextus Empiricus is an ancient Greek physician and philosopher who lived in the 2nd-3rd centuries AD (there is no reliable data on his place of birth and years of life). This is the most famous of Pyrrho's followers, famous, in particular, for the book "Pyrrho's Propositions", which today remains an important work for people studying philosophy.

In his works, he outlined the methodology of skeptical doubt, which was based on a critical understanding of the accumulated knowledge in the field of philosophy and other natural sciences of that time. In addition, Sextus Empiricus touched upon the question of the existence of gods. Comparing religion with atheism, he came to the conclusion that neutral skepticism was the most reasonable position.

It is worth noting that atheism, like any religion, contradicts the basic idea of skepticism (nothing can be proven or disproved unambiguously). But the Soviet philosopher Veniamin Boguslavsky, studying the works of the Empiricist, noted that he was clearly inclined towards atheism, since he criticized religious views twice as often as atheistic ones.

In his works, Sextus Empiricus shows that skepticism is an independent direction in philosophy and cannot be confused with others. The reason is that any other direction recognizes some entities and denies others. Skepticism simultaneously admits and questions all entities.

Notes

↑ 1 2 3 4 5 Hansen, GP
[www.tricksterbook.com/ArticlesOnline/CSICOPoverview.htm CSICOP and the Skeptics: An Overview]: [English] // The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research. - January 1992. - Vol. 86, No. 1. - P. 19−63.
↑ 1 2 Grothe, DJ
[www.csicop.org/si/show/skepticism_2.0/ Skepticism 2.0] // Skeptical Inquirer. — November/December 2009. — Vol. 33.6.
Skepticism
- article from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
Sagan K.
Contact (eng.
Contact
). Simon and Schuster, 1985; Republished August 1997 by Doubleday Books, ISBN 1-56865-424-3, 352 pp.
Sagan K., Druyan E.
Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at
the Brink of the Millennium
). Ballantine Books, 1998, ISBN 0-345-37918-7, 320 pp.
Kurtz, P.
The New Skepticism: Inquiry and Reliable Knowledge. — Prometheus Books. — 371 p. — ISBN 978-0-87975-766-3.
[www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/archives/vol12n01.html Skeptic Magazine, Volume 12 Number 1]
See [www.ras.ru/win/db/show_org.asp?P=.oi-2096.vi-.fi-.oi-2096 Organizational structure of the Russian Academy of Sciences], section Scientific coordination organizations
For example, such as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and GWUP
[plato.stanford.edu/entries/pseudo-science/#SciPse “Science and Pseudoscience”] in. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; Laudan, Larry (1983). "The demise of the demarcation problem", in R. S. Cohan and L. Laudan (eds.), Physics, Philosophy, and Psychoanalyses: Essays in Honor of Adolf Grünbaum, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 76, Dordrecht: D. Reidel , pp. 111-127. ISBN 90-277-1533-5
Langmuir I.
Pathological science. Physics Today 42 (Oct. 1989): 36-48. / transcribed and ed., Robert N. Hall.
Storms Edmund.
The science of low energy nuclear reaction: a comprehensive compilation of evidence and explanations about cold fusion. - World Scientific. - P. 49-50. — ISBN 9789812706201.
Leiter LD
[www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_16_1_leiter.pdf#search=pathological%20pseudo%20pseudoskepticism The Pathology of Organized Skepticism] // Journal of Scientific Exploration, 2002. Vol.
16, No. 1, pp. 125-128. “...PhACT members and, I suspect, members of all skeptical organizations, have an obvious and well-known bias towards disbelief. … Each one who has disclosed personal details of their formative years, say up until their early 20's, has had an unfortunate experience with a faith-based
philosophy, most often a conventional major religion.
… Thus, they gravitate to what appears to them to be the ultimate non-faith-based philosophy
, Science.
Unfortunately, while they loudly proclaim their righteousness, based on their professed adherence to “hard science,” they do so with the one thing no true scientist can afford to possess, a closed mind. Instead of becoming scientifically minded, they become adherents of scientism
, the belief system in which science and only science has all the answers to everything.”
Wunder E.
[www.skeptizismus.de/syndrome.html Das Skeptiker-Syndrome]
Wunder E.
[www.skeptizismus.de/skepreview.pdf Die “Skeptiker”-Bewegung in der kritischen Diskussion]

History of the development of skepticism

As noted above, skepticism originated in Ancient Greece and Pyrrho is considered its founder. Later, his ideas were developed by such thinkers as Heraclitus, Aenesidemus, Agrippa, Sextus Empiricus and other famous ancient philosophers. Socrates, in particular, agreed with many ideas of skepticism, although he was not a skeptic.

The reason for the emergence of skepticism was that ancient philosophers were faced with the problem of subjective knowledge , which depended on individual characteristics of perception. At the same time, there were a large number of philosophical movements based on conflicting ideas and theories. Along with this, there was a religion that excluded doubts and offered to accept unfounded dogmas on faith.

All these contradictions led thinkers to the problem of circular proof, which can be expressed in three theses:

Any statement is based on other statements.
None of the statements can be considered irrefutable.
The choice of starting point for constructing a logical proof also requires justification.

These three theses represent a vicious circle that casts doubt on whether the truth can be established at all. Thus, ancient thinkers had two options: either to completely exclude the possibility of accumulating reliable knowledge, or to soften the requirements for truth. They believed that the most reasonable approach would be to adopt skepticism as a criterion of rationality, guided by which optimal decisions can be made.

By the way, the problem of circular proof has not disappeared anywhere and continues to exist in modern philosophy, being its constant and integral element.

Taking this approach, ancient skeptics proposed observing laws, taking care of one's own health and enjoying life, satisfying one's physical needs and desire for knowledge. This approach turned out to be especially useful for the development of ancient medicine, which thanks to it acquired the first features of evidence-based science. It is worth noting that similar approaches then appeared in India, China and the Middle East.

The Middle Ages were not a particularly favorable period for skepticism. All of Europe was under the strong influence of religion, and therefore unquestioning faith in the truth of church dogmas was welcomed, and any doubts were prohibited. The ideas of skeptics were again in demand during the Renaissance, when the authority of religion was replaced by the authority of knowledge and reason. Skepticism has again become one of the main driving forces in the development of science.

In modern philosophy, the concept of skepticism was revised. Now it was seen as a direction that significantly expanded the possibilities of knowledge and could eliminate any existing contradictions. The main representatives of modern skepticism were Francisco Sanchez, Michel de Montaigne and David Hume.

Are modern skeptics good or bad?

Has the goal been achieved? Does being skeptical about anything make us happy? Having originated and received sufficient development in the ancient era, the philosophy of skepticism in modern times was divided into five equal directions :

ordinary;
philosophical;
methodological;
scientific;
religious.

And although they exist in different spheres of life, they are united by the common idea of weeding out dubious theses and confronting dogmatism. Sometimes this leads to the fact that skeptics manage to begin to challenge their own position, as was the case with Rene Descartes.

The eminent French mathematician questioned the very concept of skeptical methodology, but built the foundation of a new scientific philosophy based on the principles of radical doubt.

Today, quite violent clashes between scientific and religious skeptics are by no means uncommon, although their areas of activity practically do not overlap. Moreover, the majority of representatives of scientific skepticism are outspoken scientists , that is, people who treat scientific knowledge as a religion.

Scientists who force science into the framework of dogma consistently fight against any teachings whose effectiveness cannot be demonstrated empirically or with the help of indisputable evidence. Because of this, clashes with adherents of esoteric teachings and pseudoscientific movements arise every now and then.

However, religious organizations are also full of doubters. Their task is not to refute religion as such, but to focus the attention of the community on banal frauds. In such cases, skeptics ask questions about the legitimacy of certain dogmas and denounce “miracles” or other events recognized by the church.

It is noteworthy that it was thanks to skepticism that the institution of canonizing a person as a saint was formed, as well as a set of criteria for recognizing miracles.

Criticism of skepticism

Historically, the main opponents and critics of skepticism have always been the Stoics. Skeptics pointed out to all scientists that their knowledge is subjective and cannot be proven in any way. Their main argument in the debate was the statement “Knowledge requires confidence, and your teaching cannot give such confidence.”

The Stoics used this thesis, finding a logical contradiction in it. They asked: “If all knowledge requires certainty, then how can you yourself know and claim it ?” This question points to a real logical contradiction, allowing skepticism to be criticized even now.

Skepticism is also blamed for the fact that thanks to it, Christianity spread throughout the world and became the dominant religion. The fact is that it was the skeptics who were the first to widely criticize the polytheistic religions that dominated the world during Antiquity. They made people doubt their faith in the ancient gods, but offered nothing in return, and Christianity appeared at just the right moment to fill the vacated niche.

How to learn critical thinking?

Thinking critically means analyzing information, being able to distinguish the highest quality truth from lies, taking into account all arguments, dispassionately reasoning and getting out of situations to your advantage. Where to begin?

Recognize problems in your thinking.

The starting point of training is self-knowledge. You need to learn to observe yourself from the outside, analyze your decisions. To begin with, you can analyze unpleasant situations that happen regularly: not just describe the train of thought, but identify the logic, the role of emotions in decision making.

At the same time, memory training will be required. Poor memory can distort events beyond recognition and pass off received information as an event actually experienced. But trained memory provides all the materials to compare the data received with the experience experienced.

It is imperative to take into account the barriers to critical thinking. This is a fear of expressing one’s own judgment, a reluctance to reflect on the information received. This is self-doubt, too quick criticism of your ideas. This also includes a lack of knowledge and lack of necessary experience.

Take a self-confidence test

Apply critical thinking guidelines to problem solving.

Develop the habit of reframing one problem a week. An example format you can use is:

Problem. Make sure it exists.
Situation. Describe the problem from different angles: chronological, logical, emotional.
Analysis . Think about what really happened, get to the bottom of it.
Brainstorm . Make a list of possible solutions, even the most risky and incredible ones.
Solution. Make a balanced decision, choose what works in a particular case.
Action . Act strictly according to plan, at least to test critical thinking in action.
Grade . Evaluate the result, your mistakes, the experience gained.

Develop the qualities necessary for critical thinking.

Observation means noticing details, collecting information.
Skepticism is the healthy questioning of any information, even from the most reliable source.
Objectivity – limiting the influence of emotions where a cool mind is needed.
Curiosity – showing interest in the world and people.
Accuracy - evaluate how accurate the conclusion is or whether there are still weak points.
Analytical thinking - making decisions based on observations, collecting and evaluating evidence.
Empathy – consider the human factor.
Openness to everything new - being open-minded to alternative interpretations.
Impartiality – take into account all evidence, points of view, information.
Communication – follow the flow of thoughts of the interlocutor.

Read books that will help develop critical thinking.

Books on critical thinking are written by Nobel Prize winners, famous psychologists, biologists, science journalists, business coaches and university scientists. The selection of books is also impressive. This kind of reading is an opportunity to learn a new skill and a real chance to change your life.

conclusions:

Skepticism is the art of doubting the unproven.
Skepticism is not an end in itself, but a way to find peace of mind.
Followers of the skeptics' teachings called for following the statements of reason, their natural instincts, reading books, doing science and exploring the world.
Learning to think critically is necessary in order to find the truth.

Take the empathy test

How is skepticism different from agnosticism?

Essentially, agnosticism arose from skepticism, so there is much in common between the two schools of thought. And yet they cannot be identified or combined, since there are a number of fundamental differences. Agnosticism assumes that human knowledge is limited, but does not deny the possibility of a reliable understanding of how accurately existing knowledge corresponds to reality.

Skepticism comes from the fact that it is impossible to reliably distinguish reality from fiction. All our knowledge was obtained through unreliable means of sensory cognition, which means it can be unreliable, and there is no way to verify it. If agnosticism considers our cognitive abilities to be limited, then skepticism generally excludes the possibility of assessing with any accuracy the reliability of knowledge obtained empirically.