A skeptic is a doubter or a researcher?

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:43

Literally, the term "skepticism" means "hesitation, research, analysis". The main idea of this approach in philosophy is to deny the reliability of knowledge. A skeptic is a person who never accepts any judgment as true, first questioning it. At first glance, this position seems unstable and completely unattractive. It turns out that in the cognition of being, we cannot rely on any generally accepted provisions, since they can also be questioned.

Types of skepticism

Distinguish between relative and absolute skepticism. Absolute skepticism is characteristic of ancient philosophy; he denies the possibility of any knowledge at all. Relative skepticism is inherent in modernity and consists in the denial of philosophical knowledge. In science, it is the skeptic who is the engine of progress, since he does not accept anything as an indisputable truth, he searches for it, thoroughly checking each statement.

Skepticism as a philosophical trend

Skepticism is an independent direction in the philosophy of the eraHellenism. The philosophical school of skeptics is characterized by the main position - all knowledge is unreliable. The founder of this trend in antiquity is Pyrrho, who believed that doubt is the basis of knowledge. He proceeded from the position that one point of view is no more true than another, since all knowledge is relative, and it is impossible to say who is closer to the essence of things and who is further.

Basics of Skepticism

From a philosophical point of view, a skeptic is a person who adheres to the following provisions:

• since different thinkers had different points of view, none of them can be called fully true;
• human knowledge is limited, therefore no human judgment can be taken as truth;
• human cognition is relative, which means the inevitable influence of subjectivity on the results of cognition. We learn through feelings, which means we perceive the phenomenon not objectively, but as a result of the impact on our senses.

The Roman representative of skepticism Sextus Empiricus in his reasoning reached the point that the principle of doubt extended to his own reflections.

The ultimate goal of a skeptical approach to knowledge is the equanimity of the researcher. This means that by rejecting the adoption of any judgments, the thinker becomes dispassionate in assessing the world around him, thus acquiring serenity, happiness.

The good side of skepticism

If everything is unreliable and not amenable to knowledge, what is the skeptic operating on?The significance of this trend in knowledge is especially noticeable in the struggle against dogmatism. If science is based on so-called immutable truths, most likely it is already dead. A critical assessment of each hypothesis, each fact obtained makes the thought sometimes move in the most unexpected directions, discovering new patterns. Thus, a skeptic is not just a critical cynic. This is a thinker whose doubt opens the way to new knowledge.