Doubt

Doubt, a status between belief and disbelief, involves uncertainty or distrust or lack of sureness of an alleged fact, an action, a motive, or a decision. Doubt may involve delaying or rejecting relevant action out of concerns for mistakes or faults or appropriateness.

Skepticism is a philosophical position which denies some of epistemic conditions to attain certainty of knowledge. While skepticism denies a possibility of attaining certainty in knowledge, fallibilism does not hold such universal claim. It rather reserve the logical possibility of having mistaken beliefs in knowledge and takes a critical stance toward any form of dogmatism.

Human beings generally live with beliefs in various degrees of certainty toward different items and subject matters. In legal defense, "beyond reasonable doubt" is set as the acceptable standard.

Philosophy

Skepticism

In a general sense, skepticism or scepticism (Greek: skeptomai, to look about, to consider) refers to any doctrine or way of thought denying the ability of our mind to reach certainty.

Originating in the human tendency to question the reliability of any statement before accepting it, skepticism has taken on a variety of forms throughout the ages. It can refer both to an attitude in ordinary life and to philosophical positions. Skepticism is often contrasted with dogmatism, the position that certain truth can be reached by the application of an appropriate method. Epistemology, the inquiry into the conditions for certainty in knowing, has led practically every thinker to adopt, at least temporarily, some form of limited skepticism in one regard or another. And some of the greatest philosophers, such as David Hume, have come to the conclusion that certain knowledge is essentially unattainable. By its very nature, skepticism is unsatisfactory as an end result. Whether it is ultimately embraced or rejected thus depends in great part on one’s general outlook of life, pessimism being generally associated with the skeptical option. In any case, however, skepticism has played an irreplaceable role as a catalyst in the history of philosophy.

Fallibilism

Fallibilism is the philosophical doctrine that all claims of knowledge could, in principle, be mistaken. Some fallibilists go further, arguing that absolute certainty about knowledge is impossible. As a formal doctrine, it is most strongly associated with Charles Sanders Peirce, John Dewey, and other pragmatists, who use it in their attacks on foundationalism. However, it is arguably already present in the views of some ancient philosophers, including Xenophanes, Socrates, and Plato. Another proponent of fallibilism is Karl Popper, who builds his theory of knowledge, critical rationalism, on fallibilistic presuppositions. Fallibilism is also been employed by Willard Van Orman Quine to, among other things, attack the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements.

Unlike scepticism, fallibilism does not imply the need to abandon our knowledge - we needn't have logically conclusive justifications for what we know. Rather, it is an admission that, because empirical knowledge can be revised by further observation, any of the things we take as knowledge might possibly turn out to be false. Some fallibilists make an exception for things that are axiomatically true (such as mathematical and logical knowledge). Others remain fallibilists about these as well, on the basis that, even if these axiomatic systems are in a sense infallible, we are still capable of error when working with these systems. The critical rationalist Hans Albert argues that it is impossible to prove any truth with certainty, even in logic and mathematics. This argument is called the Münchhausen Trilemma.

Moral fallibilism

Moral fallibilism is a specific subset of the broader epistemological fallibilism outlined above. In the debate between moral subjectivism and moral objectivism, moral fallibilism holds out a third plausible stance: that objectively true moral standards exist, but that they cannot be reliably or conclusively determined by humans. This avoids the problems associated with the flexibility of subjectivism by retaining the idea that morality is not a matter of mere opinion, whilst accounting for the conflict between differing objective moralities. Notable proponents of such views are Isaiah Berlin (value pluralism) and Bernard Williams (perspectivism).

Methodic doubt

(see main article Methodic doubt and Descartes)

Methodic doubt ("Hyperbolic doubt") is a systematic process of being skeptical about (or doubting) the truth of one's beliefs, which has become a characteristic method in philosophy. This method of doubt was largely popularized in the field of philosophy by René Descartes (1596-1650), who sought to doubt the truth of all his beliefs in order to determine which beliefs he could be certain were true.

Religion

Anything that is questionable or causes doubt, especially an argument or a claim.

Branches of philosophy like logic devote much effort to distinguish the dubious, the probable and the certain. Much of illogic rests on dubious assumptions, dubious data or dubious conclusions, with rhetoric, whitewashing, and deception playing their accustomed roles.

Religion

The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio.

Doubt that god(s) exist forms the basis of agnosticism—possibly definable as the belief that one cannot determine the existence of god(s)—and atheism, which can entail either not believing in god(s) or believing that no god(s) exist(s).

By extension, doubt as to the existence or intentions of the Christian God applies to doubt concerning the Christian Bible as well, bringing into question its alleged status as the word of God, and propounding alternative explanations (such as a work of mythology like Homer's ancient Greek epics the Iliad and the Odyssey). Doubt of a religion itself brings into question the truth of its set of beliefs. Alternatively, doubt as to some doctrines but the acceptance of others may lead to the growth of heresy and/or the splitting off of sects. Thus proto-Protestants doubted papal authority, and substituted alternative methods of governance in their new (but still recognizably Christian) churches.

Christians often debate doubt in the contexts of salvation and eventual redemption in an afterlife. This issue has become particularly important in the Protestant version of the Christian faith, which requires only acceptance of Jesus as saviour and intermediary with God for a positive outcome. The debate appears less important in most other religions and ethical traditions.

Spirituality

In the context of spirituality, individuals may see doubt as the opposite of faith. If faith represents a compulsion to follow a path, doubt may succeed in blocking that particular path.^{[citation needed]} People use doubts and faith every day to choose the life path that they follow^{[citation needed]}; for example: "I doubt that laziness will help me achieve my goals."

Doubt can serve to create individual illusions to shield the vision of an unpleasant outcome. "I doubt anyone will catch me if I rob this store." Depending upon the energy put into the doubt, when used in this way, doubt itself may have little impact on events, merely blocking the individual from seeing possibilities.^{[citation needed]}

Psychology

Psychoanalysts often attribute doubt (which they may interpret as a symptom of a phobia emanating from the ego) to childhood, when the ego develops. Childhood experiences, these traditions maintain, can plant doubt about one's abilities and even about one's very identity—let alone doubt about the operations of the tooth fairy. The influence of parents and other influential figures often carries heavy connotations onto the resultant self-image of the child/ego, with doubts often included in such self-portrayals.^{[citation needed]}

Cognitive mental as well as more spiritual approaches abound in response to the wide variety of potential causes for doubt—sometimes seen as a "Bad Thing." Behavioral therapy—in which a person systematically asks his own mind if the doubt has any real basis—uses rational, Socratic methods. Behavioral therapists claim that any constant confirmation leads to emotional detachment from the original doubt.^{[citation needed]} This method contrasts to those of say, the Buddhist faith, which involve a more esoteric approach to doubt and inaction. Buddhism sees all^{[citation needed]} doubt as a negative attachment to one's perceived past and future. To let go of the personal history of one's life (affirming this release every day in meditation) plays a central role in releasing the doubts—developed in and attached to—that history. Through much spiritual exertion, one can (if desired) dispel doubt, and live "only in the present".^{[citation needed]}

Psychopathology

Many people associate "excessive" doubt with obsessive-compulsive disorder, sometimes nicknamed a "disease of doubt".

Law

Beyond a reasonable doubt is the standard required by the prosecution in most criminal cases within an adversarial system, also called the "Burden of Proof". This means that the proposition being presented by the government must be proven to the extent that there is no "reasonable doubt" in the mind of a reasonable person that the defendant is guilty. There can still be a doubt, but only to the extent that it would not affect a "reasonable person's" belief that the defendant is guilty. If the doubt that is raised does affect a "reasonable person's" belief that the defendant is guilty, the jury is not satisfied beyond a "reasonable doubt". The precise meaning of words such as "reasonable" and "doubt" are usually defined within jurisprudence of the applicable country.

Impact on society

Doubt sometimes tends to call on reason. It may encourage people to hesitate before acting, and/or to apply more rigorous methods. Doubt may have particular importance as leading towards disbelief or non-acceptance.

Politics, ethics and law, faced with decisions that often determine the course of individual life, place great importance on doubt, and often foster elaborate adversarial processes to carefully sort through all the evidence in an attempt to come to a decision.

One view regards the scientific method, and to a degree all of science, as entirely motivated by doubt: rather than accepting existing theories, scientists express systematic or habitual doubt (skepticism) and devise experiments to test (and, optimally, to disprove) any theory. Some commentators see technology as simply the expansion of the experiments to a wider user-base, which takes real risks^{[citation needed]} with it. Users may no longer doubt the applicability of the theory in play, but there remain doubts about how it interacts with the real world qua whole. The process of technology-transfer stages exploitation of science to ensure the minimization of doubt and danger.

See also

• Methodic doubt
• Descartes
• Charles Peirce
• satire may arouse doubts
• skepticism
• Belief and certainty

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Descartes, René. (1641). Meditations on First Philosophy. In Cottingham, et al. (eds.), 1984.
• Hecht, Jennifer Michael (2003). Doubt: a history: the great doubters and their legacy of innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco. ISBN 0-06-009795-7.  This book traces the role of doubt through human history, all over the world, particularly regarding religion.
• Hein, David (Winter 2006). "Faith and Doubt in Rose Macaulay's The Towers of Trebizond." Anglican Theological Review 88 (1): 47-68. ISSN 0003-3286.
• Charles S. Peirce: Selected Writings, ed. by Philip P. Wiener (Dover, 1980)
• Charles S. Peirce and the Philosophy of Science, ed. by Edward C. Moore (Alabama, 1993)
• Traktat über kritische Vernunft, Hans Albert (Tübingen: Mohr, 1968. 5^th ed. 1991)

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