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.
Human beings generally live with beliefs in various degrees of certainty toward different items and subject matters. 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.
Rene Descartes used doubt as a philosophical method in his thought experiment to discover the indubitable principle. A well known phrase Cogito ergo sum ("I think, therefor I am") is the point he reached through his methodic doubt, which properly means "I certainly exist as far as I doubt." Thus, doubt itself presuppose the certainly of the existence of thinking self who doubt. Husserl also used this method in his early works to establish phenomenology.
Since human beings can have false or mistaken beliefs, reasonable doubt is necessary or useful to discern reliable knowledge from unreliable knowledge.
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
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.
Edmund Husserl, a founder of phenomenology, also used methodic doubt, in his early works, to find out the indubitable ground in philosophy. He later gave up this Cartesian path and developed phenomenology of life world which encompasses a broader social, cultural, and historical relations of human existence.
Religious faith and doubt
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. People use doubts and faith every day to choose the life path that they follow. Questions of what, how, and why one believes or is certain about certain claims or doctrines are one of essential subjects in the philosophy of religion. Epistemic conditions of validation of knowledge, the roles of reason, experience, and revelation in establishing religious faith are complex issues in theology and religious philosophy.
As for the existence of God, three primary positions are possible: theism, atheism, and antagonism. Theists believe the existence of God and atheists do not believe in it. Agnosticism is a position that one cannot determine the existence of God.
Law: "beyond a reasonable doubt"
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
ReferencesISBN 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. 5th ed. 1991)
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