The Dawn Treader

I am skeptical about your definition of skepticism. It sounds like a straw man to me.

Main Entry: skep·ti·cism
Pronunciation: \ˈskep-tə-ˌsi-zəm\
Function: noun
Date: 1646

1 : an attitude of doubt or a disposition to incredulity either in general or toward a particular object
2 a : the doctrine that true knowledge or knowledge in a particular area is uncertain b : the method of suspended judgment, systematic doubt, or criticism characteristic of skeptics
3 : doubt concerning basic religious principles (as immortality, providence, and revelation)
synonyms see uncertainty

re: "In summarily dismissing skepticism, you're implicitly endorsing credulity."

I am dismissing inconsistency.

If skepticism is systematically doubting everything, then why isn't the method of systematically doubting everything ever doubted?

Isn't this moving the goalposts?

If we ever found a consistent skeptic, he would systematically doubt everything and be uncertain about everything. Ironically, he would have to be uncertain about any philosophy of knowledge including skepticism -- yet he is willing to accept it. In effect, by accepting skepticism with little or no certainty, wouldn't he be guilty of credulity?

re: "Are there no objects towards which you maintain an attitude of doubt or a disposition of incredulity?"

Absolutely. Ironically, one of those areas is skepticism as a worldview. But there are others.

re: "Are there no areas in which you think knowledge is uncertain?"

This gets into what we mean by knowledge. Knowledge is justified true beliefs according to Plato, and his definition has stood intact for 24 centuries now so I'll stick with it. That said, if there is a high degree of uncertainty, then the claim to know something should be removed. If there is a low degree of certainty, and a high degree of justification, then the claim to know something is justified.

So I don't think that high degrees of uncertainty can be applied to knowledge.

By the way, I don't believe that we need 100 percent certainty to know something. And I am fairly certain I am right about that too ;)

Do you equate uncertainty with skepticism?

re: "I think that most human knowledge is subject to varying degrees certainty and that we are generally less certain about events in the ancient world than more recent events."

I agree that knowledge contains varying degrees of certainty. Furthermore, it doesn't bother me whether the knowledge is ancient or modern.

Knowledge is knowledge. Period.

re: "I am sometimes accused of having a radically skeptical world view by conservative Christian who seem to think that the only choice with respect to any proposition is to accept it as true or to categorically reject it as false."

I will spare telling you what I am accused of by radical skeptics. ;)

Listen, holding varying degrees of certainty is not a big deal. It has no bearing on whether something is actually true or not. It only affects our claim to know something. That's all.

Truth is what really is. Simple.

My issue is more with the logically suicidal nature of hard core skepticism.

If skepticism simply meant "check things out", then the Bible actually encourages that. The problem is, skepticism asserts more than the innocuous "check things out" motif that you and Tom are presenting.

re: "I think he is saying that a proposition might be true and yet we cannot claim it as knowledge because we cannot justify believing it because we cannot demonstrate its truth by reason and/or evidence."

I think that is what he is saying.

Of course, there are some things that cannot technically be demonstrated, but we can still know them. Your memories, for example.

In general, however, once we add adequate justification to our beliefs, then we can claim to know them.

Of course, we can debate what rises to the level of adequate justification. No question. That is a great philosophical question, and is shaped by our core commitments (i.e. our worldview).

Pursing that question takes us away from our thread, however.

You can begin to appreciate why I find skepticism unsustainable. Anyone whose core commitment is to a high degree of doubt about everything, is at best confused, and at worst, disingenuous.

Mr. D.:

I still can't help but agree with Vinny that you're building a straw man in your description of skepticism. You're essentially ignoring matters of degree. One must either always disbelieve absolutely everything, according to your "definition," or you cannot truly be a skeptic. I'm sorry, but that's silly.

I'd argue that we should INITIALLY meet new propositions with skepticism, but as those propositions prove out, our skepticism is diminished. Essentially, we assign confidence intervals to everything we learn. Everybody does this, including people who don't self-identify as skeptics. Including you.

Now I would argue that because of the imperfect nature of our knowledge, we can never assign a confidence value of 100% to anything, nor can we assign a 0% to anything -- but we can get darn close (99.999%, or 0.00001%, for example). That's not to say that there's no such thing as truth; just that our capacity to understand it is imperfect.

In any case, the Skeptics Society, of which I am a member, directly addresses your argument:

http://www.skeptic.com/about_us/

'Skepticism has a long historical tradition dating back to ancient Greece, when Socrates observed: “All I know is that I know nothing.” But this pure position is sterile and unproductive and held by virtually no one. If you were skeptical about everything, you would have to be skeptical of your own skepticism. Like the decaying subatomic particle, pure skepticism uncoils and spins off the viewing screen of our intellectual cloud chamber. ... The key to skepticism is to continuously and vigorously apply the methods of science to navigate the treacherous straits between “know nothing” skepticism and “anything goes” credulity.'

Thank you for the links and clarification.

So skepticism is obviously limited.

That is what I suspected. It is focused in certain areas.

I will report this back to my student.

I'm coming to this really really late, but:

Ancient skeptics were divided on this question. Academic Skeptics, I think, really did believe that they knew exactly one thing, namely, that they didn't know anything else. This isn't a very strong position, as you note -- why should their knowledge be reliable on this one point alone? But Pyrrhonist Skeptics took a stronger, and harder to refute, position: a Pyrrhonist's answer to the question "how do you know that you know nothing?" was "Well, I don't, it just seems that way to me." Theoretically, a Pyrrhonist was always ready to be convinced that something was known, s/he just hadn't been convinced yet.
There's a great passage in Sextus Empiricus (our main source for Pyrrhonism) where he compares the search for knowledge to walking along a road. The dogmatists (Stoics, Epicureans, etc.) had gone off on side paths and come to wrong destinations; the Academic Skeptics had sat down and given up on the journey; but the Pyrrhonists were still walking.