Skepticism

In Western philosophy, skepticism is the attitude of doubting knowledge claims set forth in various areas. Skeptics have challenged the adequacy or reliability of these claims by asking what principles they are based upon or what they actually establish. They have questioned whether some such claims really are, as alleged, indubitable or necessarily true, and they have challenged the purported rational grounds of accepted assumptions. In everyday life, practically everyone is skeptical about some knowledge claims; but philosophical skeptics have doubted the possibility of any knowledge beyond that of the contents of directly felt experience. The original Greek meaning of skeptikos was “an inquirer,” someone who was unsatisfied and still looking for truth.

From ancient times onward skeptics have developed arguments to undermine the contentions of dogmatic philosophers, scientists, and theologians. The skeptical arguments and their employment against various forms of dogmatism have played an important role in shaping both the problems and the solutions offered in the course of Western philosophy. As ancient philosophy and science developed, doubts arose about various basic, widely accepted beliefs about the world. In ancient times, skeptics challenged the claims of Plato and Aristotle and their followers, as well as those of the Stoics; and during the Renaissance similar challenges were raised against the claims of Scholasticism and Calvinism. In the 17th century, skeptics attacked Cartesianism (the system established by the French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes) along with other theories that attempted to justify the scientific revolution initiated by Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo. Later, a skeptical offensive was leveled against the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant and then against the philosophical idealist Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and his followers. Each challenge led to new attempts to resolve the skeptical difficulties. Skepticism, especially since the Enlightenment, has come to mean disbelief—including religious disbelief—and the skeptic has often been likened to the village atheist.

Senses and applications

Skepticism developed with regard to various disciplines in which people claimed to have knowledge. It was questioned, for example, whether one could gain any certain knowledge in metaphysics (the philosophical study of the basic nature, structure, or elements of reality) or in the sciences. In ancient times a chief form of skepticism was medical skepticism, which questioned whether one could know with certainty either the causes or cures of diseases. In the area of ethics, doubts were raised about accepting various mores and customs and about claiming any objective basis for making judgments of value. Skeptics of religion have questioned the doctrines of different traditions. Certain philosophies, like those of Kant and his Scottish contemporary David Hume, have seemed to show that no knowledge can be gained beyond the world of experience and that one cannot discover the real causes of experienced phenomena. Any attempt to do so, as Kant argued, leads to “antinomies,” or contradictory knowledge claims. A dominant form of skepticism (the subject of this article) concerns knowledge in general, questioning whether anything actually can be known with complete or adequate certainty. This type is called epistemological skepticism.

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The various kinds of epistemological skepticism can be differentiated in terms of the areas in which doubts are raised—that is, whether the doubts are directed toward reason, toward the senses, or toward knowledge of “things-in-themselves” (things as they really are, rather than as they appear to human observers). Forms of skepticism can also be distinguished in terms of the motivation of the skeptic—whether he is challenging views for ideological reasons or for pragmatic or practical ones in order to attain certain psychological goals. Among the chief ideological motives have been religious or antireligious concerns. Some skeptics have challenged knowledge claims so that they could be replaced by religious claims that would have to be accepted on the basis of faith. Others have challenged religious knowledge claims in order to overthrow some orthodoxy. Kinds of skepticism can also be distinguished in terms of how restricted or how thoroughgoing they are—whether they apply only to certain areas and to certain kinds of knowledge claims or whether they are more general and universal.

Ancient skepticism

In the West, skeptical philosophical attitudes began to appear in ancient Greece about the 5th century bce. The Eleatic philosophers (those associated with the Greek city of Elea in Italy) rejected the existence of plurality and change, conceiving of reality as a static One, and they denied that reality could be described in terms of the categories of ordinary experience. On the other hand, Heracleitus and his pupil Cratylus thought that the world was in such a state of flux that no permanent, unchangeable truth about it could be found; and Xenophanes, a wandering poet and philosopher, doubted whether humans could distinguish true from false knowledge.

A more developed form of skepticism appeared in some of the views attributed to Socrates and in the views of certain Sophists (itinerant and generally mercenary teachers of philosophy, rhetoric, and other subjects). Socrates, as portrayed in the early dialogues of his pupil Plato, was always questioning the knowledge claims of others; in the Apology, he famously admits that all that he really knows is that he knows nothing. Socrates’ enemy, the Sophist Protagoras, contended that “man is the measure of all things,” a thesis that has been taken to imply a kind of skeptical relativism: no views are ultimately or objectively true, but each is merely one person’s opinion. Another Sophist, Gorgias, advanced the skeptical-nihilist thesis that nothing exists; and, if something did exist, it could not be known; and, if it could be known, it could not be communicated.

The putative father of Greek skepticism, however, was Pyrrhon of Elis (c. 360–c. 272 bce), who undertook the rare effort of trying to live his skepticism. He avoided committing himself to any views about what the world was really like and acted only according to appearances. In this way he sought happiness, or at least mental peace.

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The first school of skeptical philosophy developed in the Academy, the school founded by Plato, in the 3rd century bce and was thus called “Academic” skepticism. Starting from the skeptical doctrines of Socrates, its leaders, Arcesilaus and Carneades, set forth a series of epistemological arguments to show that nothing could be known, challenging primarily what were then the two foremost schools, Stoicism and Epicureanism. They denied that any criteria could be found for distinguishing the true from the false; instead, only reasonable or probable standards could be established. This limited, or probabilistic, skepticism was the view of the Academy until the 1st century bce, when the Roman philosopher and orator Cicero was a student there. His Academica and De natura deorum are the main sources of modern knowledge of this movement. (St. Augustine’s Contra academicos, composed some five centuries later, was intended as an answer to Cicero’s views.)

The other major form of ancient skepticism was Pyrrhonism, apparently developed by medical skeptics in Alexandria. Beginning with Aenesidemus (1st century bce), this movement, named after Pyrrhon, criticized the Academic skeptics because they claimed to know too much—namely, that nothing could be known and that some things are more probable than others. The Pyrrhonians advanced a series of tropes, or ways of opposing various kinds of knowledge claims, in order to bring about epochē (suspension of judgment). The Pyrrhonian attitude is preserved in the writings of one of its last leaders, Sextus Empiricus (2nd or 3rd century ce). In his Outlines of Pyrrhonism and Adversus mathematicos, Sextus presented the tropes developed by previous Pyrrhonists. The 10 tropes attributed to Aenesidemus showed the difficulties encountered by attempts to ascertain the truth or reliability of judgments based on sense information, owing to the variability and differences of human and animal perceptions. Other arguments raised difficulties in determining whether there are any reliable criteria or standards—logical, rational, or otherwise—for judging whether anything is true or false. To settle any disagreement, a criterion seems to be required. Any purported criterion, however, would have to be based either on another criterion—thus leading to an infinite regress of criteria—or on itself, which would be circular. Sextus offered arguments to challenge any claims of dogmatic philosophers to know more than what is evident, and in so doing he presented, in one form or another, practically all of the skeptical arguments that have ever appeared in subsequent philosophy.

Sextus said that his arguments were aimed at leading people to a state of ataraxia (unperturbability). People who thought that they could know reality were constantly disturbed and frustrated. If they could be led to suspend judgment, however, they would find peace of mind. In this state of suspension they would neither affirm nor deny the possibility of knowledge but would remain peaceful, still waiting to see what might develop. The Pyrrhonist did not become inactive in this state of suspense but lived undogmatically according to appearances, customs, and natural inclinations.