Skepticism

DelphicRaven
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Skepticism

I don't know if this topic should go on this forum category specifically but I think it should fit.  

Well, I'm at work and so being at work I'm bored which causes me to read various things on the internet. I came across an interesting debate between Deepak Chopra and Michael Shermer (here: http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/05-09-28.html) about Skepticism. Does it have value? Is there too much of it? It's a really intersting read and I guess I'm just interested in viewpoints.

 So.. what do you think?

--Sarah--


jread
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I didn't really care for

I didn't really care for the article. It seemed all over the place and misguided concerning his views of skepticism. It didn't seem like there was a concrete position he was arguing for. Also, It seems like his notion of skepticism is a bit like that of being a Sophist. But truly, that skepticism was never widely regarded as a healthy form of skepticism. Merely saying, "I doubt it, I doubt it, I doubt it" doesn't get you anywhere. But going into the skepticism with humility concerning the capacity of our understanding and perceptual acuteness guided by experience as Hume essentially describes, hopefully leads one to a better position than he was at before questioning. 

Ultimately I think the author is not an empiricist which would make sense why he doesn't like skepticism. It seems like the author is trying to argue that there is 'ultimate truth' and that skepticism is merely undermining that pursuit. 

Overall though, low quality article. 

The implication that we should put Darwinism on trial overlooks the fact that Darwinism has always been on trial within the scientific community. -- From Finding Darwin's God by Kenneth R. Miller

Chaos and chance don't mean the absence of law and order, but rather the presence of order so complex that it lies beyond our abilities to grasp and describe it. -- From From Certainty to Uncertainty by F. David Peat


DelphicRaven
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I'm glad someone wrote. I

I'm glad someone wrote. I really am interested in viewpoints, so I ask a lot of questions and hope I get some people to answer, so thanks for taking the time! 

I didn't like Deepak Chopra's article, but I liked Michael Shermer's more. I think his point was more defended. It raises an interesting question though... is there a point where skepticism is "bad" or "hinders progress"? Faith is something that is argued a lot on message boards such as this, but is there ever a time when faith can be a good thing? I'm not talking about the "faith in god" type faith but just faith in general. If your mother is sick, would "faith" that she will live to see tomorrow be bad? Is it bad to be skeptical of the law of gravity? Is there ever a time when there is just "too much" of EITHER side? Can either faith or skepticism ever reach a point where it ceases to be benificial, if it is seen as being benificial in the first place?

I don't know if any of that makes sense (I'm tired..). I guess I'm just throwing out a ton of questions and waiting to see if/what people respond with. I am ever curious of differing perceptions.

--Sarah-- 

Prayer: How to do nothing and feel like your doing something.


Jacob Cordingley
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Scepticism (English

Scepticism (English spelling, I've become confused lately as to which one is my country's spelling and which is yours) is important to science.

It is important in order to figure out what we can and can't know. I'm going to present a little thought experiment.

Imagine you find yourself on a completely different world. You have permanent amnesia, you remember nothing of this world, any knowledge you had has gone. You know absolutely nothing. How are you going to gain knowledge? You pick up a rock, you discover what its properties are. You then move on to something else and you discover another set of properties, hard, round, cold, smooth etc. You then know what the properties of these objects are. You want to look closer at what makes these objects up, but don't know how until you discover how light works, you conduct some experiments with reflection on water for example, figure out how it works, and then eventually you discover the lens, you make it, you perfect it and you can see what the rock is made of.

By this means is the only way you can discover knowledge. You do not find any evidence this way of anything else, anything else is mere speculation, there is no evidence bar existence for anything higher, intentionality might make you seek a designer, but how do you know it needs one? Well you don't. How do you know anything, through what you can find tangibly, physically and measurably through your senses.

There is another thought experiment, this time based on Rene Descartes. His Meditations detail him losing all knowledge. So let us imagine we have no knowledge we even ask ourselves how we know we exist. Ok, we know we exist because how can we experience or think if we don't, we exist in some form or other, perhaps physically perhaps as a wraith but we exist, we are a consciousness, Cogito Ergo Sum, I think therefore I am. And so the experience must exist too, either internally in our own thought processes or externally in something we perceive outside of ourselves. At this stage it doesn't matter whether the experience is inside or outside of ourselves, we are conscious of it and that means that it and everything in it is real in some way, I experience therefore the experience exists. Our senses tell us the experience is outside of ourselves, it is external, our senses are evidence of this and there is as yet no evidence to the contrary. This is where we begin to learn. All knowledge is a superstructure to our first two bits of reasoning/ knowledge. For example, I know that chocolate is brown comes from I know that the experience exists. The experience covers everything in it, that includes chocolate. Mmm I could scran a nice peice of chocolate right now.