Philosophical skepticism

Philosophical skeptics are often classified into two general categories: Those who deny all possibility of knowledge, and those who advocate for the suspension of judgment due to the inadequacy of evidence.

In this wide sense, it is quite common in everyday life: many people are ordinary skeptics about parapsychology or about astrology because they doubt the claims made by proponents of these fields.

[5][4][12][15] On this view, it is a philosophical methodology that can be utilized to probe a theory to find its weak points, either to expose it or to modify it in order to arrive at a better version of it.

In practice, the term most commonly references the examination of claims and theories that appear to be pseudoscience, rather than the routine discussions and challenges among scientists.

Unmitigated skeptics believe that objective truths are unknowable and that man should live in an isolated environment in order to win mental peace.

[8] George Edward Moore, for example, tried to refute skepticism about the existence of the external world, not by engaging with its complex arguments, but by using a simple observation: that he has two hands.

Le Morvan himself proposes a positive third alternative: to use it as a philosophical tool in a few selected cases to overcome prejudices and foster practical wisdom.

In support of this questioning Pyrrhonists developed the skeptical arguments cited above (the Ten Modes of Aenesidemus and the Five Modes of Agrippa)[26] demonstrating that beliefs cannot be justified:[27] According to an account of Pyrrho's life by his student Timon of Phlius, Pyrrho extolled a way to become happy and tranquil: 'The things themselves are equally indifferent, and unstable, and indeterminate, and therefore neither our senses nor our opinions are either true or false.

[30] Aenesidemus's best known contribution to skepticism was his now-lost book, Pyrrhonian Discourses, which is only known to us through Photius, Sextus Empiricus, and to a lesser extent Diogenes Laërtius.

[citation needed] The ancient Greek Pyrrhonists developed sets of arguments to demonstrate that claims about reality cannot be adequately justified.

Nonetheless, Hobbes was still labeled as a religious skeptic by his contemporaries for raising doubts about Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch and his political and psychological explanation of the religions.

As a result, it was out of political reasons that certain truth standards about religions and ethics were devised and established in order to form a functioning government and stable society.

[3][45] Pierre Bayle was a French philosopher in the late 17th century that was described by Richard Popkin to be a "supersceptic" who carried out the sceptic tradition to the extreme.

[3] Bayle believed that truth cannot be obtained through reason and that all human endeavor to acquire absolute knowledge would inevitably lead to failure.

In his magnum opus, Dictionnaire Historique et Critique (Historical and Critical Dictionary), Bayle painstakingly identified the logical flaws in several works throughout the history in order to emphasize the absolute futility of rationality.

However, no matter what his original intention was, Bayle did cast significant influence on the upcoming Age of Enlightenment with his destruction of some of the most essential theological ideas and his justification of religious tolerance Atheism in his works.

Furthermore, Hume even demonstrates that science is merely a psychological phenomenon based on the association of ideas: often, specifically, an assumption of cause-and-effect relationships that is itself not grounded in any sense-impressions.

Thus, even scientific knowledge is logically unjustified, being not actually objective or provable but, rather, mere conjecture flimsily based on our minds perceiving regular correlations between distinct events.

Hume (1711–1776) argued that for the notion of cause and effect no analysis is possible which is also acceptable to the empiricist program primarily outlined by John Locke (1632–1704).

The historical Buddha asserted certain doctrines as true, such as the possibility of nirvana; however, he also upheld a form of skepticism with regards to certain questions which he left "un-expounded" (avyākata) and some he saw as "incomprehensible" (acinteyya).

Because the Buddha saw these questions (which tend to be of metaphysical topics) as unhelpful on the path and merely leading to confusion and "a thicket of views", he promoted suspension of judgment towards them.

[60] Nagarjuna famously opens his magnum opus, the Mulamadhyamakakarika, with the statement that the Buddha claimed that true happiness was found through dispelling 'vain thinking' (prapañca, also "conceptual proliferation").

Hayes writes: ...in both early Buddhism and in the Skeptics one can find the view put forward that man's pursuit of happiness, the highest good, is obstructed by his tenacity in holding ungrounded and unnecessary opinions about all manner of things.

While no texts or authoritative doctrine have survived, followers of this system are frequently mentioned in philosophical treatises of other schools, often as an initial counterpoint against which to assert their own arguments.

While Jain philosophy claims that is it possible to achieve omniscience, absolute knowledge (Kevala Jnana), at the moment of enlightenment, their theory of anekāntavāda or 'many sided-ness', also known as the principle of relative pluralism, allows for a practical form of skeptical thought regarding philosophical and religious doctrines (for un-enlightened beings, not all-knowing arihants).

[64][65] Jain doctrine states that, an object has infinite modes of existence and qualities and, as such, they cannot be completely perceived in all its aspects and manifestations, due to inherent limitations of the humans.

He introduced a method of rational critique and applied it to the widespread dogmatism thinking of his age like phenomenology (the main contemporary Confucianism ideology that linked all natural phenomena with human ethics), state-led cults, and popular superstition.

His encounter with skepticism led Ghazali to embrace a form of theological occasionalism, or the belief that all causal events and interactions are not the product of material conjunctions but rather the immediate and present will of God.

Though appreciating what was valid in the first two of these, at least, he determined that all three approaches were inadequate and found ultimate value only in the mystical experience and spiritual insight he attained as a result of following Sufi practices.

[73] Recordings of Aztec philosophy suggest that the elite classes believed in an essentially panentheistic worldview, in which teotl represents a unified, underlying universal force.