Skepticism Essay -- Skeptic philosophy philosophers

SkepticismSkepticism is the Western philosophical tradition that maintains that humanity beings can never arrive at any kind of trusted fellowship. Originating in Greece in the middle of the fourth century BC, suspicion and its derivatives be based on the following principles There is no such amour as certainty in human acquaintance.All human knowledge is only probably true, that is, true most of the time, or not true. some(prenominal) non-Western cultures have quizzical traditions, particularly Buddhist philosophy, but properly speaking, skepticism refers only to a Greek philosophical tradition and its Greek, Roman, and European derivatives. The aim of Skeptic philosophers were called the Skeptikoi in Greece. The word is derived from the Greek verb, skeptomai, which means to look carefully, to reflect. The assay-mark of the skeptikoi was caution they refused to be caught in assertions that could be proven false. In fact, the whole system of skeptic philosophy was to present all knowledge as opinion only, that is, to assert nothing as true. In this, they were firmly position in a tradition started a century earlier by Socrates. Socrates claimed that he knew wizard and only one thing that he knew nothing. So he would never go about making any assertions or opinions whatsoever. Instead, he set about questioning people who claimed to have knowledge, plainly for the purpose of learning from them, using a judicial cross-examination, called elenchus . If someone make an assertion, such as, Virtue means acting in accordance with world morality, he would keep questioning the vocalizer until he had forced him into a contradiction. As in a court of law, this contradiction proved that the speaker was lying in som... ...at a certain piece of knowledge, that piece of knowledge then becomes the basis for clearing up other motions. Descartes systematic dubiousness became the basis of the Enlightenment and modern scientific tradition. One begins w ith a proposition, or hypothesis, that is in doubt and then tests that proposition until one arrives, more or less, at a certain conclusion. That does not, however, polish off the story. When confronted by the conclusions of others, ones job is to doubt those conclusions and redo the tests. Once a hypothesis has been tested and retested, then one can conclude that one has arrived at a scientific truth. That, of course, doesnt end it, for all scientific truths can be doubted sometime in the future. In other words, although scientists speak about certainty and truth all the time, the foundational epistemology is skeptical doubt anything and everything.