A follow-up to Identifying with Non-Belief.
If skepticism is the act of being skeptical, I’m ok with it, but if we go to a lot of trouble to define and systematize “Skepticism,” then we run the risk of falling into the same absolutist traps in which we don’t recognize the truest shape of reality because it’s obscured through our pre-formed ideas — exactly the kind of thing skepticism exists to attack.
Every generation has to learn this lesson independently. It takes time to grow into this attitude — if at all. I think very few ever do, and most generations are dominated by absolute ideas or conventions that virtually nobody calls into question (and hardly anyone even recognizes).
What makes full-circle skepticism so difficult is that the type of person who would start to be seriously skeptical in the first place — the intellectual type — tends to assume that learning is a matter of looking things up, being told, or figuring out formulas.
But full-circle skepticism is a practice that is gradually mastered much like swimming, riding a bike, skating, swinging a bat, or hitting a three-point jump shot. You keep doing it and doing it — observing and doubting and analyzing and asking and speculating and synthesizing and doubting and wondering… — and eventually your mind develops the proper habits (one hopes) and learns the more complex discipline of thinking.
Skating is the simple skill, hockey is the complex discipline. In the same way, skepticism is the simple skill, thinking well is the complex one — which is composed of other simple skills, like observation, imaginative association, logic…
At some point a person’s thinking matures, habits are more or less set, and we start to take things for granted that aren’t even recognized or articulate. Even the greatest full-circle skeptics settle into habits they can’t see and don’t call into question.
Or at least, that’s what I’m supposing, hypothetically. In the spirit of skepticism, I’m open to the possibility of the existence of a perfect skeptic, but the historical record indicates it’s nearly impossible — and besides, even if such a person was standing here beside me, I’d have to be skeptical — and what good would it do either of us for me to grant them that title?
Now just because someone — or a whole generation — grows up to unskeptically settle into a bunch of intellectual habits, that doesn’t have to be the end of skepticism. At least, they don’t have to continue being the catalysts of skeptical inquiry — the ones at the cutting or blazing edge.
That’s what the young are for: to raise questions, to dig and probe into the old structures, looking for gaps and weaknesses and opportunities…
Does this mean the old ought to let the young do all the work? Not at all. While the young are in the best position to criticize the thoughts and ways of their elders, the elders must in turn criticize the criticisms coming from the young.
Which isn’t to say the old are ”entitled” by the amount of their experience or stature. Their criticisms of the young ought to refer to real results and observable, future benefits. Nobody calls more skepticism onto themself than the person who says, “Trust me, I know, I’m older and I’ve been through this before.”
If you’re skeptically imagining an old bear constantly under attack from ambitious young wolves – thinking that it isn’t feasible to require scholars to address every single challenge that comes their way – consider that if the old scholars where adequately skeptical with their own thinking while coming up themselves then most of the potential challenges will have already been addressed and documented, and the young wolves will have to cut their way through that before they even get within vocal range of the scholar.
That’s essentially how science already works, but not so much when it comes to the ideas that directly affect our lives, the world we live in, and the underlying system of beliefs and values. Even scientists who practice this kind of open inquiry in their field are not skeptical at all when it comes to moral and political habits.
This is what we need more of: the means of skeptical inquiry into moral, religious, and political matters. These things tend to be sensitive – but that’s not a reason not to be critical, it’s a reason to learn to be less sensitive.
Well, I mean – in the spirit of skepticism – maybe or maybe not. But the question needs to be pursued — and where are the old bears who have already addressed my questions? Where are the accounts that might convince me otherwise?
Am I thinking that full-circle skepticism might eventually solve all our problems?
Maybe — but I doubt it.
