Skepticism cannot build, only destroy

[info being]

To say that skepticism is popular these days would be an understatement. There's so much to be cynical about, and so many perfectly good reasons. I consider myself a skeptic...more and more so over the past few years...perhaps to the extent that now I'm becoming skeptical of skepticism itself.

Skepticism only gains momentum when it is fed with solid reasons. To be skeptical is to point out, reject, and stop that which is wrong. The environment, life on earth itself, is being destroyed before our eyes. It is our responsibility to direct not only skepticism, but also irreverence and even hatred toward the forces of destruction responsible. But we will never be able to shout "stop it" loud enough for it to become a solution.

So I have a question for my fellow skeptics. What alternative do we believe in? Yes...believe...which involves faith (a term which usually illicits a strong negative reaction from my rationalist self). Skepticism is grounded in rationalism. Rationalism allows us to look at the world before us and to understand...to make choices. But neither rationalism nor skepticism help us to build. What can be built when solutions are doubted or rejected by our rationalist minds?

To build a better future, as an individual concerned with his own life, or as a movement concerned with the good of the world...requires irrational belief and faith. Belief in ourselves. Belief in humanity. Faith in possibility.

[Kolesar]

1. I don't even know if I could define faith

I just have this ethic of proceeding cautiously and conscientiously looking out for other people. Midwestern humility and frugality. Don't spend it if you don't have it.

[dusmcj]

2. most ethical codes are attempts to make practical rules for daily life

not some received stuff from a dude sitting on a cloud. Why put a cover on your bald head in the desert sun ? Why suggest that you not screw your next-door neighbor's mate ? "Better future" needs to be tangible, and I bet it is when you say it to yourself. Home in on what it means in tangible terms, and flesh out (add detail) to your vision of that better future. As you give it body and complexity, you will have built up a very concrete set of goals to work towards. Moving from our current state to that new state is at its core a mechanical process of transformation of physical reality (which includes individual and collective thought, and behavior patterns - you bet those are real...). Among all this, I don't note a requirement for irrationality... Rather, the question is whether you (individually or collectively) have the resources (might be expressed as "power", but that word is laden...) to effect those changes and overcome other forces which might possibly oppose yours. You know what a better set of conditions is than what you see today. To a large extent, getting there is mechanics. There is no guarantee that you'll succeed, but that's really a dispassionate process. Put another way, the universe doesn't give a shit what you think. So if you're thinking about changing your corner of it, but not sure that you're able, the only person you'll be having the conversation about that with is yourself. You can call the resulting domain "faith", others label it "fortitude" and venture close to the abyss of becoming gasbags afraid of acknowledging their own weakness, but however you see it, I don't see that there's anything particularly irrational about it.

[info being]

4. Have you ever taken a leap in your life?

Gone to college just believing that you'd be better off for it...or maybe you had a vision of what you wanted to do one day? Ever had kids or gotten married? Ever moved to a new city?

Those types of actions are what build a life, and most of them are a leap of faith...that you can't rationalize every aspect of why you want to do it but there is a certain amount of intuition that it is the right thing to do.

Similarly, the early Progressives and Socialists had no proof that their ideologies would work. Their beliefs were logical...but without faith that their vision could become a reality and the reality would work...they never would have built the movement.

[dusmcj]

36. you betcha

I've also had the misfortune to have had people who focused on the inward, particularly notions like "leaps of faith" and other flavors of "inner strength", on eerily Republicanlike exhortations about character involving "daring" and "risk taking", to the exclusion of being functional in the external world (again much like the Repubelicans), present in my life. The amount of my time and energy, which they were not entitled to, which they wasted has made me allergic to the type - sorry, I won't hold it against you as long as you don't hold it against me.

There is something reassuring, or precisely reaffirming about chewing the old cud about adversity, and overcoming it, and succeeding against odds, and being strong, etc. etc. It reaffirms millenia of a particular social theme (meme ?) that life is hard, and that as the priest says in what I call that stupid Father Flanagan movie, I think it's called Boys Town, "you have to fight, boy, fight".

I would suggest something worth affirming more, and that is a world in which the conditions which require struggle are consistently and continually removed, and precisely in which your scars, or "wounds" as the flatulators of the 1990's mens movement called them (and we note that in prewar Germany there was a "mens movement" which was a precursor to the Nazis), are not something to celebrate, or be ashamed of, in short in which you don't engage personally in the process of overcoming obstacles but remain detached from it and instead retain your focus on what actually matters, which is identifying appropriate goals and the mechanics of achieving them. Instead of slapping ourselves on the back (congratulating ourselves if there's no one there to do it for us, which is really just ego masturbation) for being more tough and hardbitten mofos than the opposition be it individual or inanimate, and doing the equivalent to writing odes about our heroism, we might better spend our energies cultivating a little internal discipline and practice telling the little "me" to shut up, which might let us approach the very real challenges in the external, tangible world with dispassion and detachment, and address them matter-of-factly rather than with a great burst of turgid energy after which we fall back exhausted, emit a fart and congratulate ourselves on how wonderful we were, daring, etc. Yawn. Lamers who don't get things done. There's a whole party, and social grouping behind them, that loves to focus on character traits, but it ain't this one. They are currently in power, of a kind, which might be a draw depending, in turn, on your character.

Oh, and very practically, I'd suggest that any political visionaries who succeeded in producing change weren't winging it and going on a hunch, instead they spent years of hard work envisioning alternate states, _reasoning_ about how their proposed change might work, what results it might have, etc. Inducing change in the real world is hard work, first and foremost; the Founders are the prime example of this, with others including Mao, Ho, Fidel, Lenin, the leaders of the 1848 revolutions etc. also pertaining. Romantic notions of daring strokes and bravado are left for the also rans who write, and read, bad novels about it. I.e. from my reading, "Give me Liberty or Give me Death" was a catchy phrase, but Patrick Henry didn't use it cause he was being a putzy actor, he and his compatriots felt it in their bones as a life and death question about the quality of their lives individually as well as the life of the community of colonies, as well as of the conflict between the new egalitarianism of the Enlightenment versus the decrepitude of privileged rank and absolute monarchy. The revolution will not be televised, and it ain't a f*ing tea party. And celebrating ourselves is a dangerous distraction.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

3. We are insignificant pipsqueeks in the universe.

What we do, think, believe, is about as important as what the average turnip thinks, does, or believes.

It all comes down to what kind of life want to live and how you choose to live it.

The rest is all ego. The desire to think oneself important in the cosmos.

As the Buddhists say, "Chop wood and carry water." The reason for life is life.

[info being]

5. Wrong

When you hold a thought, you begin moving in that direction. Your actions and the decisions you make every day lead you in the direction of your vision and dream. What we do, think, believe is as important as everything else in the universe. For us, individually, it is the most important thing because that is all we can control.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

8. I'm not sure you disagree with me.

"What we do, think, believe is as important as everything else in the universe. For us, individually, it is the most important thing because that is all we can control."

Of course it is important to us, individually. But, is it any more important to the universe than what the average turnip thinks, does, believes? The turnips "vision" is to grow and multiply. Is that less important to the structure of the universe than our highblown thoughts, visions, and dreams?

Does he universe give more weight to us than to turnips or algae?

If so, please show me how.

[info being]

11. Which is more important is of no significance

I'm not sure how the concept of significance in the universe ties back to any of this.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

32. Just trying to point out that interesting philisophical debates

about scepticism, rationality, etc, are all rather silly. Sort of like trying to figure out why you prefer pizza to pickled beets.

My belief is that what we do, think, believe, is because of a combination of factors mostly involving our own personal history and experiences.

Your original post sets out the question whether scepticism "builds or destroys".

My answer, in essence, was, "What difference does it make?"

The idea that we are "going to change the world" by our thoughts, beliefs, words, or actions, is noteworthy only to us. The earth has been around for about 4 billion years. We've been bumping into the furniture for about 50,000 years in our present form. Cockroaches and houseflies have been far more successful than we have at "changing the world", and will undoubtedly be dancing on our graves or devouring our "peak of evolution" cadavers.

We're just along for the (very brief) ride. Enjoy it, or worry about it, belieive, don't believe, question, doubt, create, eat, shit, screw, philosophize, but don't attach any great significance to it all. In the end we all end up as worm food.

[KittyWampus]

6. Skepticism Is Necessary For The Process Of Discrimination. Winnowing Out

what is in accord with Universal Principles and what is not.

[info being]

7. But skepticism alone is not enough.

It will only parse out, stop, and destroy what is in its focus. It will not build.

[JHB]

35. But you cannot build without it

I don't know if I fully agree with your view that it "will only parse out, stop, and destroy what is in its focus".

That chipping away and parsing can be essential to the process of creation and/or discovery. Can you carve a statue (or if you balk at that analogy, uncover a fossil) without chipping away the extraneous material around it?

[BurtWorm]

9. Skepticism is a request for evidence.

It's not about destruction. It's about reason.

[info being]

14. Oh but when enough people become more skeptical...

the RESULT is the destruction of an idea or movement.

[BurtWorm]

21. The Enlightenment was built on skepticism

(Emphasis on "built." ;) )

The modern world was built on it. Perhaps the case could be made that the modern world is in itself destructive. I could see why someone might argue that. On the other hand, compare the stagnant, faith-based Middle Ages with the dynamism of the skeptical, reasonable Renaissance. It's more complicated than just that skepticism destroys ideas or movements.

Speaking of movements, remember the era of civil rights and opposition to the Vietnam War, neither of which would have happened if people accepted the received ideas about race and empire and didn't challenge them.

[info being]

24. Civil Rights and opposition to Vietnam War

You could also argue that none of it could never have happened without faith and belief. Faith that equality could be achieved and that the war could be ended led to the action that did it.

Maybe you'd have to actually read my post, not just the title to get what I'm saying.

[BurtWorm]

28. Maybe you should have given your thread a less absolutist title

You don't have to denigrate skepticism to argue for faith of the kind you're referring to, do you?

But I'm not just reacting to the title. I'm arguing that skepticism and rationality are the modes of being that drove Europe since 1500 into the modern world. They've proven to be very creative modes at that.

[info being]

30. I wasn't denigrating

What's wrong with destroying that which is destructive or ought to be destroyed? Destroying Wal-Mart or the Bush Administration would be positive. I was pointing out the function of skepticism...not illiciting a positive response but trying to communicate something important:

Direct skepticism at what needs to be destroyed, direct faith in what needs to be built.

[chaplainM]

10. Many people confuse skepticism with cynicism

Skeptics are not automatic nay-sayers, but people who demand proof for what they're asked to believe. And, as the saying goes, extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof.

[info being]

12. "For what they're asked to believe"

See, as long as we are primarily skeptics, we will be the ones being asked to believe...not asking others to believe. We cannot be in charge of social systems without faith in our own visions, and the ability to ask others to believe what we believe.

I'm not saying that DUers don't have faith and belief in ideals...I'm simply stating that skepticism doesn't build.

[TahitiNut]

15. I've found that my own beliefs are the best target for my skepticism.

Nothing is more pernicious than that which we believe merely because we want to. :shrug:

Read ... http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism/

[info being]

17. Do you believe we can end the Iraqi war?

Do you believe we can gete Bush impeached or resigned?

Do you believe we can do more for the poor than we are today?

Is this based solely on evidence?

[TahitiNut]

23. You frame those questions in the utilitarian (teleological) mode.

How many times do I have to say that I subscribe to deontological ethics?

Why not ask "Should we oppose the invasion and occupation of Iraq?"
Why not ask "Should we support the impeachment, indictment, conviction and imprisonment of members of the Bush* regime for war crimes and crimes against humanity?"

It has very little to do with the error-prone prognostication of 'success' or 'failure' and everything to do with acting in concert with a set of values and principles.

[info being]

25. Why is it so difficult for us to admit we believe in stuff?

Not a single person here has admitted to believing in anything.

I believe in human equality and equal opportunity for all. I believe in Green Business practices. I believe in true-cost economics. I could go on.

What rational or skeptical basis is there for believing in human equality and equal opportunity for all? None. It is a value, faith, belief.

What is everyone else afraid of? Why can't we stand up for our beliefs? Because it is more difficult and scary than criticising?

[TahitiNut]

26. I do it all the time. I say I believe in "liberty and justice for all!"

That includes smokers, "detainees," overweight people, Muslims, "foreigners," and women and includes owning guns and having total soveriegnty over one's own body.

I say "Democracy is not a spectator sport" and that means that absolutely every citizen should be gladly subject to a Universal National Service obligation.

Most of what I hear in response to these is "not me" and some bullshit claim of privilege. Ridiculous.

We've got a "Let George do it" attitude and are getting what we asked for.

[info being]

27. EXACTLY

The responses on this thread prove my point. They are PITIFUL.

[lectrobyte]

13. I've always thought that progress is only made by questioning the

status quo. Otherwise we'd still be in caves or something.

[info being]

16. It takes both visionaries and skeptics

Visionaries and believers propose, skeptics hold them accountable.

[depakid]

18. I'll take science and rationality

along with all of the other cool things that it's BUILT through skepticim over the past 4-500 years.

Looking before one leaps usually ends up with better results than taking off on a wing and a prayer.

[info being]

19. Yes, but at some point one does have to leap

That's what I'm talking about. I think I made it clear in the original post how much I value skepticism...the argument is that it isn't enough and a leap is required at times.

[confludemocrat]

20. skepticism about "conventional wisdom" is the sparkplug of progress n/t

[info being]

22. But is it never required to believe in something?

Doesn't a person or movement have to believe in something positive, not just agree on what's wrong? At some point, the spark of positive action has to be a vision or belief in something.

[dusmcj]

39. it's not believing, that just makes you feel good

it's _deciding_ on it, _agreeing_ on it (just as on the negative), _evaluating_ and reaching a _conclusion_ about it. It is the Republican/conservative mistake to focus on the raw materials instead of the control structure. All the inner strength in the world is useless if misapplied. It feels great to wallow around in the warm bath of faith, it kind of reminds you of when you were breastfeeding maybe, and it's what the recovery movement tries to induce. And yet it's not enough, it is our responsibility to put our capacity for engagement with and also deliberation about the external world to use.

It's as though there were a squeamishness about poaching on the domain of God, and we humans should all just sit around working on our virtue while waiting to do someone else's bidding. And while we are just fly specs in the grand scheme of things, we need to live with that contradiction, that while we are ultimately irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, on the tangible small scale of every minute of our lives, our _choices_ (!) and the _actions that flow from them_ (!) matter.

Deconstructing my own reply, I note a possible answer to your immediate subject question, "don't you ever have to believe in anything": I'm proposing that you need to believe in cause and effect, and the existence of physical truth (whether we know such facts or not is irrelevant). Which is rather opposed to the relativization of everything (based on the relative power of its proponents) which the conservatives practice (and which is really entirely un-conservative, rather they should be called accomodationists and sycophants - and by Jove, I've called them that. And worse.) Morals and ethical codes exist because there is cause and effect in this universe and because actions and behaviors have more and less beneficial results. The Republicans/conservatives have, despite their accusations that we do so, become the party of denial of physical reality, of cause and effect. In particular, they deny the blatant negative effects of the actions and behaviors they promote. Given that a significant component of their motivational structure is reaction (as in reactionary) this is not surprising, since they are simply doing something different from what their chosen opponents do. They fail to believe in the absoluteness of physics (in a partly metaphorical sense), in the truth that the universe is a harsh environment which runs by rules which are in some ways extraordinarily rigid and unbending. (For example, in general don't expect to get more out than you put in. As in the case of resource use...) They think that because they're little personalities, special little people, and because they believe hard enough, and are vigorous enough in advocacy of their ideas, that somehow the God they regularly slander and the Universe he built (please don't conclude that I'm a Bible thumper, for here it's useful metaphor) will note their wheedlings, and kindly bend the rules for them. Uh uh. They, just as we, are also just fly specs on God's wall.

[Yollam]

29. Skepticism may not build, but it can protect.

Of all the people I know, I'm definitely the most skeptical...

[info being]

31. True

It can protect good things that have already been built. Skepticism is very important in this respect.

[derby378]

33. Maybe you should check out OUTLINES OF PYRRHONISM by Sextus Empiricus

As a card-carrying skeptic, myself, I'm not exactly sure where you're coming from.

[jim3775]

34. Here is famed skeptic Michael Shermer's reply to that argument

Deepak Chopra made that argument in an article on the Huffington Post, this was Shermer's reply:

Huffington Post

The Power of Positive Skepticism: A Reply to Deepak Chopra

Deepak Chopra's attitude toward skepticism is a common one we hear at Skeptic. Skeptics are said to be rigid, dogmatic, hypercritical, and closed-minded. We are accused of adding nothing to the fund of knowledge and wisdom, while we lurk in the shadows waiting for the opportunity to douse the flame of hope that resides in the belief in unlimited human potential and alternative realities.

Applying Jesus' Judgment Principle, I begin by acknowledging that there are some skeptics who do indeed fit this description, and no doubt Deepak has encountered them in his very public crusade on the borderlands of science. (Big targets are easy to hit.) When I first became involved in the skeptics movement I met not a few grumpy old white guys complaining that the world was overrun with pseudoscience and superstitions, pronouncing the end of Western Civilization if we didn't don our debunking caps and make the world safe for science and reason. Fair enough. There is some hyperbole there.
...

This brings me to the larger issue of two forms of skepticism, negative and positive. Stephen Jay Gould began his foreword to my 1997 book, Why People Believe Weird Things, by noting: "Skepticism or debunking often receives the bad rap reserved for activities -- like garbage disposal -- that absolutely must be done for a safe and sane life, but seem either unglamorous or unworthy of overt celebration." Deepak has identified the negative form of skepticism, debunking, but let's be honest, there is a lot of bunk in the world. Members of the "bunko squads" of police departments are debunkers, and we do not bemoan their service to society in busting scams, schemes, swindles, and stings. Gresham's Law -- bad money drives good money out of circulation -- applies to ideas as well. By weeding out bad ideas, negative skepticism enables the good to flourish.

Positive skepticism, however, involves much more than the negative disposal of false claims. In fact, the word "skeptic" comes from the Greek skeptikos, for "thoughtful." According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "skeptical" has also been used to mean "inquiring," "reflective," and, with variations in the ancient Greek, "watchman" or "mark to aim at." What a positive meaning for what we do! We are thoughtful, inquiring, and reflective, and we are the watchmen who guard against bad ideas in order to discover good ideas, consumer advocates of critical thinking who, through the guidelines of science, establish a mark at which to aim. "Proper debunking is done in the interest of an alternate model of explanation, not as a nihilistic exercise," Gould concludes. "The alternate model is rationality itself, tied to moral decency -- the most powerful joint instrument for good that our planet has ever known."


...

[porphyrian]

37. Nope. Wrong.

Faith is not required to build a better future. Stubborn dedication to making the future better and action towards that goal are the required formula. Belief has nothing to do with it. We don't work long hours at shitty jobs because we believe in the company profiting from our labor, we do it for a paycheck so that we might enjoy just a little of the life we do believe in.

"But neither rationalism nor skepticism help us to build."

Wrong again. Both rationalism and skepticism help us build things more efficiently, by eliminating ridiculous and time-wasting options before we choose them.

Belief in ourselves is not irrational. Neither is belief in humanity. And belief in possibility isn't faith because we know possibility exists.

[info being]

40. But...

Belief in ourselves...belief in humanity...and belief in possibility....

is belief.

[porphyrian]

42. So is skepticism.

Skepticism involves the belief that some things are wrong despite others believing in them. Thus, skeptics believe in questioning and analyzing beliefs the beliefs of others, especially in the case where those beliefs are held on faith alone. Skepticism itself has held up to skeptical questioning, as there is ample evidence that it serves a vital role in the development and propagation of ideas, much like meme gardening.

[dusmcj]

38. the positive and the negative are both needed

a second aspect of reply:

the positive, or constructive, and the negative, or destructive, are both needed - Freud rightly identified that the first step in healing is identifying the problem, only then can you proceed to fixing it. The idiotic flatulence which has been emitted since Bush I from the Bush League wing of American society about "being Positive" (another in the list of cathartic/affective codephrases which that tribe has given currency) misses the point that internal virtue is not enough when confronting obstacles, you just die tired. A little healthy analysis, cutting with the sword of reason, identifies the nature of the problem and allows a far more efficient application of constructive energy to remediating the situation. We can reach for archetypal structures like the Hindu trinity of Creator, Preserver and Destroyer, but we don't need to, although they do give us historical validation from a tradition that has survived the millenia. We can see the practical need for the disassembly of defective structure before its replacement with new, more functional construction. Before our eyes. Strength and being filled with life's juices, ready to employ them against whatever adversity may arise, are just tools, and they alone are not sufficient, because like I said, employing only them, you just die tired. The willingness to fulfill our destiny as conscious, volitional individuals with a _chosen_ (as opposed to received) ethical and rational compass, and to place all such tools under the control of our own small manifestation of the Godhead (what in more religious times would have been called the Divine Spark, or the Image of God) is a requirement.

[info being]

41. exactly

a movement without a positive cannot build.

[dusmcj]

43. Dems have them

we've just been having trouble identifying them, and/or deciding that it's OK to state them publicly. For example, the next time someone uses "liberal" as a pejorative, let's resolve to respond with "<fill in name here> you ignorant slut, don't you know that without liberals, the Inquisition would have found a reason to disappear you long ago ?" Or something like that. We are the party, and the people (People ?) who made the positives of the last 100 years of US history. We just need to get over our surprise that the people who were put at a disadvantage by that (slop trough is closed for the evening) got annoyed, and that the ignorant masses are exactly that. Once we figure that out and accept it as a starting point, we'll be fine.