Does Anyone Really Practice Skepticism?
I have no problem with someone who says he is "skeptical" of some proposition or theory. In everyday talk, that just means the person has doubts about a claim. It may not mean that he doubts it, just that he has doubts about it, which seems different. The first seems to imply a rejection or a near-rejection of the claim; the second seems softer. "I doubt it" differs from "I have doubts about it." Be that as it may, I am dubious about using the term skepticism to mean mere doubt. Making doubt into a ism is an entirely different ballgame. An ism suggests a doctrine, and a doctrine based on doubt strikes me as strange. (For the same reason, the term atheism is weird because no doctrine flows merely from not believing in God.) In philosophy skepticism is the position that knowledge in general or knowledge of a particular kind is impossible . It does not mean a particular doubt about something. One cannot doubt everything, as Wittgenstein pointed out. Thi