I sometimes wonder if the real purpose of this organism which we call a human being is to discover truth. Certainly curiosity is more than a passing fancy.

In philosophy, knowing truth is the matter at hand. There are no other issues to be dealt with. And that means that when discussing philosophy at least, the starting point must be critical skepticism.

Why, a skeptic might ask, is skepticism the starting point? Like most statements which are true, this one is true because the alternatives are unacceptable. In the absence of skepticism, an individual is prone to believe a proposition to be true which may in fact turn out to be false. Uncritical thinkers do this everyday, and the actions they base on those incorrect assumptions often have steep price tags.

If we grant, for the sake of discussion, that the purpose of philosophy is to know the truth, it follows that allowing untrue assumptions to enter into our premises defeats our purposes.

Take natural rights as an example. Once it is uncritically granted that natural rights do exist – despite no cogent argument or proof of any kind – we have to deal with all sorts of meaningless arguments for animal rights as natural rights, property rights as natural rights, abortion as a natural right, democracy as a natural right, health care as natural right and so on. No natural right has ever been proven and the time wasted discussing it would better be used discussing more tangible items, like the tooth fairy.

The primary problem with uncritical thought, with unskeptical thinkers, is that they impede meaningful debate. As individuals working together with some common goals, debate is the practical foundation of society. When an uncritical thinker invokes natural rights, say, as justification for a national health care scheme, he has effectively derailed meaningful debate.

Skepticism means that we withhold belief in the absence of overwhelming evidence. Skepticism in the public sphere demands that we dismiss unceremoniously propositions that are not accompanied by proof.

If we can agree to be skeptical, our debates will be meaningful and we may just be able to precipitate progress.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 29th, 2009 at 8:36 am and is filed under Philosophy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.