Economics and Philosophy

The concept of SCEPTICISM


First of all we have to say what is it scepticism? Scepticism is the philosophical school of thought in which doubt is the main principle of thinking, especially doubt in the reliability of truth. In our ordinary meaning scepticism is the permanent uncertainty state or in other words the doubts about everything.

The tradition of the systematic scepticism can be most likely traced to Pyrrho of Elis. Pyrrho was affected by east philosophy, because he spent a part of his adult life traveling with his native, Alexander the Great. He got eastward as far as India and just there he was exposed to non-Hellenic philosophy. He had originally been an adherent of Stoicism (philosophical school of though which consider logic, physic and ethics a part of philosophy). But he was troubled by the disputes that could be found against his own philosophy and within all philosophical schools, including his own. Because of it he was always overwhelmed by his inability to determine which school was correct for him. But finally he achieved the inner peace that he had been seeking. Pyrrho and his school were not actually sceptics. Their goal was ataraxia – the peace of mind. Once it was achieved, inquiry would halt. For them it was good enough. But it was not really good enough for scepticism. Anyway, later thinkers took up Pyrrho's path and extended it into full-fledged skepticism.

Philosophical scepticism can assert that we do not have any knowledge or that we cannot have knowledge. For some people these two claims seem absolutely the same, but actually they are not. The second one is stronger and more difficult to prove. As we know, Socrates tried to say that if we will continue to ask questions we might eventually get the knowledge. The most common opinion among the sceptics in ancient time was that it is impossible to have knowledge, actually some of them believe in that now.

Now we have to understand that scepticism can be about everything or can be about some particular area. If someone believes that knowledge of something is impossible at all, then his or her point of view is a global scepticism. There have been very few global sceptics in the whole history of philosophy. We can say that global scepticism is so bold, because it denies so many things, easier to say that it denies everything at all.

Now if someone says that we do or we can have any knowledge in particular area, then it is local scepticism. In philosophy we have a lot of different types of local scepticism. It can be explained by the different areas of knowledge. And also each sceptic has his or her own point of view on this particular area.

As we already know the main question of the epistemology is “Is knowledge possible?” And the sceptics’ answer is very simple. The answer is “No”. So, actually these two sentences can illustrate the whole conception of scepticism.