Tradition
Probabilism
Overview
In theology and philosophy, probabilism (from Latin probare, to test, approve) is an ancient Greek doctrine of academic skepticism. It holds that in the absence of certainty, plausibility or truth-likeness is the best criterion. The term can also refer to a 17th-century religious thesis about ethics, or a modern physical–philosophical thesis.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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There is a species of scepticism, _antecedent_ to all study and philosophy, which is much inculcated by Des Cartes and others, as a sovereign preservative against error and precipitate judgement. It recommends an universal doubt, not only of all our former opinions and principles, but also of our very faculties; of whose veracity, say they, we must assure ourselves, by a chain of reasoning, deduced from some…
David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Close in meaning to Probabilism; the term itself is not named.
Many philosophers, it is true, have held that philosophy could establish the truth of certain answers to such fundamental questions. They have supposed that what is of most importance in religious beliefs could be proved by strict demonstration to be true.
Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy
Close in meaning to Probabilism; the term itself is not named.
The argument which we found on any matter of fact we remember is more or less convincing, according as the fact is recent or remote; and though the difference in these degrees of evidence be not received by philosophy as solid and legitimate; because in that case an argument must have a different force to-day from what it shall have a month hence; yet, notwithstanding the opposition of philosophy, 'tis certain this…
David Hume, Philosophical Works, v. 1
Close in meaning to Probabilism; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed Probabilism
Related ideas
- Pyrrhonism
- Philosophy
- Jesuits
- Knowledge representation and reasoning
- Ancient Greek philosophy
- Latin
- Sextus Empiricus
- Conscience
- Philosophical skepticism
- Platonic Academy
- Theology
- Doctor of the Church
- Non-monotonic logic
- Acatalepsy
- Blaise Pascal
- Artificial general intelligence
- Casuistry
- Catholic Church
- Bartolomé de Medina (theologian)
Place in the tradition
Part of Deductive-nomological model.