Concept

Skepticism

Overview

questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Skepticism is discussed.

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
Uses the term “scepticism” and “sceptic”. The author is linked to this idea in the knowledge graph.
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Hence the criticism of knowledge which philosophy employs must not be of this destructive kind, if any result is to be achieved. Against this absolute scepticism, no _logical_ argument can be advanced. But it is not difficult to see that scepticism of this kind is unreasonable. Descartes' 'methodical doubt', with which modern philosophy began, is not of this kind, but is rather the kind of criticism which we are…
Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy
Uses the term “scepticism” and “sceptic”.
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This sceptical doubt, both with respect to reason and the senses, is a malady, which can never be radically cured, but must return upon us every moment, however we may chace it away, and sometimes may seem entirely free from it. It is impossible upon any system to defend either our understanding or senses; and we but expose them farther when we endeavour to justify them in that manner.
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
Uses the term “sceptic” and “doubt”. The author is linked to this idea in the knowledge graph.
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That is to say, its criticism of details will only be based upon their relation to other details, not upon some external criterion which can be applied to all the details equally. The reason for this abstention from a universal criticism is not any dogmatic confidence, but its exact opposite; it is not that common knowledge _must_ be true, but that we possess no radically different kind of knowledge derived from…
Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy
Uses the term “scepticism” and “sceptic”.
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1. We cannot begin with complete doubt. We must begin with all the prejudices which we actually have when we enter upon the study of philosophy.
Charles S. Peirce, Chance, Love, and Logic
Uses the term “skepticism” and “skeptic”.
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(2) Scepticism should not be looked upon merely as a doctrine of doubt. It would be more correct to say that the Sceptic has no doubt of his point, which is the nothingness of all finite existence.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Logic of Hegel
Uses the term “scepticism” and “sceptic”.
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This method of watching, or rather of originating, a conflict of assertions, not for the purpose of finally deciding in favour of either side, but to discover whether the object of the struggle is not a mere illusion, which each strives in vain to reach, but which would be no gain even when reached—this procedure, I say, may be termed the sceptical method. It is thoroughly distinct from scepticism—the principle of a…
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
Uses the term “scepticism” and “sceptic”.
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But to admit one’s liability to correction is one thing, and to embark upon a sea of wanton doubt is another. Of willfully playing into the hands of skepticism we cannot be accused. He who acknowledges the imperfectness of his instrument, and makes allowance for it in discussing his observations, is in a much better position for gaining truth than if he claimed his instrument to be infallible.
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
Uses the term “skepticism” and “skeptic”.
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Philosophers who discussed Skepticism

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Opposing perspectives

Agnosticism

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