I don't understand what they mean by SKEPTICISM here. It seems to be different than what we did in class. How can we remove skepticism from our thinking?
I personally don't like the word "skepticism" in the context of CT; it is very Socratic for which “I” believe there is little relevance in modern day thinking. (There are people who think otherwise!).
In its original use, it probably made reference to believers versus non-believers viz the existence of God, a fundamental question ever since the recorded history of thinking, of man / woman. It was a roundabout way of doing CT because people like Socrates at the time would have been labeled as heretics if they went against popular religious beliefs. Religion & its diktat were the sole embryo of intellectual discourse.
At any rate, in modern day thinking parlance, skepticism - & not pessimism (which is something else altogether) - refers to the need to establish a ‘claim’ before accepting it to be ‘true’. As the referenced video states, a ‘claim’ (& or a ‘hypothesis’ – or an unproven inquiry) needs to be screened / processed through reasoning & associated analysis before it can be ready for acceptance as believable or as a belief. This point is the same as reflected in our model, which says that unprocessed (raw) thinking needs to be taken through the screens/filters of the model.
Note, that in this context, you can even use CT to do analysis for ‘certain class of religious (or religion based) claims’. In doing so, you’d have to make qualifying assumptions based on realistic premises. For example, a popular claim among Muslims is that ‘Islam says that you can’t question it’, whcih I think is wrong: because people (skeptics) always asked Muhammad (PBUH) about Islam. “Islam” does not say any such thing. It is the Koran which carries the fundamental knowledge of what it means to be a Muslim. I think.
“How can we remove skepticism from our thinking?”
I wonder what you mean by this. Do you mean negativity, instead of the type of skepticism I just mentioned above? It’s incorrect to assume that our thinking is defaulted at/to ‘not believing’, or that it is pessimistic by nature. So in that sense, skepticism is not necessarily & or also universally inherent to thinking, & therefore we do not need to remove it from our thinking as such. If there is skepticism or say lack of sureness, then that has to be put in appropriate context of a goal or an intention, only after which we can run on it the process of reasoning – i.e. the elements of thought.
Nafisa,
ReplyDeleteI personally don't like the word "skepticism" in the context of CT; it is very Socratic for which “I” believe there is little relevance in modern day thinking. (There are people who think otherwise!).
In its original use, it probably made reference to believers versus non-believers viz the existence of God, a fundamental question ever since the recorded history of thinking, of man / woman. It was a roundabout way of doing CT because people like Socrates at the time would have been labeled as heretics if they went against popular religious beliefs. Religion & its diktat were the sole embryo of intellectual discourse.
At any rate, in modern day thinking parlance, skepticism - & not pessimism (which is something else altogether) - refers to the need to establish a ‘claim’ before accepting it to be ‘true’. As the referenced video states, a ‘claim’ (& or a ‘hypothesis’ – or an unproven inquiry) needs to be screened / processed through reasoning & associated analysis before it can be ready for acceptance as believable or as a belief. This point is the same as reflected in our model, which says that unprocessed (raw) thinking needs to be taken through the screens/filters of the model.
Note, that in this context, you can even use CT to do analysis for ‘certain class of religious (or religion based) claims’. In doing so, you’d have to make qualifying assumptions based on realistic premises. For example, a popular claim among Muslims is that ‘Islam says that you can’t question it’, whcih I think is wrong: because people (skeptics) always asked Muhammad (PBUH) about Islam. “Islam” does not say any such thing. It is the Koran which carries the fundamental knowledge of what it means to be a Muslim. I think.
“How can we remove skepticism from our thinking?”
I wonder what you mean by this. Do you mean negativity, instead of the type of skepticism I just mentioned above? It’s incorrect to assume that our thinking is defaulted at/to ‘not believing’, or that it is pessimistic by nature. So in that sense, skepticism is not necessarily & or also universally inherent to thinking, & therefore we do not need to remove it from our thinking as such. If there is skepticism or say lack of sureness, then that has to be put in appropriate context of a goal or an intention, only after which we can run on it the process of reasoning – i.e. the elements of thought.
Regards,
Faheem