I doubt, therefore I ...



It is often said that one should not just blindly believe what one is told; one should take things with a grain of salt and give them proper thought. In other words, one should doubt. Doubt keeps us honest, I heard.

But one does not and can not just doubt for doubt's sake! That would be excrutiating, if we doubted everyone and everything.
I don't doubt that the computer I am sitting at is here, nor do I doubt that I am able to use it. I don't doubt that it is day -- I don't find myself looking at the window all the time, checking if it indeed is day.

It must be that we doubt only then when we think it important enough to doubt.



What makes us doubt?
What are the criteria by which we decide when to doubt something?
Are these criteria rational or not?

doubt is what we do if we do not have verifiable proof of something.

e.g. i am not sure that it is day. i look at my clock, it says 12.00pm. therefore, i conclude i am a lazy bastard. also, i have verified that it is day, for i know for fact that at 12pm it is day.

why do we doubt? my knowledge is hazy here, but we generally doubt to find truth.
e.g. simon does an experiment and finds out from it that light is always a particle.
bill doubts this, since he notices its wave like properties. therfore, he has doubted it. he then, of course, disproves simons theory and laughs at him.

we also doubt when we experience the unknown, that we have no justifactaion for, since as i said, the knowledge isnt justified.

doubt probably stems from a deeper instinct reaction, i.e. ug the caveman doesnt nkow whether its safe to walk on that area of unstable land, so he sends his dog onto it. there is a landslide, and through his doubt, ug is safe.
however, know im just guessing.

these criterial seem fairly rational. again, they are:
-we doubt to verify uncertain knowledge
-we doubt when we see conflicting evidence
-we doubt for (orignally) protection and defence.

by the way, this is all just made up by me so all the cracks in it, please dont hesitate to expose and laugh at them.

Logically Unsound, it the example you gave about "not sure what day it is" you are not doubting the day, you just simply aren't certain about what day it it.

Your second example is a better one, since Bill has CAUSE to doubt. It is my belief that doubt is had when you expect, or think one thing, but evidence points contrarily to that idea, or expectation. As in the Ug the Caveman case, the ground seems stable enough. However, because of past experience, he knows it may not be. In this case, he is uncertain, and sends the dog to give him certainty. I don't think there is doubt here, rather simple caution. A better example would be, Ug sees an area of ground that looks unstable, and cautions Ulga. But Ulga doubts his assertion because to Ulga the area of ground looks stable. In this case, there is a contradiction taking place. A person asserts its instability, while her senses assert its stability. In such a case she has to choose which she trusts and which she doubts.

I don't find it to be a good method to simply doubt truth because it's an important issue. If everything you know tells you that it's true, but someone SUGGESTS (as opposed to asserts with given reasons) that it's false, then what reason do you have to doubt? I think that unless someone gives you good reason to doubt (facts, threat to life, more fulfilling set of beliefs, etc..) then you have no reason to doubt your beliefs.

How about... doubt to an extent? Simply put...

Doubt is a kind of mental brake mechanism...if an idea develops (too) fast doubting slows it down...doubt
is then a crash prevention....total doubt=total crash prevention: to remain still/unmoving...
(total doubt will prevent from crashing (but it will also prevent you from living fully..))

Is conscience a source/originator of doubt...often my position eg.
in a conflict is clear but then (eg. at night) I doubt it sometimes. (Did I do right?)..

U doubt something when there are other alternative explanations which might be almost equally acceptable. The reason different people have different doubting abilities (e.g. doubting Thomas!) is because they have different thresholds on what is "almost equally acceptable".

everyone who doubts is stupid

everyone who doubts is stupid

If the capacity to doubt was removed/amputeated away from your brain you would probably be dead within a week (by doing something risky).

If the capacity to doubt was removed/amputeated away from your brain you would probably be dead within a week (by doing something risky).

Would you say that the capacity to doubt is something that is innate to the human mind?

im just playing... i don't mean it's stupid. i just wanted to say somthing. but i guess we doutb sometimes cos it's good

Would you say that the capacity to doubt is something that is innate to the human mind?

The capacity to doubt is a by product of the capacity to evaluate so yes, it is innate.

If we take eg. three different systems eg a Human (H) and God (G) and a computer (C)
en investigate them on the Doubt capacity (Dc) then:

G knows all therefore the doubt capacity in such system is Dc=0 /zero
H has a partial knowledge which makes Dc>0 necessary
C = G in a limited domain (A computer has Dc=0 it is because computer has all knowledge necessary to operate).

So I would say that human mind (having not enough knowledge to operate fully as human mind) needs doubt to overcome this shortage of knowledge due to some meassure of underdevelopment (G and C being fully developed at their different levels).

Hehe, it's interesting reading the different arguments, because they are being presented by different personalities.

Anyway, I want to reiterate something I might not have made clear before. There is a difference between being careful, cautious and doubting. There is also a difference between uncertainty, and doubt. I think that it is a good and natural function of the human mind, in recognizing its lack of complete knowledge on any given particular, and therefore uncertain, to be careful about how to proceed in any given situation. Doubt seems to have taken on a connotation of uncertainty in every day common usage. However, doubt, as such, is to believe something to be false for strong reasons. For example, John doubts Sally passed her math test because she failed her last 10. John has strong reasons for doubting it. He may obviously be wrong, but he has good reason to. Unfortunately, many people nowadays doubt things without a good, a strong, or any reason at all. For example, Descartes doubts everything he believes because it seems he doesn't really know anything at all. Sure, it may seem that everything we think we know can be questioned, but is that good enough reason to doubt everything you believe? I think not, because then how could you really function in the world from day to day? It would be better to trust your beliefs until given good enough reason to doubt any particular. Doubting, I think, shouldn't be done unless one has strong reason to. This means that if you are uncertain about choice (ie, each choice is almost equally convincing) that you doubt one and trust the other, since you don't really have strong reason to doubt either one. So, the best thing to do in a case of uncertainty is to be cautious until you have enough reason to doubt one and trust the other (whether that comes by logical evidence, or intuitive sense, since both are recognized sources of knowledge).

is it wrong to doubt that absoluteness exists?
or let me rephrase,
is it wrong to doubt the existence of absoluteness?

I believe so, for even to assert "there is no absolute" is an absolute statement <--- and so is that<--- and that<------ and that<------and that<------and that ad infinitum. It may be very difficult to discover what the absolute statements are, but I believe it to be a given that they exist. An example of an absolute might be, "what is is," or "a thing cannot exist and not exist at the same time and in the same place." There are many absolutes, it's simply a matter of discovering them.

I believe so, for even to assert "there is no absolute" is an absolute statement <--- and so is that<--- and that<------ and that<------and that<------and that ad infinitum.

<--- I love this <--- and this <--- and this ad ... hm ...

Joke aside, the idea of absoluteness exists only in the context of relativity, and vice versa. Relativity does not make sense unless we view it in comparison to absoluteness, as well as absoluteness doesn't make sense unless we view it in comparison to relativity.

Which, among other things, implies that there is a possible explanation or model of reality in which neither of the terms is used.

This, I believe, has one fancy consequence: it is possible to come up with an explanation or model of reality where also the terms "uncertainty" and "doubt" don't exist; where the whole thing is conceptualized in a completely different manner.

Now please don't say that I am losing it -- I think I have, by means of the "Western mind", arrived at the point of "seeing through" this "Western" kind of thinking. It is just a bloody system that we follow and that we orientate our actions and thinking after, while this system is not -- to use a term from this very system -- absolute.

I quote Quine (http://my.dreamwiz.com/reality/data/philosophy_information2_quine.htm):


The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience. A conflict with experience at the periphery occasions readjustments in the interior of the field. Truth values have to be redistributed over some of our statements. Re-evaluation of some statements entails re-evaluation of others, because of their logical interconnections -- the logical laws being in turn simply certain further statements of the system, certain further elements of the field. Having re-evaluated one statement we must re-evaluate some others, whether they be statements logically connected with the first or whether they be the statements of logical connections themselves. But the total field is so undetermined by its boundary conditions, experience, that there is much latitude of choice as to what statements to re-evaluate in the light of any single contrary experience. No particular experiences are linked with any particular statements in the interior of the field, except indirectly through considerations of equilibrium affecting the field as a whole.