No I don't. I mean scepticism before Americans hijacked the term.
I'm going to keep pulling at this yarn: what do you mean by this? What date did this start? I have not been able to observe a 'distinct' American attitude - what is it? Skeptics are quite cosmopolitan in my experience. How do you observe it? Isn't this just bigotry?
This has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with modern skepticism. Modern skepticism is a belief system. A belief system moreover which has very little evidence or reason to support it.
I find contemporary skepticism to be a very good approximation of classical skepticism, as practiced in the Academy.
You're talking about a radical philosophical scepticism here. It's impossible to live by.
I'm talking about scepticism in the sense of not simply believing something just because other people do so, or because many people say something occurred. If someone claims some phenomenon occurred and this phenomenon contravenes the way our experience tells us that reality behaves, then it is rational to exercise doubt. We don't just simply believe when there are alternative competing hypotheses to explain what happened.
I think such scepticism in its original meaning is absolutely fine. What I think is highly irrational is to take it as an axiom that reality operates by certain principles, and that therefore any reported phenomenon contravening such principles cannot therefore be accepted for what it straightforwardly appears to be.
This is contrary to classical skepticism, whose assumption is that nothing is what it appears to be, and observations are to be evaluated critically, and not accepted. Skeptics such as Phyrro were reputed to require constant attendance, because they doubted their own body sensations of hunger, thirst, exhaustion, even doubted that the edge of a precipice was what it appeared to be, and his followers are said to have been more babysitters than pupils.
This is the fundamental principle of both contemporary philsophical and practical skepticism. Keep an open mind, but with the purpose of building a working model of reality.
Having said that, one of the most recent developments in contemporary skepticism is the revisiting of the old question: is somebody who lives his life according to true skepticism still a skeptic? Does skepticism contain itself within its scope?
It appears to me that this exactly expresses the sentiments of most people on here. Now I think David Hume is a truly excellent philosopher, but I'm afraid in this instance his reasoning is truly appalling. I won't go into why here because I'm sure no -one has an interest in my reasoning anyway (they never normally do).
A skeptic can endorse whatever philosophical position he chooses.
Gibberish.
But scepticism is all about revising your beliefs should evidence indicate otherwise.
Yessssss...
In this sense David Hume and most people on here are not skeptics (of course Hume was very much a philosophical skeptic).
Yes, but it's a big leap from "here on this forum" to "modern skepticism". This is the JREF forum, which is only loosely associated with the JREF, which is itself sort of attached at the hip to modern skepticism.
I feel a great deal of hostility towards organised skepticism and its aims.
I doubt that. I think you feel a great deal of hostility toward its conclusions. Its aims are pretty uncontroversial. To be specific, the aims of CSICOP are, and always have been:
- to provide a reliable source of information to the public and media on claims of the paranormal
- to provide public education in areas of scientific method and paranormal claims
- to facilitate open-minded testing of paranormal claims
- to provide a forum for the exchange of views
You would prefer we provide unreliable information? Miseducation? Closed-minded testing? Squelch the exchange of views?
If you are truly hostile to these goals, then I can see why you are unpopular here.
I don't see why not. For skepticism in the modern sense I mean. After all God cannot be seen, cannot be touched. Physical laws govern the entirety of the world. There is just the vast coldness of space overlooking our purposeless lives. That's the sentiment expressed by most skeptics.
I think you will have to be clearer about this "modern sense." You are not using the term in a way with which I am familiar. Most philosophers distinguish 'modern' skepticsism (post-renaissance neoclassicism) from 'contemporary' skepticism (since Unger/Stroud/Nagel's work in the '70s and '80s). All things considered, these remain very similar to classical skepticism in theory and practice.
