Skepticism vs. Interrogation
You’ll notice that throughout this treatise there is a strong emphasis on the interrogation of tradition. I have refrained deliberately from using the word skepticism because “skepticism” is a habit of thought whereas interrogation is an active and constructive skill. Today especially skepticism is simply identified with what is not believed, what is capable of being disproved or debunked. Education needs to do more than train the seven year old not to believe in the preposterous or to look for card in the magician’s left hand when the right one is in motion. Interrogation is the constructive assessment of what is given to us in every area of knowledge and its motive force is curiosity and the desire for truth–which is the end of knowledge.
That's just one paragraph from a lengthy but excellent (seriously -- go read it) lecture given at Goodard College in October of 2009 by R. Joseph Hoffmann but he just happened to hit on something I've been thinking a good bit about lately -- why do we as capital-S Skeptics fail so often? Why do we fail to convince and why do people often look upon skeptics and skepticism dismissively?
It's quite common to hear skeptics talk about skepticism as a "way of thinking". The idea is that skepticism isn't just a set of fixed answers, or knee-jerk nay-saying as we're so often accused by our critics. Rather we believe that skepticism represents a set of intellectual scales by which we can weigh up evidence good and bad for any particular proposition. Skepticism is supposed to be a set of tools for making decisions.
But as the old saying goes, when all you've got is a hammer, every problem starts looking like a nail. I think too often, as Hoffmann suggests, skepticism becomes a habit. Oh sure, it's still a way of thinking, it's still a good set of tools, but if we only apply those tools reflexively, without first asking ourselves if they're the right set of tools for the job, then we're sure to go astray.
Skepticism isn't really about the tools we use, so much as it is about sizing up the job beforehand. It should be more about a process of inquiry, of coming to an understanding, than just disproving something. And our success I think shouldn't be measured so much in whether we've convinced someone of our conclusion but by how much we've helped them to understand how we came to that conclusion.
Sure, maybe they'll still believe in psychics or UFOs or BIgfoot, but if we can at least communicate that process of inquiry then maybe, just maybe, they'll try it out themselves the next time they're confronted with a novel belief. And really, isn't growing more DIY skeptics what we're really after?
Anyway, just some late night (or early morning) musings.
