Skepticism Essays

What is Professional Skepticism? An attitude that includes a questioning mind and a critical assessment of audit evidence. The auditor should not assume whether they relate to academics, safety or business practices – help people identify acceptable levels of quality, and standards are used in nearly all aspects of our lives. Without standards, it’d be harder to tell whether a student is making adequate educational progress. While it sounds as if there are numerous standards valuation professionals…

Descartes, Hume and Skepticism Descartes is responsible for the skepticism that has been labeled Cartesian doubt. Hume critiques this skepticism in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. After his discussion of Cartesian doubt, he offers a different type of skepticism that he considers as being more effective philosophically. Is Hume right in his characterization of Cartesian doubt and is the skepticism he offers better? Descartes introduced the idea of universal doubt to philosophy. If…

that what we determine to be acknowledged as “knowledge” must present justification in order to be accepted believed as knowledge. This is important because Skepticism doubts the validation of knowledge and how we come to any such conclusion of justifying what we “know” indubitably as knowledge. This is the overarching problem with skepticism. Instead of having a solid stance on how to define knowledge, skeptics simply doubt that a reason or proposition offered is correct and suppose it to be false…

Is Global Skepticism Justified? Introduction Skepticism is something that we all have to one degree or another. Some of us who carry some Limited (Local) Skepticism might question whether we can really know if the news anchor is giving us correct information or if the five day forecast is really on track this time regarding the rain it is predicting. Others subscribe to the Global Skepticism view; that is, they would argue that we cannot know anything at all, and, therefore, we can’t have knowledge…

“Skepticism about a Refutation of Skepticism” In “The Refutation of Skepticism”, Jonathan Vogel establishes an “Inference to the Best Explanation” (hereafter, “IBE”) as a means to refute skepticism about the external world. In this refutation, Vogel acknowledges that skepticism about IBE still remains a possibility, but that this kind of skepticism would be rather outlandish in character and thus could be ignored. This paper shall both establish and evaluate Vogel’s reasoning as to why he confidently…

Philosophy Paper Skepticism is an aspect of philosophy that has been studied throughout history. Within the realm of skepticism lies the difference between knowledge and mere true belief. Descartes and Moore are two philosophers who explore the existence of an external world in their writings. In Descartes’ “Meditations” and Moore’s “Proof of an External World,” we find opposing viewpoints on what we actually have knowledge on. A mere true belief is an opinion that happens to be true. It is…

Epistemological skepticism is the idea that individuals lack knowledge or justification for a specific group of propositions (Barnett, 2014). Skepticism with respect to all propositions is known as global skepticism, and it reveals that knowledge is nonexistent (2014). The regress problem is a difficulty in epistemology, where an idea has to be justified, because the justification itself has to have further reasoning (2014). The infinite regress argument concludes that individuals lack justification…

Skepticism in the Search for the Truth of Our Knowledge How many times have you said, “No way, I do not believe it!” It is our natural tendency not to believe in something that we have not seen with our own eyes or experienced it personally. There is a saying, “seeing is believing” which has led us to a world full of skeptics. We want proof so we are not gullible fools. Skepticism, or scepticism, as it was spelled back in the ancient times, was pondered by philosophers who tried unsuccessfully…

necessarily." In fact, this can be the skeptic's answer to just about any attempt to refute his position. It has long been pointed out by opponents of skepticism that such an attitude cannot be taken to its extreme conclusion in the real world in which we operate- even skeptics must live their lives according to rules they must rely upon not to fail. Skepticism (and all philosophy) cannot avoid the cumbersome nature of human language and the simple fact that the only tool humans have to investigate the…

Skepticism about the external world is one of the most widely discussed arguments in the history of philosophy. Barry Stroud defines skepticism as the idea that we cannot have knowledge about the external world (Stroud, page 1). This conclusion is the result of Rene Descartes’ Dream Argument and has been a topic of discussion ever since. No matter how we attack the argument, it seems that we inevitably arrive at skepticism. In this paper, I will argue that the skeptical conclusion is true and why…