From Doubt To Its Social Articulation

Abstract

In addition to providing a rebuttal of the “paper-doubts” of the would-be skeptic, pragmatists have also been quite responsive to the social dimensions of doubt. This is true concerning the causes of doubt. This is true also regarding its consequences: doubt has consequences on epistemic trust; on the way we discuss truths, either about the sciences or about the “construction of good.” Readers of Dewey’s The Quest for Certainty and of some of his most important political writings can easily see how practical uncertainty can degenerate into practical and political skepticism, preventing the emergence of the public. This social aspect of the question has received less attention, perhaps, than the general pragmatist stance towards skepticism, and the present symposium offers a first round of insights into this aspect of the question: the papers retrieved below all cast light on important aspects of the debate on justification, on scientific dogmatism, on irony and skepticism, on doubt and legal theory, on skepticism and political anarchism.