Types Of Scepticism Research Articles

Naive skepticism scale: development and validation tests applied to the chilean population

BackgroundSkepticism has traditionally been associated with critical thinking. However, philosophy has proposed a particular type of skepticism, termed naive skepticism, which may increase susceptibility to misinformation, especially when contrasting information from official sources. While some scales propose to measure skepticism, they are scarce and only measure specific topics; thus, new instruments are needed to assess this construct.ObjectiveThis study aimed to develop a scale to measure naive skepticism in the adult population.MethodThe study involved 446 individuals from the adult population. Subjects were randomly selected for either the pilot study (phase 2; n = 126) or the validity-testing study (phase 3; n = 320). Parallel analyses and exploratory structural equation modelling were conducted to assess the internal structure of the test. Scale reliability was estimated using Cronbach's alpha and McDonald's omega coefficients Finally, a multigroup confirmatory factor analysis was performed to assess invariance, and a Set- Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling was applied to estimate evidence of validity based on associations with other variables.ResultsThe naive skepticism scale provided adequate levels of reliability (ω > 0.8), evidence of validity based on the internal structure of the test (CFI = 0.966; TLI = 0.951; RMSEA = 0.079), gender invariance, and a moderate inverse effect on attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccines.ConclusionsThe newly developed naive skepticism scale showed acceptable psychometric properties in an adult population, thus enabling the assessment of naive skepticism in similar demographics. This paper discusses the implications for the theoretical construct and possible limitations of the scale.

Not all skepticism is “healthy” skepticism: Theorizing accuracy- and identity-motivated skepticism toward social media misinformation

Fostering skepticism has been seen as key to addressing misinformation on social media. This article reveals that not all skepticism is “healthy” skepticism by theorizing, measuring, and testing the effects of two types of skepticism toward social media misinformation: accuracy- and identity-motivated skepticism. A two-wave panel survey experiment shows that when people’s skepticism toward social media misinformation is driven by accuracy motivations, they are less likely to believe in congruent misinformation later encountered. They also consume more mainstream media, which in turn reinforces accuracy-motivated skepticism. In contrast, when skepticism toward social media misinformation is driven by identity motivations, people not only fall for congruent misinformation later encountered, but also disregard platform interventions that flag a post as false. Moreover, they are more likely to see social media misinformation as favoring opponents and intentionally avoid news on social media, both of which form a vicious cycle of fueling more identity-motivated skepticism.

Социологический скептицизм в отношении научного прогресса

Progress, truth, and rationality form a basic vocabulary for epistemology and philosophy of science. Sociological investigations of scientific knowledge, start­ing from the works of Thomas Kuhn, Barry Barnes and David Bloor, eliminate these traditional and central categories of philosophy. Their profound works be­came the source for the new types of scepticism toward scientific cognition, its proclaimed goals and received results. Within sociological studies of knowledge, science is researched as an integral part of culture. The scientific belief is deter­mined not only by achievements of reason, transcendental conditions, ways of perception or acquired experience, but rather by social authority, collec­tive agreements and distribution of power. In the article “What is scientific pro­gress?” Alexander Leonidovich Nikiforov outlines perspectives for compromise in sociological and philosophical thinking in order to overcome relativism and sceptical conclusions toward scientific progress. After all, scientific and social progress is not the unconditional ideal for humankind. It means only that scien­tific progress requires a new justification, especially in the light of synthesis be­tween philosophical and sociological methodologies. Another important aspect, stressed by Nikiforov, interprets the progress within the socio-humanitarian field. In the future, it is surely possible to expect the results from human sciences, whereas the resources of natural history evaporate and arrive to the last frontier. The most difficult is the knowledge of ourselves. Perhaps, it explains why the progress in human sciences has been gaining strength and promising the visi­ble, quite instrumental outbreaks.

AMBIGUIDADE PRESENTE NA RELAÇÃO DE NIETZSCHE COM O CETICISMO

Este artigo se pretende a uma discussão acerca da relação entre Nietzsche e o ceticismo. Em algumas passagens o filósofo realiza elogios aos céticos, porém, em outras, ele passa a referir-se a eles como decadentes. Ainda, em determinados momentos de seu texto, Nietzsche reclama para si outro tipo de ceticismo: experimental e criador que, visto mais de perto, não se identifica com as versões do ceticismo afirmadas durante a história da Filosofia. Dessa maneira, a fim de compreendermos a ambiguidade presente na relação de Nietzsche com o ceticismo, dividimos nosso trabalho em três seções. Na primeira, buscar-se-á explicitar a compreensão que o filósofo possui sobre a questão da verdade, em contrapartida ao entendimento dogmático. Na segunda seção o objetivo será discutir as formas como o ceticismo aparece no texto nietzschiano, com o intuito de clarificar a visão do filósofo sobre esta tradição. Por fim, na terceira seção, o texto se desenvolverá apresentando a voz cética de Nietzsche. Esta sua voz não se identifica com as vozes céticas de outrora. O ceticismo nietzschiano – criador – não aceita a paralisação da vontade, pelo contrário, ganha vida em prol da criação de possibilidades novas e engrandecedoras de si.

El problema de las fuentes escépticas en el Renacimiento: el caso del Quod nihil scitur de Francisco Sánchez

Entre las problemáticas que la investigación contemporánea ha tenido que tratar a la hora de analizar la recuperación del escepticismo en el Renacimiento, no solo se encuentra la cuestión de las fuentes que nutrieron esta vena, sino también el tipo de escepticismo que estas fuentes transmitieron. En estas páginas nos proponemos revisar la cuestión de las fuentes que influyeron en la redacción de una de las obras fundamentales del escepticismo renacentista, el Que nada se sabe del tudense Francisco Sánchez.

Climate change skeptics teach climate literacy? A critical discourse analysis of children's books

This critical discourse analysis examined climate change denial books intended for children and parents as examples of pseudo-educational materials reproduced within the conservative echo chamber in the United States. Guided by previous excavations in climate change denial discourses, we identified different types of skepticism, policy frames, contested scientific knowledge, and uncertainty appeals. Findings identify the ways these children's books introduced a logic of non-problematicity about environmental problems bolstered by contradictory forms of climate change skepticism and polarizing social-conflict frames. These results pose pedagogical dilemmas for educators, environmental advocates, and communication experts interested in advancing understanding and action in the face of rapid climate change.

The Basis of Debasing Scepticism

This paper purports to provide a fresh cashing out of Debasing Scepticism: the type of Scepticism put on the map in a recent article by Jonathan Schaffer, with a view to demonstrating that the Debasing Sceptic’s argument is not so easily dismissed as many of Schaffer’s commentators have thought. After defending the very possibility of the Debasing Sceptic’s favoured sceptical scenario, I lay out a framework for thinking of the agent’s power to hold their beliefs in the light of reasons which I argue has initial plausibility. I then attempt to show that with this framework in tow, the Debasing Sceptic has an argument for their sceptical conclusion available to them which Schaffer’s commentators have failed to undermine, and which is independently interesting.

Plantinga’s Skepticism

For over 20 years, Alvin Plantinga has been advocating his Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism, or EAAN. We will argue that this argument functions as an atypical form of global skepticism, and Plantinga’s development of it has repercussions for other types of skepticism. First, we will go over the similarities and differences; for example, the standard ways of avoiding other forms of skepticism, namely by adopting some form of naturalized or externalist epistemology, do not work with the EAAN. Plantinga himself is a naturalized epistemologist, and his skepticism comes from within this perspective. Next, we will look at how Plantinga moved from presenting his skepticism diachronically, as a loop, to presenting it synchronically, as an infinite regress. Finally, we can extend this move from Plantinga’s skepticism to other forms of global skepticism, in so far as these will involve the rejection of our cognitive faculties’ reliability, and formulate them synchronically as well. Global skepticism is often accused of instability, since it leads us to skepticism about all of our beliefs, including belief in the skeptical scenario itself. Yet formulating it as an infinite regress rather than a loop allows the skeptical charge to go forward.

Skepticism and the Prediction Objection

It is an influential and often repeated objection to external world skepticism that skeptical theories lead to implausible predictions about the patterns of ordinary epistemic discourse and thought. Since skepticism entails that we know nothing, or only very little, about the external world, the skeptic seems unable to explain why competent speakers constantly ascribe such knowledge to both themselves and others. Uncontroversial facts about every day communication hence appear to present a strong reason to reject skeptical conditions on knowledge. In this paper, however, I argue that this objection to skepticism underestimates the means that a skeptic has available to account for people’s anti-skeptical assertions and judgments. A modest and highly plausible error theory enables the proponents of a familiar type of skeptical underdetermination principle to provide a compelling explanation of our linguistic and doxastic behavior. So there is a type of skepticism with a powerful response to the charge that skeptical theories lead to unacceptable predictions.

Who are the SETI sceptics?

Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is now more than half a century old and has provoked enough discussion on technical, philosophical, and popular level, much of it critical. Historically, the criticism of SETI has been strong enough to heavily influence the course of research, so that there is a significant interest in discerning the nuances and fine points of critical argumentation. In this paper, I outline the two major forms of SETI scepticism, “fundamentalist” and “instrumentalist,” which are often conflated in the published literature, both technical and popular. Precise delineation between these two types of scepticism is important for future research as a part of a wider taxonomic project, the build-up of SETI theory, as well as for smooth joining of SETI with the ongoing astrobiological revolution. Resolving the confusion in this respect is likely to lead to an improved atmosphere and heightened public image of future SETI searches and related activities.

Uncertain climate: An investigation into public scepticism about anthropogenic climate change

This study presents a detailed investigation of public scepticism about climate change in Britain using the trend, attribution, and impact scepticism framework of Rahmstorf (2004). The study found that climate scepticism is currently not widespread in Britain. Although uncertainty and scepticism about the potential impacts of climate change were fairly common, both trend and attribution scepticism were far less prevalent. It further showed that the different types of scepticism are strongly interrelated. Although this may suggest that the general public does not clearly distinguish between the different aspects of the climate debate, there is a clear gradation in prevalence along the Rahmstorf typology. Climate scepticism appeared particularly common among older individuals from lower socio-economic backgrounds who are politically conservative and hold traditional values; while it is less common among younger individuals from higher socio-economic backgrounds who hold self-transcendence and environmental values. The finding that climate scepticism is rooted in people's core values and worldviews may imply a coherent and encompassing sceptical outlook on climate change. However, attitudinal certainty appeared mainly concentrated in non-sceptical groups, suggesting that climate sceptical views are not held very firmly. Implications of the findings for climate change communication and engagement are discussed.

Skeptical Theism, Moral Skepticism, and Divine Deception

Skeptical theism—a strategy for dealing with so-called “evidential arguments from evil”—is often held to lead to moral skepticism. In this paper I look at some of the responses open to the skeptical theist to the contention that her position leads to moral skepticism, and argue that they are ultimately unsuccessful, since they leave the skeptical theist with no grounds for ruling out the possibility of maximal divine deception. I then go on to argue that the situation is particularly bleak for the skeptical theist, since the most prominent ways of dealing with this pervasive type of skepticism are not available to her. Furthermore, since this pervasive type of skepticism entails moral skepticism, it follows that moral skepticism will after all have found a way in “through the back door.” In order to solidify my case, I go on to outline and deal with three potential objections.

The Second Enclosure Movement and the Construction of the Public Domain

We are in middle of a second enclosure movement. It sounds grandiloquent to call it the enclosure of intangible commons of mind, but in a very real sense that is just what it is. True, new state-created property rights may be rather than real, but once again things that were formerly thought of as either common property or uncommodifiable are being covered with new, or newly extended, property rights. In this article, I try to develop vocabulary and analytic tools necessary to turn tide of enclosure. I offer an historical sketch of various types of skepticism about intellectual property, from antimonopolist criticisms of Framers of U.S. Constitution, through emergence of affirmative arguments for public domain, to use of language of commons to defend possibility of distributed methods of non-proprietary production. In many ways, it turns out, concepts of public domain show same variation in assumptions, and same analytic differences, as concept of property itself. I conclude by arguing that, for a number of reasons, appropriate model for change in thinking which I argue for comes from history of environmental movement. The invention of concept of the environment pulls together a string of otherwise disconnected issues, offers analytical insight into blindness implicit in prior ways of thinking, and leads to perception of common interest where none was seen before. Like environment, public domain must be invented before it is saved. Like environment, like nature, public domain turns out to be a concept that is considerably more slippery than many of us realize. And, like environment, public domain nevertheless turns out to be useful, perhaps even necessary.

Foundationalism, Coherentism and Rule-Following Scepticism

Semantic holists view what one's terms mean as function of all of one's beliefs and applications. Holists will thus be coherentists about how one's usage is justified: showing that one's usage of a term is justified involves showing how it coheres with the rest of one's beliefs and applications. Semantic reductionists, on the other hand, will understand such justification in a classically foundationalist fashion. Now Saul Kripke has, on Wittgenstein's behalf, famously argued for a type of scepticism about meaning and the possibility of demonstrating the correctness of one's usage. However, Kripke's argument has bite only if one understands justification in classically foundationalist terms. Consequently, Kripke's arguments, if good, lead not to a type of scepticism about meaning, but rather to the conclusion that one should be a coherentist about the justification of our usage, and thus a holist about semantic facts.

Caring as a slave morality: Nietzschean themes in nursing ethics.

Sceptical arguments about 'caring' can be divided into three categories. First, it is suggested that, while caring is no doubt an admirable thing in itself, it is just one ideal among others. Secondly, it is claimed that caring is not really a virtue at all, and that it should be regarded as more of a vice, because it promotes favouritism, injustice, and self-deception. Thirdly, there is a worry that caring is not politically realistic, and that its advocates underestimate the powerful organizational and social structures which conspire to subvert nursing. This paper outlines a fourth, and more radical, type of scepticism, which explains why caring is subject to these drawbacks. In doing so, it considers the relation between caring, phenomenology and holism in nursing discourse, and the way in which all three fit together to form the 'caring paradigm'. The paper adopts a genealogical approach, borrowed directly from Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality. That book argues that the values associated with caring are the expression of a profound resentment, harboured by the slaves (weak, powerless, timorous) against the nobles (strong, powerful, self-confident). Caring represents an inversion, a sort of 'fantasy revenge', in which the nobles can be portrayed as 'evil', while the slaves portray their own weakness as 'good'. Taking its cue from Nietzsche, the paper shows that the Genealogy narrative can be transposed into a modern health care context, with nurses as the 'slaves' and the medical profession as the 'nobles'. The ideology of caring is, in the Genealogy's terms, a slave morality. It represents an attack on the 'medical-scientific model', motivated by resentment, and designed to establish nursing's superiority. Its effects have been debilitating, and it has prevented nursing from becoming a 'noble' (that is, a properly scientific) discipline.

Yvor Winters and the educated sensibility in antiquity

In response to the types of scepticism from the 18th through the early 20th centuries which did most to question the criteria of all artistic evaluation, Winters states his intention “to fix in literary terms some approximation of a classical state of mind.” This state of mind is most clearly anticipated by the confidence in the cognitive resources of the senses and of the educated sensibility as affirmed by the Old Academy and its principal beneficiary, Aristotle. The subsequent scepticisms of the Hellenistic period resemble those that later confronted Winters, while the attempt of someone like Antiochus of Ascalon to escape them by returning to the views of the Old Academy in the Roman period corresponds to Winters’ own repeated invocations of the authority of Aristotle.

Organizational scepticism

Scepticism about organizations has become an integral part of the field organizational theory. This article aspires to develop through historical analysis a taxonomy of organizational scepticism. Though scepticism of all types have generic traits, there are three distinct types of scepticism: premodern, modern and postmodern scepticism. Premodern scepticism attacks the modern organizational by stressing concepts grounded in nature and tradition. Modern sceptics attack the optimism of managerialism about organizations. Postmodern sceptics stress that technological developments, economic self interest, and irrationality will be the eventual undoing of modern organization. Organizational scepticism is now so pervasive that it should be treated as an integral part of the field.

The Percy-“Fisher” Controversies and the Ecclesiastical Politics of Jacobean Anti-Catholicism, 1622–1625

Theologically and ecclesiologically James I of England was a “Gentleman of Wide Swallow.” Although he did not possess the type of skepticism that later emerged in post-Restoration latitudinarianism, he did endorse as orthodox only those essential doctrines which Christians had agreed upon in the early centuries of the church, which were grounded in the “expresse word of God” and given their most basic formulation in the creeds. The king viewed himself as an irenic monarch, one who could bring peace to Christendom by promoting an accommodation to these essentials and compromise between conflicting parties. This was an ecumenical approach to religion for his day, and he believed he could help disagreeing Christians “meet in the middest which is the center and perfection of all things.”

Destroyer and Preserver: Shelley’s Poetic Skepticism by Lloyd Abbey

R E V IE W S Lloyd Abbey, Destroyer and Preserver: Shelley’s Poetic Skepticism (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1980). xii, 171. $14.50 In a book that has governed Shelley studies since its publication a decade ago, Earl Wasserman wrote that “Shelley’s metaphysical speculations re­ capitulate the course of eighteenth-century empiricism and result in a special brand of idealism rooted in a persistent epistemological skepticism.” Wasserman ’s Shelley: A Critical Reading (1971) put the poet’s platonism in its place and influenced a whole generation of younger critics. Wasserman’s emphasis on Shelley’s skeptical treatment of poetic themes was a refreshing corrective to Shelley studies, for it brought the beautiful, ineffectual angel down to earth and gave us a more vigorous poet who courageously wrestled with the hard facts of the human condition. Wasserman’s Shelley felt the limits of mortality all too keenly; the poet who yearned to transcend imagi­ natively his circumscribed earthbound state only to be checked in his flight by his own critical intelligence was well-acquainted with the by-ways of ambivalence, and characteristically felt his way with irony, tentativeness, equivocation, and ambiguity. In his masterful analysis of Adonais, Wasser­ man showed how Shelley’s poetry continually refashioned imaginative sym­ bols and reshaped hypotheses to arrive at a provisional faith that could answer his desires and sustain his idealism. Wasserman thus toned down the anxiety that earlier mythopoeic critics such as Ross Woodman pointed to as the key to the self-destructive impulse in Shelley’s poetry. Woodman’s Apocalyptic Vision in the Poetry of Shelley (1964) gives us a Shelley tom between his dedication to humanity and his ultimate rejection of life. Shelley’s “real apocalyptic intention,” in Woodman’s estimation, “is not to recreate the body of the world but to destroy it in order to release the spirit from its prison.” Imagination, Woodman held, was therefore not redemptive for Shelley; instead, in the end, imagination betrays itself. Later acceptance of the hypothesis of Shelley’s skepticism allowed him greater detachment from the dilemma of imaginative vision, but left unanswered the question E n g lish Stu d ies in C anada, ix, i , March 1983 of what, if anything, sustained Shelley as a poet. Lloyd Abbey, who acknowl­ edges both Wasserman and Woodman as his critical ancestors, is faced with exactly this problem in Destroyer and Preserver: Shelley’s Poetic Skepticism. The issue of Shelley’s skepticism first received the attention it rightly deserves in 1954 with the publication by C. E. Pulos of The Deep Truth: A Study of Shelley’s Skepticism. Pulos helped to clear away some of the diffi­ culty surrounding Shelley’s intellectual position, characterized by M. H. Abrams in The Mirror and the Lamp as an “imperfectly assimilated” blend of platonism and empiricism. He presented considerable evidence that Shelley had been profoundly influenced by the philosophical ironies of David Hume, and that, after reading Sir William Drummond’s Academical Questions, which popularized Hume’s theories, Shelley pursued a provi­ sional and “ non-dogmatic idealism compatible with skepticism.” Wasserman ’s advice that “it is from Pulos’ analysis, and not from any supposedly fundamental Platonism, that any study of Shelley’s thought must begin” is wisely followed by Lloyd Abbey. Beginning with the premise that Shelley “was in a state of almost total philosophical uncertainty throughout his career,” Abbey has written a thoroughly consistent and sitmulating account of the way in which skepticism informs the themes and imagery of Shelley’s major poems. Abbey’s contribution begins when he distinguishes two aspects of Shelley’s skepticism, calling one “empirical” and the other “ Platonic.” Empirical skepticism, which derives from Hume, led Shelley to believe that the human mind could never attain absolute knowledge of the true nature of reality and consequently left him in a state of metaphysical uncertainty. This type of skepticism is of the sort generally accepted now as defining Shelley’s outlook, but where Pulos (and Wasserman in his footsteps) argues that Shelley the skeptic in philosophy preferred to suspend judgement in favour of entertaining imaginative possibilities in his poetry, Abbey takes up the line of mythopoeic critics such as...

Particle physics since 1930: A history of evolving notions of nature’s simplicity and uniformity

Pre-1930 atomic physics recognized the proton and the electron alone as the ultimate structural units or ‘‘elementary particles’’ of matter. The belief in the existence of only two kinds of elementaries fitted in well with physicists’ simplistic view of Nature’s frugality. And these two elementaries were found to be charged and ‘‘massy.’’ Hence, most physicists including some leading ones like Bohr and Eddington remained skeptical, for quite some time, towards the hypotheses of the elementarity of the neutrino and neutron. Recognition of these new ‘‘elementaries,’’ according to their viewpoints, would entail two unwelcome implications: firstly, it would jolt the age-old faith in Nature’s simplicity, and secondly, it would mean that the photonic properties, chargelessness and masslessness, could be properties native to any ultimate material particles too. Side by side with this type of skepticism there was, among some theorists, a positivistic reluctance to welcome the invocation of ‘‘unobserved particles’’ in theories. On the other hand, some pragmatic theorists showed bold readiness to introduce unobserved particles for making conceptual breakthroughs. The unexpected and avalanchelike arrival of the so-called superfluons since the late 1940s has, however, given atomic physicists a great jolt and then a new wisdom. They have realized that increasingly sophisticated symmetry and conservation principles must be devised to arrive at a grand unification of diverse subatomic phenomena. They also tend to develop a new conviction that even failures to detect or observe the ‘‘truly’’ ultimate particles in isolation cannot be any evidence against their existence.