Conclusion

The Next Step

Thus, our brief survey comes to its conclusion. This final chapter sum­marizes the main ideas of the previous chapters with an accent on practical implications and offers a few parting thoughts.

Throughout this work, we presented radical skepticism, according to which no statement (or judgment) is certain or plausible (in the epistemological sense of these terms).

Complete error avoidance is impossible. This is practically impor­tant because under the influence of empiricism, many people still try to avoid error at all cost and then they find themselves doing so by clinging as much as possible to known observation-reports. This may lead them to present as few ideas as they can, limiting themselves to irrefutable ideas. Such ideas do not reduce unexpectedness; as such, they are uninteresting. As skeptics, we claim that aiming at error avoid­ance at all cost is itself a serious error. (As a popular edict goes, those who close their door to risk also close it to opportunity.) Sadly, we have to repeat the obvious: we do not recommend the conscious advo­cacy of falsehoods.^[LXXV] Rather, we recommend replacing the aim of error avoidance at all cost with efforts to meet these targets: (1) seek and present interesting ideas (i.e., ideas that reduce the experience of the unexpected); (2) avoid already corrected errors; and (3lang=EN-US>) try to find errors in current ideas, especially those that you yourself entertain.

Many of the arguments against skepticism rest on the ancient idea that skepticism imposes inaction. The skeptics - by these argu­ments - cannot justify their choice of beliefs or moral and aesthet­ical judgments, so they cannot justify any action and are limited to the choice between no action and senseless action. On the contrary, skepticism encourages the examination of many ideas regarding their truth or moral or aesthetic value, and the tentativejudgment of many of them - favorably or not, as the case may be. Our beliefs and judg­ments are determined by psychological processes and rational discus­sions. Without trying to reduce epistemology, ethics, or aesthetics to psychology, we presented tentative partial theories about these pro­cesses. These tentative partial theories have wide-ranging practical applications. They may help resolve disagreements (not all of them, Heaven forbid) and they may help construct machines or processes that emulate human conduct.

Psychology

Our approach is more sociological than psychological; yet, in this work, we attended more to psychology. Western philosophy is mag­nificent because it advocates independence. Unfortunately, but quite understandably, this advocacy led it to an exaggerated concern with individual choices of opinions and attitudes about the avoidance of any submission to local prejudices in utter disregard for it and in an effort to avoid all error. Many philosophers recommend utter inde­pendence of spirit as a necessary means for these choices. Therefore, and still understandably, modern philosophy begins with the assump­tion that individuals are in full control of their choice of what to believe in, including their choice of a society to live in and even of a society to create. This is extreme individualism. It is glorious. Its application to research turned out to be the suggestion that the most basic human science is psychology, that all other human sciences are psychological at heart.

One of the most dramatic aspects of philosophy is epistemology, or the theory of knowledge. Traditionally, under the influence of individ­ualist morality, philosophers studied individual knowledge first. In the middle of the twentieth century, with the decline of psychologism, phi­losophy moved to public knowledge. This has left open the question: How does an individual member of a public take a share in this pub­lic knowledge? This question can be asked on many levels, including research, education, social stratification, communication, and more. In this study, we take the shift away from psychologism as given. This shift did not demand the betrayal of individualism and democracy, which is commonplace. What we add is that it does not demand the betrayal of psychology. This we have ventured to argue throughout this work: our accent is on psychology - and even with a vengeance - particularly because we take the public aspect more seriously than tra­ditional philosophy does. The practical aspect of the linkage between the individual and the public seems to us to demand attention to psy­chology. We do not assume that individuals are as free as traditional philosophy leads one to assume.

The Meaning of Life

Much of the current literature of the popular philosophical schools that we have tried to ignore until now is devoted to the question: What is the meaning of life? The question may mislead because, literally speaking, meaning is linguistic: only words and sentences have meaning, and their meaning relates to what they convey. Tak­ing seriously the analogy between language and life may lead to a view of life as meaningful only if it supposedly conveys something. But this assumption is obviously unserious. Still, we may suggest that one should have a purpose in one’s life, which is often referred to as the meaning of one’s life. This faces a similar difficulty: the suggestion that one should have one central target in one’s life is quite strange.

We suggest the following. Plainly, we have various interests, includ­ing the interest in decreasing the suffering of others and reducing the unexpectedness of the world around us. Following skeptical con­siderations, however, we admit that we do not know what exactly our interests are, much less what the best ways to achieve them are. But we can study these questions and seek ever-improved answers thereto. This is the rational way to meet our interests. If one calls this sugges­tion the meaning of life, then we do not object. So, in some sense of the word, life does have meaning, and it is the one we try to give it.^[LXXVI] Indeed, we experience this because if and when we lose it, we feel depressed. Hence, a healthy mode of life is purposeful and the exam­ination of the purposes we have in the aim of improving them is the earliest and the latest concern of philosophy.

Some people say that they have ideas they cannot bring themselves to doubt.

Finally, let us observe that, because skepticism is moderate, it is neither conservative nor radical; however, it is otherwise not able to adjudicate between the almost conservative and the almost radical. All we can say is that it allows for some moderate optimism, and we suggest that this is morally imperative (not as an assessment but rather as a call for action). We may entertain a hypothesis that implies that doubt and change in belief can only amount to suffering. Such a hypothesis may itself be subject to doubt. This is a cause for hope. We may wish to forestall the danger of sheer credulity and to preserve the advantageous fruits of progress up until the present. We may use to that end caution and filter new hypotheses and information. This is also an entirely reasonable application of doubt. Moreover, there are countless repeatable observations of gain, improvement, and even positive emotion experienced in various processes of new belief forma­tion possible only because of the ability to doubt. Hence, fear toward doubt in and of itself is irrational. Indeed, modern rational skepticism, the most successful outlook in all of history, remains honestly quite engendered of cautious optimism.