Pssh! You call that Skeptism?!

[king_richard]

I've been getting increasingly anoyed at Empirists that have the audacity to call themselves skeptics. Not that theres anything wrong with being either one but they are complete oppostites and therefore mutually exclusive. Observing repeatable experiments as a genuine way to acquire knowledge? yeah thats really skepical of you

Comments

[aleph_naught]

I think skeptic is one of those annoying words that has meant different things throughout history - see, I'd call myself a skeptic in the sense that I'm an empiricist/scientific-rationalist or what have you, which is I think what most modern skeptics mean by he term. But in the study of philosophy one often hears about skeptics in the sense of the classical world as people who believe that it's impossible to know anything, etc.

Though that said, if you look at the philosophy of Descartes, even though he posited all the evil genius stuff (I think it was a daemon in his case, but same concept anyways), he actually went beyond that to say that he believed that the data of the senses was a reliable record of the real, external world. Albeit, for religious reasons (God exists, is good, and would not trick us by presenting us with illusions, basically). So one *could* argue that Descartes was an empiricist, even if his justification for being so was a bit out of whack.

[king_richard]

My arguement is that empirist/scientific rationalist are misusing the term. You can't just call yourself a skeptic and then change the meaning. Whats to stop me changing the meaning again to lump you all in with flat earthers, holocaust deniers and nine eleven truthers.

But really this is just a segway into a larger rant about how 'skeptics' are as immune to irrationality as their high & mighty attitude would suggest. {for one thing they can't even rationally solve a simple afterlife payoff game!}

[aleph_naught]

The relevant definition would be the second one in the OED:
One who doubts the validity of what claims to be knowledge in some particular department of inquiry; one who maintains a doubting attitude with reference to some particular question or statement.

Yeah, I guess I can see what you mean, it's unfortunate that the movement uses an ambiguous word like that which had a pre-established meaning, but at the same time, it's a pretty big group of people which has self-identified using that word for some time now. So, meh.

I personally tend to use words like 'scientific rationalist', 'secular humanist' etc to describe myself instead since they essentially embody the same worldview without the negative connotations. Also, as you point out, there's a pretty big and unfortunate element of high-and-mightyness in the skeptical community. We're not all like that, though. :)

What's this afterlife payoff thingy? You don't mean Pascal's wager, surely?

[aigantighe]

Oh noes! People use words with meanings different to how I use them!

That's common language for you. You'll just have to use a formal ontology.

Seriously, though, the use of the noun skeptic to mean someone who is skeptical of something is both obvious and centuries old.

The problem is a difference between skepticism and Skepticism. Common usage is the first, while the latter is your philosophical position (though I bet there's others who've claimed it as their own position).

Of course, I'm in complete agreement with your segue into how Skeptics are nutty loons who can't be argued with..

[megapope]

You call this a blog post! Back in my day people left LINKS! And sassy PICTURES! Where the hell is your RSS feed!

[king_richard]

You call that an internet heckle!? Back in my day people used poor grammar & spelling as well as excessive numbers of exclaimation marks!!!11!!