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Certainty series:
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- Agnosticism
- Belief
- Certainty
- Determinism
- Doubt
- Epistemology
- Justification
- Estimation
- Fallibilism
- Fatalism
- Nihilism
- Probability
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- Uncertainty
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Doubt
, a status between belief and disbelief, involves uncertainty or distrust or lack of sureness of an alleged fact, an action, a motive, or a decision. Doubt brings into question some notion of a perceived "reality", and may involve delaying or rejecting relevant action out of concerns for mistakes or faults or appropriateness. Some definitions of doubt emphasize the state in which the mind remains suspended between two contradictory propositions and unable to assent to either of them [1]
(compare paradox).
The concept of doubt covers a range of phenomena: one can characterise both deliberate questioning of uncertainties and an emotional state of indecision as "doubt".
The term "to doubt" can also mean "to question one's circumstances and life-experience".
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DOUBT TICKETS
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Impact on society
Doubt sometimes tends to call on
reason. It may encourage people to
hesitate before acting, and/or to apply more
rigorous methods. Doubt may have particular importance as leading towards disbelief or non-acceptance.
Politics,
ethics and
law, with decisions that often determine the course of individual
life, place great importance on doubt, and often foster elaborate
adversarial processes to carefully sort through all available evidence.
Psychology
Psychoanalysts[who?] At times
[weasel words] attribute doubt (which they may interpret as a symptom of a
phobia emanating from the
ego) to
childhood, when the ego develops. Childhood experiences, these traditions maintain, can plant doubt about one's abilities and even about one's very
identity — let alone doubt about the operations of the
tooth fairy. The influence of parents and other influential figures often carries heavy connotations onto the resultant
self-image of the child/
ego, with doubts often included in such self-portrayals.
Cognitive mental as well as more
spiritual approaches abound in response to the wide variety of potential causes for doubt — sometimes seen as a "
Bad Thing".
Behavioral therapy — in which a person systematically asks his own
mind if the doubt has any real basis — uses rational,
Socratic methods. Behavioral therapists claim that any constant confirmation leads to emotional detachment from the original doubt. This method contrasts to those of say, the
Buddhist faith, which involve a more
esoteric approach to doubt and inaction. Buddhism sees all doubt as a negative attachment to one's perceived
past and
future. To let go of the personal
history of one's life (affirming this release every day in
meditation) plays a central role in releasing the doubts — developed in and attached to — that history. Through much spiritual exertion, one can (if desired) dispel doubt, and live "only in the present".
Psychopathology
Psychopathology in general
[who?] associates "excessive" doubt with
obsessive-compulsive disorder, sometimes nicknamed a "disease of doubt".
Philosophy
Descartes employed
Cartesian doubt as a pre-eminent methodological tool in his fundamental philosophical investigations. One view suggests that Descartes' ideas in his
Discourse on the Method
may show the influence of the work of
Al-Ghazali ("Algazel" to the West), whose method of doubting shares many similarities with Descartes' method.
[2]
Branches of philosophy like
logic devote much effort to distinguish the dubious, the
probable and the certain. Much of illogic rests on dubious assumptions, dubious data or dubious conclusions, with
rhetoric,
whitewashing, and
deception playing their accustomed roles.
Religion
Doubt that god(s) exist may form the basis of
agnosticism — possibly definable as the belief that one cannot determine the existence of god(s) — and
atheism, which can entail either not believing in god(s) or believing that no god(s) exist(s). On the other hand, doubt over God's nonexistence may lead to acceptance of a particular religion: compare
Pascal's
Pensées
. By abbreviation
[clarification needed], doubt as to the existence or intentions of the
Christian God may relate to doubt concerning the
Christian Bible as well, bringing into question its status in some circles as the
word of God, and propounding alternative explanations (such as seeing it as a work of
mythology like
Homer's ancient Greek epics the
Iliad
and the
Odyssey
). Doubt of a specific religion brings into question the truth of that religion's set of beliefs. Alternatively, doubt as to some religious doctrines but the acceptance of others may lead to the growth of
heresy and/or the splitting off of
sects. Thus proto-
Protestants doubted
papal authority, and substituted alternative methods of governance in their new (but still recognizably similar) churches.
Christianity[who?] often debates doubt in the contexts of
salvation and eventual redemption in an
afterlife. This issue has become particularly important in the
Protestant version of the Christian faith, which requires
only
acceptance of
Jesus as
saviour and intermediary with
God for a
positive outcome. The debate appears less important in most other
religions and
ethical traditions.
Doubt as a path towards (deeper) religious
faith lies at the heart of the story of Saint
Thomas the Apostle. Note in this respect the theological views of
Georg Hermes:
... the starting-point and chief principle of every science, and hence of theology also, is not only methodical doubt, but positive doubt. One can believe only what one has perceived to be true from reasonable grounds, and consequently one must have the courage to continue doubting until one has found reliable grounds to satisfy the reason. [3]
Christian existentialists such as
Søren Kierkegaard suggest that for one to truly have faith in God, one would also have to doubt one's beliefs about God; the doubt is the rational part of a person's thought involved in weighing evidence, without which the faith would have no real substance. Faith is not a decision based on evidence that, say, certain beliefs about God are true or a certain person is worthy of love. No such evidence could ever be enough to pragmatically justify the kind of total commitment involved in true religious faith or romantic love. Faith involves making that commitment anyway.
Kierkegaard thought that to have faith is at the same time to have doubt.
[4] [5]
Spirituality
In the context of
spirituality, individuals may see doubt as the opposite of
faith. If faith represents a compulsion to follow a path, doubt may succeed in blocking that particular path. People
[who?] use doubts and faith every day to
choose the
life path that they follow; for example: "I doubt that laziness will help me achieve my goals". Doubt can serve to create individual
illusions to shield the
vision of an unpleasant outcome. "I doubt anyone will catch me if I rob this store." Depending upon the energy put into the doubt, when used in this way, doubt itself may have little impact on events, merely blocking the individual from seeing
possibilities.
Doubts can debase one's sense of spirituality: "I doubt the existence of the soul." On the other hand doubts can lead to the contemplation of spiritual issues if it is turned upon empiricism: "Why could there not be more to life than what can be proved?" While skeptical thinking (which relies on our ability to doubt) is often assumed to be at odds with spirituality it can also be turned inward on itself and preserve the possibility of spiritual belief.
Law
Most
criminal cases within an
adversarial system require that the prosecution proves its contentions
beyond a reasonable doubt — a doctrine also called the "
Burden of Proof". This means that the State must present propositions which preclude "reasonable doubt" in the mind of a
reasonable person as to the guilt of defendant. Some doubt may persist, but only to the extent that it would
not
affect a "reasonable person's" belief in the defendant's guilt. If the doubt raised
does
affect a "reasonable person's" belief, the jury is not satisfied beyond a "reasonable doubt". The
jurisprudence of the applicable jurisdiction usually defines the precise meaning of words such as "reasonable" and "doubt" for such purposes.
See also
- Reasonable doubt
- Doubting Thomas
- FUD
- List of ethics topics
- Methodic doubt
- Philosophical skepticism
- Question
- Satire (which may arouse doubts)
- Skepticism
References
- Doubt
- The Place and Function of Doubt in the Philosophies of Descartes and Al-Ghazali
- George Hermes
- Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, ed. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, v. 1, Princeton University Press, 1992, pp. 21–57
- Soren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, trans. Hong and Malantschuk, p.399.