Evaluation of Truth in Life with Doubt and Skepticism

Skepticism brings us to doubt everything in our lives that we once perceived as true. David Hume, Rene Descartes, and Sextus Empiricus have all made a contribution with their stance on skepticism through their writings Discourse on the method of rightly conducting the reason, and seeking truth in the sciences (Descartes), Of the Academic or Sceptical Philosophy (Hume), and Outlines of Pyrrohonian Skepticism (Empiricus). Out of these three readings, Hume provides the readers with the most sophisticated view on doubt and skepticism, and how to evaluate what we believe to be true in our own lives.

Hume claims that there are two types of doubt. There is antecedent doubt, which is portrayed by Descartes, and there is consequential doubt. Hume dissects these topics and it leads him to the conclusion of “The mind has never anything present to it but the perceptions and cannot possibly reach any experience of their connexion with objects. The supposition of such a connexion is, therefore, without any foundation in reasoning” (Hume, Skeptical Philosophy, pg 3). Universal doubt, or antecedent doubt tells us that we must doubt all former opinions, principles and faculties. It is incurable, and we must bring doubt to all our ideas. This forms the question of what is our truth then? How do we know that something is true if everything comes from a basic principle, but we are doubting that basic principle? Therefore, nothing is beyond doubt.

Consequential doubt doubts our senses; this is where we derive the quote from. Consequential doubt tells us that we rely on the perceptions of reality, but these are not of true essence. Senses alone are insufficient. Hume provides us with the example of a table. When we walk farther from a table, it seems smaller. The question is, is the table getting smaller, or are we being deceived by our senses? How do we come into understanding if our perceptions change as we move about in the world? We rely on experience, and rationality to reach a truth. However, universal doubt tells us that we cannot rely on experience because we have only ever had our perceptions of our minds in which we are calling into doubt. Therefore, our belief in an external world is not rationally justified. Hume also addresses secondary qualities of objects. These are the issues of hot and cold, hard and soft etc. Are these qualities in the objects themselves, or, again, perceptions of our minds? Our ideas of this are sensible, dependent on the idea of secondary qualities and our senses of sight and feeling, and therefore attained by abstraction. It is human opinion that makes up tables, or other objects, and if you remove these primary and secondary qualities Hume says we cannot trust, we are left with something we cannot explain, and therefore cannot have a real connection with.

Hume provides us with a world that we cannot be sure of, however he also provides light for how we should navigate our way through it with free will. He is a skeptic and concludes that there is no rational world to make a connection with, but if we were to accept these principles, the world would cease to exist. Hume admits that in order to live we must believe in something, and act on it. This implies the existence of free will, however, free will can coincide with doubt. Doubt can guide us through life with moral responsibility, instead of free will or doubt taking over our life or decisions.

Descartes, in his writings, concluded that if we break down and doubt everything, we know to be true, we are left with one undoubtable statement: “I think, therefore I exist.” Hume claimed that if this was the only statement we could see to be true, anything that would come after, would be reasoned by a human being, and therefore, is not reliable as we are not to trust our reasoning. Descartes took it farther and that was where he started to lose support. He reasoned that because he doubts, he is not perfect. But what exactly is perfect? Instead, saying because he doubts, there is something he does not know, would have been more accurate, however still contradictive. From there, he reasoned that because he is not perfect, it implies the existence of something that is perfect in which we depend on, for example, God, or a deity. However, this idea still has contradictory around it, and can still be argued and doubted. This attributed to Descartes having less support than Hume does, and allowing Hume’s writings to stand out compared to Descartes's.

Descartes went too far in his reasoning about the world and a deity, but Sextus does not do enough in his writing Outlines of Pyrrohonian Skepticism. He starts off by dividing philosophers into three categories, the dogmatists, the academic and the skeptics. He lists ten modes of skepticism against the possibility of knowledge, but with both lists and categories, he never truly places himself within it. He tells us to suspend our judgement, because we cannot be sure of anything in our world. Hume agrees with this to a point, but Sextus believes it to where life has no meaning to him. Sextus believed that for every argument, there is an equal argument against it, therefore it is rational to suspend judgement on all issues. Sextus is asking us to live without desire and beliefs, because desire and beliefs are opinion and opinion is judgement. However, Hume points out that this is impossible. We cannot go through life without beliefs or desires, or we would not be able to make decisions or truly live. Sextus adds nothing to the sceptical argument, being that his position is that he does not know anything, so he should not judge anything, and this is impractical and is not beneficial to the readers or the society. David Hume’s approach to seeking truth in our world provides the readers with tactical arguments and strong standings and support in order to properly evaluate our world, and still live our lives with our own beliefs.