Being Skeptical: Proportioning One's Belief to Evidence

"In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence."

The above quote, from David Hume's famous An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), is more than just a pronunciation of the skeptical attitude towards reasonable expectations and the generation of knowledge. Rather, it is perhaps the most useful maxim one could adopt as the first line of defense against the propositions of universal truth.

In a society such as complex and complicated as ours, I cannot think of better advice than to live the life of a skeptic, at least under certain circumstances. In our society we are constantly bombarded with a variety of interests and agendas that may be contrary to our own well-being, and indeed may sometimes have no other purpose than to manipulate or use us for some other means. This essay then is applying the skeptical attitude towards life in a practical way for protecting oneself against those that seek to use manipulation, deception, or misinformation against us.

Proportioning one's belief to the available evidence is crucial. This means exactly as it sounds - that one should reasonably believe something in varying degrees as it stands against the evidence. Evidence will either affirm or deny such claims, and it is only on this basis that people should hold something to be justifiably believable. However, what are we to do when the evidence isn't readily available to us?

The only means of attaining the evidence in order to make one's belief in something justifiable is to investigate. Often times, this means nothing more than asking questions. Indeed, asking questions is often times the only available means to obtaining the necessary evidence. However, it seems that questioning certain aspects of existence seems all but natural to human beings.

We often times feel inclined to ask the most important question when it comes to deep metaphysical or existential issues: "Why?" However, why is a tricky question, is it implies that a possible answer can be given. When we ask, "Why are we here?" we are assuming an answer can be given, or that such a question is answerable at all. Empirical scientific-data cannot answer "why" questions as they relate to our existence. But this doesn't seem to stop us from questioning, but rather, we look beyond science to provide these questions. Often times, others conscious of this questioning within the human psyche, provide an answer. Religion does this, and so do other belief-systems not quite religious but not quite entirely secular either. The point is sometimes "why?" is not the appropriate question to ask; however, there are times when it is perhaps the most important question that can be asked when the possibility of an answer does exist.

So what possibilities do exist when we may legitimately ask "why" questions? Well, for starters, we may appropriately ask this question when someone asks us to believe, act, or behave in some particular manner that may seem inconsistent with our own attitudes. In these circumstances, this is a perfectly legitimate question to ask. An example may illustrate my point more clearly.

Let's say someone comes to your door. He knocks, and you look through the eye-hole and see a respectable looking man in a well-tailored but modest suit. He says he is from the Church of Christian Knowledge. He greets you in a friendly manner, and asks you a simple question, "Are you happy with your life?" You are taken by surprise but seem all too easy to please, and you respond, "Well, I think so. Yes, I am happy." But this man has not come all the way to your door simply to inquire about whether you are happy or not - he has an agenda or an interest he is trying to satisfy. He then proceeds to ask you if you feel spiritually satisfied, and this one makes you question your own spirituality for a bit. You ponder, and take your time to reflect - having been persuaded that this friendly and respectable man might have something intriguing to offer you. The response you come up with sounds something like this, "Well I haven't really thought about my spirituality," (assuming of course you are not dedicated to the belief in any one religion or have ambivalent thoughts on religion/spirituality in general). Now, this man sees an opening. He now can tell that you are not someone strongly indoctrinated nor committed to a particular faith, and he has legitimate reasons to believe he may convince you through an argument, and so he proceeds. He goes on to tell you that there is something missing in your life, and implicitly he tells you that what you are missing in your life can be fulfilled by the Church of Christian Knowledge.

Now, the reasonable skeptic will have a few questions to ask, and these are legitimate questions - after all, what does this man know about true happiness anymore than you do? So you ask him, "how do you know this is what I am missing? You have just met me." Or, you might want to ask, "on what basis should I believe that the Church of Christian Knowledge is the only pathway to truth, in relation to other religions or institutions?" These are important questions, and the man at the door may recite nothing more than dogma (which he either assumes to be true or has been convinced to be true) and expects you to affirm what he has assumed. The question you must ask yourself then is, "why should I assume this as well?"

These questions may annoy the man, or he may expect them and even have answers. Be skeptical of these answers as well - after all, you must also ask yourself, "why do I think this man came to my door to talk to me about his particular faith? Does he want to convert me, or is he merely trying to inform me of another possible way to enlightenment and redemption?" These answers assume metaphysical questions, and cannot be found in experience or the physical world. And it's quite possible that the man may be acting on nothing more than good intentions and sincerely want to help you by spreading the faith for which he finds so useful to his life. However, how justified you (or he) is in accepting this path is an altogether difficult question with real-life implications. Hence, you should be skeptical of the answers he gives you.

We need not have to think hard to think of examples in which the more deceptive elements of our society approach us with "facts" telling us how we ought to live, what we ought to buy, or what we ought to do. These people use devious and often times successful tactics in trying to convince you of one thing or another. How are you best to defend yourself against these individuals (or groups), by asking questions and generating beliefs in proportion to empirical facts that are justifiably identified as facts of knowledge, i.e. things that can be observed or experienced within the physical world and can objectively be tested with successful recurrence.

Sometimes taking a skeptical approach may be obvious. Let's say we are browsing the internet, and we come across a page advertising a miracle cure for cancer. Now, the website uses lots of technical jargon that sounds scientific and even cites the names of doctors who endorse their products. What we have here is a good example of a scam, one in which only someone who takes a skeptical approach that references empirical evidence will be able to avoid. The facts that we can know about cancer, is that an all around universal "cure" is probably impossible. There are many different causes of cancer, and many different cancers that may be caused by many different environmental or genetic conditions; and the respective treatment or "cure" will vary greatly depending on what type of cancer you have. A skeptic is wary of such evidence, and will proportion his belief in this miracle cure as either legitimate or illegitimate based on this evidence.

Miracles of any sort - whether they be miracle cures or someone seeing the Virgin Mary in their taco, are of any interest to us as human beings simply because they contradict our reasonable expectations of certain outcomes. It would be a miracle to say that a human being could jump out of a sixteenth story building window and defy gravity. Gravity, as we experience it, is an empirical fact which justifies a reasonable belief in its existence (or perhaps the best indication of something we may generate knowledge about). I have little doubt that if I were to jump out of a sixteenth story building, I would fall to my death ten out of ten times (assuming this were possible after one fatal jump). We should be skeptical of anything that insists upon a miracle of nature by virtue of the fact that the empirical evidence will consistently suggest otherwise. That does not mean we should put 100% faith in empirical facts, since science is only inductive (not deductive like mathematics) and basis its own facts on reasonably expected recurring observances. These observances lend themselves to the varying degree of certainty for which we may believe these facts to be true. In other words, while our empirical evidence may not be perfect - they are perhaps the best example of information we can reasonably be expected to hold as justifiable "facts" of knowledge.

My purpose here has not been to suggest that one should take on a pessimistic or cynical attitude towards life. Often times, by experience, we can reasonably be justified to assume that those whom we share a long history with, and have demonstrated consistently their interest in our well-being, are not trying to harm us or take advantage of us. However, this is a belief proportioned to the evidence which we experience in the physical world. Thus, being skeptical of those situations, events, or people for which we do have not (or simply cannot) experience in the physical world should be approached skeptically. In a complicated world with complicated problems, often times, we just have to realize that the solution is not always (and rarely going to be) so simple.