Skepticism relates to the aspect of questioning opinions, facts, beliefs, or knowledge presented as factual conclusions. A skeptic person does not necessarily deny the existence of the opinion, facts, or knowledge, but rather requires conclusive proof through concrete evidence. There are various branches of skepticism; academic, moral, philosophical, pyrrhonian, and religious skepticism among others. Academic and pyrrhonian skepticism have their origin from ancient Greek (Popkin 2003), and have informed the development of the other branches. This paper focuses on moral and scientific skepticism.
Moral skeptics generally differentiate moral knowledge and justified moral belief. Moral knowledge is based on facts, which in most cases can be proved by evidence. For instance, majority of Christians believe that same sex marriages are morally wrong because the Bible forbids them. This can be proved by reading the verses in the Bible that forbids them, and thus this is a moral knowledge. A moral skeptic would in this case question the validity of the Bible, or the verse. Given that the Bible was written by people, the moral skeptic would doubt the verse by questioning the knowledge of the person writing the verse. To the response that the person writing the verse was inspired by God, the skeptic would ask for evidence of such inspiration.
On the other hand, justified moral beliefs are based largely on justifications that may not necessarily be knowledge based. For instance, a person may say it is morally wrong to make faces at a lecturer when they are not looking. This is hard to prove based on knowledge but may be justified by social norms such as respect for elders. The moral skeptic would question the validity of this norm, whether it is true or false.
Scientific skepticism on its part questions the validity of anything that cannot be empirically proved by research or experiments. To the scientific skeptic, anything that cannot be proved through such is false, or at least not true. Ideally they repudiate any assertions based on anecdotal evidence or belief. As earlier noted skeptics do not deny the existence of the claim, and so do scientific skeptics, but rather opine that such claims should be subjected to critical empirical examination. Once the empirical examination produces concrete evidence to back the claim, then the claim is considered valid.
Accordingly, scientific skeptics rely on authorities or established principle to interpret claims. Thus for instance if a new claim is based on or can be supported by an established science, the scientific skeptic will invariably believe the validity of the claim, without necessarily subjecting it to an empirical examination. This is based on the fact that the established since is considered as an authority, having been empirically proven before. It is on such basis that scientific skepticism is criticized for more of defending established principles rather than establishing the veracity of new claims.
Reference List
Popkin, R. 2003. The History of Skepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle (Revised and Expanded
Edition). New York: Oxford University Press. Print.
Sinnott-Armstrong, W. 2007. Moral Skepticisms. New York: Oxford University Press. Print.
