Skepticism can be a difficult principle to uphold - it's easier and simpler, usually, to simply believe what we are told and not try to critique the claims being made. Critical thinking is a skill that takes time to learn and effort to apply. Is it perhaps the case that being skeptical is inhuman and inappropriate?

Lorraine Daston argues just that in the Spring, 2005 issue of Social Research:

This state of withheld or suspended belief is known as skepticism, and it comes in varying strengths, from mild demur to radical doubt. It is so reflexive an intellectual stance for moderns that some effort is required to appreciate its strangeness. Perform the following analogical thought experiment: imagine a person who, on principle, withheld trust from others until their reliability had been proved, rather than the other way around. The local shopkeepers would be assumed to be swindlers, friends warily eyed for the slightest signs of disloyalty, family members suspected of calculating legacies and life insurance premiums. We have met such people in plays by Moliere; they are called misanthropes and are to be chastised or pitied, but not admired.

Yet they are the moral equivalent of skeptics, who refuse to trust--their senses, received wisdom, testimony, scientific hypotheses--until shown the evidence, bushels of it. Even if the prototype of the skeptic is taken to be not Descartes, with his unsettling fantasies about malevolent demons, but rather the debonair and self-ironic Hume, there is more than a whiff of paranoia in the mental exercises of suspending belief about everything, including whether the sun will rise tomorrow. ... But if there is something inhuman about the skeptical withholding of belief, lest an error be committed, it is an inhumanity bred of fear.

Why does Lorraine Daston describe skepticism of empirical claims as being the same as cynical distrust of the honesty of other individuals? It’s so reflexive for gullible people to think that skepticism is the same as cynicism and distrust that some effort is required to appreciate its strangeness. For the radically gullible like Lorraine Daston, any questioning or doubt about the truth of a claim is, necessarily, questioning or doubt about the honest of the claimant. It’s as if there is no way that a person could be both completely honest and completely wrong for honest reasons.

To understand just how asinine Lorraine Daston’s position is, perform the following analogical thought experiment: imagine a person who, on principle, trusted everything they heard from others unless their unreliability had been proved, rather than the other way around. The local snake oil salesmen would be assumed to have miracle cures for baldness and erectile dysfunction in the same little bottle, politicians eagerly embraced for every promise made, telephone psychics consulted on every little decision. We have met such people in movie comedies; they are called fools and idiots and are to be chastised or pitied, but not admired.

Such gullibility as this is not inhuman; on the contrary, it is all too human — but it is an aspect of our humanity which properly applied skepticism can keep in check, preventing us from making mistakes we’ll surely regret.

It should, however, be noted that scientific attitudes toward epistemology do resemble those of the allegedly devout toward religion in that, in both cases, precepts are generally honored only in the breach. Indeed, it could be argued that the entire enterprise of science would grind to a halt were epistemological scruples to be rigorously enforced, just as ordinary life would were religion to rule with an iron hand and an all-seeing eye.

Successful science, in contrast to minatory epistemology, has historically been risk-seeking with respect to belief. There is something reckless about remarkable scientific advances. ... Forced to choose between two kinds of error, successful science has historically erred on the side of maximizing knowledge, rather than on that of minimizing error--even at the cost of believing too much.

Here, Lorraine Daston confuses gullibility with imagination. Scientists rely heavily on imagination to come up with possibilities and solutions — but they don’t insist that the products of their imagination are true. Instead, they test what they imagine to see if believing it is really justified. This is why Lorraine Daston is so tragically wrong: she misrepresents science by ignoring the fact that the constant testing and re-testing and independent testing are all demanded by the skeptical attitude she falsely derides as “inhuman.”

Frankly, I’d much rather be an inhuman skeptic and keep my money from the snake oil salesmen than a gullible Lorraine Daston.

 

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