Skepticism Essay

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In ethics, the value of emotion in creating knowledge claims is debatable, since skeptics can challenge the use of emotions as measurable evidence. According to Sam Harris, a neuroscientist who argues that skepticism can answer questions of morality, a justified knowledge claim is one coherently supported by both empirical evidence and consistent logic within a reasonable scope (Harris 73- 77). Harris’s emphasis on empiricism suggests that evidence limits the scope to which skepticism can justify claims with reason, a limitation I can demonstrate. Outside of school, I volunteer in a local special education program, so friends may define me as philanthropic. However, in this case definition is the claim about my character based on evidence of volunteering. My supervisor can verify information, like quantified time spent volunteering and the kinds of activities through oral or written testimony. However, the motive behind my volunteering could be for self-gain, like qualifications for college scholarships and applications, even if I testify my selflessness or seem charitable. In this case, skepticism cannot accurately evaluate my internal motives based on language or sense perception. However, while Harris argues that emotional biases limit the use of reason in knowledge claims, I know that emotion can be quantified in the human body. By studying nerve impulses in my biology course, I’ve learned how the human brain signals the release of the chemical neurotransmitter dopamine into the central nervous system. When dopamine binds to its specific receptor, the result is a feeling of pleasure that can be chemically quantified with brain scans. Assuming that a skeptic can generally quantify emotions with tests, skepticism can indeed use emotional evidence to justify ethical claims with empiricism and reason. Between ethics and mathematics however, Harris’s skepticism cannot avoid emotional and linguistic uncertainties in ethical claims, while Shermer’s skepticism aims to reduce all individual biases in analyzing mathematical evidence.

By comparing Shermer’s skepticism in mathematics to Harris’ skepticism in ethical claims, we determine that skepticism can consistently interpret evidence with objectivity if the resulting claims are supported with testable, empirical information. However, Pinker’s evidence of genetically-linked intelligence implies that the individual will interpret evidence communicated through language or sense perception with some degree of subjective bias despite the conditioning from culture. But unlike Pinker’s example, Kepler’s interpretation simply lacks empirical evidence and becomes a construct albeit with reason. However even with reason, the use of skepticism to understand language can lead to many possible interpretations that become impractical when distanced from given evidence. Conversely, Harris’s skepticism challenges the empiricism in evidence such as communicated emotions. Therefore, in ethics and biological sciences, reason alone could justify claims assuming that evidence from emotions is quantifiable and linguistic evidence is empirical. But while skepticism effectively verifies the evaluation of evidence in mathematical theories, skepticism’s bias against emotions can hinder the pragmatic value in ethical claims.

If we agree that ethics must account for human wellbeing socially, physically and mentally, then Harris’ skepticism has a weakness in its bias against communicated evidence. Harris suggests that communicated evidence can have weaknesses in an inability to be externally verified with a secondary person’s observations or experiences. However, some branches of ethics, like William James’ pragmatism, put ethical value in emotions. According to pragmatism, claims are justified according to evidence of their practical effects, not logic (James 194). Therefore emotion can have individual value even if it subjectively affects one person’s mental wellbeing without secondary confirmation. Between James’s pragmatism, Pinker’s linguistics, and Shermer’s skepticism, that tolerance of subjective interpretation can coexist with the use of reason if the supporting evidence logically coheres with the interpretation. Therefore, skepticism challenges both mathematical claims and ethical claims on the basis of evidentiary support, though would likely consider human wellbeing more in ethics than in mathematics.

We have evaluated skepticism in the field of mathematics and ethics. Also, we have explored how skepticism may first encounter genetic bias when interpretation of language precedes the process of reasoning. Based on Kepler’s inductive failure and my experience with calculus, skepticism becomes a generally effective tool to challenge the support from evidence in mathematical induction. However, the bias against both emotion and language in Harris’s ethics and the influence of genetic diversity on intelligence as described by Pinker demonstrate how skepticism can become impractical. In those weaknesses, we conclude that skepticism cannot avoid biased interpretation of evidence even with subsequent logical reasoning.

(1597 words without parenthetical citations)

Sources:

Burkhardt, Frederick. The Works of William James - Pragmatism. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1975. Print.

Harris, Samuel. “The Nature of Belief.” The End of Faith, Religion, Terror and the Future of Religion. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2004. Print.

Pinker, Steven. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York: Viking, 2002. Print.

Shermer, Michael. Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time. New York: W.H. Freeman, 1997. Print.