Critical Philosophy

Scientific Methodology

The basis of all Science is the logical process of Induction, or repeatability combined with theoritization.

Induction - This is based on the assumption that an identically repeated observation, ideally from different perspectives, is likely to be a true observation. This is probably the best way to discover truths (though ironically it could only be proven so via inductive reasoning), however it is limited by the possible range of perspectives. For example, from every perspective in Europe all observations of swans over the centuries revealed them to be white. So it followed inductively that 'all swans were white', however black swans were later found in Australia, a new perspective, falsifying the induction. Similar we might safely say the Sun has risen at dawn every morning for millennia, therefore it always will. However this depends on the background mechanics of the solar system, which are not eternal or absolutely stable, so will not always be the case. It seems safer to say that on Earth a stone dropped will always fall to the ground, based on a background 'law of nature'. But given our limited human experience in cosmic terms, how certain can we be about the stability of these laws under all possible conditions. Even basic laws such as Causation are rooted in our habitual observation and assumption and so cannot be certain. All that can be really said is that Induction is useful and gives us generalizations with varying degrees of probability. But the precise probability is hard to measure given the unknown background. An unpredictable surprise can always change the picture considerably.

Experimental Method - General Induction is not enough for Science which seeks to answer specific questions or solve particular problems. Knowing a stone falls when dropped is not as useful as knowing all the conditions for and factors in the descent and how they effect it, nor does it help us build predictive theories about the nature of falling objects or the causal mechanisms involved. For this reason a more controlled form of Induction is required which controls all the conditions of observation, screens out any influencing factors not being studied, modifies variables and isolates the phenomenon under study. The extent to which this is possible depends on experimental design, the nature of the phenomena and the preconceptions of the experiments designer.

A series of experiments performed under optimal conditions is the foundation of a scientific research program, however scepticism about the reliability, competence, motivation or honesty of the initial experimenter requires the experiment be repeated by independent experimenters, all of whom must be of good reputation, sound mind and show proficiency in their science.

Limits of Experimentalism - The methodology is of course an idealization which may not be followed or followable, even on a collective basis. Anyone performing college based experiments in class will know only a few will achieve the 'expected result' and the rest will copy the results. The situation is not that different in professional science. Optimal conditions are harder to achieve than many believe and most scientists are not above tweaking the results. In extreme cases a scientist with a career or theory to promote or defend will understandably falsify results.

Even the diligent, honest experimenter faces problems. Even if the scientist can truly adopt a neutral approach, something very difficult in itself given unconscious biases, their honest assumptions will shape the experimental format. What's more the accrued assumptions of science also comprise a framework of assumption and expectation, as does the measuring instrumentation itself. Though despite that it remains an unrivaled method of investigating the objective (semi) regularities of the world at large, a narrow but crucial range of experience.

The Problem of Observation and Visualization - A deeper problem is one of human perception. If our sensory experience is as mediated and as shaped by representative categories as it appears to be, how can we ever observe the real world? Instrumental measurement of unsensed physical data is one way round this, but this still requires interpretation, usually 'visually', using concepts shaped by our perceptions. Quantum Physics seems to show that our representive categories, such as position, motion and even space and time, are entirely artificial and conveniently mediate a simplified picture of a much stranger reality. Not surprisingly some scientists have given up on interpretation and deal solely with formuli.

Scientific Theoritization - The aforementioned limits have been the limits of experimentalism and data gathering, but this alone even when successful only gives us a set of results which then have to be interpreted. This on the face of it is simple pattern recognition, whether we generalize a rule or law from the data or devise a whole theorem based on it. The hypothesis that 'bests fits the evidence' is chosen. This is the reliable way we arrive at all our views of the world, but what does 'best fit' mean, and what if there seems to be several 'good fits'? This returns us to the problem of the criterion.

The most popular criterion, and once almost a tenet of scientific faith was the famous 'Ockham's Razor' based on the principle of Parsimony. That is, the simplest explanation that involves the least hypothesised phenomena, conditions or 'ifs' is the better. This once seemed intuitively sound on the basis of notions like 'nature takes the simplest path of least resistance' or on the principle of the conservation of energy. It remains strong as an indicator of probability, however in an age of complexity and chaos theory simple theories or equations are at best useful approximations and not at all necessarily true. Most technicians know that many scientific equations are at best a rule of thumb and not to be taken as truths.

Another popular criterion is 'elegance', Einstein selected his Theories of Relativity primarily on aesthetic grounds, the beauty and mathematical perfection of the theory. This can work, but seems to imply a rather optimistic and romantic view of nature, that certainly is not always true. A more down to earth version of this approach assumes that the universe is ordered in a 'consistent' or 'coherent' way, independent of human cognition, and so the more 'coherent' theory is always true. Thus arguably shifting optimistically from romanticism to naivity.

All criterion of this kind have their strengths and weaknesses and so many scientists simply rely on intuition or guess work and then use secondary criteria to test their theory.

The most basic is Verification or Confirmation. A theory can be used to make predictions and these predictions can then be tested, and enough correct hits is said to verify the theory. But the problem here is very few theories produce one hundred percent accurate predictions while even a false theory with elements of approximation can produce a few hits for a while. Furthermore a committed theoretician tends to be unconsciously biased and only looks for the signs that confirm the theory. Verification is thus not really stringent enough.

The most popular alternative has become Falsification, the demonstration of counter evidence against a theory. This is perhaps still the most used secondary criterion, however the Duhem-Quine theorem suggests that every theory of sufficient complexity actually consists of a cluster of interrelated micro-theories rather than one overall hypothesis, and that Falsification may only refute one of these. Thus in practice scientists will often defend their favourite theory by changing one of its theoretical components, or many background assumptions, and so retain the theory through slight modification. Thus no complex theory is falsifiable. Falsification thus only really applies to simple theories or equations that are usually approximations anyway and so prone to fallibility.

A variant form of Falsificationism is Disconfirmation were predicted results do not manifest or where the results that do emerge can be 'better' accounted for by an alternative theory. The latter begs the question of the criteria for theory selection however, while the former is no grounds for completely discarding a theory, as the name implies, but simply requires theoretical or experimental modification as with Falsification.

All we are left with then is ways of selecting approximate theories with various degrees of probability. The faith of science is that successive approximations move closer to the truth. However the history of science reveals that while successive theories respond to new and more accurate data, as technology progresses, they are often just popular perceptions amongst the current generation of scientists with no progressive relation to the theories that went before them. Quantum Theory inherits little from Newtonian Physics, for instance, and even rejects its basic concepts. The evolution is thus non-linear and haphazard. Moreover each successive theory is nested in a broader web of meta-theory that is rarely challenged. Science is thus rooted in its initial metaphysical assumptions, such as Causation, Nomic Realism, Physicalism and Logic, and only tentatively moves beyond them. It can thus be as dogmatic as any religion.

Despite this however science works, in the sense that it has shaped our world in a beneficial way (as well as negative). This is reason for accepting it as a guide towards certain practical knowledge, though not necessarily truth. Religions have also shaped the world in beneficial ways, while at the same time contradicting each other and causing suffering. Today we live in a world greater advanced by technology but also damaged by it, with different schools of scientific opinion contesting the truth of any situation.

Scientism vs Pragmatism - Despite these clear limits some scientific sceptics have insisted contemporary science is the only route to reliable knowledge, with its 'securer' theories being the nearest thing we have to truth, and all else being false, or at best untested, opinion. Though they sometimes use selective 'truths' to support their own opinions. Those that extend this theory of knowledge to a theory of meaning also claim 'positivistic' scientific statements are the only meaningful ones (despite the fact that others have no problem finding meaning in non-scientific statements). This move to scientific conviction is in many ways a form of religion, aptly term Scientism. To deny this would either be an over-evaluation of science or an under-evaluation of the strengths of existential religion. Either way it is far removed from true scepticism.

A much more rational option however is to treat science pragmatically as a tool towards approximate knowledge, about useful objective (semi)regularities, within a probabilistic view of the world. This seems to be the position of most professional scientists. And of course even a highly probable truth is by no means a certainty as any gambler knows.

Logic

The original concept of Logic was derived from Logos, or the Word. The blueprint of the ordered universe as spoken by whatever creator God was believed to be responsible. In some more subtle theologies the Logos was more of a regulating order in a fluid universe, for Heraclitus it was something akin to the Tao, but in general it was the descriptive order of the stable cosmos. The key point was that it was expressible in language and so was describable, a means of stating the order of the world. This was normally equated with Reason, the accurate mental representation of the world in thought.

Thus Classical Logic was a way of formalizing and perfecting rational thought and an accurate description of the world. Science too absorbed this view, despite its religious basis, and set out to describe a logical cosmos. Only in the 20th Century has it emerged that the natural order of the cosmos and human logic are very different orders.

A more contemporary view of Logic is to see it as reflecting the ideal structure of human reason. Either what it is or more likely what it approximates. The religious view thus being an anthropomorphic projection.

The problem remains of the relation between Logic and the World. The classical world model and our everyday experience certainly seems to correspond to the basic tenets of Logic, and not surprisingly if both are based on our mental categories. But if this has occurred biologically as a result of evolutionary adaption to the world then it may have some correlation to it. An alternative idea is that it evolves much later as a product of human language and communication. Logical principles like Non-Contradiction making more sense in terms of communication than as a model of the Quantum Mechanical world.

There are now many different forms of Logic, based on different theories of how the world, or our mind, is structured. But Classical Logic, with its binary notions of true or false, remains the common sense view.

Of course we not reject it or this very web site and its arguments would not be possible, but it remains an open mystery. Certainly logic is a human construction dependent on our specific language and neurology, but it also attempts to capture the 'rational' aspects of reality. But where one ends and the other begins remains uncertain.

One thing that has been proved logically is that a formal description can never be a complete one. Certainly in particular kinds of description, and it would seem so in all. We can't attempt to describe everything in total without leaving something out. This is typified by the paradox
of the library index - one way of describing this is as a vast library that could house every book on every possible subject, a near total description of the world. But it must also contain an index book if that information is to be useful (a metaphor for a unifying total description). This index book contains all the books, but to contain every book, to be a total description, it must also contain itself, but it cannot contain itself without infinite expansion, i.e. Index[Books..., Index {Books..., Index(Books..., Index (etc))}] so it is impossible to search in a finite time. Other books may also refer to themselves causing a similar problem. We can stipulate an Index which does not contain books which refer to themselves, Index 1, but then we must stipulate another Index for books which do refer to self, Index 2 [Book n (Book n...)]. This will also be an infinite set, but could be regarded as a vague, abstract subset of a more definable collection, containing a near total description. The final problem being Index 1 can't include itself or Index 2 and Index 2 can't contain Index 1, but can contain itself. So there will always be two seperate sets of books, or incomplete total descriptions, Index 1 and Index 2 which cannot contain, or describe each other. This is a simplified metaphorical example of a complex fact about the structure of most, if not all, logical systems, demonstrated by Godel's Incompleteness Theorem. The same situation has been logically shown to apply to many attempts at total description, and probably all, and results in the failure of the production of a total description without an excluded other. This is a serious problem for those who think logical descriptions do, or can, describe the totality of existence. It also seems to make the presence of contradictions, between incompatable descriptions, innevitable. Thus it remains a major area of heated contention in philosophical logic.

The Psychology of Knowledge

The psychological function of knowledge is simply to reduce anxiety. Knowledge may have the selected significance of instrumental utility but it does so by creating stress in its absence, this is the true motivator for knowledge, as with any power drive, powerlessness creates anxiety and depression, as those who have experienced it well know.

Anything we classify as knowledge will reduce stress, but the all encompassing, explanative descriptions of the world are the ultimate panacea, thus religions have long been a necessary psychological utility for many, as much as they are a false opiate. In fact I would argue the 'supernaturalist' aspect of religion is a minor part, as some lack any notion of a divinity, an afterlife or any 'spookiness' at all, while all optimistically give meaning and explanation, and create a sense of order, controllability and goals. And this is their greater risk, far more than any metaphysically unfashionable descriptions. The same is true of myth, history, politics, science, romantic endeavours, vocationalism or any idealist or ideological stance. While it would be equally foolish to reject these out of hand, they are after all very empowering on an instrumental level, they are also dangerous if taken as Truths. This danger of course varies on their ratio of fact and illusion. Science is perhaps the safest of all, but given what has been said about scientific method even here caution is needed, perhaps more so than with mor orthodox forms of religion. We should remember science is an approximate truth about a narrow range of phenomena, expanding it into a grand narrative that explains all simply makes it another religion. Its potential for truth in some areas probably make Scientism the worst of all religions, particularly given the unlikelihood of a total rationalised description of the world.

Given the anxiety base of the search for knowledge, those already under stress, whether from external or internal instability tend to be the most dogmatic of knowledge claimants and the most rigid or formal in their logical structuring of it. But this doesn't mean that all logicians are crazy or paranoid! It does mean that those under less stress will adopt theories as they should be adopted as pure hypotheses. Similarly authoritarian social orders depend on tightly controlled belief systems and so also rely on the creation of insecurity and fear, whether the source is 'hellfire' and 'demons' or 'social chaos' and 'terrorism'.

It is not only complete world views or ideologies that have this psychological effect of course items of belief such as Cause and Effect are also rooted in this security assurance.

Inductive Reasoning itself is an essential part of this psychological mechanism, the more an observation is repeated the more faith we gain in its stability and truth. Thus Reason is a stress reducer at root, as is also evidenced by the psychological tendency to rationalize away any problems we face. Simplification and reductionism are other forms of stress relief. The dominant Western form of this psychology has been to project out these processes as means of contacting some transcendental order called Truth by the application of Reason. While in the East it often belief that that constant experience actually shapes and orders the world. In this respect all our belief systems can be seen as therapeutic.

This does not mean the views we obtain are false of course, some may be true by virtue of the
factors outlined in the Science section, it simply means that even the most widely and deeply held beliefs are not necessarily true and that their plausibility to us has psychological roots which cannot be trusted.

A related milder form of this human syndrome is the tendency to desire conceptual unity, a theory of everything, or overall body of coherent and consistent knowledge. This is related to the anxiety syndrome but is more deeply rooted. It relates more closely to the structure of the human mind and language that is biased towards 'coherent systems'. This creates a tunnel vision in science in particular, where all new data is assessed and filtered through a broader established belief system, or holistic 'web of belief', comprising the total body of conventional wisdom and accepted belief. Simplistically put, all new knowledge has to fit into what we 'already know', even if what we 'already know' is false or misleadingly only 'half true'. Thus original and innovative perspectives can be suppressed in the face of older biases.

Another example of psychological cognitive filtering is the selection of theoretical models isomorphic to one's own culture. Thus the metaphysics of particles, seperation and exchange became dominant with the emergence of a Capitalist system, while a metaphysics of holism and connectivity becomes dominant under more Communal socio-economic systems. This does not mean the theories are necessarily wrong, it just explains their dominance in any arbitrary selection system.

A more positive application of Psychology would be the demonstration of Intuition in cognitive processes. However despite its familiarity Intuition is an extremely vague phenomena. There are actually three different uses of the term. What we might call surface intuition is the idea of pattern recognition. This is very closely related to Inductive reasoning, but is instantaneous rather than linear in its connection of facts. Likewise it is prone to illusion and psychological bias, as anyone who has looked at inkblots will realize. Despite this it is extremely useful and probably the first stage of all scientific thought. It does not give certain knowledge however.
A more controversial form of Intuition is the alleged ability to grasp the truth of a state of affairs simply by some form of deep engagement with it. It could be termed deep intuition. This is sometimes explained as a kind of sympathetic resonance between a mind and its subject, this is understandable when the subject is another being perhaps, but harder to comprehend for objective states of affairs. A complete understanding of the kind claimed by mystics is gnosis. Whatever mechanism is at work here it remains problematic given that intuitions vary so much. It is thus likely that bias is at work here too, but we have no way of deciding between competing deep intuitions. ESP, if it exists, might be classed here, however most claims seem to involve mere transfer of mental contents, sometimes across time, through some apparent psychic entanglement, not the gaining of original data. The final form of Intuition is that used in divination. This is the most controversial of all. The basic premise is that an isolated random event will in some way symbolically reflect broader events elsewhere that are being 'held' in the mind of the diviner (this randomness ranges from the rolling of a dice under ritual conditions to the 'pseudo-random' relational cycles of planets in astrology and the timing of their measurement). If possible this would change our entire view of the way the cosmos works, and for this reason is rationally held to be improbable. However it is not impossible and may be rationalism as indicating a link between the subjective and objective and synchronistic relations between randomness and human consciousness, as well as involving some kind of mental ESP. Similar possibilities are scientifically hinted at in many interpretations of Quantum Physics. Fortunately we need not concern ourselves with such arcane subjects here, as it would appear that the only real Intuition involved may be the surface intuition of pattern recognition with all its strengths and weaknesses, therefore the status of Divination does not effect the argument.

The Epistemic Reaction

The perceived danger to human progress allegedly inherent in total scepticism, as well as the anxiety it produced for some, led to a form of anti-scepticism known in philosophy as epistemology (literally the study of knowledge claims, ultimately from the same root word as epistle). The agenda of epistemology is to counter the claims of the sceptics and develop positive arguments for rational and scientific methodology.

A traditional way to go about this was set down, during the emergence of Science and religious contention and decline in the 17th century, by the philosopher Descartes, who took the role of absolute sceptic to its limit, and then attempted to extricate himself. Descartes took up many classical sceptical arguments and invented new ones of his own. His ultimate argument was that we have no way of knowing we are not constantly dreaming and so can doubt everything (this was modernized in the 20th century as the Brain-in-a-Vat argument, which partly inspired the film the Matrix). Descartes then extracted himself by claiming the only thing he couldn't doubt was that he was doubting (as doubting this would only affirm it). From this he argued that he himself as a doubter must therefore exist (modern arguments that doubting could take place without a doubter seemed as absurd to him as it does to most modern readers). As doubt was just a mode of thought, he produced his truism, 'I think therefore I am'. From this he argued on the basis of the consistency of his experience, and its lucidity and difference to dreams, that there was an external reality and other people. Later epistemic arguments added the existence of coherent language (arguably a social product rather than a private one), including its possibility for error, proved the existence of others in some shared reality. Descartes then made a leap of faith and assumed that the regularity and consistency of the world must have a source, which he identified as God. From which he derived more of a theological than philosophical argument that God must be perfect, and therefore benign, and a benign God would ensure our senses were reliable and human reason mirrored the order of the world making it knowable. This then was a short step to the acceptance of Science as the road to truth. In the process of all this he created a schizoid world view in which God and Nature, spirit and matter and psyche and body all had an equal but disconnected reality. All subsequent epistemology and European philosophy in general can be seen as a reaction for or against Descartes view or various modifications of it.

Descartes position was what today would be called a form of Foundationalism, one of the main schools of Epistemic faith. It takes many forms but all believe that there exist facts that are either self evident or undeniable and from these bare foundational facts logical certainties can be deduced. The problem with it is all the foundations proposed are in fact doubtable and the few which might achieve a consensus, such as self existence or the inertia of reality, don't really take as very far, particularly if we also question logic. Hense post-modernists can argue for the bare existence of language and (maybe) language users.

An alternative position even closer to the post-modern perspective is Coherentism. This argues that all beliefs are based on other beliefs, i.e. the belief that something is hot is based on the belief that it can have a temperature, and the beliefs that it is neither cold, cool or warm. Truth and knowledge is based on the coherency and consistency of a network of belief and the place a knowledge claim has in relation to this. There is arguably no necessary relation here to an external reality, as everything is dependent on logic, language and/or systems of thought. Thus the word dog does not refer to a being in the world but rather a 'furry, quadruped that barks', with each of these terms further defined dictionary wise. The problem with this position is twofold, firstly it seems to rely on the impossibility of contradiction and a the idea of total description, which as we've seen is logically in doubt, and secondly it detached knowledge from any actual state of the world, except perhaps form some Idealist mental projection. It is also quite conservative in respect to its rejection of anything that does not fit its consistent structuring of the world, as in science for example.

Other positions are basically those described early under the Scientific Method. With the exception that it is either expanded to produce a universal account of everything knowable
in the world, rather than specific scientific or technical issues, or our domain of possible knowledge is shrunk to a scientifically knowable one. The former can of course lead to Scientism, the faith that everything can be explained scientifically, in terms of contemporary science, and that the models of the world produced by science to date are either true or approaching truth. This is prone to all the problems outlined earlier of course.

In practise most modern analytical philosophy attempts to resolve the various problems described above and posits epistemologies that are often hybrids of the standard positions we have explored. Though it is not at all clear that combining three bad ideas makes a good idea.

But what is clear is that the most basic arguments of the sceptics have not yet been addressed but are simply swept under the carpet.

Skepticism - One of the strangest combined responces to both Radical Scepticism and naive True Belief has been that form of 'critical thought' popularly known as 'Skepticism'. My which I mean the belief system behind such publications as the Skeptical Enquirer. American English spells 'sceptic' as 'skeptic' so this distinction is harder to see, but in conventional English the 'skeptic' spelling has been adopted to denote a different meaning. This type of thinking evolves out of the earlier Scientific Scepticism outlined above, but is far more naive in its uncritical acceptance of established scientific knowledge and methodology. Most of its proponents far from being true sceptics are instead 'true believers' with a strong faith in Scientism, which becomes their yardstick against which all other claims are assessed. A similar ungrounded faith in Logic is also often present, which often embraces dubious logical concepts like the 'burden of proof' (the notion of 'innocent till proven guilty' found in some legal systems misplaced as a logical principle only 'proven claims' are true or legitimate). Unfortunately such Skepticism is is often badly motivated, not just by faith in Scientism, but by more negative beliefs such as Atheism (which is as biased an ideology as Theism and Deism , with the true Sceptic always taking an Agnostic position). There is also a variety of biased political positions involved, mostly involving idealistic, authoritarian notions of the control of nature, society and the individual through Science, a dystopia shared by many Capitalists, Humanists and Communists alike. The financial framework created by governments and ruling elites which hold these political agendas also distorts the academic and intellectual environment. Some sociologists even regard Skepticism as a pathological form of the psychological conditions mentioned above. For these reasons I would discount this position as part of a genuine Radical Scepticism aimed at liberating people.

The Continental Approach

So called Continental Philosophy, or that part of it excluding the Anglophile school, has evolved in opposition to the kind of analytical position outlined above. Its proponents regarding it as a revolutionary alternative perspective, its detractors see it as symptomatic of muddled thinking if not insanity.Unfortunately the divide was often political in context.

It has several relevant forms:

German Idealism - A school accepting Descartes view, but denying the reality of his material phenomena, as merely perceptual images created in mind, or within a broader God, just as the Anglo school denied the reality of Descartes mental phenomena, as merely the products of material brains and Nature. Thus knowledge of the world was directly contactable. But the resistance of the apparently concrete world to any mind, collective human aspiration or moral development, unexpected and even irrational discoveries in it, and the successes of material technology have tended to marginalise this position, if not refute it completely. Epistemically the failure to gain any consensus via intuition is also damning for this perspective.

Kantianism - Kant's notion that the world we experience is a mental construction, based on manmade concepts, that filter a more mysterious and alien externality to us, is now almost universally accepted. His broader philosophy that the real world is entirely rational, not directly experienced, and knowable through rational analysis alone is far more contentious, and now, partly due to the critiques of Nietzsche - and the Existentialists and Phenomenologists who followed in his wake - is almost universally rejected as a rationalist fantasy. For these critics reality is something more vague and mysterious, and all that really matters is the world of experience, which was accessible to us directly, but whose relation to any deeper reality is unknowable.

Hegelianism - Hegel's complex philosophy is the only system to date to fully tackle the mystery of the reality of contradiction, the problem of model selection criterion and many of the other issues raised by sceptics. His solution was a new form of logic that would more acurately represent the structure of reality, manifest to the mind as the mutually modifying dialectical opposition of contradictory views (and their possible transcendental synthesis). This also served as a kind of evolutionary process for the development of knowledge criteria, through the competition and modification of rival criteria. A kind of pulling of the subject up by its own bootstraps. This innovative solution is still the most ingenious means of rationally dealing with scepticism yet devised, but what it actually entails is by no means clear and many diverse intepretations have emerged. Hegel's own view that consciousness (of objects) should be the true focus for those seeking knowledge, rather than bare objects themselves, and that some form of spirit or mind is behind the relationship between opposites, governing the dialectical process, was considered a retreat to Idealism, or a remnant of deep Kantian rationalism, to be acceptable. The most radical alternative being Marx's inversion of this position into a material process that did the work of Hegel's spirit. However the 'logic' of Marx's process is highly contentious, and arguably history has proved his historical predictions false. Despite this a limited Hegelianism, in one form or another, retains some research interest for many.

Structuralism and Post Structuralism - The disillusionment with Idealism, amongst the Anti-Materialists, and/or Anti-Realists, as well as the vagueries of free floating Existentialism, led to the embrace of language as the structuring frame of experience. This trend took the form of a kind of loose Coherentism based on syntax and semantics rather than strict logic, but retained many of the problems of this view. The reaction in opposition to this as well as the attempt to resusitate elements of it gave birth to a variety of post structuralist theories. Many of these strenghtened scepticism rather than weakened it however.

Post Modernism - Could be seen as the ultimate Sceptical position against any ideological or fixed viewpoint, as well as the hegemony of Reason and a notion of any Objective Reality, arising from a Post Structuralist framework. It is however a deeply paradoxical position in that it remains wed to certain theories of language as well as what is essentially a materialistic paradigm. Its more naive proponents claim this paradox is part of its rejection of logic, however its own assumptions are grounded in an unexamined pre-logical Rationalism that it cannot itself support.
At best it can only become a Conservative Scepticism, which many argue it already has. Thus it can be argued that the only step beyond this is Radical Scepticism.

Preliminary Conclusions

The only conclusion the Radical Sceptic can really derive from these considerations is that certainty of knowledge is impossible, outside a few basic considerations (such as self existence and anti-solipsism) and some pragmatic scientific theories, and the 'natural laws' they reveal, with a limited and probabilistic applicability (outside of the near certainties of Quantum Mechanics, which seem to be beyond human reason anyway). Scientific Scepticism as an alternative fails on this limited scope of Science (without degenerating into an oppressive Scientism), and in practice its reformed mode becomes little different to Radical Scepticism. The danger in this for those who seek a liberation through Scepticism is a decline either into Nihilism, where nothing is believed, or a negative Liberalism, where everything is potentially believable. Both of which have obvious conservative consequences as they make decisive, pre-emptive or even positive counter action impossible.

However there is nothing within Scepticism that precludes personal, pragmatic belief, or holding those beliefs with as much force as is desired (regardless of whether they are theoretical approximations or useful myths). This allows a far wider range of potential beliefs than most other positions allow, particularly when the pragmatism is based as much on personal experience as on collective experience. The only practical criteria would be a means of avoiding the imposition of one belief system on another - declarations that 'might is right', or that the 'majority is right', or even 'seduction (i.e. soft imposition) is right', are of course just other ideologies subject to scepticism, and so can't be used as a meta-level framework if universal liberty is our aim. Given the inescapability of personal bias, a form of disciplined, individualism seems called for, to balence the drive for social change. As well as perhaps a radical form of enlightened self interest that survives all sceptical rigour.

Thus not only is Radical Scepticism an evolving position it is also a self questioning one, rejecting any tendency to become an ideology itself. In this context it also has positive epistemic features
that seek a more solid ground for it, whether scientific or dialectical.