Skepticism is the ideology that knowledge can never be certain. It originated in the 5th century BCE from a group of eleatic philosophers. Eventually it was refined by Socrates who came up with the phrase "All that he knows, is that he knows nothing". However, Pyrrho is considered the father of skepticism as he founded Pyrrhonism which was the ancient Greek form of skepticism. In this form he proposed a neutral stance on ideas, religions and ideologies by accepting things as they appear. This view changed during the age of enlightenment as many philosophers began to argue with one another on how humanity and the world works. Many skeptics in the 17th century began to target other institutions of philosophy.
For example, Cartesianism which was founded by Rene Descartes was targeted due to it being intertwined with Catholic beliefs. This again caused skepticism to change from a neutral position to a more offensive type as skeptics began to go out of their way to disprove the existence of a higher power. Today, skepticism has taken many forms one of which being existentialism which is school of philosophy that emphasizes the concrete and problematic character of human existence. Another modern form is logical positivism, this form is about the possibility of gaining knowledge of anything other than mere tautologies. This basically means gaining knowledge from other things rather than people who say the same thing in a different way. Overall, skepticism has taken many forms and there are many different sub sets just like most other schools of philosophy. However, many are similar as most agree that knowledge that is obtained should not be immediately trusted until there has been further investigation on the particular subject.
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Lennon House section #6
It's important to understand that Descartes was not truly a skeptic, he pretended to be one. But his goal in philosophy was to defeat skepticism and establish the possibility of certainty.
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