# On Methodological Skepticism (also: Richard Tarnas doesn't get it) **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 5, 2014, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-methodological-skepticism-also-richard-tarnas-doesnt-get-it/677930 "2014-01-05T04:14:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2014, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-methodological-skepticism-also-richard-tarnas-doesnt-get-it/677930/1 "2014-01-05T04:14:22Z")
A friend of mine recently wrote this to me: > [@](#): > > hi X, sorry we didn’t get to chat more today. I think you might be interested to watch the movie Mindwalk…it’s a bit dated at this point, but a classic conversation between a scientist, a philosopher and a poet. > > ``` > Also, here's an interesting quote from Richard Tarnas' Cosmos and Psyche: "Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, Santayana declared, and the metaphor is apt. The mind that seeks the deepest intellectual fulfillment does not give itself up to every passing idea. Yet what is sometimes forgotten is the larger purpose of such a virtue. For in the end, chastity is something one preserves not for it's own sake, which would be barren, but rather so that one may be fully ready for the moment of surrender to the beloved. the suitor whose aim is true. Whether in knowledge or in love, the capacity to recognize and embrace that moment when it finally arrives, perhaps in quite unexpected circumstances, is essential to the virtue......without this capacity....the long discipline would be fruitless. The carefully cultivated skeptical posture would become finally an empty prison.....a permanently confining end in itself rather than a rigorous means to a sublime end.....it is just this tension and interplay - between critical rigor and the potential discovery of larger truths-that has always informed and advanced the drama of our intellectual history." happy exploring..... -D > > ``` I felt my response to this was worth posting in general, as it says a lot about how I examine philosophy and skepticism. ``` I think Richard Tarnas misses the point somewhat. The point of methodological skepticism is indeed to hold back for ideas which are true, but it's not a chastity belt so much as it is an STD test. the skeptical mind is not a pure virgin untouched by such wild things as "ideas" but rather the discerning freewheeler who will sleep around (more aptly: will keep a harem) but won't just lay any loser. You don't just find one idea and stick with it, you use your skepticism to evaluate ideas, find out which ones work, and stick with them. Why? Because we have no other way to evaluate the universe that works. Beyond this sort of skepticism, there is no methodology available to establish the truth of, well, anything. I welcome anyone to propose one which holds up to the slightest bit of scrutiny; after all, methodological skepticism essentially built our modern society, from the laws of physics and thermodynamics we use to construct and warm our homes to the laws of electricity that we use daily to communicate with each other to the science of medicine that we use to stay healthy. I honestly don't see what the endgame for Tarnas' statement is. We don't preserve chastity for its own sake, but we very much preserve the validity of our beliefs for their own sake, as well as for ours. It seems like what he's saying is that eventually we should find a delusion which we find comforting or attractive and settle down with it, abandoning our sole functional mechanism for examining the value of claims. Or what else is "the beloved" to whom we should "surrender" if not a belief or entire system of beliefs which cannot demonstrate itself to be true or valid? Tarnas seems to understand why skepticism is important (it filters out ideas which cannot be demonstrated to be true) but then expects us to throw that away for an idea which somehow fails that filter. And I'm sorry, but I can't understand why anyone would consider that a good idea. I know you and others may think that this philosophy is limiting, but I feel that where you see the supernatural, all there is is delusion. And given that without the skeptical methodology, there is simply no way to establish the truth of a claim to anyone beyond yourself (and I would argue to anyone including yourself!), we end up at an impasse, and I'm left wondering the same thing I wonder whenever Christians admit that they cannot even in theory provide evidence for the existence of their god - "Well, if you know you can't demonstrate it to me or to yourself, why do you believe in it?" ``` Just felt like sharing. TL;DR: if I run every file through an antivirus filter, why the fuck should I skip one file just because it seems to be too good to be true? :smack: