Empires of Belief: Why We Need More Skepticism and Doubt in the Twenty-First Century
Stuart Sim
Language: English
Pages: 217
ISBN: 2:00009605
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Is absolute belief making a comeback? Recently the public has accepted unquestioningly certain political, economic, and scientific theories, and for sceptical people, this is a deeply worrying trend. Stuart Sim outlines the history of scepticism in both Western and Islamic traditions from the Enlightenment to today. He argues that we need less belief and more doubt-an engaged scepticism that replaces dogmatism. Addressing contemporary debates surrounding terrorism and fundamentalism, Sims suggests that scepticism can play a greater role in public and political life.
Market Orientalism: Cultural Economy and the Arab Gulf States
Economy and the Future: A Crisis of Faith
Selected Letters (Oxford World's Classics)
René Girard and Secular Modernity: Christ, Culture, and Crisis
Five Types of Ethical Theory (International Library of Philosophy)
posing the problem is to suggest that rather than a body in the world you might just be a ‘brain in a vat’, connected up to a very powerful computer by some evil scientist such that you are given the impression of bodily existence. Hilary Putnam, however, argues 35 Empires of Belief that a brain in a vat could not have such a thought itself, and that ‘the supposition that we are actually brains in a vat . . . is, in a certain way, self-refuting’.64 Brains in vats simply could not have the same
connections: ‘No desire: the desert. . . . [Y]ou are delivered from all depth there – a brilliant, mobile, superficial neutrality, a challenge to meaning and profundity, a challenge to nature and culture, an outer hyperspace, with no origin, no reference-points.’26 There is no grand vision to be articulated by the author; events happen randomly and we should not bother to question why. Such an outlook is the very antithesis of structuralism. 63 Empires of Belief Elsewhere, Baudrillard
which makes ‘spectacular’ predictions ‘without ever being wrong’16 (it is a small step from there to the notion of biblical ‘codes’, belief in 81 Empires of Belief which has generated a whole new literary sub-genre in its own right in recent years17). One might think that the Old Earth/Young Earth division might be a source of embarrassment to creationist enthusiasts, and Muncaster does refer to the ‘unfortunate disagreement’ that exists in the faith-based science camp over chronology.18 But
force to be reckoned with in world politics – rarely for good. Unquestioning belief underpins nationalism as well; unquestioning belief in the superiority of one’s country and its cultural heritage, generally felt by believers to be under constant threat from outsiders. Nationalism has a tendency to be reactionary in this regard and does not have much truck with doubt: fervent nationalists are quite certain of their country’s virtues and the necessity of defending these from any adulteration. In
Pigliucci, Massimo, Denying Evolution: Creationism, Scientism, and the Nature of Science, Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, 2002. Pope, Alexander, The Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. John Butt, London: Methuen, 1968. Popkin, Richard H., The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes, New York: Humanities Press, 1964. — The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1979. — and Schmitt, Charles B., eds, Scepticism from
