Scepticism

In Our Time: Philosophy

BBC

History

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 5 July 2012

⏱️ 42 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Scepticism, the idea that it may be impossible to know anything with complete certainty. Scepticism was first outlined by ancient Greek philosophers: Socrates is reported to have said that the only thing he knew for certain was that he knew nothing. Later, Scepticism was taught at the Academy founded by Plato, and learnt by students who included the Roman statesman Cicero. The central ideas of Scepticism were taken up by later philosophers and came to the fore during the Renaissance, when thinkers including Rene Descartes and Michel de Montaigne took up its challenge. A central plank of the philosophical system of David Hume, Scepticism had a powerful influence on the religious and scientific debates of the Enlightenment. With: Peter Millican Professor of Philosophy at Hertford College, Oxford Melissa Lane Professor of Politics at Princeton University Jill Kraye Professor of the History of Renaissance Philosophy and Librarian at the Warburg Institute, University of London. Producer: Thomas Morris.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.uk.
0:10.0	I hope you enjoy the program.
0:12.0	Hello, in one of his earliest works, the Ponsef philosophic of 1746, the French philosopher
0:18.4	Dennis Diderot wrote, A Thing Not Proved Just Because one, a thing is not proved just because no one has ever questioned it.
0:27.0	Something that has never been examined dispassionately has never been properly examined.
0:31.0	Hence, skepticism is the first step towards truth.
0:35.0	Didere was writing about a philosophical tradition which emerged in ancient Greece and which has been important ever since.
0:41.0	Skepticism is the idea that it may be impossible to know anything
0:44.5	with complete certainty. One early Greek skeptic claimed that nothing can be
0:48.7	known, not even this. Skepticism was rediscovered during the Middle Ages and it's been of key importance to scientific, religious and political thoughts since the Renaissance.
0:57.0	With me to discuss the philosophy of skepticism are Melissa Lane, Professor of Politics at Princeton University,
1:04.0	Jill Craig, Professor of the History of Renaissance Philosophy and Librarian at the Warburg Institute
1:09.5	University of London, and Peter Milliken, Gilbert R Fellow and Professor of Philosophy at Hartford College, Oxford.
1:16.0	Peter Milliken, can you distinguish between everyday use of skepticism and skepticism as it is as it is described in philosophy.
1:24.0	Yes I think in everyday use a skeptic is often thought to be someone who denies some
1:30.6	orthodox view so a skeptic in religion or a global warming skeptic or a
1:35.8	skeptic about evolution, may be someone who simply disagrees with the majority.
1:41.0	But in philosophy, skepticism tends to be more about doubt
1:46.7	than about negative assertions, so it's not so much denying some orthodox view as questioning it. And obviously there's quite a spectrum of possibilities there.
1:58.0	Within philosophy skepticism can be specific so you can get skepticism say about the external world
2:05.4	do we really know that there's a there's a world beyond our appearances
2:10.3	Skepticism about induction. Do we have any reason for believing? skepticism about
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