DOUBT

Doubt is one of the states of mind that a knower can entertain toward some proposition. If the knower is unaware of the proposition altogether, he is in a state of ig norance. If he either affirms or denies the proposition with no hesitancy, he possesses certitude. If he affirms or denies the proposition but with fear that he may be incorrect, he has an opinion. If, on slight grounds, he is inclined either to affirm or deny, he has suspicion. Finally, he can decline either to affirm the proposition or deny it, in which case he is in a state of doubt (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae 2a2ae, 2.1; De ver. 14.1). Thus doubt, in general, is a suspension of judgment concerning the truth or falsity of a proposition.

Kinds of Doubt. When serious evidence is lacking both for and against the proposition, the doubt is called negative. When there is equally serious evidence for and against, the doubt is called positive.

Distinction is made also between speculative doubt and practical doubt. As the terms themselves suggest, the former pertains chiefly to abstract, objective truth or falsity, while the latter concerns a concrete act of conduct. The distinction is relevant principally in ethics and moral theology. In these sciences speculative doubt bears on the objective morality of an action considered in itself. Practical doubt pertains to the lawfulness of someone's performing an action here and now. In some instances it is possible to solve a practical doubt without solving a speculative doubt on the same matter.

Also of moral relevance is the distinction between doubt of law and doubt of fact, which regard respectively the existence or meaning of a law and its applicability. The following discussion is concerned primarily with speculative doubt understood simply as the intellectual state of suspended judgment with no necessary association with moral science (see doubt, moral).

Role of Doubt. Most often doubt is taken unfavorably as signifying undesired and insoluble perplexity, or the deliberate despair of acquiring certitude, characteristic of skepticism. Yet doubt has also positive roles in preventing error and in initiating philosophical inquiry. When cogent evidence or authority in support of a proposition is lacking, one ought to suspend judgment lest, under influences extrinsic to objective truth, the simple lack of truth (ignorance) become its positive corruption (error). Thus can doubt prevent error.

Similarly, doubt can promote the discovery of truth. In this role doubt is closely associated with wonder in the genesis of knowledge. Wonder is a kind of emotional shock, a species of fear that occurs when one confronts an effect, the cause of which he does not know (ST 1a2ae, 32.8; 41.4). Out of the initial state of wonder there arises a sort of doubt that is not a symptom of unbelief but a stimulus to investigation (ST 3a, 27.4 ad2; 30.4 ad 2). When this incipient doubt is elaborated into technically formulated difficulties against some position, the mind is in a state that Aristotle calls aporia; metonymically, such difficulties are themselves called aporias (dubitabilia by thomas aquinas).

Both Aristotle and Aquinas make it incumbent on the philosopher to consider the aporias. If one has not looked carefully at a knot, they ask, how can he expect to untie it? Therefore, he who wishes to discover truth"ought to 'doubt well,' that is, to touch well on things that are dubitable," i.e., the aporias (In 3 meta. 1.339). Aporia, however, is not an end in itself but a means of defending and clarifying truth: "the elimination of doubt is the goal of the truth seeker" (ibid. 340). Moreover, aporia is sometimes hypothetical, a means of talking to one's adversaries, rather than a doubt (ibid. 342).

Methodical Doubt. The foregoing indicates that the older philosophers understood the methodical use of doubt. However, the term methodical doubt is usually associated with descartes in his celebrated proposal to doubt all things as a prerequisite for establishing certitude (Discourse on Method, 4; Meditations, 1, 2). Scholastic philosophers maintain that Descartes's method logically leads to universal skepticism, even though Descartes himself was not a skeptic.

Among scholastics there is disagreement regarding the place doubt should have as a philosophical method, particularly in the critique of knowledge. Some exclude the possibility of doubting the first fact (one's own exis tence), the first condition (the mind's ability to achieve truth), and the first principle (the principle of contradic tion). Others maintain that such an attitude is open to the charge of excessive dogmatism and that it also arbitrarily singles out only three among many spontaneous and evidential certitudes. Hence, this group holds that all certitudes are subject to methodical doubt, but of a different kind than Descartes's.

To understand this view rightly, it is necessary to distinguish first between simple doubt and methodical doubt. Simple doubt is the mind's involuntary perplexity when confronted with a problem it is unable to solve. Methodical doubt, on the other hand, is an assumed attitude whereby one deliberately chooses to doubt as a means of promoting inquiry and establishing certitude. Such methodical doubt may be either real or fictitious. It is real when one actually suspends his judgment on a proposition. Apparently it was this sort of methodical doubt that Descartes attempted to use universally; yet to do so plunges one into a skepticism from which it is impossible to emerge. The doubt is fictitious when one attempts only to assume that the contradictory of a certitude is true and discovers that such an assumption is impossible to entertain. Only this latter sort of doubt can be applied to the first fact, condition, and principle, and to other immediately evident truths. Hence, universal real doubt is prohibited not because of any dogmatic presumptions, but because the very attempt to doubt some truths is absurd and self-defeating.

Doubt and Skepticism. skepticism differs from methodical doubt in accepting doubt as the final outcome of inquiry rather than as its beginning. Skepticism abandons the quest for truth, despairs of certitude, and adopts an attitude of permanent doubt. The skepticism that is of interest to philosophy is not the practical skepticism of indecisive persons, nor the shallow, affected skepticism of those who want only to avoid intellectual effort, but the speculative or doctrinal skepticism of some serious thinkers who say that definitive and certain answers cannot be given to the great problems of life and knowledge.

Speculative skepticism is absolute if it is an unqualified mistrust of human knowledge that questions not only certitude but even probability. In an extreme form it professes to doubt everything—even the most immediate facts of existence and consciousness. Skepticism is relative if it rejects the possibility of achieving reflex, scientific certitude, but recognizes probability and the necessity of accepting many things as certain in everyday life.

Skepticism may be universal or partial. Universal skepticism doubts all human knowledge, whatever its source. Partial skepticism doubts only some kinds of knowledge. Thus, platonism is skeptical of sense knowledge; positivism is skeptical of supra-sensible truths; fideism is skeptical of purely natural knowledge; rationalism is skeptical of divinely revealed truth, and so forth.

See Also: dialectics; knowledge, theories of; epistemology.

Bibliography: p. coffey, Epistemology, 2 v. (New York 1917; reprint 1958) 1:135–38. l. m. rÉgis, Epistemology, tr. i. c. byrne (New York 1959). p. j. glenn, Criteriology (St. Louis 1933). r. p. phillips, Modern Thomistic Philosophy, 2 v. (Westminster, Md. 1948) 2:8–38. j. maritain, Distinguish to Unite, or the Degrees of Knowledge, tr. g. b. phelan from 4th French ed. (New York 1959).

[j. b. nugent]