From all that I’ve read, and all that is said, one important thing has remained. The importance of doubt. This will be all one needs to find the truth in any given situation. Constantly question everything and the truth will smack you right upside the head. WHACK! 
I just wanted to share my thoughts on that because I think it is the foremost important thing to do. Be a lamp onto yourself as Buddha I think put it.
Funny you should start this thread, I was thinking about doing it myself. I totally agree with you, but I will elaborate further and suggest a model of our thought process that would explain exactly why questioning is so important, and may actually be the key to intelligence, creativity and our imagination. But I am still working on this, and I hope to get it on here soon.
Language, indeed all forms of communication, contains an element of entropy which maintains the continual deconstruction of language. Questions simply demonstrate this clearly: that it is always possible to ask questions perhaps tell us more about the language we use to describe experience than the experiences themselves.
We can always come up with the ‘right’ answers. The tough part is figuring out the right questions…
JT
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I think doubt is how you learn.
A belief is the absense of doubt.
Once you believe something you are very slow to learn anything that contradicts that belief, and only through doubt can this new information be obtained.
Beliefs are mental roadblocks.
Question everything.
dsalvato
I agree as to the importance of doubt in uncovering the truth but that is only part of the process. The other and I believe larger part is being open to and having the ability for verifification
Sure I agree. Doubt is only part of it but an important part I believe, one thing I cannot stress enough.
"[i]We can always come up with the ‘right’ answers. The tough part is figuring out the right questions…
JT
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That’s absolutely true. The right questions will in turn bring the right answers whatever they may be.
I really like this thread.
But you need some reason to doubt, Otherwise, it is only what the American philosopher, C.S. Peirce, called “sham doubt” or “paper doubt”. Doubting is not simply uttering the words, “I doubt”. If I claim to doubt that some proposition that people believe, is true, then I have to be prepared to say why I doubt it.
Moreover, if someone claims (for instance) to doubt that there is a table in front of him, or that he is holding a vase in his hand, he might be suspected of being insincere if he then puts the vase he doubts exists on the table he also doubts exists. Doubting is not something divorced from behavior.
Ya if you doubt, it best be out of sincere curiosity either of the subject, or how the speaker came to believe what he/she believes. You don’t just aimlessly doubt or your not going to have any clue as to what you should doubt or what questions you should ask to fulfill your curiosity.
well, tell that to descartes…
-Imp
I would, if I could. That is a major objection to “Cartesian Doubt”. If a someone put a vase on a table, and then told me that he doubted the existence of both the vase and the table, I would doubt either that he knew what it meant to doubt, or that he was being sincere. (Of course, in the proper circumstances, I might conclude he was joking, too) But what you say has connections with what you do. If I greet someone at the door, and while I say, “Welcome.” I kick him down the stairs, he might well wonder whether I meant what I said. (Or maybe that I had gone crazy).
As I logged onto this forum I began a search (this being my first time on this site)…I began a search for Truth. I find it interesting that so many of us would waste time searching for something that simply does not exist. Perhaps on some level, each of us know that there is truth and the answer to the ever popular question of “what is truth” evades us only because it is naturally as individual as our fingerprints. I will not find truth where you find truth regardless of how similar we are or how friendly we are. My truths are my own, as are yours. We are better served by learning to accept and educate ourselves to and by other’s truths.
Strange. If you go to the World Almanac and look up Ecuador, you will find that the capital of Ecuador is Quito. Now, that is, I think true. So here is a case in which I seached for truth, and there it was. And you could find out what the capital of Ecuador is, just as well as I can, and in the same way. So why do you say that you will not find truth where I do? We can both find the truth that Quito is the capital of Ecuador in exactly the same place. The World Almanac Book of Facts/
Ya plum crazy, I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about. You have to ask yourself if what you said is true for all cases. I don’t think it is.
Oh and Kenny. That person can doubt the table and the vase for as long as they want. They will eventually realize to accept the table and the vase and if they are truely interested in understanding it, they can read up on the history of vases and tables.
True for what “all cases”? You mean that we can’t both look up what the capital is, and find out that it is true that it is Quito? Why not?
I suppose you mean “doubt that here is a table and vase”. Well, as Peirce said, “some people think that doubting is as easy as lying”. But if a person thinks he is doubting there is a table and a vase while he places the vase on the table, what makes him think he is not mistaken? “Doubt” is a word like any other in the language. You can use it correctly, and you can use it wrongly. As a pointed out, a person who says, "Welcome!"and throws you down the stairs is using that word in a way no English speaker would understand. And a person who says he doubt there is a table and a vase and firmly places the vase on the table, is using the word “doubt” in a way I don’t understand.
I think maybe I misunderstood you on the truth thing. I don’t exactly know what the argument is over anymore.
Ok about the doubting of the table and the vase. To doubt it would be to question it. Now whatever you’re questioning about it is up to the person. But by questioning it’s existence you quickly get into perception and from there, you will learn to understand and closure will come to the doubting of the table. You’ll have to accept it, and you’ll learn exactly why you should.
2 Questioning is, I suppose, a kind of doubt. But if, as I pointed out, a person questioned whether there is a table and a vase, and at the same time, placed the vase on the table, I would not understand his questioning. How could he question (doubt) it when he was acting that way. Was he joking? Did he undertand what “doubting” or “questioning” means?
Kennethamy,
Imagine the Matrix. Remember Neo. He questioned the fundamentals. He still acted that way. My only point is that I believe questioning is important, but as you say, theres got to be a line drawn somewhere. Otherwise we could go on questioning everything. The point is that the line is REALY hard to draw. Not as easy as you say… as ive learned arguing with Impenitent. I dont even know how to draw the line… I would love to figure it out, but maybe I never will. I too draw the line around the senses. Around our perceptions. How can I rationalize this though? Just because I act that way?.. a skeptic could shatter that… you could just be a brain in a vat, and you are not really acting at all. Bassicly, I dont have any of the answers. Just pointing out that the answers dont come as easy as you would have it. But the constant here is indeed questioning. Question question question, doubt doubt doubt. Personally, I think its far worse to not question at all than to question too much. What did super skeptics ever do to us? But look at what absolutist extremists are doing to the world right now… Always question.
Nemo didn’t question the fundamentals. He questioned the Hollywood version of the fundamentals. Hollywood would not know a fundamental issue if it tripped over it.
My point was not that we “have to draw the line”. Where did I even say that? My point is that just saying that you doubt is not the same as actually doubting, and that doubting has real world correspondences. It is not merely a verbal gesture.
And my point is that putting a bottle on a table does in no way put in jeopordy ones genuine doubt of the existence of the table or bottle… And Matrix 1 was a great movie! It projected a skeptics scenario unto mainstream film. Though I doubt it reached people in the way it did me or anyone else interested in the difficult questions, its still great that it was put out there. And great that it was so excpetionally done. Dont make fun of the Matrix…