Doubt can take up different forms while creeping up on you. It can do a lot of things for you or against you. In fact doubt is one of the main tools in the line of the work I am doing.
Technically speaking doubt is what you get when you assess your opinions, beliefs and stances of and towards the world and the situations of life. Opinions, beliefs ans stances are falsifiable, meaning that they can turn out to be wrong or wrong ones turn out to be accurate. In this rough sketch (JM, please don’t send me a copy of Brandom’s last article…) that hundreds of philosophers have tried to put so much better than I could do it, all turns around one little word: ‘…can…’ (replace that with a ‘could’ if you happen to be an external realist).
The whole modality of doubt runs from this verb.
In our everyday lives we are not thrown off balance by the fact alone that things turn out to be wrongly assessed or inaccurately described, not by the fact alone that we err, are wrong about things, people, situations…
What starts the perpetuum mobile of that tiny little voice or the little devil sitting on your shoulder is the uncertainty that flows from this. In the monumental set of our everyday stage it may only take so much as a changed iota to cause us to plummet. Because: if I was wrong about this, I could be wrong about that as well…. etc. And suddenly are our beliefs, opinions and stances are bracketed, put on hold, set under close scrutiny.
That’s what doubt really is about.
The futility of the reality we make up for ourselves. The fact that certainty is a mathematical illusion and that the world is literaly spiralling towards chaos. Doubt can be the one question you’re asking in class to be sure about an ascertained theory, it can be the feeling that someone just lied to you or it could be the switch that makes the light go out forever.
Some people turn towards faith or ideologic systems to rebuild some foundations that the doubts cannot reach or are not allowed to reach. Others make doubt their new ideology. Others again commit suicide since none of this seems to matter anyway.
Doubt can take up different forms and it can do a lot of things for you or against you.
I’m aware of the fact that this sounds all a bit weird and that I’m still under the influence of rather heavy codeine pain meds, but don’t worry. I am in no way giving in to the doubt. If anything I’d say the last year and the few months of this one have been filled with a huge load of doubts… and I am still here.
Doubt has a life of it’s own, not unlike bacteria it has a very cunning way of adapting itself to changed situations to survive. And as our beliefs and opinions of the world change, doubt mirrors this change. Not only that. Doubt is multi-layered. It comes in long or short term versions, minor insecurities or a major ‘I don’t know what my future holds’ crisis.
Whatever form it takes, it’s always a chance for reassessment, recalculation, reassurance and empowerment.
Doubt can take up different forms and it can do a lot of things for you or against you.
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