Quine's web of belief image is helpful for illustrating the differences here (though we need not accept the ideas behind it for it to be so). The skeptic tears down the web, or at least brackets it out, and starts trying to construct a new web. They don't just tear out more questionable beliefs on the fringes, they go right to the center and begin tearing out essential assumptions, hoping to reestablish them later.

They cannot tear out everything, but they can tear out a lot. Different thinkers decide to tear out different things. The difference between rationalist skepticism and empiricist skepticism is not that both don't tear down most of the web, including central parts, but that they leave different parts up.

Then they work themselves back. The difficulty, as I see it, is that this makes philosophy extremely chaotic in a way that the "sciences" are not. This is chaotic in the sense of "strong susceptibility to initial conditions." Depending on which central parts of the web are allowed to stand, the philosophy that comes out looks radically different, even between thinkers in the same "camp" in the same era. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I have my doubts about the skeptical methodology. Is worrying about underdetemination in extreme cases reasonable? If philosophy is the love of wisdom, is it wise? Should we build our understanding of the world and knowledge off of the fear that our sense data is also consistent with us being the last human alive, raised in an alien zoo full of human-like robots? It's certainly underdetermined by the data, as Chesterton says, the madman's explanation covers the facts as well as ours do. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I suppose another consideration is: "should demonstration proceed from premises that are better known than the conclusion?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

↪Count Timothy von Icarus Would you say postmodernism is best understood as a form of skepticism, or does it represent a distinct philosophical approach? — Tom Storm

.. it is through experience that men acquire science and art ...

Notice here, that you describe the skeptic as having two conflicting intentions. One is to tear down, and the other to construct. Since these two are conflicting, we must choose one of them as the true intention of the skeptic, and that of course is to tear down.

So this whole aspect of the characterization, "to construct a new web", to "work themselves back", is a misunderstanding of skepticism. And this misunderstanding influences the characterization of the tear-down with the qualification of "hoping to reestablish them later". This is all a misrepresentation of skepticism because it represents the skeptic as tearing down with the intent of rebuilding. This intent of rebuilding would contaminate the skeptic's tear-down, with an ulterior motive, as if the skeptic already has in mind, a goal of rebuilding, and is tearing down as the means to this end, rather than assigning to the skeptic the pure goal of tearing down.

There is very clear evidence that mistake hides within accepted knowledge. Whenever accepted knowledge is exposed as wrong, and replaced with something different, this is evidence of mistake which has lain hidden within accepted knowledge. And, since all accepted knowledge appears the same, appearing as accepted knowledge, all accepted knowledge must be subjected to skepticism in order to reveal where mistakes lie hidden. Therefore skepticism is the choice of wisdom.

Arguing that a science doesn’t begin from radical doubt, that it “works from established beliefs/knowledge, and then tries to explain what is less well understood in terms of what is more well understood” just subsumes it as a secularized version of the belief in a God of fixed purposes. Because both rely on faith in sovereign purpose, this faith is itself nihilistic, productive of skepticism. — Joshs

I suppose another consideration is: "should demonstration proceed from premises that are better known than the conclusion?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

The natural and social sciences, and much "proper philosophy," doesn't work like this. It works from established beliefs/knowledge, and then tries to explain what is less well understood in terms of what is more well understood. This doesn't mean current belief is taken to be infallible, but it might be taken as highly credible, or above suspicion until implicated in some way. Biologists and economists, for instance, don't go about their work by doubting all prior publications and theories and trying to work their way back to things that are already assumed to be well understood. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Non-Pyrrhonian sceptics, Pyrrhonists maintain, go too far in making doubt absolute and indiscriminate, in making the denial of everything inevitable. Confident of not allowing any positive assertions to be made, they draw the negative conclusion that no positive assertions can ever be made, and that even what is apparent must somehow be an illusion rather than something anomalous, something unusual and challenging. This kind of scepticism is a nihilistic negative dogmatism that claims we can know nothing at all. The point of positive dogmatic belief is to transcend the uncertainties and vicissitudes of life, of the space-time, flesh-and-blood world of appearances of which we are conscious, by appeal to something nonevident. The point of negative dogmatic belief, what is now called “scepticism,” is that there is no way to transcend life in this way. The point of Pyrrhonism, by contrast to both these, is to leave the question open..

For Pyrrhonists, like Buddhists and other nondogmatic soteriological schools, attachment is a symptom of a problem, not a solution. But ataraxia, free of any link to a view or attachment, escapes this burden; it is quite a different response to the claims of beliefs, and...it is for this reason that ataraxia was introduced by the Pyrrhonists in place of euthymia and other similar terms, such as eudaimonia. Ataraxia is not the elation of finding the hidden “truth” underlying experience, nor the security offered by a belief in such a truth, but is instead a liberation from the urge to seek such “truths” or beliefs at all. Insofar as ataraxia follows only upon such a suspension of belief, and not upon the adoption of any belief, it could not have been experienced by dogmatists like Epicureans, Stoics, Aristotelians, Platonists, Academic Sceptics, etc. — Greek Buddhism

Only if it is assumed that keeping falsity out is more important than keeping truth in, and that wisdom consists primarily in avoiding falsehood. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Second, when accepted knowledge is exposed as "wrong" it often isn't totally wrong. The differentiation between fixed stars and mobile ones still holds up. Understanding something better doesn't need to imply that the poorer understanding is simply false.

So, perhaps part of the motivation for skepticism is the idea that knowledge is a binary. Either you know something or you don't. Propositions as the main or sole bearers of truth lead in this direction. Whereas if the question is about knowing things better or worse, then, while we might understand ancient astronomy different, it still managed to get plenty right even in modern terms. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Kuzminski disputes that Pyrrhonism *is* skepticism, per se, pointing out that the latter is a form of dogmatic belief (or dogmatic unbelief, more to the point.) Kuzminksi points out the the Greek 'skeptikos' meant originally an 'enquirer' or 'seeker', which is very different from what negative or dogmatic skepticism developed into. — Wayfarer

In your case, would it not be fair to say that a skepticism about the mainstream and its platitudes drew you towards a countercultural orientation and by extension into traditions of higher consciousness? — Tom Storm

Part of it is the idea that if Hume has a long string of (sophistical) arguments, and I have only the (illative) belief that causes exist, then the long string of arguments must win on account of quantity.

We probably need to do this to grow - to transcend the dogmatic assumptions of upbringing and culture. In your case, would it not be fair to say that a skepticism about the mainstream and its platitudes drew you towards a countercultural orientation and by extension into traditions of higher consciousness

We will act, and do act, regardless of the knowledge we have. Therefore the primary criteria for wisdom is not the capacity to enable acts with truth (acts are enabled regardless of truth), but to avoid mistakes caused by falsehood.

I don't understand the relevance of this.

On the other side, there is the fear that those in the immanent frame have reduced the human good to mere consumption, the specter of consumerism and spiritual emptiness, or on the far side the fall into grave sin. — Count Timothy von Icarus

People pile up citations and technical terminology as if by sheer weight these will prove the point in question. — Count Timothy von Icarus

We're never paralyzed by doubt? — Count Timothy von Icarus

In The Moral Landscape, Sam Harris gives the example of a doctor he spoke with who was unwilling to pass any judgement on a hypothetical culture that tears the eyes out of every third born baby due to superstition. Likewise, in the policy world, bad policy often carries on due to inertia because people doubt plausible better alternatives, and do not want to take on the risk of having been in error. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, if one thinks more in terms of knowing/understanding better or worse, more or less, instead of a binary, it seems to me that fears of error will loom less large. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Afterall, we face both ignorance and error, and it does not seem possible to reduce ignorance without taking on a greater risk of error. — Count Timothy von Icarus

For instance, if one never implements an education reform because one doubts one's knowledge of what would truly be best, one will never learn from the implementation. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Partisans of either frame have their reasons for seeing the other as dangerous. Partisans of the immanent frame see any notion of transcendence as at best a dangerous distraction from real goods, at worst the specter of fanaticism (Taylor does note that communists squarely in the immanent frame have been plenty fanatical however). On the other side, there is the fear that those in the immanent frame have reduced the human good to mere consumption, the specter of consumerism and spiritual emptiness, or on the far side the fall into grave sin.

On Taylor's view, almost everyone will be some degree of closed or open towards either frame, but radical closure on either side suggests a sort of dogmatism, particularly if one has never "stood in the middle" or traversed from one side to the other. — Count Timothy von Icarus