Reply #105: If pressed to identify yourself as adhering to a particular philosophy, what would it be?

[derby378]

Me, I'm a Skeptic. You have the modern skeptical movement with people such as James Randi, Paul Kurtz, Penn and Teller, and the like who spend a lot of time researching claims of the paranormal and supernatural (and thus debunking a lot of scam artists in the process), and I'm part of that. But then there's the philosophy of Skepticism itself, which comes out of Greece as a logical progression from the Atomism of Leucippus and Democritus and the Sophism of Protagoras (with, perhaps, some input from the Lokayatas and Ajnanavadas of the ancient Indian states). Skepticism, as a philosophy, more or less focuses on how to achieve a sense of tranquility (ataraxia) in the absence of an ultimate criterion of truth.

As such, I'm not saying that there is no such thing as absolute truth, but trying to prove the existence of absolute truth is another thing entirely. Like Heisenberg once said, "What we observe is not Nature itself, but Nature exposed to our line of questioning." Just ask anyone who studies quantum physics and/or Einstein's theory of relativity, let alone theoretical GUTs such as superstring theory or loop quantum gravity.