Abstract:  Much of Bertrand Russell's fame (or infamy) can be traced directly to his "skepticism." And yet the evidence suggests that Russell is more appropriately viewed as being a "probabilist" instead of a "skeptic." This paper begins with a statement of skepticism's proper place and limits, as well as the nature of probabilism. Discussion follows of the confusion regarding Russell's related views on the matter and of his own applications of probabilism. I conclude then with a focus on the menace Russell thought a thoroughgoing skepticism poses to our society.
 

     If…amidst the many opinions about the gods and the generation of the universe, we are not able to give notions which are altogether  and in every respect exact and consistent with one another, do not be surprised. Enough if we adduce probabilities as likely as any others…
Plato’s Timaeus 29C-D

   It is…wrong to remove the foundations of a science unless you can replace them with others more convincing.
Aristotle’s De Caelo III.1.299a5-6

Much of Bertrand Russell’s fame (or infamy) can be traced directly to his “skepticism.” And yet the evidence suggests that Russell is more appropriately viewed as being a “probabilist” instead of a skeptic. This paper begins with statements about  skepticism’s proper place and limits as well as the nature of probabilism. Discussion follows about confusion regarding Russell’s related views and his own applications of probabilism. The paper concludes with the menace Russell believed a thoroughgoing skepticism poses to our society.

I. The Proper Place and Limits of Skepticism
     It may seem obvious to the average person that if we draw conclusions only when we have absolute certainty, life not only becomes unproductive but impossible. And yet it may  seem evident as well that if a conclusion is considered to be absolutely correct for the simple reason that we have drawn it, life is doomed not just to downright dogma but danger generally. Therefore, the majority of people could well be in agreement that the most sober approach here is one wherein we carefully draw conclusions based on what the evidence suggests is most probably the case.
      And yet the propriety of drawing conclusions based on probability has eluded a good many of history’s most illustrious philosophers. That is to say, throughout the centuries philosophy has found itself  between a Scylla of skepticism and a Charybdis of dogmatism, all the while failing to steer a middle course.
     The defects of dogmatism throughout history are well known and well documented. It is not our purpose to recount them  here. The defects of skepticism, in contrast, have gone largely unheeded, and it seems well to concentrate on how skepticism, far from being the be-all and end-all in philosophy, is merely an opposite of dogmatism with its own corresponding excesses. Skepticism is all well and good as long as it is merely a preamble to or cautionary note in our quest for truth, but it is unsatisfactory when it serves as the crescendo or climax to that quest. Instead, our attempts to understand the world should culminate in specific claims about reality’s nature, but claims that are moderated by the limits of available evidence. In other words, these two tendencies of thought?dogmatism and skepticism?pose a thesis and antithesis crying to be resolved into a higher synthesis. One such synthesis is called “probabilism.”

II. The Nature of Probabilism
    But before proceeding further, a clarification is in order relative to my use of the term “probabilism.” For when using the term probabilism I am in no way  referring to causation, Keynes’ views, or frequency theories. Nor do I have in mind any moral theories such as those propounded by the Spanish Dominican John of St. Thomas. Rather by probabilism I mean “The doctrine particularly associated with scepticism, to the effect that no definite knowledge can be attained: opinions and actions should therefore be guided by probability.”
     The merits of probabilism as understood here then are that, on one hand, when skeptical considerations serve as a preliminary warning in our search for knowledge, we are able to reap all the assets skepticism has to offer without necessarily incurring its liabilities. On the other hand, we enjoy the best of what dogmatism has to offer while being spared its many perils as long as we do come to conclusions carefully enough that the intensity  of our convictions is subordinated to the evidence we are able to cite.
     The idea of probabilism is not new?just comparatively rare. While germs of it can be found as early as Greece’s golden age, the Athenian Academy’s Carneades (214/12-129/8 BC.) is generally reckoned the primordial probabilist. During the 3rd and 2nd  centuries BC, the Academy’s leaders were intent on showing the inadequacy of contemporary Epicurean and Stoic philosophies. But Carneades, rather than aspire to a complete suspension of judgement such as that sought by those who are absolutely skeptical, attempted to establish “reasonable” or “probable” standards. This spirit of Hellenic probabilism was  submerged, first by the “practicality” of imperial Rome and then by the medieval Catholic culture. It was, however, the spirit of probabilism that surfaced in the Renaissance and prepared the way for modern scientific method.
     With the relative scarcity in philosophy of probabilism’s advocates over the ages, the result has been a welter of philosophic systems that are products of an endless oscillation between dogma and doubt. Our own times are no exception.  Contemporary philosophy either draws affirmative conclusions with an unbecoming certitude or altogether banishes those  conclusions from its realm. It banishes them on the grounds of their being either inappropriate as such or as having a more proper place in the special sciences. In our own day and age, however, we do have a philosopher who, while typically designated as a “skeptic,” actually seems to be more of a “probabilist.” That philosopher is Bertrand Russell.
III. Confusion Regarding Russell’s Views
     The matter is muddled in the case of Russell, though, because of the different ways in which  he employs the term  “skepticism.” If the various uses of the term “skepticism” in Russell’s writings go unnoticed, we run the risk of dismissing as simply contradictory such seemingly disparate positions as Russell’s advocacy of skepticism in Skeptical Essays and his criticism of the same in Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits.
    To be sure, Bertrand Russell can be, and has been called, a “skeptic.” Russell has called himself a “skeptic.” But the term “skeptic” is used equivocally in his writings, having one meaning for him in a “popular” context and another meaning for him literally.
     The popular context in which Russell uses the term “skeptic” is exemplified in his essay On the Value of Scepticism in which he proposes as a “wildly paradoxical and subversive”  tenet that “it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.”  And it is largely this style of expression that has made Russell a “skeptic” in the popular mind, especially vis-à-vis political and theological orthodoxy.
     But in more literal, or technical, contexts such as The Problems of Philosophy and Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits, Russell does not champion a skepticism that is absolute. He concedes that “absolute skepticism” is “logically impeccable.” He hails Cartesian  “methodical doubt” as philosophy’s very “essence.” But he maintains that “a Cartesian scrutiny,…if it is to be fruitful, must have some non-skeptical guiding principle.” Indeed, “absolute skepticism” is criticized by Russell as being both “psychologically impossible” and characterized by an element of “frivolous insincerity.”
     Even when Russell is evidently using the term “skepticism” in a popular context he alludes to his British passion for  compromise which inclines him to acknowledge?at least in practice?common sense’s standard beliefs along with the settled findings of science. He accepts them “not as certainly true, but as sufficiently probable to afford a basis for rational action.”
     As Russell would have us understand the matter:
  …if philosophy is to serve a positive purpose, it must not teach mere skepticism, for, while the dogmatist is harmful, the skeptic is useless. Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or of ignorance.

     This is the spirit of probabilism.
IV. Russell’s Applications of Probabilism
     In his Preface to Why I Am Not a Christian, Russell speaks of how “A habit of basing convictions upon evidence, and of giving to them only that degree of certainty which the evidence warrants, would, if it became general, cure most of the ills from which the world is suffering.” Now in these words, the recommended restraint on convictions may certainly be music to the ears of the skeptical community. Yet  it is of note, as well, that such words expressly encourage formulating convictions of some sort rather than simply wallowing in uncertainty.
        True, Russell was in the habit of labeling himself an “agnostic,”  but he hastened to deem the existence of God   “improbable” to the point of “not worth considering in practice.” As such his view was “not far removed from atheism.”  So, by deciding “it is not worth considering in practice,” Russell can be understood as parting ways with those who are simply skeptics and, instead, to have joined ranks with the probabilists.
    Russell thought it to be common in philosophy for several competing hypotheses to account for the facts. He understood such rivalry to be resolvable using “degrees of self-evidence.” Knowledge, after all, is a “matter of degree.” There is the substantial “self-evidence” we associate with the most  notable sense-data or elementary logical and mathematical tenets. There are also the significantly  lower degrees of “self-evidence” that can characterize propositions seeming only slightly more probable than their alternatives.  In this sense, philosophy should be “scientific,” that is, it should consist of technique and rules designed to make degrees of belief coincide as nearly as possible with degrees of credibility.”
     Essentially, for Bertrand Russell there is a close alliance between philosophical knowledge and that which is scientific. What makes philosophy different from science is its critical examination of  the principles used in science and day-to-day life. And philosophy rarely finds grounds for eschewing the  principles science employs.  Overall, there is much room in Russell’s thinking for beliefs that survive even the utmost  scrutiny and that  would be  unphilosophical to reject.
     In sum, what is generally considered to be knowledge amounts to probable opinion. So it seems more appropriate to understand Russell as being a probabilist rather than a mere skeptic.  If Russell is to be  called a skeptic, the designation seems in order only with the proviso that probabilistic correctives, or supplements, are to be found in his thinking.
     Incidentally, it is to Russell’s credit that, in spite of the uncertainty he associated with human awareness, he was never baited into believing that the objective world is characterized by anything like the indeterminacy all too often plaguing our own outlooks. Rather, notwithstanding the advent of quantum physics, Russell, like Einstein, remained a determinist.
     Similarly, what puts both the practice and precepts of Russell in welcome contrast to that of so many voguish skeptics is that however much subjectivity Russell associated with the ethical proposition as such, he never recoiled from moral contentions of the most earnest and heartfelt sort. Rather he would marvel: “I am quite at a loss to understand why any one should be surprised at my expressing vehement ethical judgements. By my own theory, I am, in doing so, expressing vehement desires as to the desires of mankind; I feel such desires, so why not express them?”
V. The Plight of Skepticism Meanwhile
     In conclusion, it seems appropriate to quote at some length     from one of Russell’s Hearst newspaper columns dated July 20, 1932. It is entitled ‘On Modern Uncertainty’, and is even more applicable now than it was then. Russell declares:
  In our age,…[t]he scepticism of the intelligent is the cause of their impotence, and is itself the effect of their laziness: if there is nothing worth doing, that gives an excuse for sitting still. But when disaster is impending, no excuse for sitting still can be valid. The intelligent will have to shed their scepticism, or share responsibility for the evils which all deplore. And they will have to abandon academic grumblings and peevish pedantries, for nothing that they…say will be of any use unless they learn to speak a language that the democracy can appreciate.

    In this same column Russell also says: “The only people left with positive opinions are those who are too stupid to know when their opinions are absurd. Consequently the world is ruled by fools, and the intelligent count for nothing in the councils of the nations.
     This state of affairs, if it continues, must plunge the world more and more deeply into misfortune.”
     If the future has in its store a robust spirit of impartial inquiry that appreciates at once both the limits of human understanding calling for caution and the urgency of large questions in need of coherent verdicts, this may be due, in part, to the legacy of Bertrand Russell?at least this appears to be the case?probably.