Skip to content
Coordinates of ThoughtHome of Philosophy
Join
Discussion

My student doubts the moon landing but trusts the bus timetable. Is that scepticism?

Emeka Nwosu Fellow
· 4 replies · 194 views
SkepticismAnalyticModern European#conspiracy-theories#local-skepticism#teaching#trust
Follow

I teach physics in Lagos, and one of my brightest students has decided that the Apollo moon landings were staged. I have tried evidence: the retroreflectors left on the surface that observatories still bounce lasers off, the rock samples, the sheer number of people who would have had to keep a secret. Each piece is absorbed. The lasers are bouncing off something else. The rocks came from Antarctica. The people were paid.

What fascinates me is not the moon. It is the shape of the doubt. He doubts one thing without limit, but everywhere else he is completely trusting. He trusts the bus timetable, the textbook equations he applies in my class, the videos that tell him the landing was faked, and the friend who sent him the videos. He is not a sceptic in any philosophical sense. He is extremely credulous with one locked door.

I have been reading about the difference between global and local scepticism, and it seems to me the conspiracy shape is a strange hybrid: local doubt that borrows the rhetoric of global doubt ("how can you really know anything?") while resting on ordinary trust everywhere else.

Two questions. Is there a good philosophical description of this pattern? And what does it take to doubt well, so that I can teach that instead of just telling him he is wrong?

LikeReply
Follow4 replies

Members reply here. Reading is always free.

Sign in to reply

4 replies

  1. Sana Mir

    Fellow

    As a journalist I see this every week. The pattern you describe has a political economy: the doubt is aimed at institutions, the trust goes to whoever is attacking those institutions. People who say "do your own research" almost never mean read the primary sources. They mean trust a different authority.

    I would not tell your student he is credulous, though. In my experience people with this shape of mind are often reacting to a real betrayal somewhere. The doubt is wrong about the moon and right that institutions sometimes lie.

  2. Sam Ellery

    Contributor

    From debate coaching, the useful test is falsifiability in the plain sense: what evidence would change your mind? A good sceptic can always answer. The conspiracy shape usually can't, because every possible piece of evidence has been pre-classified as part of the cover-up. That is not more doubt. It is a belief that has made itself immune to doubt, which is the opposite of scepticism.

    I have had some success asking students to name, in advance, what would convince them. It turns the conversation from the moon to how beliefs should work.

    Helpful · 1
  3. Brian Otieno Ouma

    Contributor

    I teach a reading class in a prison, and I want to add a caution. Many of my students have excellent reasons to distrust institutions; they have seen the inside of them. When they doubt an official story, it is not paranoia, it is experience. So "doubt well" can't mean "trust the authorities". It has to mean something like: let your distrust be proportional to the track record, and apply the same standard to the people you agree with.

    One of my men put it better than I can: you have to be as suspicious of your friends' stories as you are of the police's.

    Helpful · 2
  4. Emeka Nwosu

    Fellow

    Thank you. Brian, your student's line is going on my board. Putting your three answers together, doubting well might be: be able to say what would change your mind (Sam), match your distrust to the record (Brian), and notice who you are trusting while you doubt (Sana).

    I tried Sam's question yesterday. He said nothing could convince him because NASA controls the evidence. Then he laughed and said, "I see what you did there." Small progress.

    Helpful · 3