True Skepticism

The skeptical position is not one of denial that something is true, but that a given thing is not known or knowable: someone who believes elementary particles or ghosts or yetis or aliens do not exist is not a skeptic regarding the respective subject although they might be stupid enough to think they are.  They are really an anti-realist with that particular thing existing or being true.  Rationalistic skepticism, moreover, is not a default skepticism of all matters.  This is idiotic in certain cases, as with logical axioms and one's own mental existence, for these are self-evident.  They can only be doubted by relying on them, so they are verifiably true independent of what else is.  Other truths can be known, when applicable, if they follow by logical necessity from something that is self-evident, or if one perceives--one can at least know that the precise perceptions exist even if their correspondence to outside factors is unverifiable in some cases.

If someone is inattentive or shows bursts of outward hyperactivity, they might say they have ADHD.  Among other things, I do not know if they are lying to me intentionally, confused about their own condition, or telling the truth.  The same is the case with any instance of physical weakness or illness with no external symptoms, though it is entirely consistent with logical axioms, and thus possible, that they are either right or wrong in their projected stance.  A skeptic of whether another person has a particular learning disability or mental disorder would not believe they do not have it.  No, they would not believe either way.  Their reason for doing so would determine the extent of their rationality.  However, given human limitations, there are many things that cannot be known by people who might passively or actively think otherwise.

A skeptic of the external world would not hold that there is no such thing as matter; he or she would think that they do not or cannot know (each would be its own form of skepticism).  A skeptic about the afterlife does not believe in scientific reductionism, immediate and permanent soul annihilation upon death, or any other such thing.  Rather, this person would believe that they do not or cannot know if there is life after biological death, much less which of all the logical possibilities it would be.  Sensory skepticism aside, I have no way of observing photons at the quantum level to see if they exist and are immaterial, and hearsay is never proof of anything but that hearsay is being proposed.  As a rationalist, since the logical possibility of either the existence of nonexistence of photons cannot be proven, I am a skeptic about such things.  This does not mean one cannot find fallible evidences in favor of something or at least know that if the hearsay is true, certain things would be entailed.

As long as it is consistent with the laws of logic, something is possible, although a concept's veracity and falsity cannot both be correct at once.  Many things are possible despite their inability to be proven or disproven, such as that electrons actually break down into some smaller particle, that the inhabitants of Earth live in a supernatural or technology-rooted simulation, that God hates all people and does not love anyone alongside this (love and hate are not always exclusive), that an alien species with the power to keep us alive for decades of torture is mobilizing against the planet now, and that Jesus did not exist in spite of the evidence suggesting otherwise.  A true skeptic would embrace true skepticism (but only rationalistic grounds, which themselves require the absolutely certain knowledge of reason, can make someone legitimate in their skepticism) and not deny the possibility or veracity of any of these things.

No intelligent skeptic has a bias against the supernatural or extraterrestrial life or undiscovered terrestrial life forms or the possibility of human historical records being either true (or false).  A rational skeptic, more importantly, does not hold to something that is merely logically possible simply because it does not follow from either axioms nor any other necessary truth stemming from them that the idea is true.  They do not have an assumed skepticism.  With select issues, someone might even be a rational skeptic only in the sense that they have not had the chance to particularly focus on a matter that is demonstrable one way or the other, yet they know that they can at least have genuine knowledge, which is always absolutely certain, that logical axioms govern the issue, that some things would or would not follow if true, and so on.  The person who thinks rational skepticism is anything else is gravely mistaken, and the person who thinks base skepticism is about anything other than a lack of personal knowledge or epistemological knowability altogether is even more wrong.