Doubtfulness – A Dialogical Perspective

The current globalizing world stimulates many doubts. Doubtfulness is a starting point for inner dialogue. Internal dialogical activity often reduces the experience of uncertainty by integration of contrasting ideas. Sometimes, however, the result is quite opposite - doubts grow rather than being reduced. The paper proposes a dialogical model of doubtfulness and presents empirical findings which are consistent with the model. Additionally, the functions of doubtfulness and internal dialogue in philosophy and science are discussed. On one hand, as empirical results show, doubtfulness can be linked to anxiety which blocks human thinking and acting. On the other hand, as exemplified by Galileo, doubt demands a deeper analysis of the situation and is conducive to human development, in personal or even in socio-cultural space.