You have many ideas you believe and a bunch you don’t. Then there are the things in between. Those are your agnostic beliefs.
The definition:
An agnostic position on a speculative idea does not pretend certainty.
Chapter 11 of 30 Philosophers defines the agnostic view.
“Agnostics assert that it is impossible to either prove or disprove certain claims, such as the existence of unicorns, ghosts, or Valhalla.”
In common terms, agnosticism is a restraint: a way of saying, “I do not know enough to call this true or false.”
While there are many defined types of agnosticism, in my writing, there are only two: agnostic and explorative. An explorative agnostic withholds certainty, but explores. An apathetic agnostic does not engage in the topic. This matters because not all uncertainty is the same.
A person can be agnostic about one claim, a skeptic on another, and a believer on yet another. That’s agnosticism in practice. For example, a person might be agnostic about Valhalla and demons. They might be skeptical of astrology’s truth claims, but may still enjoy it as personality language.
Pragmatism, by contrast, describes the broader worldview lens. The pragmatic types are the lenses a person can use to interpret the world.
Pragmatism calibrates your worldview lens, while agnosticism focuses your lens away from a specific topic.
For me, I try to live as an empirical pragmatist. On specific topics, I calibrate. For example, on string theory, I remain exploratively agnostic and find the topic fascinating. On ghosts, I’m an apathetic agnostic with a skeptical lean. When I encounter a new mystery, I use OVM to examine the believer, empiricist, and skeptic views on the topic. I then return to my empirical-pragmatic worldview for calibration. Calibration helps me decide how much confidence a topic deserves.
