Certainty about one’s inner states — “I know what I feel”, “I understand what is happening in me” — is paradoxically one of the stances least conducive to observation. It closes questions before they have been genuinely posed.
Methodological doubt, as the Laboratory practises it, is not a doubt about the reality of experiences — they are real. It is a doubt about their interpretation, their categorisation, the causal relationships attributed to them. It is the application, to the inner domain, of the same scepticism that scientific method applies to external data.
Practical application
- Treat each observation as provisional.
- Formulate hypotheses rather than conclusions.
- Seek counter-examples — moments when the state is not what one supposes it to be.
Doubt as a tool transforms one’s relationship to inner experience. Instead of seeking to confirm what one already believes to be true of oneself, one maintains an active curiosity about what is effectively there.
The unexpected effect of this stance: it reduces the anxiety linked to observation. Certainty creates rigidity and fragility. Doubt creates flexibility — everything that emerges is potentially interesting data. This flexibility is itself an improvement in the quality of presence.