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On Outlines of Pyrrhonism , Book 1, from around 200 CE.
Are our beliefs warranted? Skeptics following in the footsteps of Pyrrho (who lived just after Aristotle, around 300 BCE, but didn’t leave us any writings, so Sextus, centuries later, has to fill us in) think that for any argument someone puts forward (at least about the nature of reality), you can come up with a plausible counter-argument, and that after you’ve done this enough, you achieve a relaxed state where you you’re satisfied in not being able to decide.
Is this really true? And is there a sharp distinction between beliefs you need to accept in order to live (this is food; that is poison) and theoretical ones? Can a philosopher really get beyond philosophizing in this way? Can one be a scientist and still be a skeptic of this sort? Jessica Berry joins Mark, Wes, and Dylan to defend this position. Read more about the topic and get the text.
End song: “Point of Confusion” recorded for this episode by Mark Lint. Read about it.
The Pyrrho picture is by Corey Mohler.
Great cast. There was good back and forthery. Jessica seemed pretty determined to defend Sextus whereas you guys were more skeptical of his thinking. The conversation was well rounded and satisfying. Personally, it sounds like Sextus verges on some kind of incoherence but I haven’t read it yet…
Thanks. You should invite Jessica more frequently.
Generally, the podcasts lead me to reflect on my philosophical beliefs, but it is infrequent that they lead me to reflect on how I live my daily life. The discussion on skepticism, however, got me thinking about whether I should be more skeptical about many of the values that I guide myself by in my dealings with others and society in general. I didn’t reach any firm conclusions, but I guess not reaching firm conclusions is applied skepticism.
very thought provoking podcast for those studying the various fields in the philosophical corpus.
i was left wondering just how far back anyone needs to step from sextus’ skepticism before finding themselves in the muddles of relativism, pragmatism, fallibilism, agnosticism (of any valuables), or just simply in a place where they need not to try or think anything.
i know my interest in phil has always been to get at what is really what is, so a metaphysical scheme from a modern academic genius like whitehead is a big draw. skeptics would quibkly label anw as uber dogmatic, but remember that he stresses one of the highest natural affects entertained in human experience is ‘reason,’ which helps us to “live, live well, and to live better.” also that the simplest answers are to be sought AND distrusted. mental investigations are to start out gathering-up the known data, taking flight with it in imaginative assimilations, and touching back down to earth to test the new hyporheses for durability. then repeat. trial and error.
the anw method is the scientific method, and it is skeptical, with the added bonus of striving for highher value – a big shortcooming in sextus’ method. i think sextus is too afraid to live with the negative consequences of getting something wrong while striving to get things to be better.
A common complaint against Pyrrhonism is that it does not allow us to commit to everyday beliefs (e.g. that car is going to hit me if I don’t move), and thus practitioners of Pyrrhonism will quickly find dumb ways to die, or simply do nothing at all. Sextus argues that skeptics will still form everyday beliefs based upon our past experiences, our nature, and our feelings; thus we will not walk into traffic, and we eat when we feel hungry, and so forth. But it is still not clear why these beliefs, based upon ‘raw appearances’ and feelings, should not be subject to the same degree of skepticism. What is the dividing line between ‘everyday’ beliefs and more metaphysical beliefs, and how could the skeptic know what that line is. That line appears to be a metaphysical or philosophical construct, and not an everyday appearance.
Here is a another way to understand Pyrrhonian skepticism that may avoid this problem. Every judgement we make about the world is, in part, a product of a broader theoretical framework we have about the world. When I say “there is a car over there”, I am not passively reporting an appearance; I am making a theoretical judgment that has something to do with how I conceptual space, my place in it, something about space-occupying bodies, how I categorize patterns of color, and likely much more. Now, Pyrrhonian’s do not question the truth of the particular judgement “there is a car over there”, as much as they question the underlying theoretical apparatus that allows the person to make that judgement at all.
The Pyrrhonian will move out of the way, just as you or I, because they abide by a judgement that follows from a similar theoretical apparatus. The Pyrrhonian differs, however, in that he acknowledges that the judgement follows from a theory(model?) about the world, rather than a truth about the world. He abides by a model that he has come to have, simply in negotiating the world. He questions this model–is there really space?, is that car solid or simply a hologram, etc?; but he still abides by the judgments that follow from the model that he has. In this way, he successfully negotiates the world while also making room for new models of the world. In the end, Pyrrhonism is about being ‘open’ to understanding the world in new ways, in not closing yourself off in a way that would prevent useful growth.
In this sense, I see Pyrrhonian skepticism as a broad instrumentalism, where we take the concept of a scientific theory and broaden it to include the latent models of the world that we all possess, but may not be aware of.
was nice to have a guest who was knowing about the text (and kept y’all to it) without needing to have the final/definitive word, would be good to get Dewey in the PEL mix and than maybe down the road take on quietism and realism/antirealism.
http://philosophicalreadings.org/2014/10/27/interview-with-lee-brave/
It’s easy to see how readily she connects Nietzsche to Pyrrhonian Skepticism–it’s a natural! Nietzsche’s whole project may be seen as asking how one is to live in light of the problems raised by the skeptic’s insights. It’s what appears to lead him to virtue ethics rather than any other kind, for example: a more subjective estimating of “the good.” Great talk!
never really got the sense that Nietzsche was skeptical of his own proposals, but than I thought her reading of FN was too much along the lines of analytic-philo concerns so different strokes I guess…
https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/d/dickstein-pragmatism.html
See “Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy.”
Really? If there was ever a philosopher in the entire canon that I think to have been communicating in an almost purely ironic mode, it’s Nietzsche. I’ll even go one further–to be Nietzschean about an analysis of Nietzsche’s writing would, I think, mean to see it all as an attempt at achieving Pyrrhoean Ataraxia. To get biographical about it, he clearly appears to have had the kind of mind that seemed to rage with opposing thoughts he knew better than to “settle” via a dogmatic choosing of one over the other. Do we think he was NOT beyond the good/evil distinction? I think he’s clearly telling us yes was. It all sounds like Pyrrho to me.
no not beyond good and evil, just being aware of contingency/genealogy doesn’t erase one’s sense of rightness/wrongness just provides at most an intellectual understanding of the possibility of feeling/being different (see Stanley Fish on “theory hope”) and Nietzsche (like Emerson) seems to have heartily embraced his own sense of a will to power:
http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/nietzsche-mind-and-nature
While I am not the fussiest person around when it comes to things like coherent sentences, I made little to no sense of your response. Nonetheless, re-read Beyond Good and Evil and tell me it isn’t about the Pyrrhonist stance against 1. dogmatism, and 2. absolute truth. Oh, and forget Emerson–he was both lightweight and insane.
This episode made me wish all sceptics started out by applying their core statement that for every statement there is an equal and opposite statement to their own core statement.
You see, the opposite statement here is:
if there are two statements disagreeing on the same thing, then at least one of them is a lie
I’ve found that reaching equipollence on this particular junction makes the sceptic evolve straight back into a sort of ascended form of dogmatist – the one that is able to tell truth from lie and is working towards building a system of truths, even while accepting that the foundations that are being built upon can potentially be wrong.
According to this podcast and reading, the ancient skeptic feels that for opposing points of view or claims, each claim is associated with an argument of equal ’emotional’ weight or pull, or equipollence. The opposite of this view, I think, is that each claim is not associated with equal weight or pull. I don’t see how you can talk about one statement being ‘a lie’ here. A lack of equipollence has nothing to do with truth or lies. The fact that one statement pulls us more than the other does not imply that the other is a lie. Maybe I’m missing something in your argument, or you left out a step or two.
And the ancient skeptic does not deny that unequal emotional pull for opposing claims may exist, it is simply that the skeptic has not found them, or has always been able to equalize them. The skeptic does abide by equipollence, in a similar way he abides by hunger to eat, and I guess you might call him dogmatic in this sense. But he never claims “all opposing claims are equipollent’ is true. I agree that ancient skepticism is associated with a dogmatic attitude on some level, but I think that dogmatism is something like being dogmatically skeptical.
I guess the missing step is that I find that arguments that don’t ring true at least in some way in some context fail to gain “Emotional weight”. Therefore if argument has “Emotional weight” to someone, it must have some properties of truth.
State of equipollence as i understood it means acknowledging that two contradicting arguments are both felt to be true by someone, and not having a problem with it. “So we philosophers believe X. And yeah, those people that some authority says are blasphemers believe Y. And yeah, i understand why we believe X and those others believe Y, and that’s okay. And oh my GOD HOW I LOVE THE FACT THAT THIS IS OKAY (ataraxia)”
But then skeptics seem to just stop there, their job done, viability of opposing points of view with respect to themselves established, enjoy the ataraxic state. Call yourself curious for exploring different angles.
However, in myself, a different kind of curiosity sets in and says: “yeah, these two statements are both equally attractive, but they can’t both exist in actual reality at the same time! Yeah, i understand that they are individually true in personal headspaces, but personal headspaces are not what we are curious about here, aren’t they? Aren’t you curious which one is it in actual world? Or is it both, but only to some extent? To what extent? Let’s figure out!”.
Skeptics that claim to be curious but do not move to that step after achieving ataraxia are coming across to me as, at best, being curious about imaginary things, such as worlds where A and not(A) can exist simultaneously. At worst – these skeptics are not curious at all, but rather something else entirely.
Ultimately, i feel that this notion of equipollence cannot be an end in itself. For all the joys of ataraxia, which i am aware of, ultimately there always comes a time where you either need to decide in favor of one statement over the other.
Of course, a human being can be tricky and simply choose to discard whatever created that need to decide in favor of continued ataraxia. And maybe this is occasionally justified. But seeing a person doing it always, on general principle, in all situations? Claiming that the entire world is “sick” for not doing that?
That would make me wonder who is the sick one here.
If only just for the sake of equipollence.
In closing, I think that the notion of equipollence has but one important role – making sure that you consider all points of view on any real thing. An analysis of that thing, of sorts.
After that role is done, however, the philosopher’s job still isn’t. Synthesis must follow. Which involves creation of new statements by mixing and matching various parts of the old ones, choosing which to carry forward and which to discard. Scepticism has no method to help with that process.
Ancient skeptics were only able to overcome that by planting themselves firmly in opposition to something else. Which doesn’t strip them of all value in my eyes, but gives skepticism a significantly diminished scale of applicability.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/12/10/3601948/scientists-media-skeptic-deniers/
The core advice from skeptics seems to be something like: “Don’t be so certain about your theory, keep looking for the truth” which is fine advice even (especially?) when you feel entirely and irrevocably certain.
That said, our behavior and ideas should be modeled on whatever our best guess is, even if we’re not 100% certain. We should act like the external world is there and causality holds even if we can’t prove that 100% – it’s still our best guess about how the world works. There’s no reason not to extend that pragmatic usage of knowledge to abstract concepts like ethics or politics.
you’ve said it well, adam pierce. such common sense keeps people connected (in common); a committed skeptic will tend to criticize rather than contribute. this makes me wonder about the relationship between analytic and perennial philosophy.
“There’s no reason not to extend that pragmatic usage of knowledge to abstract concepts like ethics or politics.” cosmology, as well. if there is anything that warrants a healthy dose of skepticism, it is the absurdity of blindly accepting a curved space “fabric” because the math tells us it is so. the consequence of this metaphysical error in congruence has us making up other ontological entities (dark matter, dark energy).
Excellent episode. Thank you!
This episode is fantastic! Thanks! Jessica is a phenomenal guest. You should invite her on more often!
I think it was Jessica that warned not to confuse skeptics, pragmatists and relativists. That sounds like a great podcast topic.
Just finished the episode and loved it!
It got me thinking of the minimal level of ideology one has to accept to live as a moral human in society. I realize I’m using a lot of loaded words but I”m not sufficiently smart enough to substitute them.
I believe it was Dylan who mentioned that the skeptic project led one to be a conservative as you couldn’t really challenge existing order, not knowing for certain its merit. This wasn’t exactly plausibly debunked (imo).
So I wonder: do we have to have a minimal positive conception of human rights, or behavior in order to claim to be living morally? The question is usually addressed from the other side, in freedom of speech debates: is there some speech that is so hateful or wrong that we simply ought to ban it? I ask: is there some modes of behavior or thoughts that are simply so right and so moral as to condemn those who don’t subscribe (skeptics included?) Is there are world where gender equality, sexual rights etc are wrong? What is the minimal level or is there a level we should subscribe to? Certainly we can condemn someone how says they don’t know if its moral or not to pick up a knife, close their eyes and swing wildly until they hit someone? Are we only able to condemn this due to past experience, as per the skeptic project or are there more positive conceptions of rights out there?