Talk:Pyrrhonism

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Merge radical skepticism here

The article to be merged here seems to be about the same subject, to wit: "the philosophical position that knowledge is impossible." --TS 18:10, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I've withdrawn this proposal. Pyrrhonism was a completely agnostic position, disavowing as dogmatic even the statement that all knowledge was impossible. --TS 12:02, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Both are wrong Tony. A much much much much much better way of looking at what Pyrrhonism/New Academy is and was would be to see it as the use of Epoche from a position of Wu wei. LoveMonkey (talk) 13:12, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Modern Pyrrhonism

Considering the recent upsurge in Pyrrhonism along with scientific scepticism, it would be a good idea to discuss it here. 150.203.110.137 (talk) 15:40, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

fallibilism

pyrrhonian skepticism is a much more radical view than fallibilism. the former says that we might be wrong; the latter that there would be no way of knowing if we were. obviously the skeptical claim is logically stronger.

also, what's with the citation to the 'journal of management research?' surely, better sources could be found ... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.32.173.159 (talk) 07:16, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

This is tricky stuff, and people disagree, but I think it is a mistake to think that Pyrrhonism's conclusion is that "there would be no way of knowing" if we're wrong about something. That is (second-order) negative dogmatism, exactly the sort of view that they will suspend judgment about. It might well seem to them that there would be no way (they don't see how they could know whether or not they know), but that is not the same as making the "logically stronger" claim you're ascribing to them. Delavagus (talk) 16:27, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal, in the 17th century, devoted some of his arguments to counter the Pyrrhonist sceptics of that day. Some say that Pascal's wager does not make sense without knowing the Pyrrhonist background of that time. I'm just adding this in case someone want to add it to the article. Lehasa (talk) 15:25, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Criticism of Pyrrhonism?

There seems to be a lack of coverage of views critical of Pyrrhonism here. A quick search for "David Hume on Pyrrhonism" revealed this and this which might be a good start. --BenMcLean (talk) 22:26, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

If any discussion of Hume's criticism of Pyrrhonism is incorporated, I hope the authors will bear in mind that, when he used the term "Pyrrhonism," he was quite obviously not talking about actual, historical Pyrrhonism. In his day, "Pyrrhonism" was a synonym for "skeptic" in the modern sense, i.e., a negative dogmatist. I can't recall off the top of my head what evidence we have about Hume's knowledge of the historical schools, their development, their differences from modern skepticism, but we should not take it for granted that he means by "Pyrrhonism" what we mean by it in this article. Delavagus (talk) 16:30, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

A more skeptical approach with primary sources

There's a fair amount of direct citation of primary sources like Sextus and Diogenes in this article, which is especially problematic for Pyrrhonism because they are contradicted by other ancient sources such as Cicero, Aristocles, etc. The short of it is that modern scholars are more hesitant to ascribe claims made about Early Pyrrhonism in the 4th century BCE that are not supported by disinterested sources. There's also the matter of the influence from Buddhism - we should discuss this, but it seems from the sources like it's more tentative than currently presented in this article. - car chasm (talk) 18:41, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

As I mention below, the idea that citing Sextus as a source of "Pyrrhonism" could be problematic is bizarre and based on a misunderstanding of what "Pyrrhonism" meant to the Pyrrhonians who adopted that name for themselves. If all you're saying is that Sextus is not an infallible source for the views of his predecessors, sure; but the vast majority of this article is about Sextus's Pyrrhonism, so I'm not sure where you think the problem lies.

As for the Buddhism section -- I completely agree that it is too long. The reason for that is obvious: the whole "Greek Buddha" thing has really caught on among (at the risk of being rude) philosophical dilettantes: people who are into "Eastern wisdom" who've ran with the interesting scholarly work on similarities (and possible connections) between Pyrrhonism and Indian Buddhists, but whose grasp of the ancient skeptical tradition is sometimes... lacking.

In short, the whole issue of Pyrrhonism's relation to Buddhism is a obscure, non-essential corner of the topic -- though an interesting corner, to be sure! I personally find it fascinating. Jay Garfield's work in particular is really intriguing. But it should not take up such a huge amount of real estate on a page on Pyrrhonism, and the only reason it does is because it's rather "trendy" at the moment. Delavagus (talk) 17:40, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Merges

I've merged in a variety of subpages of this article, many of which seemed to have similar information copied into all of them. There's no reason for such a WP:CFORK when nothing about pyrrhonism is quite covered comprehensively or well sourced in this page yet. - car chasm (talk) 06:58, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

If I understand correctly the gist of your latest edits in this specific area, it seems to me you are implying that Pyrrhonism and Skepticism are not the same thing. I always thought that early modern and modern Skepticism developed in part from Pyrrho's ideas? Thank you, warshy ^(¥¥) 17:27, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I think that's very close to what I'm saying, I think it's really about "suspending judgement" about it ;) - the consensus as I understand it (from A.A. Long's monograph) is that Pyrrho and Timon (i.e. "early" Pyrrhonism) may not have been as skeptical or as closely aligned with the 1st century BCE revival, and that the "later" Pyrrhonists projected a lot of their doctrines onto them when those doctrines were also a refinement and development out of the new academy. But that it's not definitive either way, especially due to the relatively few fragments of Timon's work that survive.

I definitely don't think it's a definite enough case that it merits excluding Timon and Pyrrho from any pages or categories on skepticism. More like how we treat Socrates - it's hard to say what doctrines he had (if any), but scholars do try to tentatively reconstruct what they might have been based on the available evidence, even if it contradicts what some of the (perhaps biased) ancient primary sources say, and that that's worth covering so long as it's clear these are tentative theories.

I haven't encountered anything to suggest this is a particularly contentious issue within the scholarly literature yet, I think it's more about presenting all the primary evidence in a way that it's clear (to a reader) that it's inconsistent, and that there are good reasons for not taking Sextus or Diogenes' word on everything, but also reasons for not disregarding them entirely. - car chasm (talk) 19:05, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

And as for modern/early modern skepticism, definitely I agree they were heavily influenced by Pyrrhonism (through Sextus), I don't think there's any question of that. it's more Pyrrho -> Sextus that's up in the air than Sextus -> Montaigne, I don't think there's any reasonable doubt about the second, it's well documented and he cites sextus a lot! - car chasm (talk) 19:12, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

And I think the scope of this article is "Ancient Pyrrhonism" and what it influenced should be in the legacy section, certainly a lot of modern people will colloquially refer to themselves as "Pyrrhonists" but I don't think that's based on a consistent set of principles that's identical with Ancient Pyrrhonism as much of an acknowledgement of influence. E.g. Montaigne should be covered under Renaissance skepticism and someone like Robert Fogelin or Benson Mates should probably be considered a "Neo-Pyrrhonist" - which there should be references from Fogelin himself to support, and that Neopyrrhonism should be its own article that's linked out from here if it turns out there's enough WP:SIGCOV beyond those two people that it needs its own page. - car chasm (talk) 19:21, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying all this to me. And thanks for all the work I see you doing on Philosophy articles. I was confused between Pyrrho and Sextus, and now my confusion got clarified. The confusion stems from the fact that what Sextus started is sometimes called, probably by mistake, Pyrrhonism, when in fact it should be called just Skepticism. And the Skepticism that goes from Sextus to Montaigne is a different thing than Pyrrho's own classical thougts. But your clarification above really explains all that much better than I could. Thanks again! warshy ^(¥¥) 20:13, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

No problem! I think we're mostly on the same page, just one small thing - technically Sextus mostly documented what his predecessors (Aenesidemus 1st BCE, Agrippa 1st CE, possibly others) started, and his is just the only work on Pyrrhonism (which is what Aenesidemus -> Sextus called themselves) that survived the middle ages, but broadly yes, I do think everything else you said is correct, and that it's right to say he and his work started renaissance and modern skepticism. I'll just chart it out here a bit more for clarity:

• Pyrrho and Timon: possibly skeptics, possibly "dogmatists", hard to say because our ancient sources disagree
• Aenesidemus, Agrippa the Skeptic, Sextus Empiricus: "Pyrrhonists" who claim to be reviving lost doctrines of Pyrrho and Timon, diverging from earlier Academic skepticism which also claimed influence from Pyrrho and Timon
• Montaigne: Renaissance skeptic, influenced by work of sextus
• David Hume: Empiricist, skeptic, influenced by work of sextus
• Fogelin: "Neopyrrhonist" who reconstructed what he believes the best interpretation of the "Pyrrhonists" to be and interprets in the context of contemporary philosophy, but acknowledges we'll never fully know what they thought

- car chasm (talk) 21:16, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Your knowledge of these areas is truly encyclopedic, so I'll get out of your way and let you keep improving the Philosophy area on Wikipedia. It is a great work you do, and I'll keep admiring it and learning from it. Thank you again! warshy ^(¥¥) 22:55, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

I think it is a mistake to adopt uncritically the dismissive view that "Sextus was merely a copyist." That view is usually advanced by people hostile to Pyrrhonism (such as Jonathan Barnes). Almost all ancient philosophers felt a need to couch their philosophies in terms of venerable predecessors, in much the way that the Scholastics all couched their innovations as commentaries on or developments of Aristotle's views: to "prove" something, Scholastics needed only to show that it agreed with Aristotle, whom they called simply "the Philosopher." To be sure, Sextus is presenting the "philosophical orientation" (agoge) or "doctrine" (haeresin) in which he was "brought up," and he specifically credits the skeptical Modes to earlier Pyrrhonians. But none of that gets us the conclusion that he had no independent thought in his head.

Also, note that the amount of time Sextus spends on a general presentation of Pyrrhonism is really quite small -- indeed, it should have been much longer, given all the questions he left open. The majority of his texts are given over to deploying Pyrrhonian methods against various dogmatic positions. It is bizarre to think that all of this was merely "copying" from earlier sources. Many of the views he attacks, I believe, were specific to his time-period, views that Aenesidemus (for example) would not even have encountered.

I think, then, that there is every reason to view Sextus's work as "original" despite that it clearly belongs to a preexisting tradition. Delavagus (talk) 17:30, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

To reiterate points I've made elsewhere on this page: Sextus called his skepticism "Pyrrhonism" very purposefully; it was not done "by mistake." (See PH 1.7.) But his main term for his view is "skepticism"; Pyrrhonism is a secondary term. For him, they mean the same thing. The mistake is to think that, because the Pyrrhonians took Pyrrho as a figurehead, they saw themselves as the inheritors of Pyrrho's views or strategies or whatever, the way Neo-Platonists were inheritors of Plato's views. That is not at all the case. Delavagus (talk) 17:19, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

I am puzzled by this remark: "there are good reasons for not taking Sextus or Diogenes' word on everything, but also reasons for not disregarding them entirely." To disregard Sextus entirely is to wipe out the Pyrrhonian tradition as it has existed since the ancient world; the very idea of "disregarding" him seems too crazy to even mention. And when you say "not taking Sextus's word on everything," what do you mean? You seem to be assuming that Sextus was claiming to tell us about Pyrrho's views; and that, on Pyrrho, we needn't take everything he says as gospel -- the same way we don't take Aristotle's "history of philosophy" seriously. But this is a different sort of case entirely, for Sextus is not claiming to be transmitting "Pyrrho's philosophy" (see PH 1.7). We can wonder how closely his work corresponds to earlier Pyrrhonians (e.g., Aenesidemus, the otherwise unknown Agrippa), but ultimately we simply lack the evidence to answer the question. Sure, we can try to reconstruct the earlier history of Pyrrhonism, both "what did Pyrrho think?" and the development of (self-described) Pyrrhonism, which emerged as a rejection of a perceived turn to dogmatism in the Platonic Academy; but it's all quite speculative and inconclusive. Ultimately, Sextus's texts are the only "Pyrrhonian" texts we have. For us, Pyrrhonism just is "what Sextus says," in which case we absolutely should take his word on everything. Delavagus (talk) 17:15, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

I need to correct myself. This is an easy sort of mistake to make, but it's a point that I think is important: Sextus's texts are the only ancient Pyrrhonian texts we have. That does not mean that they are the only Pyrrhonian texts we have. I believe that there are later texts that we should consider "Pyrrhonian," both explicitly (e.g., parts of Montaigne) or by philosophical kinship (I happen to read Hume as a Pyrrhonian: on that, see Fosl 2020 [I think that's the year]). Any denial of the claim that there is a modern Pyrrhonian tradition must ultimately boil down to a terminological quibble, such as: "Technically, we should call these so-called 'modern' Pyrrhonians 'Neo-Pyrrhonians.'" Fair enough! My only objection to that is the observation that it's not how people talk. "Neo-Pyrrhonism" means Pyrrhonism in contemporary analytic philosophy, particularly epistemology. But I digress... Delavagus (talk) 22:23, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure car chasm's responses adequately address the question of ancient vs. modern (and vs. early-modern, if you want to use that distinction) skepticism.

First, it's pretty safe to say that early-modern/modern skepticism did not develop from Pyrrho's ideas, except to the extent that ancient skepticism in general, and Sextus's Pyrrhonism in particular, developed from those ideas. Even if there is a strong link between Pyrrho and Sextus, then the influence of Pyrrho on modern skepticism would be second-hand: it's Sextus's arguments that drove the "rediscovery" or "revival" of ancient skepticism (on this, see Richard Popkin's seminal monograph). It is questionable, however, how much Sextus's Pyrrhonism owes to Pyrrho. As car chasm pointed out, asking "What did Pyrrho think?" is a bit like asking "What did Socrates think?", except that we have far, far less to go on in Pyrrho's case. The "Pyrrhonians" (who emerged long after Pyrrho's death) claimed Pyrrho as a sort of figurehead for their movement. Sextus writes that "the skeptical orientation... is also called... Pyrrhonian, from the fact that Pyrrho appears to us to have attached himself to skepticism more thoroughly and conspicuously than anyone before him" (PH, 1.7; trans. mine). As I understand it, this "attachment" has to do principally not with doctrine but with a particular way of life, and secondarily with a kind of attitude or approach to philosophical questions. Sextus is not at all saying that his work is based on anything Pyrrho actually said or thought (let alone wrote, for he didn't write anything).

Second, there's the early-modern vs. modern distinction. I take this to refer to the distinction between pre-Cartesian (16th century) skepticism and the different kind of skepticism introduced by Descartes, which has become the dominant conception. (Hence -- to address warshy's other question -- there are good reasons to distinguish between "Pyrrhonism" and "skepticism" nowadays, for Pyrrhonism is not the position we think of as "skepticism," though it's similar in many respects. It is true, of course, that as far as Sextus was concerned, "skepticism" and "Pyrrhonism" were the same thing. But after Descartes, that was no longer true.) Early-modern skepticism (the greatest example of which is no doubt Montaigne) was directly influenced by, and sympathetic to, Sextus's Pyrrhonism (again, see Popkin). And it was Montaigne (and his ilk) that Descartes attempted to vanquish by means of his "hyperbolic doubt." Descartes claimed (in his Correspondence, I believe, or perhaps in a preface) that his treatment of skepticism was "reheated cabbage" -- i.e., he claimed to be presenting the views of the early-modern Pyrrhonians and then refuting them. But it is well-established that that was not at all the case.

In one sense, Descartes took skepticism further than it had gone before, by calling into question not just knowledge of (or justification of knowledge-claims about) the "external world," but also the very existence of an external world. I think there is something to this, but contra the majority view among scholars (see Bernard Williams 1981, Burnyeat 1982), I think it's clear that he was not the first philosopher to call into question the existence of the external world as we commonsensically imagine it to be, which is really what these people are claiming. (On this, see Harry Bracken, 1985.) In another sense, he didn't take skepticism far enough -- as Hegel points out in several places, e.g., "On the Relationship of Skepticism to Philosophy" -- for he did not apply his skepticism to itself, as the ancients did. Thus, we arrive at the real difference Descartes introduced (or reintroduced): he turned "skepticism" into a kind of negative dogmatism. (See Michael Frede's two famous papers on skepticism, in which he distinguishes between "dogmatic," or Cartesian, and "classical," or ancient, skepticism.) The main "skeptical tradition" after Descartes was this sort of negative dogmatism: a denial of knowledge or justification or even of their possibility. Thus, "skepticism" turned into something different.

I should mention, though, that this is not to say that the influence of "real" (Pyrrhonian) skepticism simply died out. That is not the case at all. On ancient skepticism's influence on Hume, see Peter Fosl's book. Kant self-consciously adopted Pyrrhonian approaches to philosophical questions (just look at the Antinomies). Hegel thought Pyrrhonism was superior to its modern skeptical cousins, and claimed that it was the true beginning of philosophy, or gateway to "true philosophy" or whatever -- i.e., Pyrrhonism plays a important foundational role in the system of Hegel's thought. And then there's Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, Husserl and Heidegger... all the way up to the present day. Nevertheless, the Cartesian conception of "skepticism" became so dominant that it literally altered the meaning of the word. If you look up "skepticism" in a dictionary, you're going to find a characterization that is not Pyrrhonian. Delavagus (talk) 17:02, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Nietzsche on Pyrrhonism

The paragraph about Nietzsche is, at least very least, a tendentious reading of the text. I would go so far as to say it's completely mistaken. In GM 3.9, Nietzsche is not talking about "skeptics" (however broadly construed) and certainly not about "Pyrrhonism" in particular. Nietzsche's essay is about the different "meanings" of what he calls "the ascetic ideal" to different sorts of people: artists, philosophers, women, priests, etc. In sec. 9, he turns to "philosophers." In the cites passages, he's talking about the first philosophers: It was "on the apron strings" of the ascetic ideal "that philosophy... learned to take its first steps and half-steps on earth." These people (or, rather, this earliest kind of philosophy itself) is "the shy little blunderer and milquetoast with crooked legs." Yes, he uses the word "ephectic," but that is not nearly enough to support the claim that he's talking about Pyrrhonians in this passage.

Nietzsche's remarks on skepticism are ambiguous: some positive, some negative. But if we bear in mind the distinction between ancient and modern skepticism, it becomes possible to distinguish two main opinions: a negative assessment of "modern" skepticism (i.e., Cartesian skepticism, etc. -- negative dogmatism) and a positive assessment of ancient skepticism (Pyrrhonism). On modern skepticism, you might point to Beyond Good and Evil, 208. (This passage does seem to echo the sentiments about the earliest philosophers in GM 3.9.) But then in the very next section, he refers to "another, stronger type of skepticism" that he advocates: "This skepticism despises and nevertheless appropriates; it undermines and takes possession; it does not believe but does not die out on this account; it gives the spirit a dangerous freedom, but is severe on the heart." See also Wanderer and His Shadow, sec. 213, which (as I read it) gives a positive spin on Pyrrhonism (quite directly: it's a dialogue between "Pyrrho" and "an old man"). The ancient Pyrrhonians were, I think, Nietzsche's prototype for his "free spirits." His attitude toward metaphysics generally is one of suspension of judgment in a distinctively Pyrrhonian sense (cf., Human All Too Human, sec. 9; Twilight of the Idols, "How the True World Became a Fable"), and I read his rejection of "convictions" as basically Pyrrhonian (cf., Human All Too Human, secs. 630-638).

Finally, he is explicitly approving of the ancient skeptics in Ecco Homo, "Clever," sec. 3): "I have to go back half a year to catch myself with a book in my hand. What was it again? An excellent study by Victor Brochard, Les Sceptiques Grecs, that puts my Laertiana1 to good use as well. The sceptics were the only respectable types among the philosophical tribes, tribes that generally talk out of both sides of their mouths (they would talk out of five sides if they could)!" In The Antichrist (sec. 12), he says: "I will make an exception for a couple of the sceptics, the decent types in the history of philosophy; but the rest of them have no conception of the basic demands of intellectual integrity. They all act like little females, these admiring fans, these prodigies,—they think that ‘beautiful feelings’ constitute an argument, that a ‘heaving bosom’ is God’s bellows, that conviction is a criterion of truth." And in Antichrist sec. 54, he tells us that "Zarathustra was a skeptic." Delavagus (talk) 16:24, 31 October 2024 (UTC)