Alan Bailey is a Teaching Fellow at the

University of York, and was previously a

College Lecturer at Balliol College, Oxford.

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Sextus Empiricus: Against the Ethicists

Translated with an introduction and
commentary
Richard Bett

Pyrrho, his Antecedents, and his Legacy

Richard Bett

Emotion and Peace of Mind

From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation
Richard Sorabji
 SEXTUS EMPIRICUS AND
PYRRHONEAN SCEPTICISM
Sextus Ernpiricus
and Pyrrhonean
Scepticism

ALAN BAILEY

CLARENDON PRESS, OXFORD

2002
 OXFORD
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Sextus Empiricus and Pyrrhonean scepticism I Alan Bailey.
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This book is dedicated to the memory
of my father, Ronald Headley Bailey
 Preface

I N the case of some philosophers, for example Descartes and Kant,

books purporting to provide a comprehensive survey of their cen-
tral views exist in such profusion that it is incumbent upon the
author of any new book of this type to explain in detail how his
or her work constitutes a significant advance in our understand-
ing of these famous thinkers. At first sight, however, the author of
a general account of the philosophical stance espoused by Sextus
Empiricus faces a rather different challenge. With the exception
of the present work, no book featuring Sextus' name in its princi-
pal title and offering a comprehensive account of his philosophical
views has been published in English since the nineteenth century.
Thus it might be suggested that if we have managed to cope for
more than a hundred years without the publication of another book
of this kind, there can be no real need for one to be published now.
In reality, however, the past twenty-five years have seen the
enduring tradition of French and Italian interest in Sextus and
Pyrrhonism supplemented by an upsurge of works in English con-
cerned with these topics. Much of this material has taken the form of
articles in journals and edited collections; but there have also been
some books concentrating on specific aspects of Sextus' philosoph-
ical position and several new translations of substantial portions of
his writings. Furthermore any apparent dearth of novel accounts
of Sextus' overall stance is simply an illusion generated by the fact
that these accounts have appeared as introductions to translations
or have been incorporated into books, such as R. j. Hankinson's
The Sceptics and Leo Groarke's Greek Scepticism, that have nomi-
nally been concerned with discussing both Sextus' scepticism and
other forms of ancient scepticism.
It does seem to be true, though, that the overwhelming majority
of recent writing on Sextus has tended primarily to treat him as
exemplifying an influential position in the history of philosophy. In
a similar fashion, one might be sufficiently intrigued by the views
held by Malebranche to explore the way in which they reasonably
VIIl Preface
arose from a Cartesian starting-point and the influence his views ex-
erted on subsequent philosophers. Nevertheless this concern with
Malebranche's philosophical stance need not be accompanied by
any belief that the study of his thought would make any substan-
tial contribution to resolving the problems confronting present-day
philosophers working in the area of philosophy of mind. In con-
trast, I take the view that present-day discussions of epistemologi-
cal scepticism urgently stand in need of being reinvigorated by the
study of the form of scepticism espoused by Sextus.
All too often the sceptic discussed today is simply an abstract the-
oretical construct who lacks all psychological authenticity. More-
over he is either saddled with an uninteresting thesis about the
unattainability of certain knowledge or, if he is permitted to attack
our confidence in the availability of rationally justified belief, the
alleged dangers of self-refutation are used to render him vulnerable
to the charge that he arbitrarily disputes the rational credentials of
one class of beliefs while inconsistently maintaining that other be-
liefs susceptible to similar regressive difficulties are nevertheless
actually rationally justified beliefs.
When we turn to the writings of Sextus, however, I believe that
we can find a richer conception of scepticism that provides us, when
properly understood, with the answer to these objections. Thus
I hope that the present book can serve as a means of persuading
present-day epistemologists and anyone else interested in questions
about justification and epistemic rationality that any worthwhile
discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of scepticism needs to
respond to Sextus' version of scepticism. It is perhaps a seductive
thought that almost two thousand years of epistemological reflec-
tion must have led us to a more sophisticated understanding of what
is problematic about our ordinary claims to have rationally justified
beliefs than would have been available to someone of Sextus' era;
but it is my contention that in many important respects Sextus'
stance is considerably more insightful than the views that generally
prevail today.
Accordingly the first chapter of this book attempts to point up
some of the deficiencies of modern accounts of scepticism, and
it also identifies two crucial arguments, namely the self-refutation
argument and the argument that a radical global scepticism is unliv-
able, that are commonly used to constrain the sceptical challenge in
 Preface IX

ways that leave it vulnerable to charges of arbitrariness and internal

inconsistency.
The next four chapters concentrate on the task of exploring the
historical origins of the Pyrrhonism defended by Sextus. In par-
ticular these chapters attempt to explain why Sextus is prepared
to describe himself as a Pyrrhonist even though it seems evident
that he prefers the designation C1KE7T7'LKO, (sceptic); and they also
discuss the intricate relationship between Sextus' brand of scepti-
cism and the so-called Academic scepticism that came to dominate
Plato's Academy for a period of nearly two centuries starting with
Arcesilaus' succession to the position of scholarch around 272 Be.
Chapter 6, in contrast, offers an overview of the general fea-
tures of Sextus' scepticism and the rhetorical devices he uses to
express his philosophical position. And the following three chap-
ters endeavour to vindicate the claim that it is impossible to arrive
at a satisfactory account of Sextus' scepticism if we insist that a
Pyrrhonean sceptic must eschew all the beliefs he does not regard
as rationally justified. In particular, it is argued that although the
actions of Pyrrhonean sceptics force us to accept that they definitely
have some beliefs, the radical epistemological arguments employed
by sceptics of the kind described by Sextus yield the uncompro-
mising conclusion that nobody has any rationally justified beliefs.
The final two chapters then attempt to show how it is possible to
reconcile the supposition that Sextus' scepticism is an instance of
global scepticism about rational justification with the view that his
philosophical stance is nevertheless a coherent and livable one. It
is suggested that the objection that global scepticism about rational
justification is dialectically self-refuting can be disarmed by distin-
guishing between the mature Pyrrhonean sceptic's assessment of
his negative epistemological arguments and the assessment forced
upon his philosophical opponents by their own rationalist code.
And it is subsequently argued that the objection that a global scep-
tic about rational justification cannot live his scepticism overlooks
the point that Sextus' Pyrrhonist is apparently free to maintain
that he acts solely on the basis of beliefs that are necessitated by his
biological and psychological constitution.
A large number of people have helped me to write this book, and I
am pleased to have this opportunity to acknowledge their assistance.
Marie McGinn, my M.Phil. supervisor at the University of York,
guided me safely through the process of writing the initial thesis
x Preface
on which the present work is based, and her insights and personal
example have profoundly influenced both my own philosophical
methodology and my views about the relationship between scepti-
cism and twentieth-century analytic philosophy. Anita Avramides
was my acting D.Phil. supervisor at Oxford for the academic year
199213, and in the course of that year she not only assisted me
with my work on Hume but also provided me with detailed and
exceptionally helpful written comments on a first draft of the ma-
terial that now constitutes Chapter 2. Furthermore John Kenyon,
my principal D.Phil. supervisor, has been a stimulating source of
information and ideas about eighteenth-century empiricism and
Humean scepticism, and has provided generous support for my ef-
forts to juggle the competing demands of preparing a D.Phil. thesis,
college teaching, and completing this book.
My awareness of what can be achieved by philological analysis of
the paraphrases of the views of Pyrrho and Aenesidemus preserved
by later authors owes a great deal to conversations I was fortunate
enough to have with Maria Chiesara Bertola. Lengthy and highly
entertaining discussions with Katherine Morris about appropriate
ways of studying and writing about past philosophers have played
an important role in shaping the form of my attempt to use a histor-
ically grounded study of Sextus to improve our understanding of
issues that still preoccupy present-day philosophers. And Cather-
ine Canary's friendship and epistemological expertise have made
the study of modern epistemological theories far more enjoyable
than it might otherwise have been.
Susan James' encouragement and generosity with her time were
responsible for giving me the confidence to approach publish-
ers with a proposal for a book on Pyrrhonean scepticism; and I
must particularly thank Edward Craig for his positive comments
about my M.Phil. thesis and his kindness in facilitating my ini-
tial contacts with Oxford University Press. Three readers em-
ployed by the Press supplied extensive feedback concerning the
strengths and weaknesses of two preliminary drafts of this book,
and the present version incorporates many of the changes they
suggested.
Finally, I wish to thank the following people for supplement-
ing the efforts of everyone mentioned above with additional philo-
sophical conversations, encouragement, and practical advice: Mark
Rowe, John Robinson, Douglas Odegard, Susan-Judith Hoffmann,
 Preface Xl

Bridget Clarke, Ross Singleton, Mark Addis, Adrian Moore, Car-

olyn Price, Galen Strawson, Helen Steward, and Martha Klein.
A.B.
June200I
 Acknowledgements

THE author thanks the following for kindly agreeing to the reprint-
ing of published material: Blackwell Publishers and the editors of
The Philosophical Quarterly for permission to use material that first
appeared as 'Pyrrhonean Scepticism and the Self-Refutation Ar-
gument' © The Philosophical Quarterly, 40 (Jan. 1990),27-44; the
publishers and the Loeb Classical Library for permission to use
material from Sextus Empiricus, trans. R. G. Bury (4 vols.; Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1933-49).
 Contents

Principal Texts XVi

I. Introduction: Scepticism and Rationally Justified

Belief
I. The sceptic's target
2. Global scepticism about rational justification 9
3. Pyrrhonism and global scepticism 15

2. Pyrrho's Connection with Pyrrhonean Scepticism 21

I. The origins of Pyrrho's philosophical views 21
2. Pyrrho's epistemological nihilism 25
3. The fiction of an unbroken Pyrrhonean succession 30

3. Arcesilaus and Suspension of Judgement 38

I. Socratic dialectic and Arcesilaus' suspension of
judgement 38
2. A non-normative account of Arcesilaus' suspension of
judgement 44
3· An ongoing problem 54

4. The New Academy and the Origins of Aenesidemean

Pyrrhonism 56
I. Sextus and Aenesidemus 56
2. Carneades and the New Academy 58
3. Carneades, plausibility, and assent 60
4. The New Academy after Carneades 69

5. Pyrrhonism from Aenesidemus to Sextus Empiricus 72

I. Aenesidemus of Cnossus 72
2. Pyrrhonism after Aenesidemus 80
3. Pyrrhonism and the art of medicine 86
4. Sextus Empiricus: his life and writings 99
XIV Contents
6. An Outline of Sextus' Pyrrhonism I 19
I. Ends and means I 19
2. The limits of bTOX~ 122
3. The arguments 126
4. Pyrrhonism and non-demonstrative reasoning 135
5. Disingenuous ad hominem arguments 137
6. Catachresis and statements about the way things are 142
7· Conclusions 145

7. A Life without Beliefs? 147

I. An alleged distinction between belief and assent to
appearances 147
2. Four kinds of appearance-statement 149
3. Bypassing belief without bypassing truth? 153
4. Sextus and the truth-valueless thesis 157
5. The implications of Sextus' use of appearance-
statements 165

8. Pyrrhonism and Common Sense 175

I. An un likely champion of ordinary life 175
2. Some initial objections 181
3. Pyrrhonism's rejection of our everyday beliefs 194
(a) The prevalence of the objection that the Pyrrhonist
cannot live his scepticism 194
(b) The interplay between philosophical doctrines
and everyday beliefs 196
(c) The equipollence of philosophical arguments and
arguments drawn from common sense 200
(d) Aenesidemus' ten tropes 208
(e) The goal of Pyrrhonism 210

9. Is the Pyrrhonist a Proto-Phenomenalist? 214

I. Justified beliefs about appearances 214
2. The supporting evidence 218
3. Does the Pyrrhonist succeed in eschewing all beliefs
about matters of objective fact? 221
4. Sextus' rejection of induction 234
5. Agrippa's tropes and our knowledge of our current
impressions 247
 Contents xv
10. Arguments and Reasons 256
I. Some preliminary remarks 256
2. The impact of the Pyrrhonist's epistemological
arguments 257
3. The Pyrrhonist's relationship to his own arguments 264

I I. Pyrrhonism and Constrained Belief 267

I. Arguments that prove too much 267
2. Obligation and constraint 270
3. The Pyrrhonist's endorsement of the commemorative
sign 276
4. Impressions and hidden beliefs about matters of
objective fact 279
5. Practical Pyrrhonism 284

Select Bibliography 291

Index 297
 Principal Texts

All references to the writings of Sextus Empiricus are to R. G. Bury's Loeb

edition of the Greek text (4 vols.; Cambridge, Mass., 1933-49). PH refers
to the Outlines of Pyrrhonism, and M. refers to Adversus mathematicos, the
latter embracing both Against the Professors and Against the Dogmatists.
References are to book and section.
Translations are either my own (marked 'own trans.') or taken from the
facing English translation prepared by Bury to accompany his edition of
the Greek text.
Word and name indices to Sextus Empiricus are available in the Teubner
edition of his works. See Sexti Empirici Opera, iii. Adversus mathematicos,
ed. J Mau (Indices, K. Janacek) (Leipzig, 1954).
All references to the writings of Diogenes Laertius (0. L.) are to the
Loeb edition of the Greek text prepared by R. D. Hicks (2 vols.; Cam-
bridge, Mass., 1925). References are to book and section. Unless otherwise
indicated, all translations are taken from the facing English translation
provided by Hicks.
 I

Introduction: Scepticism and

Rationally Justified Belief
I. The sceptic's target

PH I LOSOPHERS have often attempted to analyse the concept of

knowledge in the following manner: A knows that p, where A is
the name of a person and p is a sentence, if, and only if, A believes
that p, it is true that p, and A's belief is strongly justified. In 1963,
however, the advocates of this account were thrown into confusion
by the publication of Edmund Gettier's paper 'Is Justified True
Belief Knowledge?"
Gettier's paper centred around two alleged counter-examples to
the standard analysis. In Gettier's view the conditions set out by
that analysis were not sufficient to ensure that a belief fulfilling
those conditions constitutes a piece of knowledge.
The first counter-example discussed by Gettier concerns a man,
Smith, who has what we would normally take to be a very good
reason to believe that another candidate on the final shortlist, Jones,
will secure a particular job. However Smith also knows that Jones
has ten coins in his pocket, so Smith goes on to form the justified
belief that the job in question will be given to a man with ten coins
in his pocket. Moreover this latter belief turns out to be true, but
it is true only because the job actually goes to Smith, who also
happens to have ten coins in his pocket. Thus Gettier concludes
that we have here a true, strongly justified belief that is clearly not
an instance of knowledge: it is a pure accident that the job at issue
does eventually go to a man with ten coins in his pocket.
Gettier's second counter-example, in contrast, involves a person
S who decides to weaken his belief that p to the belief that p or

, Edmund Gettier, 'Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?', AtUliysis, 23 (1963),

121-3·
2 Chapter I

q. S has good reason to believe that p, and it follows that he also

has good reason to believe that p or q. Moreover it so happens that
this weakened belief is indeed true. Nevertheless, it is true only
because the arbitrarily selected disjunct q is true. Thus Gettier
concludes that he has again succeeded in describing a situation
where a justified true belief does not amount to knowledge.
Somewhat surprisingly, Gettier's brief and seemingly insubstan-
tial paper initiated a storm of controversy. Although his counter-
examples appear to be strained and extremely artificial, it proved
to be impossible to arrive at any consensus about how to respond
to them. Initially defenders of the standard analysis of knowledge
responded by alleging that Gettier's supposed counter-examples
were defective in some way or other. However each attempt at dia-
gnosing this alleged deficiency simply led to the appearance of an-
other group of papers containing modified counter-examples that
succeeded in circumventing the proposed diagnosis. Thus many
philosophers eventually became convinced that this unending tor-
rent of counter-examples indicated that the standard analysis of
knowledge was fundamentally and irrevocably mistaken.
Unfortunately no one could agree on what was to replace the
standard analysis. In their introduction to a collection of papers
inspired by the Gettier controversy, Pappas and Swain distinguish
three main ways of tackling the problem: the conclusive reasons
approach, the causal approach, and the defeasibility approach! All
three approaches had some vigorous supporters but even more cri-
tics. Moreover the chaos resulting from the attacks launched by the
supporters of these competing views was increased by the general
enthusiasm for investigating epistemological concepts by scruti-
nizing our linguistic intuitions about puzzle cases. Gettier's use of
this technique had apparently led to results of great philosophical
importance. Consequently a considerable number of people seized
the opportunity to enhance their output of published material by
contributing papers exploring our linguistic intuitions about such
matters as the relationship of knowledge and belief, or the need
for knowledge to imply certitude and freedom from doubt. By this
time, then, virtually every single aspect of the former orthodoxy
about the analysis of knowledge was the object of intense and ex-
cited discussion.
2 George Pappas and Marshall Swain (eds.), Essays on Knowledge andJustification
(Ithaca, NY, 1978), 18-30.
 Introduction: Scepticism and Rationally Justified Belief 3
Indeed this new-found spirit of adventure and enterprise was so
liberating that some epistemologists began to toy with the idea that
there might be something to be said on behalf of epistemological
scepticism. I t had become painfully clear that the main obstacle
to the formulation of a satisfactory replacement for the standard
analysis of knowledge was the way in which any analysis that was
stringent enough to exclude all those beliefs that seemed plainly
to fall short of knowledge invariably turned out to exclude a great
many beliefs that we are accustomed to think of as instances of
knowledge. However epistemological sceptics had always insisted
that much of what passes for knowledge is not genuine knowledge.
Thus the idea began to spread that the correct response to the
prevailing situation was to conclude that these sceptics had been
right to maintain that we know much less than we unrefl.ectively
think we do.
Nor, in fact, was it all that long before papers presenting 'scepti-
cism' in a favourable light began to appear in the journals. J How-
ever there was no recognition that the denial of our usual knowledge
claims is only an incidental aspect of any genuine scepticism. Con-
sequently the leading figures in this supposed revival of scepticism
were responsible for peddling an understanding of scepticism that
wholly failed to do justice to the richness of the intellectual tradition
that had gone by the name of scepticism in previous eras.
We find, for example, that Peter Unger begins his paper 'A De-
fense of Skepticism' with the words 'The skepticism that I will
defend is a negative thesis concerning what we know. I will happily
accept the fact that there is much that many of us correctly and rea-
sonably believe, but much more than that is needed for us to know
even a fair amount.'4 Now these remarks are in themselves sufficient
to reveal that Unger has lost contact with the tradition he is pur-
porting to defend. For if we examine the stance adopted by promi-
nent sceptics like Arcesilaus, Sextus Empiricus, Montaigne, and
Hume, we discover that their criticisms cover not only our know-
ledge claims but also our claims about the rationality of our beliefs.
However our sense of unease at Unger's apparent emasculation of
3 See amongst others, William Rozeboom, 'Why I Know So Much More Than

You Do', American Philosophical Quarterly, 4 (1967), 257-68; Brian Skyrrns, 'The
Explication of "X knows that p .... Journal of Philosophy, 64 (1967). 373-89; Peter
Unger. 'A Defense of Skepticism', The Philosophical Review, 80 (1971). 198-218; and
Keith Lehrer. 'Why Not Scepticism?'. The Philosophical Forum. 2 (1971). 283-<}8.
• Unger, 'A Defense of Skepticism', 198.
4 Chapter I
scepticism becomes even more acute when we realize that his own
criticisms of our knowledge claims are based on the supposition
that a person A cannot know that p unless A believes that p with
absolute confidence. But that line of thought has nothing to do
with scepticism as it has been generally understood for thousands
of years. No historical sceptic would have been prepared to concede
that if we were more confident in our beliefs, then we would know a
great many things about the world and ourselves. On the contrary,
the essence of the sceptic's complaint is that our confidence in the
truth of our beliefs already outstrips the rational warrant possessed
by these beliefs. Unger has become so obsessed with achieving a
particular form of conclusion that he has failed to pay any attention
to the question of the potential significance of such a conclusion.
Keith Lehrer explicitly shares Unger's view that the defining
mark of a sceptic is that he is someone who believes that most of
our unreflective knowledge claims are false. Although Lehrer does
manage to avoid the absurdity of presenting scepticism as a thesis
about the degree of conviction with which we hold our beliefs, he
is adamant that scepticism is primarily a thesis about our inability
to know where the truth lies in various important areas of inquiry.
This view comes over particularly forcibly in the following remarks
from Lehrer's paper 'Why Not Scepticism?':
The form of scepticism I wish to avow is more radical than traditional
sceptics have been wont to defend. Some philosophers have maintained
that we do not know anything beyond some necessary truths and some
truths about our own subjective states. But they have not denied that we
do know about those matters. I wish to seriously consider a stronger form
of scepticism, to wit, that we do not know anything. S

It is clear, therefore, that the 'scepticism' discussed in the 1960s

and the early 1970S was little more than a caricature of the scepti-
cism that had once been espoused by real people as a practicable
way of life. There was no awareness of the fact that all genuine
sceptics, from Pyrrho to Hume, have taken their target to be our
claims to have rationally justified beliefs rather than our claims to
have knowledge of particular matters. 6 Nor, indeed, was there any

SLehrer, 'Why Not Scepticism?', 283.

6This claim may, perhaps, be disputed on the grounds that the philosophers of the
late Academy were commonly referrred to as sceptics (OK€1M"KO" even though they
held that it was possible to reach beliefs that had some degree of rational justification.
However it is plain that these philosophers did not describe themselves as OK€",TtKO'
 Introduction: Scepticism and Rationally Justified Belief 5
thought that scepticism might have practical implications. Lehrer,
for instance, is careful to reassure his readers that 'the sceptic is not
prevented by his agnoiology from believing most of the same things
that we believe; . . . all his position debars him from is believing
in such things as would entail that we have knowledge.'7 Thus the
supposition that the sceptic's scepticism might commit him to a
way of life radically unlike anything practised by the ordinary man
would have struck people like Lehrer and Unger as absurd.
Even more seriously, however, the new 'scepticism' was both an
ahistorical phantasm and a doctrine of astonishing triviality. The
simple fact of the matter is that the quest for absolute certainty
occupies a very low place on our usual scale of priorities, yet the only
plausible criticism being levelled against our ordinary knowledge
claims was that none of our beliefs was completely free from the risk
of being mistaken. Consequently the thesis that we did not have any
knowledge in this excessively demanding sense of the word totally
failed to engage with any of our important concerns and aspirations.
Let us suppose, by way of illustration, that we happen to be
of the opinion that it is absolutely certain that there are genuine
instances of reincarnation. If someone were to convince us that
there is no reason whatsoever to believe that reincarnation ever
takes place, then that would be a development of great importance
for the way in which we think about the universe and conduct
our lives. In contrast, if someone were to convince us that it is not
absolutely certain but merely extremely probable that reincarnation
occurs, then the significance of this change would be negligible.
Once the perceived probability of a particular state of affairs reaches
a suitably high level, we cease to pay any further attention to the
possibility that this state of affairs does not obtain: all our actions
are unhesitatingly based on the firm belief that this supposed state
of affairs is the actual state of affairs. Thus the revelation that it
is 'only' extremely probable that reincarnation occurs would not
have any effect on our actions. But nor would we be intellectually
in that sense of the word in which it picks out a particular type of philosopher (see G.
Striker, 'Sceptical Strategies', in M. Schofield, M. Burnyeat, and J Barnes (eds.),
Doubt and DogrtUltism: Studies in Hellenistic Epistemology (Oxford, 1980), 54-83 at
54 n. I, for a presentation of the evidence that at the time of Aenesidemus, who
was a contemporary of Philo of Larissa and Antiochus of Ascalon, aK'1TnK6~ meant
nothing more than 'an inquirer'); and Sextus Empiricus vigorously denies that the
later Academics could properly be classed as sceptics. .
7 Lehrer, 'Why Not Scepticism?', z84.
6 Chapter I

discomforted by this revelation. In fact, we would presumably be

highly gratified that our belief in reincarnation is not vulnerable
to any more serious objection. We care deeply about not being
exposed as irrational, but very few of us have any strong, personal
commitment to the notion that we are or could be infallible.
Moreover a belief in reincarnation is clearly a belief of great in-
trinsic importance, and it is plausible to suppose that the potential
significance of the discovery that a particular belief is probably true
rather than certainly true varies in accordance with the intrinsic
importance of the belief concerned. Thus we can conclude that if
so important a belief as a belief in reincarnation can be downgraded
in this way without the change being of any major significance, then
the discovery that the truth of a particular belief is overwhelmingly
probable rather than certain will invariably be a wholly trivial dis-
covery. Furthermore it seems plain that if no specific discovery that
a belief is merely very probably true rather than certainly true can
be important, then the thesis that it is impossible for any belief to
be certainly true will not be important either. Yet that thesis is none
other than the no-knowledge thesis put forward in the 1960s and
197°s.
The mountebank character of this alleged revival of scepticism
also manifests itself in the initiating cause of the upsurge of interest
in the doctrine that little or nothing can be known. As we have al-
ready pointed out, interest in this doctrine was first aroused by the
fact that the attempt to formulate an analysis of knowledge capable
of accommodating the cases discussed by Gettier was spectacularly
unsuccessful. If the proposed necessary and sufficient conditions
were weak enough to let through our ordinary knowledge claims,
then they also let through some beliefs that no one wished to clas-
sify as instances of knowledge. But if the proposed conditions were
strong enough to ensure that all the beliefs meeting those condi-
tions could plausibly be passed off as instances of knowledge, then
they invariably categorized virtually all of our ordinary knowledge
claims as mistaken. Consequently some epistemologists decided to
resolve this dilemma by accepting the conclusion that our unreflec-
tive knowledge claims are usually mistaken. By taking this step, the
epistemologists in question hoped to evade the obligation to keep
their conditions for knowledge sufficiently weak to accommodate
our ordinary knowledge claims, and hence free themselves to con-
centrate exclusively on ensuring that the conditions for knowledge
 Introduction: Scepticism and Rationally Justified Belief 7
were set at a standard high enough to keep out every single belief
that appeared not to be an instance of knowledge.
Michael Williams, however, has persuasively argued that there is
no need for us to suppose that our linguistic intuitions about what
is to count as an instance of knowledge are capable of being codified
into a set of necessary and sufficient conditions. 8 As Williams re-
minds us, we cannot specify the necessary and sufficient conditions
for something to be a game; yet this incapacity does not appear to
strike anyone as particularly threatening or perplexing. So if one
does become disillusioned with the quest for the necessary and suf-
ficient conditions for a belief to be an instance of knowledge, then
one can legitimately abandon that quest as misdirected and un-
necessary. And this, in turn, means that any difficulties that might
be generated by the attempt to specify necessary and sufficient
conditions for knowledge that allow us to see the majority of our
ordinary knowledge claims as correct are not of themselves capable
of giving us any substantial grounds for concluding that we are
radically mistaken about the extent of our knowledge of the world.
I t is, of course, important to bear in mind that the truism that
the meaning of a word is a product of the way we choose to use that
word does not have the consequence that the word 'knowledge' has
to be interpreted as having a meaning that ensures that a majority
of the purportedly referential statements made by using that word
are true statements. The word 'witch', for example, has undeni-
ably been applied to many people with the intention of making a
true statement. Nevertheless it seems plausible to suppose that all
statements of the form 'x is a witch' have, in fact, been false. In this
case the falsity of such statements arises from the gap between the
evidence that tended to prompt the claim that some particular per-
son was a witch and the state of affairs that needs to exist in order
for someone to be a real witch. When a competent user of English
describes a person as a witch, he intends that this statement should
be taken as literally false unless the person concerned possesses
supernatural powers conferred by the Devil or some pagan nature
deity. However many people have combined this understanding of
the word 'witch' with the belief that certain aspects of a person's
appearance or public manner guarantee the possession of such su-
pernatural powers. And as the world happens to be such that these
supposed marks of a witch are never accompanied by the powers
8 Michael Williams, Groundless Belief (Oxford. 1977). 10.
8 Chapter I

they are thought to signify, people relying on these cues have been
led to make many false assertions about the existence of witches.
We are, however, entitled to conclude that these are false as-
sertions rather than true assertions we have failed to understand
correctly only because we are confident that a thorough probing of
the linguistic intentions underlying such people's use of the word
'witch' would have induced them to acknowledge that the meaning
of 'witch' is such that there is more to being a witch than merely
having a particular kind of appearance or manner of behaving.
Similarly, then, it is perfectly possible that most or even all claims
of the form 'x is an instance of knowledge' might be false, but we
are not in a position to conclude that they are false unless we can
specify at least one respect in which the implications of knowledge
claims go beyond anything entailed by the cues that usually prompt
these claims and also show that the world is actually such that these
implications are frequently unfulfilled even when the customary
cues for knowledge claims are present. And as there is no basis for
supposing that difficulties over specifying the necessary and suf-
ficient conditions for the truth of knowledge claims indicate that
we are in a position to do either of the two tasks just mentioned, it is
clearly inappropriate to treat such problems of analysis as warrant-
ing the wholesale repudiation of most of our ordinary knowledge
claims. A well-motivated case for assessing negatively our ordinary
knowledge claims may provide us with an opportunity to explore
analyses of the meaning of 'knowledge' that would have no plaus-
ibility if we were committed to the truth of the majority of these
claims, but there is no cogent way of directly arguing from even
a persistent failure to construct a suitable analysis under this lat-
ter constraint to the conclusion that we should reject most of our
ordinary knowledge claims as mistaken.
Thus we have seen that the price of construing scepticism as
a thesis about what we can and cannot know is that scepticism
degenerates into nothing more a series of arid quibbles over the
use of the verb 'to know'. If we are to preserve an understanding
of scepticism as posing a serious challenge to our ordinary beliefs
and way of life, then we must interpret scepticism as an attempt to
undermine our confidence in the rationality of our beliefs. Hence
we must accustom ourselves to thinking of scepticism within a
particular area of discourse as the view that no claim in that area
is rationally preferable to its contradictory. Moreover that in turn
 Introduction: Scepticism and Rationally Justified Belief 9
means that global scepticism has to be thought of as the view that
no claim is ever rationally preferable to its contradictory.

2. Global scepticism about rational justification

However if we do construe global scepticism as the view that no
claim is ever rationally preferable to its contradictory, then global
scepticism seems vulnerable to two decisive objections. First, there
is the objection that the sceptic would not be able to live with-
out abandoning his professed scepticism. And second, there is the
objection that such scepticism is dialectically self-refuting.
The argument that the sceptic cannot live his scepticism can be
traced back at least as far as Aristotle. 9 In the course of its long
history, however, several different versions have developed, and it
is now impossible to pick out one particular pattern of reasoning
as the argument that scepticism is unlivable. Thus we can form a
proper appreciation of the force of this general objection to global
scepticism only by considering each of the three main versions
separately.
In recent years, at least, the argument has often taken the form
of the contention that we cannot describe what it would be like for
a living agent to express all-encompassing sceptical doubts. This
line of thought is prominent in Wittgenstein's work On Certainty, 10
and it has been widely popularized by commentators like Norman
Malcolm" and G. H. von Wright. 12
Basically the point emphasized by this version of the argument
is that doubting that p is a highly complex phenomenon. It is not
simply a matter of feeling hesitant and uncertain when contem-
plating the claim that p. The presence of such a feeling is nei-
ther sufficient nor necessary for someone to doubt that p. What is
needed is a certain type of behaviour. If a person A doubts that
some particular expanse of ice is capable of bearing his weight,
then A characteristically manifests that doubt by keeping off the
9 See J. Annas and J. Barnes, The Modes of Scepticism (Cambridge, 1985), 11-12 .

•0 Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von

Wright (Oxford, 1969). See, in particular, sects. 24, 105, "5, 154,255,341-3,354,
492-4, and 509 .
.. Norman Malcolm, 'Moore and Wittgenstein on the sense of "I know''', in
Malcolm, Thought and Knowledge (Ithaca, NY, 1977), i70--98.
02 G. H. von Wright, 'Wittgenstein on Certainty', in id., Wittgenstein (Oxford,

1982), 165-82.
10 Chapter I

ice while testing its thickness and solidity. Of course A may have
the doubts and yet fail to manifest them in his behaviour because,
for instance, it is not very important to A whether the ice can
bear his weight or not. But these unmanifested doubts can be seen
as genuine doubts only because A would manifest the doubts in
his behaviour given appropriate circumstances. However univer-
sal doubt does not seem to have any coherent manifestation. The
taking of precautions and the use of tests and checks will neces-
sarily indicate that some beliefs are held, that some things do
stand firm and undoubted. Yet what other sort of manifestation
of doubt is possible? Thus the sceptic cannot bring into question
the truth of all our beliefs at once because it is logically incoherent
to suppose that anyone could give any expression to such supposed
doubt.
Despite its popularity, however, this version of the argument ap-
pears to misrepresent the global sceptic's real position. The global
sceptic holds merely that no claim about any topic has any rational
warrant. He does not assert that he is in the position of actively
doubting and questioning every claim that has ever come to his
attention; nor does his view that no claim at all has any rational
justification appear to commit him to that particular posture. Why
should he not find that he retains a wide variety of enduring beliefs
despite the fact that he no longer regards them as rationally justi-
fied? Until an argument is produced that gives us some grounds for
supposing that active doubt concerning p will inevitably supervene
for anyone who genuinely lacks both the belief that he is rationally
justified in believing that p and the belief that he is rationally justi-
fied in believing that not-p, the global sceptic can simply accept all
the points made above about the nature of doubt and yet still deny
that these points generate any difficulties for him.
The second version of the argument that scepticism is unlivable
also seems to share this weakness of criticizing the global sceptic
for his inability to perform a task that bears no obvious relationship
to his thesis that no claim about any topic possesses any rational
justification. In this instance, however, the global sceptic comes
under fire for failing to suspend belief on all matters.
A representative example of this version occurs in Jean Pierre de
Crousaz's A New Treatise of the Art of Thinking. IJ Crousaz begins
'J Jean Pierre de Crousaz, A New Treatise of the Art of Thinking (London, 1724),
pt. 2, pp. I 19-22.
 Introduction: Scepticism and Rationally Justified Belief I I

promisingly by accurately identifying a type of sceptic who clearly

qualifies as a global sceptic about rational justification:
but the Pyrrhonians would not own one Proposition to be more probable
than another, Indeed how could they say, that a Proposition is probable,
and comes near the Truth, when they maintained, that the Mind of Man
has no Idea of Truth, and does not know the Character of it. But, on the
other hand, how durst they say, that One and One make Two, is not yet
more probable than the most uncertain thing in the World?'·

However Crousaz then proceeds to accuse these sceptics of falsely

purporting to suspend belief on all topics when they actually have
numerous beliefs which they are not prepared to publicize:
That there are Persons, who entirely doubt of every thing, and durst not
persuade themselves that they think and exist, is what one could not imag-
ine, without supposing their brains to be out of Order. Most of the Pyrrho-
nians believe many things, for they cannot perfectly stifle Nature, or forget
absolutely all that they really are themselves. Therefore they feel them-
selves, and are not only sensible that they are something, but believe they
have a Commerce with others, and yield to a Variety of Truths. This hap-
pens daily to them, when unguarded. But when a Man asks them, or they
reflect on the Law they have set to themselves of Thinking quite differently
from others, they will own nothing: they run to Evasions, and Perplexities,
to embarrass others and themselves at the same time. 'S

Now the argument in this case does not allege that we cannot
describe what it would be like for a person to suspend belief on all
matters. Such an allegation would, in fact, be highly implausible,
for an appropriate expression of that stance comes to mind fairly
readily: the sceptic simply settles into a state of log-like apathy
and desists from all action until the necessities of life put an end
to his existence.· 6 Instead the pOint being seized on here is that
people who describe themselves as global sceptics invariably fail
to refrain from all action despite their professed scepticism. Far
from falling into a catatonic trance, these sceptics write books, play
backgammon, and host dinner parties. Yet we normally assume
that the best way of determining what someone really believes is to
examine his actions rather than his words. So Crousaz concludes
that as the global sceptic clearly acts as though he has beliefs, we
'. Ibid. 119-20.
'S Ibid. 120.

,6 See David Hume, An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, ed. L. A.

Selby-Bigge, 3rd edn., rev. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford, 1975), 160.

12 Chapter I

should not allow ourselves to be impressed by his claims to have

suspended belief on all matters. Rather we should conclude that
those claims arc false.
Nor, indeed, does this argument have to remain at the level of folk
psychology. In recent years a considerable number of influential
philosophers have found it plausible to suppose that there is an
internal connection between voluntary action and belief such that
it is impossible to provide an account of a person performing some
voluntary action without simultaneously providing grounds for the
ascription of some belief or other." In their view, then, it is not
a question of a person's actions happening to provide the most
reliable clues to his beliefs. Instead the concept of belief and the
concept of voluntary action are related to one another in such a way
that it is necessarily true that an agent's voluntary actions provide
us with good reason to hold that he has various specifiable beliefs.
Consequently every voluntary action the global sceptic performs
will demonstrate his inability to suspend belief. .8
Thus it seems plain that the inference from the premiss that the
global sceptic engages in voluntary action to the conclusion that he
has beliefs is a very attractive one. Moreover no sceptic takes his
sceptical principles to the extreme of refraining from all voluntary
action. Consequently it appears that there is an impressive case for

'7 See, in particular, P. F. Strawson, Individuals (London, 1959); Norman Mal-

colm, 'Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations' , in id., Knowledge and Certainty
(Ithaca, NY, 1964), 96-129; and Stuart Hampshire, Thought and Action (London,
1959)·
.8 In this context the distinction between a voluntary action and an action that is
not voluntary has nothing to do with the distinction between a coerced action and
an action that is performed willingly. If it is true that someone has been coerced
into perfonning a particular action, this fact does not have the slightest tendency to
undennine the supposition that his beliefs constitute an essential part of the expla-
nation for his action. Instead, it implies that at least one of the beliefs responsible
for his action is a belief about the retribution that might be infticted upon him if he
acted otherwise. Thus the need to restrict ourselves to the claim that it is voluntary
action rather than action tout court that establishes that the agent has bel iefs arises
from the existence of situations that seem to be appropriately described in terms
of someone acting rather than being acted upon but are nevertheless not situations
where the person involved has full conscious control over his actions. We are all
familiar, for example, with reftex actions that occur before we are fully aware of the
nature of the stimulus that has prompted them. Moreover many of us have nervous
mannerisms that consist of actions we habitually perfonn at times of stress or bore-
dom without realizing that we are behaving in that way. And it seems undeniable
that in the case of these automatic and unthinking actions the contention that they
must be manifestations of the agent's beliefs is much less compelling than it is in
the case of voluntary actions.
 Introduction: Scepticism and Rationally Justified Belief 13
inferring that even the global sceptic has some beliefs, and hence
does not suspend belief on all matters. Nevertheless we still lack
any grounds for supposing that the global sceptic needs to be able
to suspend belief on all matters. Crousaz, of course, implies that
the Pyrrhonian sceptics of his time explicitly claimed to eschew all
belief. It follows, therefore, that if the argument set out above is
successful, then no more needs to be done to refute those particular
sceptics. However there is no reason to suppose that all global
sceptics will be naIve enough to make so rash a claim. And nothing
that has been adduced so far has any tendency to show that all global
sceptics are nevertheless implicitly committed to suspending belief
on all matters. Hence we are forced to conclude that no quick-
witted sceptic has anything to fear from this second version of the
argument that scepticism is unlivable.
However the third version of the argument that scepticism is un-
livable seems to remedy the deficiencies we have found in the two
other versions. In this instance the argument that the global scep-
tic's actions reveal that he possesses beliefs is carefully reinforced
by an argument purporting to show that the global sceptic ought to
suspend belief on all matters. Thus we arrive at a normative version
of the argument that the sceptic cannot live his scepticism.
The global sceptic, as we have made clear, holds that no claim
about any topic is rationally preferable to its contradictory. But
it seems obvious to most people that a person who holds on to a
belief while conceding that he is unable to justify it is acting less
rationally than he would if he were to abandon that belief. And if
we accept that principle, then it follows that anyone who accepts
that he cannot justify the belief that p has a clear obligation to
eschew that belief. However the global sceptic actually glories in
the admission that he cannot think of even one claim which he is
capable of justifying. It follows that the global sceptic seems to have
a clear obligation to refrain from holding any beliefs at all.
Moreover once we have established that the global sceptic ought
to suspend belief on all matters, we can deploy the argument that
voluntary actions imply the presence of beliefs to establish that
the global sceptic invariably fails to meet this obligation. And it is
important to bear in mind here that making a meaningful statement
is just as much an action as punching someone. Consequently it
appears that a consistent global sceptic would be unable even to
announce his scepticism, let alone offer any arguments on its behalf.
14 Chapter I

We can conclude, therefore, that this version of the argument

that scepticism is unlivable is sufficient in itself to cast grave doubt
on the legitimacy of global scepticism about rational justification.
However the objection that scepticism is unlivable is tradition-
ally paired with the further objection that scepticism is dialec-
tically self-refuting. So we have not yet seen the full strength
of the case that can be assembled in support of the contention
that global scepticism is not even a notionally coherent intellectual
stance.
The argument that allegedly shows that global scepticism about
rational justification is dialectically self-refuting takes the form of
a dilemma. The global sceptic about rational justification is plainly
engaged in attacking our customary view that some beliefs and
actions can be rationally justified. Let us suppose, then, that this
attack is launched by way of overtly non-rational considerations.
These would rightly be dismissed by everyone concerned to live
a rational life. But the attempt to offer reasons would seem to be
completely self-defeating. If these putative reasons are indeed good
reasons, then they will merely provide an illustration of the thesis
that some beliefs can be justified rationally. Whereas if they are
not good reasons, then they will be dismissed in the same way as
the overtly non-rational considerations already discussed. Thus it
seems clear that the argumentation employed by the global sceptic
must be wholly incapable of providing any genuine support for his
scepticism.
Now this argument undoubtedly constitutes a formidable criti-
cism of global scepticism about rational justification. Moreover its
elegance and simplicity have long made it a favourite weapon of
philosophers opposed to scepticism. Sextus Empiricus discusses
the self-refutation argument on several occasions (see PH 2. 130-
3; 3· 19; M. 7. 440-4; 8.278-9; 9. 204-6); so it is obvious that the
argument featured prominently in the anti-sceptical polemics of his
period. Similarly, the revival of Pyrrhonean and Academic scepti-
cism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries led to a revival of
interest in the self-refutation argument. Hume offers some obser-
vations on the argument in book 1 of A Treatise of Human Nature;'9
and Pierre-Daniel Huet's Pyrrhonean handbook Of The Weakness
of Human Understanding places the argument on a list of seven
'9 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, 2nd edn.,

rev. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford, 1978), 186-7.

 Introduction: Scepticism and Rationally Justified Belief 15
misguided objections to scepticism!O Indeed, the self-refutation
argument is still immensely popular today:21 no other argument
against global scepticism seems to have the same air of brutal final-
ity. Ironically, however, its prominence as a freestanding argument
has actually tended to obscure one of its most impressive features.
Although the self-refutation argument is a powerful argument in
its own right, it also combines in a felicitous way with the argument
that global scepticism is unlivable.
If we assume that a particular sceptic correctly takes himself to
have a stock of rationally justified beliefs, then he is obviously free
to act on those beliefs and free to use them as the premisses of ra-
tionally compelling arguments. However to make that assumption
is simply to assume that global scepticism about rational justifica-
tion is false, and that the sceptic in question accepts that it is false.
I t follows that if we are to make room for global scepticism about
rational justification to be true and for the sceptic to think that it
is true, then we shall need to assume that our hypothetical sceptic
correctly takes himself to lack any rationally justified beliefs. Un-
fortunately it appears that this is to assume both that his arguments
in favour of his scepticism are worthless and that his actions are
motivated by beliefs he ought to have abandoned. Consequently
it seems that the self-refutation argument and the argument that
scepticism is unlivable combine to make it absolutely clear that any
coherent scepticism about rational justification will have to admit
that it is possible to have rationally justified beliefs about some
topics.

3. Pyrrhonism and global scepticism

Up to this point, then, our discussion has been of little comfort
to anyone who takes a sympathetic view of global scepticism. We
have argued that the only interesting form of scepticism is a scep-
ticism that denies our claims to have rationally justified beliefs.
'0 Pierre-Daniel Huet, Of the Weakness of Human Understanding (London, 1725),
184-5.
" See e.g. Anthony Quinton, The Nature of Things (London, 1973), 150-3; John
Passmore, Philosophical Reasoning, 2nd edn. (London, 1970), 72-4; Hugo Meynell,
'Scepticism Reconsidered', Philosophy, 59 (1984), 431-42; and John Crosby, 'Refu-
tation of Skepticism and General Relativism', in Dietrich von Hildebrand (ed.),
Rehabilitierung der Philosophie (Regensburg, 1974), 103-23.
16 Chapter I

Hence it follows that the only interesting form of global scepticism

is one that maintains that none of our beliefs is ever rationally jus-
tified. Yet in the preceding section we saw that there seemed to
be overwhelming grounds for concluding that so extreme a view
is not intellectually coherent. Thus it appears that we are forced
to accept that any form of scepticism that is seriously concerned
to question our entire practice of assessing some beliefs and ac-
tions as rationally preferable to others must ultimately be unintel-
ligible.
Nevertheless, such a conclusion would be too hasty. In the course
of the following chapters we shall be examining a form of scepti-
cism-namely, the Pyrrhonean scepticism expounded by Sextus
Empiricus-that seems to offer some answers to the objections
canvassed above.
Many people, however, would deny that Pyrrhonean scepticism
even purports to be a form of global scepticism about rationally
justified belief. Consequently our discussion will have two main
objectives. We are, of course, particularly interested in the ques-
tion of whether Pyrrhonean scepticism has the internal resources
to rebut the objections that global scepticism about rational justifi-
cation is unlivable and dialectically self-defeating. But we are also
concerned to show that any less radical interpretation of Sextus'
Pyrrhonism fails to yield a coherent account of Sextus' philosophic
position. In short, we shall be striving to show both that global
scepticism about rational justification is intellectually coherent and
that the Pyrrhonism described by Sextus is an example of this form
of scepticism.
Furthermore it is, in fact, highly appropriate that we should turn
to Sextus' Pyrrhonism as a reminder of scepticism's real potential.
For the Greek Pyrrhonists were the first people to call themselves
sceptics in the modern sense of the word.
Originally the Greek word C1KE1TTLKOS meant 'inquirer'. However
an examination of Sextus' extant writings makes it clear that he
uses the word as a synonym of 'Pyrrhonist'. Moreover this use of
C1KE1TTLKO, as the title of a specific group of philosophers must have

originated with Sextus' Pyrrhonean predecessors.

Many modern accounts of Greek scepticism imply that there were
two entirely separate varieties of this scepticism. 22 Thus people
" See C. L. Stough, Greek Skepticism (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969), 5-15;
and A. A. Long, Hellenistic Philosophy, 2nd edn. (London, 1986), 75-106.
 Introduction: Scepticism and Rationally Justified Belief 17
freely talk about Academic scepticism and Pyrrhonean scepticism
as though the members of both traditions were equally entitled
to be known as sceptics. However Academic epistemology had
lost most of its sceptical colouring by the beginning of the first
century AD,2 3 and at that time the word C1K£1TTtKOS could still be
unproblematically applied to all philosophers instead of being re-
served as a way of characterizing the stance of a particular kind
of philosopher.24 Consequently the only group of philosophers
active in the first century AD who would have had any interest
in annexing the word C1K€1TTtKOS to describe themselves were the
Pyrrhonists. It follows that it is not totally implausible to claim
that the authenticity of any putatively sceptical system depends
on the closeness with which it approximates to Pyrrhonean scepti-
CIsm.
Moreover there is a genuine historical link between Sextus' ac-
count of Pyrrhonism and the familiar sceptical arguments that can
be found in Descartes and Hume. Sextus himself appears to have
been active at the end of the second century AD or the beginning of
the third centurY,2 5 and there is little evidence of the Pyrrhonean
movement retaining any vitality much beyond his death!6 How-
ever manuscripts of many of Sextus' principal works continued to
exist in Byzantium until the fall of Constantinople, and in AD 1427
Francesco Filelfo brought some of them back to ltaly!7 These
manuscripts were then exploited as a useful aid to scholars con-
cerned with historical and philological questions, and new copies
and Latin translations began to appear in response to this slowly
growing interest in Sextus' writings.
The breakthrough, however, occurred in 1562, when Henri Esti-
enne published the first printed translation of the Outlines of
2, See P. Couissin, 'The Stoicism of the New Academy', in M. Bumyeat (ed.),
The Skeptical Tradition (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983),31-63; and H. Tarrant,
Scepticism or Platonism? (Cambridge, 1985), 2-6.
2; See Striker, 'Sceptical Strategies', 34 n. I; and D. Sedley, 'The Motivation of
Greek Scepticism', in Burnyeat (ed.), The Skeptical Tradition, 9-29 at 20.
25 See ch. 5, sect. 4.
,6 Annas and Barnes, The Modes of Scepticism, 18, represents an attempt to argue
that there may have been a resurgence of interest in Pyrrhonean scepticism in the
4th cent. AD. However their evidence for this contention is so limited that it seems
clear that Pyrrhonism had, by that time, long ceased to be a living philosophical
movement.
'7 This date, and the other information about the rediscovery and dissemina-
tion of Sextus' writings, comes from C. B. Schmitt, 'The Rediscovery of Ancient
Skepticism in Modern Times', in Burnyeat (ed.), The Skeptical Tradition, 225-5 I.
18 Chapter I

Pyrrhonism.'s This was followed in 1569 by Gentian Hervet's

translation of Adversus mathematicos. 29 By the fourth quarter of
the sixteenth century, therefore, Sextus' writings were once again
available to anyone who cared to read them. And it was not long
before Pyrrhonean scepticism began to reassert itself as a force in
the intellectual controversies of the era.
A full account of this development can be found in Richard H.
Popkin's authoritative study The History of Scepticism from Eras-
mus to Spinoza. 3o Thus it is only necessary to point out here that
Popkin conclusively shows that Pyrrhonean scepticism was enthu-
siastically pressed into service as part of the Catholic Church's
response to the arguments of the Protestant reformers. The re-
formers were seen as trying to settle religious questions by means
of the natural power of human reasoning. However Pyrrhonean ar-
guments could apparently be used to show that human reasoning
is incapable of establishing any belief whatsoever as true or likely
to be true. Consequently various Catholic theologians maintained
that the procedure of the reformers was patently unjustifiable. In-
stead of rashly placing their confidence in man's feeble cognitive
powers, everyone ought to rest content with humbly following the
practices and doctrines of the established Church.
As one might expect, however, there were many people, even on
the Catholic side of the controversy, who were bitterly opposed to
this odd synthesis of Pyrrhonean scepticism and Christian fideism.
One of these people was Rene Descartes. Indeed, his method of in-
quiry in the Meditations 3 ' was specifically constructed to overcome
the doubts raised by these 'nouveaux Pyrrhoniens'. Thus Frans
Burman reported that Descartes explained his introduction of the
deceiving demon as follows:
The author is here making us as doubtful as he can and casting us into
as many doubts as possible. This is why he raises not only the customary

28 Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhoniarum Hypotypwsewn libri III . . . Latine Nunc

Primum Editi Interprete Henrico Stepha no (Paris, 1562).
'9 Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos ... Graece Nunquam, Latine Nunc

Primum Editum, Gentiano HenJeto Avrelio Interprete. Eivsdem Sexti Pyrrhoniarum

Hypotypwsewn Libri Tres ... Interprete Henrico Stephano (Paris, 1569).
)0 R. H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza (Berkeley and

Los Angeles, 1979).

J. Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, in The Philosophical Writings
of Descartes, trans. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff and D. Murdoch (2 vols.; Cambridge,
1984-5), ii. 3-62.
 Introduction: Scepticism and Rationally Justified Belief 19

difficulties of the Sceptics but every difficulty that can possibly be raised:
the aim is in this way to demolish completely every single doubt. And this
is the purpose behind the introduction at this point of the demon, which
some might criticize as a superfluous addition. 32

Moreover in Descartes' reply to the objections of Father Bourdin,

he stated that we must not think that 'sceptical philosophy is extinct.
It is vigorously alive today'; and he added that he was himself the
first man to succeed in overthrowing the doubts of the sceptics. 33
In contrast, Hume's reaction, a century later, was to embrace the
negative epistemological conclusions of this revived Pyrrhonism
while maintaining that it was psychologically impossible for anyone
to suspend belief on the scale envisaged by the ancient Pyrrhon-
ists. We find, for example, that Hume's Enquiry concerning Human
Understanding offers the following assessment of Pyrrhonism:
a Pyrrhonian cannot expect, that his philosophy will have any constant
influence on the mind, or that if it had, that its influence would be beneficial
to society. On the contrary, he must acknowledge, if he will acknowledge
anything, that all human life must perish, were his principles universally
and steadily to prevail. 34

Yet this apparent criticism is counterbalanced but two pages later

by the pronouncement:
To bring us to so salutary a determination, nothing can be more serviceable,
than to be once thoroughly convinced of the force of the Pyrrhonian doubt,
and of the impossibility, that anything, but the strong power of natural
instinct could free us from it.35

Hence we can see that the sceptical arguments found in Hume

represent his attempt to reinforce the negative epistemological ar-
guments originally discussed by Sextus, while the sceptical argu-
ments of Descartes' 'First Meditation' are a deliberate attempt to
take Pyrrhonean doubt further than it had ever been taken before.
In both cases, then, their awareness of Sextus' arguments, either
directly or through such philosophers as Michel de Montaigne,
Pierre Charron, and Pierre Bayle, shapes their own procedures and

,2 Frans Burman, Descartes' Conversation with Burman, ed. and trans. J. Cotting-
ham (Oxford, 1976), 4.
JJ Rene Descartes, 'Seventh Set of Objections with the Author's Replies', in The

Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. Cottingham et al., ii. 302-83 at 374-6.

34 Hume, Enquiry, ed. Selby-Bigge, 160.

J5 Ibid. 162.
20 Chapter I

methods. It follows that Pyrrhonean scepticism is not only the most

authentic form of scepticism, but it is also the form of scepticism
that lies behind, and provides a context for, the sceptical arguments
found in Descartes and Hume. Thus an examination of Sextus'
Pyrrhonism will be an examination of the original source of most
of the disjointed arguments and recommendations that pass for
scepticism today. And we can confidently expect that placing these
pieces in their correct context will add greatly to our understanding
of the true nature of the challenge posed by radical scepticism.
 2

Pyrrho's Connection with

Pyrrhonean Scepticism
I. The origins of Pyrrho's philosophical views

I N his extant writings Sextus is primarily concerned to present

himself to his readers as a sceptic. However he does acknowledge
that the philosophic tradition he follows has a variety of alterna-
tive names. In particular, Sextus tells us that the sceptic school is
referred to as the Pyrrhonean school 'from the fact that Pyrrho ap-
pears to us to have applied himself to Scepticism more thoroughly
and more conspicuously than his predecessors' (PH I. 7). And this
connection between Sextus' philosophic stance and the example
provided by Pyrrho of Elis has led to present-day commentators
talking of Sextus as a 'Pyrrhonean sceptic' .
Information about Pyrrho's life and philosophical background is
regrettably sparse. Pyrrho seems to have been born around 360 BC,
and Diogenes Laertius reports that he studied philosophy under
Bryson son of Stilpo (D.L. 9. 61). However it is generally thought
that this claim must be false as Pyrrho and Stilpo were of roughly
the same age, and Stilpo is also cited as the first philosophical
mentor of Pyrrho's subsequent disciple Timon of Phlius. It seems,
therefore, that if we are to salvage anything from Laertius' remarks,
we shall need to take 'Bryson son of Stilpo' to be a corruption of
'Bryson or Stilpo'. It is, in any case, unlikely that the connection
I

Pyrrho might have had with Bryson or Stilpo played a major role
in the development of Pyrrho's mature philosophic position. Both
Bryson and Stilpo belonged to a school of philosophers known as
the Megarian school after its founder Eucleides of Megara, an asso-
ciate of Socrates and Plato; and Timon, who was deeply committed

I This emendation is accepted by, inter alios, A. A. Long, Hellemstic Philosophy,

2nd edn. (London, 1986), 79.
22 Chapter 2

to presenting Pyrrho as living and philosophizing in an exemplary

manner, had little respect for the Megarian philosophical tradition:
'But I care not for these babblers, nor for anyone besides, not for
Phaedo whoever he may be, nor wrangling Euclides, who inspired
the Megarians with a frenzied love of controversy' (D.L. 2. 107).
In contrast, Pyrrho's association with Anaxarchus of Abdera is
likely to have exercised a considerable influence on Pyrrho's own
thought. Anaxarchus is said by Laertius to have studied under the
Democritean philosopher Diogenes of Smyrna, and Anaxarchus
subsequently became a court philosopher who accompanied Alex-
ander the Great on his conquest of Persia and invasion of India
(D.L. 9. 58). Now Laertius tells us that after Pyrrho's initial philo-
sophical apprenticeship, he joined Anaxarchus, 'whom he accompa-
nied on his travels everywhere so that he even foregathered with the
Indian Gymnosophistsand with the Magi' (D.L. 9. 61). Moreover
it is these travels that are said to have led Pyrrho to adopt
a most noble philosophy ... taking the form of agnosticism [aKamA1J.pta,]
and suspension of judgement [broxi),]. He denied that anything was hon-
ourable or dishonourable, just or unjust. And so, universally, he held that
there is nothing really existent, but custom and convention govern human
action; for no single thing is in itself any more this than that. (D.L. 9. 61)

There is no need, however, to suppose that Pyrrho's formidable

composure and indifference to externals have their origins in his as-
similation of the ideals of Indian mysticism. 2 According to Laertius,
Anaxarchus was himself called the Happy Man 'for his fortitude
and contentment in life' (D.L. 9. 60); and Laertius also includes a
probably spurious report on Anaxarchus' equanimity in the face of
an extremely painful death (see D.L. 9. 59) that is remarkably rem-
iniscent of the kind of anecdote generated by Pyrrho's own equa-
nimity. Thus it seems likely that Pyrrho's mature composure was
essentially a development of the stance espoused by Anaxarchus;
and Anaxarchus, in turn, appears to have been responding to views
originally put forward by Democritus: 'The end of action is tran-
2 It has been argued by Everard Flintoff that evidence for substantial borrowings
from the Indian tradition can be found in Pyrrho's willingness to make apparently
contradictory claims about the nature of the world and in the enthusiasm subsequent
Pyrrhonists appear to display for the Indian argument known as the quadrilemma.
See E. Flintoff, 'Pyrrho and India', Phronesis, 25 (1980),88-108. However Flintoff's
arguments seem to have been successfully rebutted by Leo Groarke in his book Greek
Scepticism: Anti-Realist Trends in Ancient Thought (Montreal and Kingston, 1990),
81-2,94-6.
 Pyrrho's Connection with Pyrrhonean Scepticism 23
quill ity, which is not identical with pleasure, as some by a false
interpretation have understood, but a state in which the soul con-
tinues calm and strong, undisturbed by any fear or superstition or
any other emotion' (D.L. 9. 45).3
Pyrrho's epistemological views also seem to have been closely
connected with both the specific epistemological position espoused
by Anaxarchus and the thoroughgoing critique of the senses found
in the mainstream Democritean tradition. If we turn first to Dem-
ocritus' assessment of the reliability of the senses, we find that he
appears to have taken the view that they can tell us scarcely anything
about the real nature of the world. Aristotle, for example, claims
that reflection on perceptual relativity persuaded Democritus to
draw the conclusion that 'either nothing is true or it is unclear to
US'.4 Furthermore Sextus reports that 'Democritus in some places

abolishes the things that appear to the senses and asserts that none
of them appears in truth but only in opinion', and cites him as say-
ing 'Now verily that we do not comprehend what the nature of each
thing is or is not has been oft-times made plain' (M. 7. 135 and 136).
Now it is quite true that Sextus augments these remarks about
Democritus by saying that 'it is only the senses that he specially
attacks' (M. 7. 137); and Sextus also draws our attention to Demo-
critus' distinction between two kinds of knowledge:
one by means of the senses, the other by means of the intelligence, and
of these he calls that by means of intelligence 'genuine', ascribing to it
trustworthiness in the judgement of truth, but that by means of the senses
he terms 'bastard', denying it inerrancy in the distinguishing of what is
true. (M. 7. 138)

Thus it seems clear that we do not have in Democritus an antici-

pation of the vie~ that there is no means whatsoever of arriving at
rationally justified beliefs about the world. Nevertheless his deep
pessimism about the reliability of the senses can plausibly be seen
as an important step towards such a conclusion, and a passage
preserved in the writings of the doctor and philosopher Galen of
1 Significantly Laertius reports (D. L. 9. 67) that Philo of Athens, 'a friend of his

[Pyrrho], used to say that he was most fond of Democritus and then of Homer'; and
Democritus, unlike most philosophers, is also treated with great respect in Timon's
collection of philosophical lampoons, the Silli: 'Such is the wise Democritus, the
guardian of discourse, keen-witted disputant, among the best I ever read' (D.L.
9· 40).
4 Aristotle, Metaphysics, r 5, 1009 7, trans. G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M.
b

Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, 1983), 409-10.

 Chapter 2

Pergamum (second century AD) indicates that Democritus himself

was not unaware of the way in which his critique of the senses
might threaten the view that we can arrive at knowledge or justified
belief by means of the intellect: 'Wretched mind, do you take your
assurances from us and then overthrow us [sc. the senses]? Our
overthrow is your downfall.'s Moreover it is worth noting here that
midway through his account of Democritus' views on the criterion
of truth, Sextus says 'in these passages he almost rejects apprehen-
sion altogether' (M. 7. 137); and in the Outlines of Pyrrhonism he
goes to the trouble of including a chapter that is devoted solely to
rebutting the suggestion that the sceptic way does not differ in any
important way from the philosophical stance adopted by Democri-
tus (PH I. 213-14).
Turning now to Anaxarchus, we find that he seems to have es-
poused an epistemological position that rejected even Democritus'
hope that the intellect could provide the justified beliefs that were
not available via the senses. Sextus classifies Anaxarchus as one
of those philosophers who denied the existence of a criterion of
truth (M. 7. 48), and he goes on to report that Anaxarchus, along
with the Cynic philosopher Monimus, 'likened existing things to
a scene-painting and supposed them to resemble the impressions
experienced in sleep or madness' (M. 7. 88).
There is, of course, a significant difference between denying the
existence of a criterion of truth and suspending judgement on its
existence, and Sextus explicitly claims that the sceptic does not
employ 'arguments against the criterion by way of abolishing it
but with the object of showing that the existence of a criterion is
not altogether to be trusted, equal grounds being presented for the
opposite view' (M. 7. 443). However even Sextus finds it difficult
to keep consistently to this official posture. The remarks just cited
come at the end of book I of Against the Dogmatists, and Sex-
tus begins book 2 with the following statement: 'The difficulties
that are usually stated by the Sceptics in order to abolish the crite-
rion of truth have now been reviewed by us in the treatise already
completed' (M. 8. I, my emphasis). It seems, in fact, that Sextus
is allowing his own fastidious anxiety about the need to exclude
anything suggestive of dogmatism from the sceptic way to shape
his interpretation of material that ultimately derives from earlier
S Galen, On Medical Experience, 16, trans. Kirk et al., The Presocratic Philoso-
phers, .p 1-12.
 Pyrrho's Connection with Pyrrhonean Scepticism 25

sceptics who were less scrupulous in this regard. Thus it is quite

possible that Pyrrho simply followed Anaxarchus in bluntly deny-
ing the existence of a criterion of truth.
If, however, one does wish to assimilate Pyrrho's own position as
closely as possible to the stance defended by methodologically so-
phisticated sceptics like Sextus, then it could be argued that Pyrrho
could readily have converted Anaxarchus' apparently dogmatic de-
nial of the existence of a criterion of truth into suspension of judge-
ment on the issue merely by reflecting on the point that if there
is no criterion of truth, then the claim that this is indeed the case
could not possess any rational justification as one needs to possess a
criterion of truth in order to be justified in believing any statement
whatsoever. And it is perhaps relevant here that one philosopher
who seems to have acquired considerable notoriety by exploring
the consequences of subjecting his negative epistemological argu-
ments to reappraisal in the light of the conclusions reached by those
same arguments was the Democritean philosopher Metrodorus of
Chios, who is supposed to have taught Anaxarchus' teacher, Dio-
genes of Smyrna (see D.L. 9. 58). Thus we find that Sextus cites
Metrodorus as saying 'We know nothing, nor do we even know the
very fact that we know nothing' (M. 7.88).

2. Pyrrho's epistemological nihilism

Pyrrho himself appears to have refrained from writing any philo-

sophical works (see D.L. 9. 102), but his views were recorded by
Timon and some of his other pupils. However even these accounts
no longer exist; so we are left with little more than a few fragments
of Timon', poetry preserved by later authors and some short pas-
sages that claim to report things said about Pyrrho by Timon or
some other person who knew Pyrrho personally.
The most authoritative piece of testimony that is still available
to us is to be found in the Praeparatio Evangelica of Eusebius of
Caesarea, a Christian bishop who appears to have been born around
AD 260 and to have died around AD 340. Eusebius preserves a pas-
sage from Aristocles of Messene's On Philosophy that purports to
summarize an account of Pyrrho's views provided by Timon. Now
it might initially be thought that this chain of transmission is so
convoluted that it would be foolish to repose much confidence in
 Chapter 2

its accuracy. However Timon lived with Pyrrho for several years
at Elis (see D.L. 9. 109), and hence was in an excellent position to
acquire a full understanding of the details of Pyrrho's philosophic
stance. Moreover Eusebius claims to be quoting Aristocles verba-
tim; and in cases where it has been possible to check Eusebius'
alleged quotations against texts that happen to have survived, he
has been found reliable in this respect. 6 Aristocles, in contrast, is
not always so reliable; but even here there are two pieces of evidence
that seem to tell decisively in favour of the supposition that he is
not simply passing off his own misinterpretation of some later scep-
tic's position as an authentic account of Pyrrho's own philosophic
stance. First, Aristocles cites specific works by Timon elsewhere
in his account of Pyrrhonism, and goes to some trouble to mark
the distinction between material supposed to come directly from
Timon and information about Pyrrhonism taken from the writ-
ings of the sceptic Aenesidemus of Cnossus (first century Be). And
secondly, the technical terms that feature in Aristocles' summary
are, as Long and Sedley point out,7 markedly different from those
employed by Sextus. Thus the supposition that Eusebius has pre-
served for us an authentic report of Pyrrho's views by someone who
knew him well is a remarkably compelling one.
Aristocles' account of Timon's description of Pyrrho's philo-
sophical standpoint offers us the following information about Pyr-
rho:
He himself has left nothing in writing, but his pupil Timon says that
whoever wants to be happy must consider these three questions: first, how
are things by nature? Secondly, what attitude should we adopt towards
them? Thirdly, what will be the outcome for those who have this attitude?
According to Timon, Pyrrho declared that things are equally indifferent,
unmeasurable and inarbitrable. For this reason neither our sensations nor
our opinions tell us truths or falsehoods. Therefore for this reason we
should not put our trust in them one bit, but we should be unopinionated,
uncommitted and unwavering, saying concerning each individual thing
that it no more is than is not, or it both is and is not, or it neither is
nor is not. The outcome for those who actually adopt this attitude, says
Timon, will be first speechlessness, and then freedom from disturbance;
and Aenesidemus says pleasure. 8

6 See A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers (2 vols.; Cam-

bridge, 1987), ii. 5-6. 7 Ibid. 6.
8 Aristocles, in Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14. 18. 2-5, trans. Long and
Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, i. 14-15.
 Pyrrho's Connection with Pyrrhonean Scepticism 27

Somewhat surprisingly, this passage strongly suggests that Pyr-

rho was a negative dogmatist rather than someone who met Sextus'
formal definition of a sceptic. In the first chapter of the Outlines
of Pyrrhonism Sextus asserts that within philosophy 'some have
claimed to have discovered the truth, others have asserted that it
cannot be apprehended, while others again go on inquiring' (PH
I. 2); and he immediately proceeds to identify the sceptic with
the person who keeps on inquiring. Sextus describes those who
believe they have discovered the truth as 'the Dogmatists specially
so called-Aristotle, for example, and Epicurus, and the Stoics and
certain others' (PH 1.3); and it seems, accordingly, that it would be
in keeping with the spirit of Sextus' classificatory schema to think
of someone who has ceased inquiry because he holds that the truth
cannot be apprehended as a negative dogmatist even though Sextus
himself chooses at this point to contrast positive dogmatists like
Aristotle and the Stoics with one particular school of philosophers,
namely the Academics (see PH 1.4). In the passage quoted above,
however, Timon apparently presents Pyrrho as maintaining that we
should refrain from inquiry because all things are, by nature, indif-
ferent, unmeasurable, and inarbitrable. From Sextus' perspective
such a stance does not qualify as a form of scepticism. On the
other hand, Timon's account of Pyrrho's deep pessimism about
our ability to arrive at well-founded beliefs about the objective
world would make it inappropriate for Sextus to allocate Pyrrho to
the category of 'the Dogmatists specially so called'. Thus it seems
that Sextus, at least, would have been forced to classify Pyrrho as a
negative dogmatist.
This conclusion has been rejected by Leo Groarke on the grounds
that Pyrrho's putative claims about how things are have to be read
as disguised claims about how things appear.9 Now it has to be
conceded to Groarke that the Pyrrhonean sceptics of Sextus' era
did habitually use statements with the surface form of statements
about the real properties of things to express how things appeared
to them;'O and it is also true that Laertius reports that Timon
explicitly stated in the Pytho that the canonical sceptical formula
'no more this than that' (ov8€v /-La'\'\ov) was to be interpreted as
simply expressing a state of mind in which one withheld assent
and determined nothing even though the words themselves had the
form of a statement about how things really stood (D.L. 9· 76).
9 Groarke, Greek Scepticism, 94-6. '0 See ch. 6, sect. 6.
28 Chapter 2

However Groarke's suggested reinterpretation of this passage

loses much of its plausibility when we examine the details of the
chain of reasoning attributed here to Pyrrho. If we take Aristocles'
report at face value, Pyrrho moves from the supposition that things
are 'indifferent, unmeasurable, and inarbitrable' to the conclusion
that neither our sensations nor our opinions are true or false. Now
Richard Bett has persuasively argued in his article 'Aristocles on
Timon on Pyrrho' that if we give the statement that things are
indifferent, unmeasurable, and inarbitrable a non-epistemological
interpretation so that it amounts to a claim about the intrinsic
properties of these things rather than a claim about the inability of
our faculties to grasp their true properties, then anyone who accepts
that this statement is true is virtually compelled to concede the truth
of Pyrrho's conclusion that neither our sensations nor our opinions
are true or false. I I But if we follow Groarke's recommendations,
Pyrrho's line of argument becomes much more problematic.
According to Groarke, Pyrrho's initial premiss is the claim that
things appear indifferent, unmeasurable, and inarbitrable. However
Diogenes Laertius cites Timon as saying in his work On the Senses,
'I do not lay it down that honey is sweet, but 1 admit that it appears
to be so' (D.L. 9. 76). It is plain, therefore, that Timon has no
qualms about accepting that we can distinguish between the dif-
ferent ways in which things appear to us: he does not suggest that
we should say that honey appears no more sweet than not sweet,
or it both appears sweet and appears not to be sweet, or it neither
appears sweet nor appears not to be sweet. We are accordingly
driven to the conclusion that anyone intent on interpreting the
premiss that things are indifferent, unmeasurable, and inarbitrable
as a disguised claim about the way things appear needs to interpret
it as the claim that it appears that the objective nature of things is
indifferent, unmeasurable, and inarbitrable.
Moreover if we are to have a premiss that is capable of supporting
the conclusion that it appears that neither our sensations nor our
opinions are true or false, we have to construe it as going beyond
the claim that it appears that the objective nature of things cannot
be determined by us. The weakest premiss that will suffice here
is the claim that it appears that the objective nature of things is
such that they lack any determinate or definite character. However
.. R. Bett, 'Aristocles on Timon on Pyrrho: The Text, its Logic, and its Credi-
bility', Oxfurd Studies in Ancient Philosophy, IZ (1994), 137-81.
 Pyrrho's Connection with Pyrrhonean Scepticism 29

it is important to remember at this point that Groarke's only direct

evidence for the supposition that Pyrrho used statements with the
surface form of statements about matters of objective fact to make
claims about how things appeared to him comes from Timon's re-
ported comments about the use of the phrase ovoiv lLa'\'\ov. Yet the
unknown author Laertius is using as his source at this point in his
account of Pyrrhonism clearly takes Timon to be saying that the
ovoiv lLaAAov formula expresses nothing more than the speaker's re-
luctance to attempt a positive determination of how things really
stand: at no point is there any suggestion that this reluctance is to be
understood in terms of the world appearing to the speaker as though
its real nature is such that it lacks any determinate character. Fur-
thermore the disguised statements about appearances employed by
Sextus invariably turn out to be announcements about the sceptic's
ignorance or the way some object appears to have such humdrum
properties as being yellow or in motion.
It seems, therefore, that Groarke's attempt to interpret Pyrrho's
position so that it resembles the scepticism espoused by Sextus ul-
timately founders on the following obstacle. Groarke's contention
that we should read Pyrrho's reported claims about the objective
nature of things as disguised claims about how things appear is
supported only by evidence that also indicates that if it is true that
on this occasion we are faced by disguised claims about appear-
ances, then these claims are claims about our apparent inability
to determine the truth about the objective world. But if we sub-
stitute claims of this kind for Pyrrho's putative claims about the
objective indeterminacy of the world, we transform an intuitively
acceptable inference into one that has no plausibility whatsoever.
The premiss that it seems that we are unable to determine the truth
about the objective world is patently incapable of providing any
genuine support for any subsequent claim that it seems that our
sensations and opinions are neither true nor false: even if it does
seem that we are unable to determine the truth about the objective
world, this is perfectly compatible with it seeming to us that our
opinions and judgements about the world are capable of being true
or false even though we never know which truth-value to attribute
to any particular statement. And as it is a sound principle of tex-
tual interpretation, in the absence of countervailing considerations,
to maximize the plausibility of the arguments we are ascribing to
a text's author, we are forced to conclude that it would not be
30 Chapter 2

appropriate to prefer Groarke's interpretation of Pyrrho's reported

position to the interpretation that is supported by a literal reading
of the comments attributed to Timon. '2

3. The fiction of an unbroken Pyrrhonean succession

We might be tempted at this point to fall back on the supposition

that if Sextus' willingness to describe himself as a Pyrrhonist can-
not be explained in terms of a close similarity between his views
and those espoused by Pyrrho, the answer must lie in the existence
of a chain of philosophers who successively altered Pyrrho's origi-
nal teachings in such a way that the end product was significantly
changed even though each step in this process was sufficiently mi-
nor to make it natural for all these philosophers to continue to think
of themselves as Pyrrhonists. Unfortunately, however, the histor-
ical evidence actually available to us appears to indicate that the
process of incremental evolution postulated here is simply a myth.
According to Aristocles, Pyrrho and his immediate disciples made
no impact whatsoever on their contemporaries: 'nobody took notice
of them any more than if they had never been born'. However he
does note with obvious regret that 'a certain Aenesidemus began
just yesterday to stir up this nonsense again at Alexandria in
>2 The above discussion follows all extant manuscripts of Eusebius' text in pre-

senting Pyrrho as apparently inferring that neither our sensations nor our opinions
tell us truths or falsehoods from the premiss that things are equally indifferent,
unmeasurable, and inarbitrable. Nevertheless some scholars, following a sugges-
tion first made by Eduard Zeller, believe that the text should be emended so that
the first occurrence of I)"i TO.n-O is replaced by 1)1<, T(). If this emendation were to
be accepted, then we would have to interpret Pyrrho as putatively inferring that
things are equally indifferent, unmeasurable, and inarbitrable from the premiss that
neither our sensations nor our opinions tell us truths or falsehoods. However this
inference seems to have matters back to front: how are we supposed to arrive at the
conclusion that neither our sensations nor our opinions tell us truths or falsehoods
befoTe we have undertaken an investigation into the nature of the world around us?
Moreover the inference at issue here does not seem to gain any plausibility even if
we adopt Groarke's device of reinterpreting all the apparent claims about matters
of objective fact as disguised claims about how things appear to be. If we are not
responding to an impression that the objective nature of the world is such that things
are equally indeterminate, unmeasurable, and inarbitrable, there do not appear to
be any circumstances in which the impression that neither our sensations nor our
opinions tell us truths or falsehoods would be anything other than wholly gratuitous
and arbitrary. It seems, therefore, that the same exegetical principles that led to the
rejection of Groarke's suggestion that the unemended text should be read as a series
of claims about appearances also tell decisively against the emendation of the text
advocated by Zeller.
 Pyrrho's Connection with Pyrrhonean Scepticism 3I
Egypt'. I 3 Now it is generally accepted that Timon died around
230 BC; and there is no evidence to indicate that any of Pyrrho's
other pupils outlived Timon by a significant number of years.
Aenesidemus, in contrast, seems to have written his works on
Pyrrhonean scepticism no earlier than the beginning of the first
century BC. Thus Aristocles' testimony strongly implies that the
death of Pyrrho's immediate disciples initiated a period of more
than a hundred years in which no one professed to share Pyrrho's
philosophic stance.
Further evidence for the existence of a lengthy gap between Ti-
mon's death and the re-emergence of people prepared to describe
themselves as philosophizing in the same vein as Pyrrho is provided
by Diogenes Laertius. Laertius reports that the Empiricist physi-
cian Menodotus of Nicomedia maintained that Timon 'left no suc-
cessor, but his school lapsed until Ptolemy of Cyrene re-established
it' (0. L. 9. I 15). Moreover Menodotus is a witness who deserves to
be taken very seriously. Galen's writings on the distinction between
the Empiricist, Rationalist, and Methodist schools of medicine re-
veal that Menodotus was an enthusiastic and influential polemicist
on behalf of the Empiricist school, and Galen often appeals to Men-
odotus as an authoritative source when he wishes to persuade his
readers that the particular doctrines he is discussing are genuinely
part of the Empiricist position. ,+ According to Galen, Menodotus
praised Pyrrho and insisted that one 'should approach all that is
not manifest as if perhaps it is true and perhaps is not true'. 15
Furthermore, Galen himself places considerable emphasis on the
close relationship between the Empiricist school of medicine and
Pyrrhonean scepticism when he attempts to summarize the princi-
pal features of Empiricism in the penultimate chapter of An Outline
of Empiricism. Galen maintains that the true Empiricist 'will not
be a man of many words or of long speeches but will talk little and
rarely,just like Pyrrho the Sceptic'; and he goes on to claim that 'the
Empiricist's attitude towards medical matters is like the sceptic's
attitude towards the whole of life'. ,6 Menodotus, then, was both
" Aristocles, in Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14. 18, p. 763 D, trans. E. H.
Gifford (2 vols.; Oxford, 1903), ii. 822.
'4 See An Outline of Empiricism and On Medical Experience, in Galen, Three
Treatises on the Nature of Science, ed. M. Frede, trans. R. Walzer and M. Frede
(Indianapolis, 1985) .
•, Galen, An Outline of Empiricism, I I, ed. Frede, Three Treatises, 43 .
•• Ibid., ed. Frede, Three Treatises, 42.
32 Chapter 2

a leading representative of a medico-philosophic movement that

was closely allied with Pyrrhonean scepticism and someone who
manifested a strong personal interest in the example provided by
Pyrrho's way of life. It seems, accordingly, that Menodotus would
have been in a particularly good position to arrive at an accurate
assessment of developments after Timon's death.
Moreover the testimony offered by Aristocles and Menodotus
appears to be indirectly corroborated by the Latin author Cicero.
Around 45 Be Cicero embarked on the ambitious project of at-
tempting to explain Greek philosophy to his fellow Romans in a
series of works written in Latin. At the time of composing these
works Cicero tended to align himself with the position advocated in
Rome by the Academic philosopher Philo of Larissa immediately
after he had fled there from Athens in order to avoid the upheavals
of the Mithridatic war; and this had the consequence that Cicero
regarded himself as needing to defend the view that knowledge
lies beyond our grasp even though we can possess beliefs that are
rationally justified. I7 It also embroiled Cicero in a dispute over
the relationship between Philo's teaching and the views of earlier
Academics such as Carneades and Arcesilaus. Philo claimed in his
Roman lectures that the view that we could in favourable circum-
stances arrive at rationally justified beliefs was one that had also
been espoused by Carneades. However this was an extremely con-
troversial claim as both Carneades and Arcesilaus were frequently
interpreted as advocating some radical form of detachment from
our ordinary beliefs precisely because our inability to know any-
thing coexists with a similar inability to arrive at any rationally
justified beliefs.I8 Thus Cicero was led to compose a book, Aca-
demica, in which he discussed the case for the epistemological fal-
libilism espoused by Philo and examined the extent to which we
can and should detach ourselves from belief. Significantly, though,
Cicero's lengthy treatment of these topics did not include any dis-
cussion of Pyrrho's epistemological pessimism and his advocacy

'7 See Cicero, De natura deorum, I. 11-12, 17, ed. and trans. H. Rackham (Loeb

Classical Library; Cambridge, Mass., 1933); and Cicero, A cademica , I. 13, and 2.
98-9, ed. and trans. H. Rackham (Loeb Classical Lihrary; Cambridge, Mass., 1933).
Philo would eventually modify his views in an even more dogmatic direction (see
ch. 4, sect. 3), but Cicero continued to give his allegiance to Philo's initial position.
,8 Despite his support for the substantive views advocated in Philo's early teach-
ing, even Cicero was unconvinced by Philo's interpretation of Carneades' philo-
sophical stance. See Cicero, Academica, 2. 78.
 Pyrrho's Connection with Pyrrhonean Scepticism 33
of suspension of judgement. Yet such an omission would have
been most unlikely if Pyrrho had really established an intellec-
tual movement that existed without interruption from Timon's
death to the time when Cicero was composing his philosophical
works.
On the few occasions when Cicero does mention Pyrrho, he al-
most invariably portrays him as a moralist who held an extreme
and discredited view about the worthlessness of everything except
virtue. According to Cicero,
Since Aristo and Pyrrho thought that these [primary things in accordance
with nature] were of no account at all, to the extent of saying that there
was utterly no difference between the best of health and the gravest illness,
arguments against them rightly stopped a long time ago. For the effect of
their wish to make virtue on its own so all-embracing was to rob virtue of
the capacity to select things, and to grant it nothing either as its source or
its foundation; consequently they undermined the very virtue which they
embraced. '9

This accusation is repeated later in the same work when Cicero,

speaking on behalf of Antiochus, claims that 'all those people are
mistaken who have said that living honourably is the highest good,
but some more so than others: Pyrrho above all certainly, since,
having posited virtue, he leaves nothing at all to seek after'. 20 In
the Tusculan Disputations Cicero mentions Pyrrho alongside Aristo
and another ethical indifferentist, Herillus, as someone whose views
on virtue no longer retain any popularity.21 And even in the Acade-
mica, a book primarily devoted to an exploration of epistemological
issues, Pyrrho features only as an ethicist who develops Aristo's
view that nothing is good except virtue in an even more radical
direction: Cicero states that whereas Aristo held that we should
strive to be unmoved by anything other than virtue, Pyrrho 'held
that the wise man does not even perceive these things with his
senses' ."
At least one influential commentator has been so impressed by
Cicero's testimony that he has concluded that Pyrrho had no epis-
'9 Cicero, On Ends, 2.43, trans. Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, i.
19·
Cicero, On Ends, 4. 43, trans. Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, i.
20.
2' Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, 5. 85, ed. and trans. J. E. King (Loeb Classical
Library; Cambridge, Mass., 1927).
22 Cicero, Academica, 2. 130, trans. Rackham (Loeb), 637.
34 Chapter 2

temological views of the kind attributed to him by Timon. ZJ Ac-

cording to Jacques Brunschwig, Pyrrho was exclusively an ethicist
and the epistemological component of early Pyrrhonism comes en-
tirely from Timon!4 However this response appears to lack a due
sense of proportion. What, after all, would have been the source of
Cicero's supposed insight into the true nature of Pyrrho's philo-
sophical stance? After Laertius has told us that Pyrrho left no
writings, he goes on to say that Pyrrho's associates 'Timon, Ae-
nesidemus, Numenius and Nausiphanes did; and others as well'
(D.L. 9. 102). This comment strongly suggests that reliable testi-
mony about Pyrrho's views was very limited!S Aenesidemus had
no personal acquaintanceship with Pyrrho; and if, as seems likely,
the Numenius mentioned by Laertius is the second-century AD
Platonist philosopher of that name, then we must conclude that
his account of Pyrrho's views was composed at least 350 years
after Pyrrho's death. Thus the fact that Laertius is nevertheless re-
duced to citing Aenesidemus and Numenius as two of the authors
best placed to provide an authoritative description of the stance
adopted by Pyrrho and his followers makes it quite obvious that
Laertius is uneasily aware that if he had been unable to appeal
to Timon's writings, then the amount of testimony that could
plausibly have been thought of as a written record of Pyrrho's
teaching set down by a person who had personally studied or
debated with him would have been virtually negligible. Timon,
however, is not mentioned in any of Cicero's extant writings, and
there is no indication that Cicero's brief remarks about Pyrrho are
based on testimony from either Timon or Nausiphanes!6 It seems,

2, See Jacques Brunschwig, 'Once again on Eusebius on Aristocles on Timon on

Pyrrho', in id., Papers on Hellenistic Philosophy (Cambridge, 1994), 190-21 I.
... Ibid. 205-7.
2, The significance of Laertius' list of sources is emphasized by Michael Frede,
'The Skeptic's Beliefs', in id., Essays in Ancient Philosophy (Oxford, 1987), 179-200
at 182-3.
,6 Laertius says that when Nausiphanes was a young man he was 'captivated' by

Pyrrho (D.L. 9. 64); and Laertius also includes Nausiphanes alongside Timon and
Hecataeus of Abdera in a list of Pyrrho's pupils (D.L. 9. 69). However Nausiphanes
appears to have eventually adopted a philosophical position that differed from the
one held by Pyrrho: according to Laertius, 'he [Nausiphanesl used to say that we
should follow Pyrrho in disposition but himself in doctrine' (D. L. 9. 64).
Significantly, claims about Pyrrho attributed to Nausiphanes occupy just one
paragraph in Laertius' lengthy account of Pyrrho's life. Moreover Laertius never
supports any of his claims about scepticism or Pyrrho's philosophical views by
citing Nausiphanes as his authority. It seems plausible to suppose, therefore, that the
 Pyrrho's Connection with Pyrrhonean Scepticism 35
therefore, that the fact that Cicero presents Pyrrho as someone
whose philosophical innovations were confined to the ethical do-
main is best seen as another manifestation of Cicero's profound
ignorance about Pyrrho's actual philosophical stance: an igno-
rance that would be wholly inexplicable if Pyrrho and Timon had
founded a sceptical movement that had shadowed the Academy
throughout the 200 years in which it argued against anyone claim-
ing to possess knowledge and advocated that we should check
our inclination to settle on firm beliefs about the true nature of
the world.
Moreover when we examine closely the only substantial piece
of textual evidence that can be cited in favour of the view that
the scepticism advocated by Sextus evolved incrementally from the
philosophic stance espoused by Pyrrho, we find that this evidence
writings left by Nausiphanes concentrated on expounding his own doctrines and said
little of substance about Pyrrho's views. We are led to the conclusion, accordingly,
that Nausiphanes is unlikely to have bequeathed to posterity the detailed testimony
about Pyrrho that would have been necessary to challenge Timon's account of
Pyrrho's philosophical stance.
In any case, Nausiphanes' advice that we should emulate Pyrrho's disposition
but adopt Nausiphanes' own philosophical doctrines strongly suggests that an ex-
clusively ethical interpretation of Pyrrho's philosophy along the lines laid down
by Cicero cannot be correct. As we have already seen, Cicero presents Pyrrho
as someone who advocates complete indifference to such things as good health,
friendship, and the respect of one's peers because he holds that these things, un-
like virtue, possess no objective value. Indifference of this kind, however, makes
good sense only if is true that nothing other than virtue is objectively valuable.
Yet Nausiphanes appears to have taken the view that Pyrrho's disposition was ad-
mirable even though his doctrines were false. It seems, therefore, that we must
conclude either that Pyrrho did not advocate the kind of indifference attributed
to him by Cicero or that Pyrrho held some philosophical views about non-ethical
matters. 1V10reover the doxographical tradition concerning Pyrrho places great em-
phasis on his freedom from any tendency to engage in scientific or metaphysi-
cal speculation (see D.L. 9. 65 and 68). Thus it is plausible to suppose that if
Pyrrho did hold philosophical views about non-ethical matters, then these views
took a form that underpinned a deep pessimism about the possibility of arriv-
ing at well-founded opinions on topics of the kind characteristically discussed by
other philosophers with metaphysical interests. Now Timon, of course, ascribes
to Pyrrho a view on the nature of the world that readily enables us to understand
why Pyrrho would have been led to repudiate detailed metaphysical and scientific
theorizing. And as Timon also links this suspension of judgement to peace of mind
in a way that is very similar to Sextus' own account of the relationship between
the sceptic's suspension of belief and his unperturbed acquiescence in whatever
happens to befall him (see PH I. 25-8), there is surely no need to look any fur-
ther for an explanation of why Pyrrho would become associated with a degree of
indifference to external circumstances that could easily have become confused in
Cicero's mind with the indifference to everything but virtue advocated by Aristo
and Herillus.
 Chapter 2

is less than impressive. Immediately after reporting Menodotus'

claim that Timon left no successor, Laertius cites some contrary
testimony from Hippobotus and Sotion of Alexandria. According
to Laertius, these two authors claimed that Timon 'had as pupils
Dioscurides of Cyprus, Nicolochus of Rhodes, Euphranor of Se-
leucia, and Pray Ius of the Troad' (D.L. 9. I 15). Laertius then sup-
plements this report with a list of teachers and their pupils that
purports to describe an uninterrupted succession of philosophers
linking Euphranor to Sextus and his pupil Saturninus (see D.L.
9. 116).
Unfortunately the provenance of this list is extremely obscure.
Sotion of Alexandria appears to have compiled his survey of past
philosophers around 200 Be. Thus it seems clear that the names of
the Pyrrhonean philosophers who are supposed to have succeeded
Euphranor do not derive from Sotion's writings. Moreover Laer-
tius' prologue indicates that information attributed to Hippobotus
ultimately derives from Hippobotus' work On Philosophical Sects
(see D. L. I. 19). However Laertius' list of the nine sects discussed
by Hippobotus conspicuously omits any mention of a Pyrrhonean
school of philosophers, and it is accordingly implausible to suppose
that the detailed succession set out by Laertius has Hippobotus as
its source.
Another problematic feature of Laertius' list is its inclusion of
Menodotus. If we treat Laertius' anonymous source as offering us
a trustworthy account of an unbroken chain of Pyrrhonean philo-
sophers who were ultimately responsible for transmitting Pyrrho's
ideas to Sextus and Saturninus, we are also committing ourselves
to the conclusion that Menodotus was an integral part of that chain.
But if Menodotus was part of such a succession, then it is difficult
to see what would have led him to assert that Pyrrho's school lapsed
until it was re-established by Ptolemy. It is tempting, therefore, to
conclude that the original compiler of Laertius' list supplemented
the facts at his disposal with a generous admixture of guesswork
in order to generate the spurious precision and authoritativeness
that seems to have been so prized within the Greek doxographical
tradition. '7
So far, then, the nature of the connection between Pyrrho and the
'7 A concise but illuminating discussion of some of the problems associated with

this tradition can be found in Kirk et al., The Presocratic Philosophers, 4-6.
 Pyrrho's Connection with Pyrrhonean Scepticism 37
Pyrrhonism espoused by Sextus remains unexplained. If Sextus
would have classified anyone holding the views ascribed to Pyrrho
by Timon as a negative dogmatist rather than a sceptic and it is also
clear that Sextus' position did not emerge from Pyrrho's by means
of a process of incremental evolution, how are we to explain Sextus'
willingness to refer to sceptics as Pyrrhonists? Somewhat surpris-
ingly, it appears that at least part of the answer to this question lies
in the history of Plato's Academy after Plato's death in 347 Be.
 3
Arcesilaus and Suspension of
Judgement
I. Socratic dialectic and Arcesilaus'
suspension of judgement

PLATO was succeeded as head of the Academy by his nephew

Speusippus, who appears to have begun a process of changing the
emphasis of the Academy from original research to an attempt to
produce a canonical systematization of Plato's mature philosophical
doctrines. However around 272 Be the Academy was dramatically
revitalized by the election of Arcesilaus of Pitane as its head. Now it
seems clear that Arcesilaus would not have been elected to this post
if his philosophical views had been seen by his contemporaries as
a heretical repudiation of the Academy's Platonic heritage. Never-
theless Arcesilaus appears to have drawn his inspiration primarily
from the role allocated to Socrates in Plato's early dialogues.
In these dialogues Socrates is portrayed as questioning other
people in order to see whether they possess real expertise in a par-
ticular area of inquiry; and he tests this expertise by attempting
to construct arguments that use claims endorsed by his interlocu-
tors to arrive, via principles of inference that are equally acceptable
to these people, at conclusions which contradict their professed
views on a given topic. If Socrates can achieve this result, he infers
that he is not conversing with real experts and seeks enlighten-
ment elsewhere. Significantly, there is no indication that Socrates
already possesses the expert understanding initially claimed by his
conversational partners. Thus Socrates' dialectical expertise gen-
erates starkly negative conclusions: the people who put themselves
forward as able to speak with authority on the particular topic
under investigation have their claims to expertise undermined and
Socrates conspicuously refrains from asserting that he has the ex-
 Arcesilaus and Suspension of Judgement 39
pertise he cannot find elsewhere. In the end, then, Socrates is forced
to acknowledge that he has been unable to discover anyone with
genuine expertise and he resolves to continue his inquiries.
When we turn to Plato's later dialogues, we find that Socrates is
usually allocated the very different role of someone who does know
where the truth lies. Although Socrates continues to scrutinize and
undermine other people's claims to expertise, he is also presented as
someone whose own views on the topic under investigation can sur-
vive rigorous examination. In the Republic, for example, Socrates is
not only depicted as successfully undermining the arguments about
the nature of justice put forward by Thrasymachus but as having a
positive account of justice that explains why justice is always a good
for the just man. Unfortunately our familiarity with the Socrates
of these later dialogues tends to distort our understanding of what
actually occurs in the early dialogues. Instead of reflecting on the
way in which the early dialogues see Socrates undermining all the
positive views on offer and putting nothing in their place other
than an admission of the need to continue our investigations, we
interpret Socrates as criticizing the views of his interlocutors on
the basis of what he at least takes to be his knowledge of where the
truth really lies.
In the case of Arcesilaus, however, his destructive critique of the
pretensions of other philosophers utilized Socrates' ad hominem
approach but we find ourselves reacting to Arcesilaus' philosophic
posture in a radically different way precisely because we are not
under the same pressure to interpret him as really arguing from
the basis of some positive views that were concealed simply for
presentational reasons. The example of Arcesilaus forces us to con-
sider what would happen if someone who had a settled policy of
testing all claims to expertise by means of the methods of Socratic
dialectic found that these techniques invariably succeeded in un-
dermining such claims irrespective of whether they were made by
himself or any other person. How would such a person respond to
his continued success at negative criticism and his persistent failure
to persuade himself that he or anyone else genuinely counts as an
expert on even the most straightforward of topics?
Presumably that ongoing experience would eventually give him
an inclination to suppose that he will never succeed in uncovering
any real experts. However that inclination would, to some extent,
be counterbalanced by his recognition that any claim he might
 Chapter 3
be tempted to make about being an expert on the availability of
experts would itself not withstand critical scrutiny. Thus he would
be inclined to refrain from concluding that it is impossible for there
to be such a thing as a genuine expert. And this, in turn, makes it
understandable that he might continue his investigations in a calm
and relaxed manner, free from the anxious thought that the truth
about the nature of the world and his place in that world might
easily be within his grasp ifhejust made one last heroic intellectual
effort.
I t also seems to be a psychological fact about human beings that
they are incapable of exercising immediate volitional control over
the content of their beliefs. In many circumstances these beliefs
respond directly to a person's assessment of the relevant evidence:
if he takes himself to have good evidence for the truth of the claim
that p, then he will find himself believing that p; and if he takes
himself to have no good evidence for the truth of the claim that
p, then he will find that it is psychologically impossible for him to
hold the belief that p. However someone who has persuaded himself
that neither he nor anyone else he has ever met possesses any real
expertise at conducting inquiries into even the simplest of matters is
unlikely to think of himself as having good evidence for the truth of
any claim. It follows that if the psychological mechanism specified
above operates over a wide range of possible beliefs, then such a
person will frequently find himself suspending belief on occasions
when other people do have definite opinions.
Significantly, the ultimate outcome of Arcesilaus' enthusiastic
use of the techniques of Socratic dialectic seems to have been very
similar to the one just described. Arcesilaus' proficiency at under-
mining positive claims by these means did not persuade him to
abandon philosophical inquiry, but it did lead to his being associ-
ated with a wide-ranging suspension of judgement that struck many
of his contemporaries as being very similar to the unopinionated
and noncommittal stance espoused by Pyrrho and his immediate
disciples.
Unfortunately Arcesilaus appears to have refrained from setting
down a written account of his philosophical stance (see D.L. 4· 32).
However several independent sources attest to Arcesilaus' preoccu-
pation with dialectic. According to Laertius, Arcesilaus was the first
of the Academic philosophers 'to argue on both sides of a question,
and the first to meddle with the system handed down by Plato and,
 Arcesilaus and Suspension of Judgement 41
by means of question and answer, to make it more closely resemble
eristic' (D.L. 4. 28). Cicero makes essentially the same claim, and
explicitly links Arcesilaus' practice with the example provided by
Socrates:
By thorough inquiry and questioning, he [Socrates] was in the habit of
drawing forth the opinions of those with whom he was arguing, in order
to state his own view as a response to their answers. This practice was not
kept up by his successors, but Arcesilaus revived it and prescribed that
those who wanted to listen to him should not ask him questions but state
their own opinions. When they had done so, he argued against them. But
his listeners, so far as they could, would defend their own opinion. I

Moreover when we turn to the passages from Numenius' The Re-

volt of The Academics against Plato that are preserved in Eusebius'
Praeparatio Evangelica, we find that Numenius describes Arcesi-
laus in the following terms:
There was no less uncertainty about Arcesilaus than about Tydides in
Homer, when you could not know on which side he was, whether associated
with Trojans or with Achaeans. For to keep to one argument and ever say
the same thing, was not possible for him, nor indeed did he ever think such
a course by any means worthy of a clever man. So he went by the name of
a 'Keen sophist, slayer of men unskilled in fence'"

It is clear too that Arcesilaus' style of argument proved to be a

highly effective way of destroying his listeners' confidence in the
truth of their own opinions. Plutarch, for example, asserts that
Arcesilaus 'was more highly regarded at the time than any other
philosopher';3 and Cicero claims that Arcesilaus' skill at arguing
against everyone's opinions 'drew most people away from their
own'.4 Laertius says of Arcesilaus that 'in persuasiveness he had
no equal' (D.L. 4. 37), and Numenius' vituperatively hostile as-
sessment of Arcesilaus nevertheless portrays him as throwing the
Stoics of his era into total disarray:
The Stoics listened in amazement. For their Muse was not even then

I Cicero, On Ends, 2. 2, trans. A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic

Philosophers (2 vols.; Cambridge, 1987), i. 441.
, Numenius, in Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14. 6, p. 730 B-C, trans. E. H.
Gifford (2 vols.; Oxford, 1903), ii. 786.
J Plutarch, Against Colotes, 1121 E-F, trans. Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic
Philosophers, i. 440.
• Cicero, Academica, I. 45, trans. Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers,
i·43 8 .
42 Chapter 3
learned nor productive of such graces as those by which Arcesilaus talked
them down, knocking off this argument, cutting away that, and tripping up
others, and so succeeded in persuading them. When therefore those against
whom he argued were worsted, and those in whose midst he was speaking
were astounded, the men of that day were somehow convinced that neither
speech was anything, nor feeling, nor any single work however small, nor
on the contrary would anything ever have seemed useless, except what so
seemed in the opinion of Arcesilaus of Pitane. 5
Our sources also agree that the notion of suspension of judge-
ment occupied a crucial place in Arcesilaus' philosophic stance. In
particular, many ancient authors claim that Arcesilaus and those
Academics influenced by his arguments either suspended or tried
to suspend judgement about everything.
According to Laertius, Arcesilaus was 'the first [of the Aca-
demics] to suspend his judgement owing to the contradictions
of opposing arguments' (D.L. 4. 28). Plutarch names the Cyre-
naics and the Academy of Arcesilaus as 'the people who suspended
judgement about everything',6 and adds that contemporary critics
of Arcesilaus 'accused him of rubbing off his doctrines about sus-
pension of judgement and non-cognition on Socrates, Plato, Par-
menides and Heraclitus, who did not need them'.' Moreover Sex-
tus claims that we do not find Arcesilaus 'making any declarations
about the substantial existence or non-existence of anything, nor
does he prefer any particular thing to anything else in respect of its
trustworthiness or untrustworthiness, but he suspends judgement
on all things' (PH I. 232, own trans.).
Other authors maintain that Arcesilaus committed himself to
the view that we ought to suspend judgement. Thus we find that
Eusebius reports that Arcesilaus 'declared that we ought to suspend
judgement about all things, for all are incomprehensible, and the
arguments on either side equal each other in force'. 8 And Cicero
claims that Arcesilaus said that
no one must make any positive statement or affirmation, or give the ap-
proval of his assent to any proposition, and a man must always restrain his

5 Numenius, in Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.6, p. 733 C-D, trans. Gifford,

ii. 789-<)0.
• Plutarch, Against Colotes, 1120 C, trans. Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Phi-
losophers, i. 440.
7 Ibid. 1121 F, trans. Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, i. 440.
S Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.4, p. 726 D, trans. Gifford, ii. 782.
 A rcesilaus and Suspension of Judgement 43
rashness and hold it back from every slip, as it would be glaring rashness
to give assent either to a falsehood or to something not certainly known,
and nothing is more disgraceful than for assent and approval to outstrip
knowledge and perception. 9

Furthermore even those people who maintained that Arcesilaus

secretly shared Plato's positive doctrines admitted that the public
face of the Academy under Arcesilaus was one that emphasized
suspension of judgement and our inability to comprehend the real
nature of things. Numenius, for example, reports that Diocles of
Cnidos asserted in his Diatribae that
through fear of the followers of Theodorus, and of the Sophist Bion, who
used to assail the philosophers, and shrank from no means of refuting them,
Arcesilaus took precautions, in order to avoid trouble, by never appearing
to suggest any dogma, but used to put forward the 'suspense of judgement'
as a protection, like the black juice which the cuttle-fishes throw out .• 0

And Sextus tells us that some people said of Arcesilaus that al-
though
he appeared at the first glance ... to be a Pyrrhonean ... in reality he
was a dogmatist; and because he used to test his companions by means
of dubitation to see if they were fitted by nature for the reception of the
Platonic dogmas, he was thought to be a dubitative philosopher, but he
actually passed on to such of his companions as were naturally gifted the
dogmas of Plato. (PH I. 234)

Significantly, neither Numenius nor Sextus gives any credence

to these claims that Arcesilaus was engaged in a systematic pol-
icy of dissimulation. Numenius explicitly says that he does not
believe Diocles' allegation; and Sextus' own assessment of Arce-
silaus' philosophic stance is that he was a sincere advocate of sus-
pension of judgement (see PH I. 232). It seems, therefore, that
we can safely disregard the suggestion that Arcesilaus was really
a crypto-Platonist; and we can accordingly treat the accusations
that Arcesilaus concealed his actual doctrines behind his public ad-
vocacy of suspension of judgement as simply further evidence of
the extent to which Arcesilaus was associated in the minds of his
contemporaries with arguments in favour of €TrOX~.

9 Cicero, Academica, I. 45, trans. H. Rackham (Loeb Classical Library; Cam-

bridge, Mass., 1933),453.

\0 Numenius, in Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14. 6, p. 731 B-C, trans. Gifford,

ii. 787.
44 Chapter 3

2.A non-normative account of

Arcesilaus' suspension of judgement

We noted in the previous section that there are several reports that
Arcesilaus took the view that we ought to suspend judgement. But
if it is correct to interpret Arcesilaus as someone whose philosophic
stance was the result of his systematic attempt to use the methods
of Socratic dialectic to test people's claims to expertise in particu-
lar areas of inquiry and of his persistent failure to find anyone who
could plausibly be thought of as genuinely possessing such exper-
tise, then it is difficult to see how he could have found himself
committed to the view that we ought to suspend judgement. We
have been treating Arcesilaus as someone who uses another person's
premisses and favoured inferential principles to arrive at a conclu-
sion that contradicts some claim that this person put forward in
his capacity as a putative expert on some topic of inquiry. It ap-
pears, therefore, that we are forced to accept that if Arcesilaus did
construct arguments that had as their conclusion the claim that we
ought to suspend judgement, then those arguments were binding
only on Arcesilaus' opponents. Arcesilaus' ability to construct an
argument for a particular conclusion around someone else's pre-
misses and inferential principles does not imply that Arcesilaus
himself had any reason to think that this conclusion is true.
Confirmation that Arcesilaus' arguments for the conclusion that
we ought to suspend judgement were often ad hominem in char-
acter is provided by Sextus. In book I of Against the Dogmatists
he attributes to Arcesilaus a lengthy argument that explicitly uses
Stoic premisses to deliver the conclusion that the Stoics could not
deny, without contradicting themselves, that the wise man would
suspend judgement on all matters. In the first part ofthe argument
Arcesilaus attempts to show that the Stoics offer an account of
apprehension (KaTaATJVJts) that has the unfortunate property, when
taken in conjunction with their own inferential principles and ad-
ditional premisses which they cannot reject without being guilty
of insincerity and bad faith, of committing them to the conclusion
that apprehension does not exist (M. 7. 154-5). The remainder of
the argument then concentrates on exploring the implications of
some of the Stoics' explicit pronouncements about assent, opinion,
 A rcesilaus and Suspension of Judgement 45
and the response of the wise man. Sextus presents Arcesilaus as
putting forward the following line of reasoning:
If all things are non-apprehensible [dKaTa'\~7TTwV], it will follow, even ac-
cording to the Stoics, that the wise man suspends judgement. Let us con-
sider the matter thus:-Since all things are non-apprehensible owing to
the non-existence of the Stoic criterion, if the wise man shall assent the
wise man will opine; for when nothing is apprehensible, if he assents to
anything he will be assenting to what is non-apprehensible, and assent to
the non-apprehensible is opinion. So that if the wise man is in the class of
assenters, the wise man will be in the class of those who opine. But the wise
man, to be sure, is not in the class of those who opine (for, according to
them, opinion is a mark of folly and a cause of sins); therefore the wise man
is not in the class of assenters. And if this be so, he will necessarily refuse
assent in all cases. But to refuse assent is nothing else than to suspend
judgement; therefore the wise man will in all cases suspend judgement.
(M.7· 1 56-7)
The ad hominem character of this part of the argument seems
plain. The key claim that the wise man is not someone who has
opinions is supported only by an observation about the views held
by the Stoics. Moreover Arcesilaus conspicuously fails to explain
or defend the assertion that assent to the non-apprehensible is opi-
nion. However this omission is readily explicable if we assume that
Arcesilaus' argument is intended solely to show that the Stoics
are committed to accepting its conclusion as true. Given that aim,
the assertion that assent to the inapprehensible is opinion needs
no defence because it faithfully reflects official Stoic doctrine. II

And additional confirmation of the need to adopt an ad hominem

interpretation comes from both the explicit assertion that the ar-
gument's conclusion follows 'even according to the Stoics' and the
way in which Arcesilaus explains what is involved in suspension of
judgement by appealing to the Stoic notion of refusing one's assent
(davYKaTCt8EToS').
Once it has been accepted, however, that this part of the argument
" According to Stobaeus, the Stoics claimed that 'there are two kinds of opinion,
assent to the incognitive [aKa'TU'\~7TT'Pl and weak supposition, and these are alien
to the wise man's disposition' (Stobaeus, Anthologium, ed. C. Wachsmuth and 0.
Hense (s vols.; repro Berlin, 1974), ii. 68, trans. Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic
Philosophers, i. 256); and Plutarch reports in his work On Stoic Self-Contradictions
that the Stoics held that people are 'precipitate if they yield to unclear impressions,
deceived if they yield to false ones, and opining if they yield to ones which are
incognitive [aKaTa'\~7TTo'~l quite generally' (Plutarch, On Stoic Self-Contradictions,
1056 E, trans. Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, i. 255).
 Chapter 3
is intended only to draw out the consequences of views accepted by
the Stoics, we are forced to accept that there is nothing in the entire
argument that supports the conclusion that Arcesilaus himself held
that we ought to suspend judgement. Yet this is the argument that
Sextus chooses to set down as the 'doctrine of Arcesilaus' regarding
the criterion of truth (M. 7. 159). Moreover other independent
sources support the supposition that Arcesilaus' critique of Stoic
doctrines was one of the most salient aspects of his philosophical
posture. The founder of Stoicism was Zeno of Citium, and Cicero
reports that
It was entirely with Zeno, so we have been told, that Arcesilaus set on foot
his battle, not from obstinacy or desire for victory, as it seems to me at all
events, but because of the obscurity of the facts that had led Socrates to a
confession of ignorance, as also his predecessors Democritus, Anaxagoras,
Empedoc\es, and almost all the old philosophers. 12
Similarly, Numenius claims that 'when Arcesilaus saw that Zeno
was a professional rival, and worth conquering, he shrank from
nothing in trying to overthrow the arguments set forth by him', 1 J
and asserts that the rivalry between Arcesilaus and Zeno had its
origins in the time they spent as fellow pupils of the Academic
philosopher Polemo. '4 It seems clear, therefore, that reports that
Arcesilaus held that we ought to suspend judgement can readily be
explained without resorting to the supposition that Arcesilaus did
hold this view. In the course of his vigorous struggle with the Stoics
of his era, Arcesilaus would often have had occasion to deploy the
ad hominem argument outlined above, and this could easily have left
many of his listeners with the false belief that Arcesilaus himself
accepted the argument's conclusion as true.
What, though, are we to make of the many reports that refrain
from ascribing to Arcesilaus the normative claim that we ought to
suspend judgement but nevertheless describe him and his followers
as purporting to suspend judgement about everything? Initially, it
might be thought that these reports too can be explained in terms
of Arcesilaus' audience mistakenly interpreting the conclusions of
ad hominem arguments as setting out Arcesilaus' own beliefs. But
an explanation along these lines seems incapable of accounting for

I2 Cicero, Academica, I. 44, trans. Rackham (Loeb), 453.

IJ Numenius, in Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14. 6, p. 733 A, trans. Gifford,
ii.789. 14 Numenius, ibid. 14. 5, p. 7Z9C, trans. Gifford, ii. 785.
 Arcesilaus and Suspension of Judgement 47
Arcesilaus' response to the allegation by his philosophical oppo-
nents that suspension of judgement about everything was incom-
patible with voluntary action. If Arcesilaus had held the view that
he was not, in any way whatsoever, committed to suspending judge-
ment, there would have been no need for him to construct a defence
against this allegation. However there is substantial evidence that
he made great efforts to put forward a plausible account of how
voluntary action was possible even for someone who suspended
judgement on all matters; and this strongly suggests that Arcesi-
laus thought of himself as someone who does suspend judgement
or is under an intellectual obligation to suspend judgement.
Before we can usefully proceed any further, however, we need to
examine what Arcesilaus meant by the term €7TOX~' We have, un-
til now, translated this as 'suspension of judgement'; but we shall
see in Chapter 6 that when Sextus talks of €7TOX~ he is referring
to nothing less than suspension of belief. It might be suggested,
accordingly, that it would be appropriate to adopt a similar inter-
pretation of Arcesilaus' terminology. However such an interpreta-
tion would seem to commit us to holding that Arcesilaus purported
to suspend belief on all matters. We would then be driven to the
highly implausible conclusion that Arcesilaus espoused a suspen-
sion of belief that was far more extreme than anything advocated by
Sextus: according to Sextus, even the Pyrrhonist does not suspend
belief about evident matters of inquiry. And this, in turn, would
leave Arcesilaus looking dangerously vulnerable to the argument
that his own actions reveal that his claim to have no beliefs must be
mistaken.
It is clear, therefore, that the question of how to interpret Arce-
silaus' talk of €7TOX~ is one of great importance. We do, however,
possess one crucial piece of evidence: Arcesilaus' willingness to
treat the Stoic notion of refraining from assent as equivalent to
his own notion of suspending judgement seems to establish con-
clusively that it would be a mistake to treat Arcesilaus as equating
€7TOX~ with suspension of belief.
Most Stoic references to assent are references to situations that
involve assent to an impression (~aV'raa{a). However it is clear that
the Stoics were also prepared to talk of assent to propositions. Thus
we find, for example, that Laertius reports that the Stoics explained
the concept of a plausible proposition in the following terms: 'A
plausible proposition is one that inclines us to assent' (D. L. 7· 75,
 Chapter 3
own trans.). Moreover it is important to bear in mind that the Stoics
did not hold that all impressions are sensory impressions. Laertius'
evidence here is particularly forthright and compelling:
According to them, some impressions are sensory presentations and others
are not: sensory presentations on the one hand are those derived from a
sense organ or more than one sense organ, while non-sensory presentations
are those derived from the intellect itself, as is the case with those of
incorporeal things and of the other things conveyed by reason. (D. L. 7. 51,
own trans.)

Nevertheless it is the Stoic account of sense-perception that pro-

vides us with essential clarification of what the Stoics understood
by assent. Zeno maintained that sense-perception was a two-stage
process that involved both 'a sort of impact offered from outside" 5
and an act of mental assent. These impacts were regarded as al-
tering the physical state of the perceiver in such a way that a part
of the perceiver's physical structure comes to have representational
content. According to the Stoics, a normal human being looking
at a tree, for example, is physically affected by the way 'the light
between the visual organ and the object stretches in the form of a
cone' (D.L. 7. 157); and this alteration or impression represents the
world as containing a tree of a particular kind and shape. Assent to
a sensory impression was then treated as a matter of arriving at the
conclusion that the impression in question was true in the sense of
being a veridical impression.
How, then, are we to broaden this account of assent so that it
is also applicable to propositions and non-sensory impressions?
In the case of assent to a sensory impression, assent occurs when
someone forms the belief that the state of affairs represented by
the impression is a feature of the objective world. However the
Stoics hold that propositions and non-sensory impressions also
have representational content. Consequently the obvious way of
expanding the paradigm provided by assent to sense-impressions so
that it can cover assent to propositions and non-sensory impressions
is to say that assent to any item that possesses representational
content is always a matter of having the belief that the state of af-
fairs represented by that thing exists in a way that is independent
of anyone's psychological state.
This account of assent means that someone who moves from

'S Cicero, Academica, I. 40, trans. Rackham (Loeb), 449.

 Arcesilaus and Suspension of Judgement 49
having an impression of an entity with specific properties to the
conclusion that it is true that he has an impression of an entity
with those properties does not count as assenting to anything. Nor
would he count as assenting to anything if he formed, on the basis
of that impression, some expectation about his future impressions.
As one assents to an impression or proposition only by forming
a belief about the nature of the objective world, one can have all
manner of beliefs about the subjective character of one's experi-
ence without giving one's assent to anything at all. And this means
that someone with Arcesilaus' understanding of what is meant by
suspension of judgement can sincerely maintain that as long as a
person eschews all beliefs about matters of objective fact, he still
counts as suspending judgement about everything even if he holds
a rich set of beliefs about the subjective qualities of his present and
future impressions.
It seems, therefore, that Arcesilaus could have replied to the
charge that suspension of judgement about everything is incompat-
ible with voluntary action by claiming that the voluntary actions
carried out by people who withhold assent on all matters can be
explained by their beliefs about the subjective character of their
experience. Unfortunately, when we turn to Sextus' summary of
Arcesilaus' account of voluntary action, we do not find anything
that immediately presents itself as an explanation of human action
in terms of beliefs that are not beliefs about matters of objective
fact. According to Sextus,
Arcesilaus states that he who suspends judgement about everything will
regulate his inclinations and aversions and his actions in general by 'the
reasonable' [nil 'vAoy'!'], and by proceeding in accordance with this crite-
rion he will act rightly; for happiness is attained by means of prudence,
and prudence consists in right actions, and the right action is that which,
once it has been done, possesses a reasonable justification. (M. 7. 158, own
trans.)

This account of Arcesilaus' stance seems, at first sight, to imply

that Arcesilaus regarded himself as entitled to act on the basis of
beliefs about what it is reasonable to regard as objectively true: as
long as one accepts that one's beliefs about matters of objective fact
are never absolutely certain, one can legitimately act on the basis of
judgements that are better justified than any contrary judgements.
Moreover this reading of the above passage is apparently reinforced
50 Chapter 3
by Laertius' account of what the Stoics meant by TO n'}'\oyov. Ac-
cording to Laertius, the Stoics held that 'A reasonable proposition
is one which has to start with more chances of being true than not'
(D.L. 7. 76). Now we have already noted Arcesilaus' familiarity with
the technical vocabulary employed by the Stoics and his willingness
to use Stoic concepts in ad hominem arguments intended to force
the Stoics into making admissions that are inconsistent with their
official doctrines; and in this particular instance two further con-
siderations also tell quite strongly in favour of the suggestion that
Arcesilaus was employing Stoic terminology in the same way that
the Stoics themselves would have used it. First, Plutarch informs
us that the allegation that suspension of judgement was incompat-
ible with voluntary action was one of the chief weapons used by the
Stoics in their struggle against Arcesilaus' criticisms of their views:
'Nor was suspension of judgement about everything disturbed by
those who toiled away and wrote lengthy arguments against it. But
having finally confronted it from the Stoa with "inactivity" like
a Gorgon, they faded away.,,6 And second, Arcesilaus' otherwise
perplexing invocation of the notion of retrospective justification,
'that which once it has been done possesses a rational justification'
(M. 7. 158, my emphasis), is most readily explained as a deliber-
ate borrowing from a standard Stoic definition of proper function:
according to Stobaeus, the Stoics defined proper function as 'con-
sequentiality in life, something which, once it has been done, has a
reasonable justification'. I,
Further investigation, however, reveals that it would actually be
highly implausible to suppose that Arcesilaus held that universal
€7TOX~ is compatible with acting on the basis of beliefs about matters
of objective fact as long as one regards these beliefs as rationally
justified but not certainly true. We shall see in subsequent chapters
that the Pyrrhonean sceptic described by Sextus does not view
himself as holding any rationally justified beliefs about matters of
objective fact. However when Sextus is attempting to explain the
difference between Pyrrhonism and Arcesilaus' philosophic stance
(see PH I. 232-4), he fails to refer to Arcesilaus' advocacy of TO
EV'\OYov as a basis for voluntary action even though this would have

,6 Plutarch, Against Colotes, 1122 A-B, trans. Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic
Philosophers, i. 450.
'7 Stobaeus, Anthologium, ed. Wachsmuth and Hense, ii. 85, trans. Long and
Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, i. 359.
 Arcesilaus and Suspension of Judgement 51
constituted a major point of divergence if Arcesilaus had genuinely
been arguing that brox~ was consistent with retaining rationally
justified beliefs about matters of objective fact.
Another point that tells heavily against the attempt to interpret
Arcesilaus as a modest epistemological fallibilist rather than a radi-
cal sceptic emerges from a consideration of an anecdote Laertius
tells about the Stoic philosopher Sphaerus. Sphaerus was accused
by King Ptolemy Philopator of having given his assent to the propo-
sition that some real pomegranates had been placed on the table
before him when those pomegranates were actually waxen models.
However Sphaerus defended himself by saying, 'I assented not to
the proposition that they are pomegranates, but to another, that
there are good grounds for thinking them to be pomegranates [dAA'
on €vAoyov Ean poa, aUTa, Elva!]. Certainty of presentation and rea-
sonable probability are two totally different things' (D.L. 7. 177).
This story shows clearly that the Stoics held that someone who
acts on the basis of TO €vAoyov is nevertheless giving his assent to
some proposition. Although Sphaerus manages to explain his de-
cision to reach for the wax pomegranates without admitting that
he had given his assent to the false proposition that they were
real pomegranates, he does this only by appealing to his assent
to the proposition that it was reasonable to think they were real
pomegranates. Arcesilaus, in contrast, needed to explain how his
voluntary actions were compatible with his withholding assent on
all matters, and this obligation plainly could not be discharged by
invoking an explanation of voluntary action that relies on an agent
giving his assent to propositions about what it is reasonable to ac-
cept as objectively true.
The most important piece of testimony, however, is provided by
Plutarch's account of Arcesilaus' response to the inactivity argu-
ment. In his work Against Colotes Plutarch offers a description of
Arcesilaus' response that is considerably more detailed than any-
thing to be found in Sextus' extant writings; and it is conspicuous
that Plutarch omits any explicit mention of TO €vAoyov and con-
centrates instead on the proposal that impressions can give rise
to impulses towards particular actions without the agent giving
his assent to anything. According to Plutarch, Arcesilaus and his
followers responded to their critics by arguing in the following
manner:
52 Chapter 3
action requires two things: an impression of something appropriate, and an
impulse towards the appropriate object that has appeared; neither of these
is in conflict with suspension of judgement. For the argument keeps us away
from opinion, not from impulse or impression. So whenever something
appropriate has appeared, no opinion is needed to get us moving and
proceeding towards it; the impulse arrives immediately, since it is the
soul's process and movement ...• 8
In essence, then, Plutarch presents Arcesilaus as maintaining that
the Stoic explanation of voluntary action is unnecessarily compli-
cated. The Stoics held that voluntary action needs to be explained
in terms of impressions giving rise to beliefs about matters of ob-
jective fact which, in turn, give rise to impulses towards particular
objects and goals.' 9 However Arcesilaus seems to have taken the
view that beliefs about matters of objective fact are not required
here: once we have acknowledged the existence of impressions and
impulses, nothing more is needed in order to account for all the
voluntary actions that are an inevitable part of daily life.
It would, however, be a mistake to assume that Arcesilaus was of-
fering his critics a new theory of how voluntary action is possible. It
seems far more plausible to suppose that Arcesilaus was once again
exploring the consequences of assumptions made by other people.
Simple reflection on his own actions gave him no tendency to con-
clude that his voluntary actions were necessarily linked to acts of
assent, but he was also aware of the existence of seemingly plausible
arguments that purported to prove the existence of such a connec-
tion. Thus he was in danger of being pushed into the conclusion
that he was mistaken about his ability to suspend judgement on all
things. However closer examination of these arguments revealed
that they were plausible only to the extent to which the Stoic onto-
logy of impressions, acts of assent, and impulses was a plausible one.
But once one has chosen to work within that framework, it emerges
that it is also possible to develop a plausible account of voluntary
action that displays it as sometimes arising from impressions that
,8 Plutarch, Against C%tes, 1122 C-D, trans. Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic
Philosophers, i. 450 .
•• See e.g. Origen, On Principles, 3. I. 3, trans. Long and Sedley, The Hellenis-
tic Philosophers, i. 313. Origen describes the Stoics as maintaining that 'ensouled
things [i.e. animals] are moved by themselves when an impression occurs within
them which calls forth an impulse ... A rational animal, however, in addition to
its impressionistic nature, has reason which passes judgement on impressions, re-
jecting some of these and accepting others, in order that the animal may be guided
accordingly. '
 Arcesilaus and Suspension of Judgement 53
generate impulses without the assistance of any intervening act of
assent.
The resources available to Arcesilaus here are illustrated in a
striking manner by the fact that the Stoics were accustomed to ex-
plain the actions of all non-human animals in terms of a simple
impression-impulse model even though most people would take
the view that the concept of a voluntary action can be usefully
employed to describe animal behaviour. zo Although much complex
animal behaviour does appear to be the product of instinctual drives
that are so powerful that the animals in question are not free to do
anything else, it seems absurd to suppose that a dog chasing a stick
or a cat playing with a ball of wool is not doing so voluntarily. It
follows that the Stoics' insistence that impression-impulse expla-
nations suffice to explain the behaviour of all non-human animals
badly undermines the plausibility of their claim that all voluntary
actions carried out by human beings need to be explained in terms
of acts of assent.
Arcesilaus, then, was free to argue that in so far as the Stoic on-
tology of impressions, acts of assent, and impulses did possess any
degree of plausibility, it also provided all the resources required to
develop an account of voluntary action that did not appeal to acts of
assent. Yet the inactivity argument depended for its power on the
plausibility of that ontology. And this, in turn, meant that the up-
shot of Arcesilaus' investigations was that he could sincerely report,
without feeling guilty in any way of bad faith or lack of intellectual
rigour, that he was unable to discern any grounds for supposing that
his self-professed €7rOX~ was incompatible with voluntary action.
At this point, however, it might be objected that this interpre-
tation of Arcesilaus' response to the inactivity argument fails to
account for the fact that Sextus presents Arcesilaus as invoking TO
d;,.\oyov as a criterion for action. Now it is quite true, as we have
already noted, that the Stoics did, in many contexts, think of acting
in accordance with TO £v"\oyov as a matter of giving one's assent to
the proposition that it was reasonable to hold a particular belief
about the world's objective properties. However they were also so
strongly committed to the thesis that the natural order of things

'0 Some of the evidence for ascribing an impression-impulse model of animal

action to the Stoics can be found at D.L. 7. 86; Philo, Allegories of the Laws, I.
30, trans. Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, i. 3 [7; and Origen, On
Principles, 3. I. 3., trans. Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, i. 3[3.
 Chapter 3
was inherently rational that they would have been in no position to
deny that action in accordance with one's nature as a human being
counted as acting in accordance with 'TO €VAoyoV. 21 Thus Arcesi-
laus' argument that the Stoics' own account of action led to the
conclusion that our nature was such that impressions could lead to
impulses without the mediation of any act of assent also permitted
him to parody their doctrines by presenting the actions arising from
such impulses as actions in accordance with 'TO €VAOYOV.

3. An ongoing problem

Our investigations seem to have revealed that Arcesilaus' philo-

sophic stance closely resembled the philosophic stance subse-
quently espoused by Sextus. Indeed, if we compare Arcesilaus'
stance with the one that seems to have been taken up by Pyrrho,
we find, somewhat surprisingly, that it is Arcesilaus who appears to
have more in common with Sextus. Pyrrho's suspension of judge-
ment seems unduly dogmatic, whereas Arcesilaus not only pro-
fesses to suspend belief on all matters of objective fact but arrives
at this €7TOX~ through a lengthy and open-ended process of subject-
ing the claims of other philosophers to disinterested investigation.
I t is clear, moreover, that Sextus himself finds it difficult to iso-
late any clear-cut respects in which the Pyrrhonean scepticism he
is describing differs significantly from the position embraced and
defended by Arcesilaus. Indeed, Sextus even goes so far as to say
that Arcesilaus 'definitely seems to me to share in the Pyrrhonean
way of thinking, so that his mode of life and ours are all but one'
(PH I. 232, own trans.).
It might be suggested, then, that our examination of Arcesilaus'
philosophic stance has merely succeeded in making the nature of the
relationship between Sextus' Pyrrhonism and Pyrrho's own views
even more puzzling than we originally supposed. Even before we
turned our attention to Arcesilaus and his followers in the Middle
Academy, we had been forced to conclude not only that Pyrrho's
own philosophical position appeared to be that of a negative dog-
matist but also that it seemed most unlikely that Sextus genuinely
Z< See R. Bett, 'Carneades' Pithanon: A Reappraisal of its Role and Status', Oxford
Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 7 ([989), 59-94 at 63, and Damianas Tsekourakis,
Studies in the Terminology of Early Stoic Ethics (Wiesbaden, [974), 25-30.
 A rcesilaus and Suspension of Judgement 55
formed part of an unbroken succession of Pyrrhonean philosophers
who had gradually refined Pyrrho's original views into the sophis-
ticated form of scepticism expounded in the Outlines of Pyrrhon-
ism and Against the Dogmatists. However we have now found in
Arcesilaus and other members of the Middle Academy a group of
thinkers who seem to have espoused a philosophical outlook that
is very similar to the one espoused by Sextus. Moreover we have
just noted that Sextus himself acknowledges the existence of these
similarities. Why, then, does Sextus not think of himself as an Aca-
demic sceptic? I t is, of course, true that the members of the Middle
Academy did not use the term aK£7TTLKO, to describe themselves.
However it seems equally clear that Pyrrho did not apply this term
to himself in the technical sense given to it by Sextus." Thus the
problem remains: why does Sextus choose to associate himself with
the example provided by Pyrrho when Arcesilaus' way of philoso-
phizing seems significantly closer to Sextus' own practice?

22 See Chapter I, sect. 3.

 4
The New Academy and the Origins
of Aenesidemean Pyrrhonism
I. Sextus and Aenesidemus
A T this point in our investigation into the connection between the
views of Pyrrho of Elis and the philosophical stance embraced by
Sextus Empiricus, it is essential to direct our attention once more to
the succession of philosophers set out by Laertius as linking Pyrrho
to Sextus and his pupil Saturn in us. Although we have dismissed
the suggestion that a series of master-pupil relationships genuinely
links Pyrrho and Sextus, Sextus' own writings yield abundant evi-
dence that Aenesidemus of Cnossus, who is one of the philosophers
mentioned in Laertius' succession, did exercise a major influence
on Sextus' scepticism.
As we shall see in the next chapter, Aenesidemus wrote books in
which he described himself as a Pyrrhonist. Moreover arguments
explicitly attributed to Aenesidemus by Sextus occupy an extremely
prominent place in book I of the Outlines of Pyrrhonism. We find,
for example, that Sextus states that 'the usual tradition amongst
the older Sceptics [TOLC; apxaLOTEPOtC; UK€7TTlKOLC;] is that the modes
[Tp07TOt] by which suspension is supposed to be brought about are
ten in number' (PH I. 36), and he then proceeds to devote almost
half of book I to an exposition of these tropes. As Sextus openly
ascribes the ten tropes to Aenesidemus in Against the Dogmatists
(see M. 7. 345), this would seem to mean that almost half of book I
of the Outlines of Pyrrhonism is actually devoted to an exposition of
arguments that were assembled and shaped by Aenesidemus. Nor,
indeed, does this lengthy discussion of the ten tropes constitute
the full extent of Aenesidemus' overt influence on the contents of
book I. Sextus also says that 'Aenesidemus furnishes us with eight
modes, by which, as he thinks, he tests and exposes the unsoundness
 The New Academy and Aenesidemean Pyrrhonism 57
of every dogmatic theory of causation' (PH I. 180); and Sextus
appends a summary of Aenesidemus' specific objections to such
theories.
The existence of this strong connection between Aenesidemus'
position and the one espoused by Sextus indicates that it might be
possible to clarify the nature of Sextus' relationship to Arcesilaus
and Pyrrho by exploring the circumstances in which Aenesidemus
came to write his books on Pyrrhonism. Aenesidemus seems, in
fact, to have been a pivotal figure in the development of the form
of scepticism described by Sextus. He appears to have spent some
time as a member of the Academy, I yet he is also the earliest identi-
fiable figure picked out by Sextus as a sceptic. Sextus conspicuously
refrains from using the term C1KE1TTLK6" to refer to Pyrrho, but, as we
have just seen, Sextus has no qualms about including Aenesidemus
in the ranks of 'the older sceptics'. Moreover Photius' precis of Ae-
nesidemus' Pyrrhonist Discourses makes it plain that Aenesidemus
was particularly concerned in that work to present the Pyrrhonist
as someone who had a more consistent and less dogmatic philo-
sophic position than the one embraced by the Academics of that
time;2 and it is also noteworthy that it is Aenesidemus who is sin-
gled out by Aristocles of Messene as the person responsible for the
re-emergence of people who purported to follow Pyrrho in their
approach to philosophy. J Now it would be wholly inappropriate
to allow Aristocles' testimony to override Menodotus' assertion
that it was Ptolemy of Cyrene who re-established Pyrrho's schoo\.4
Nevertheless Aristocles' comments do suggest that Aenesidemus
can safely be regarded as an early and particularly prominent mem-
ber of the group of philosophers who initiated the practice of using
Pyrrho's name as a way of marking the distinction between their
hardline scepticism and less radical positions. It seems, therefore,
that if we could find an explanation of why someone of Aeneside-
mus' views would have been keen to associate himself with Pyrrho
rather than Arcesilaus and the Academy, this would also serve to
explain why Sextus calls himself a Pyrrhonist despite the strong
similarities between his philosophic stance and that espoused by
Arcesilaus.

, See Photius, Bibliotheca, 169-70, trans. A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, The

Hellenistic Philosophers (2 vols.; Cambridge, 1987), i. 468-9.
Z Ibid., trans. Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, i. 469-'70.
J See Chapter 2, sect. 3. 4 See ibid.
58 Chapter 4

2. Carneades and the New Academy

When Arcesilaus died around 242 Be, he was succeeded as head

of the Academy by Lacydes, who appears to have remained com-
pletely faithful to Arcesilaus' way of approaching philosophical
issues. 5 However Carneades, the fourth head of the Academy after
Arcesilaus, was interpreted by many of his contemporaries as mov-
ing away from the uncompromising bTOX~ associated with Arcesi-
laus; and Sextus accordingly reports that 'according to most people
there have been three Academies ... the third or New Academy
[being] that of the School of Carneades and Cleitomachus' (PH I.
220). Now it is quite possible that this assessment of Carneades'
philosophical stance was badly mistaken. Nevertheless the even-
tual outcome of the controversy over the correct interpretation of
Carneades' views was that the Academy became dominated in its
last years by people who held that it was appropriate and justified
for those professing to adhere to the Academy to hold beliefs about
matters of objective fact as long as they were also prepared to ac-
knowledge that absolute certainty about such matters was unattain-
able. It is unlikely, therefore, that anyone who denied that it was
rationally justified to hold beliefs about matters of objective fact
and espoused a complete withholding of assent would have found
the Academy of that time a congenial intellectual home. Nor would
there have been any serious possibility of re-establishing Arcesi-
laus' views as the official stance of the Academy. Arcesilaus had
left behind no philosophical writings; and even if it had been pos-
sible to arrive at a renewed consensus about the details of Arcesi-
laus' philosophic stance, Carneades' intellectual reputation was so
formidable that the Academy would have united around Arcesilaus'
views only if it could have been established that they had also been
Carneades' views.
I t was, of course, generally accepted that there were many im-
portant respects in which Carneades had continued to philosophize
in the manner introduced into the Academy by Arcesilaus. Euse-
bius, for example, reports that in argument Carneades 'employed
the same method as Arcesilaus, for, like him, he too practised the
mode of attacking both sides, and used to attack all the arguments

5 See Cicero, Academica, 2. 16.

 The New Academy and Aenesidemean Pyrrhonism 59
used by the others,;6 and Eusebius also cites Numenius as stating
that 'Carneades having succeeded to the leadership disregarded the
teacher whose doctrines he ought to have defended [i.e. Plato], and
referring everything back to Arcesilaus, whether good or bad, re-
newed the battle after a long interval. '7 In similar fashion, Cicero is
perfectly happy to include in the Academica a character who talks in
terms of Carneades completing Arcesilaus' philosophy.s Moreover
Carneades plainly seems to have shared Arcesilaus' enthusiasm for
controverting the views put forward by the Stoics. Laertius asserts
that Carneades 'studied carefully the writings of the Stoics and par-
ticularly those of Chrysippus, and by combatting these successfully
he became so famous that he would often say: "Without Chrysip-
pus where should I have been?" '(D.L. 4. 62); and even Sextus'
summary of Carneades' general argument against the existence of
a criterion of truth indicates that Carneades devoted most of his
effort to undermining the Stoic version of the criterion (see M. 7.
159-6 5).
It seems, in fact, that Carneades' divergence from the views of
Arcesilaus was, on the whole, thought of as being confined to a
change in attitude towards l7TOX~' The dominant interpretation of
Arcesilaus' stance saw him as purporting to withhold assent in every
area of inquiry, but Carneades gave many people the impression that
he was willing to assent to some claims about the world. In Cicero's
Academica the character Lucullus expounds the views of Antiochus
of Ascalon, a one-time member of the Academy who attempted to
lead it towards an acceptance of a modified version of the doctrines
espoused by the Stoics;9 and Cicero puts into Lucullus' mouth the
claim that the arguments used by the members of the Middle and
New Academies committed them to 'the doctrine of €7TOX~' that is,
"a holding back of assent" , in which Arcesilaus was more consistent,
if the opinions that some people hold about Carneades are true'. 10
Furthermore, when Cicero replies to Lucullus' criticisms of the
New Academy, he acknowledges that some prominent Academics,
in particular Philo of Larissa and Metrodorus, maintained that

6 Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14. 7, p. 736 D, trans. E. H. Gifford (2 vols.;

Oxford, 1903), ii. 793.
7 Numenius, in Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14. 8, p. 737 B, trans. Gifford,
ii.793. 8 Cicero, Academica, 2. 16.

9 See A. A. Long, Hellenistic Philosophy, 2nd edn. (London, 1986), 222-9.

'0 Cicero, A cademica , 2. 59, ed. and trans. H. Rackham (Loeb Classical Library;

Cambridge, Mass., 1933), 543.

60 Chapter 4
Carneades had accepted that the wise man might hold opinions. II

In similar fashion, Eusebius claims that Carneades differed from

Arcesilaus 'in the principle of €7TOX~ alone ... stating that it was not
possible for a man to suspend judgement upon all matters, and there
was a difference between "non-evident" and "non-apprehensible",
and although all things were non-apprehensible, they were not all
non-evident';I2 and Sextus draws a distinction between Arcesilaus
and Carneades on the grounds that Carneades and his followers,
unlike Arcesilaus, treated some impressions as more plausible than
others and hence failed to withhold assent (see PH I. 226-30).

3. Carneades, plausibility, and assent

As Sextus' comments indicate, it was Carneades' elaborate dis-

cussion of the different levels of plausibility that an impression
might possess that seems to have been primarily responsible for
the emergence of the view that he was not as strongly committed
as Arcesilaus to €7TOX~' In Against the Dogmatists Sextus moves di-
rectly from his exposition of Carneades' attack on the criterion of
truth to the following remarks:
yet as he himself [Carneades] also has some criterion demanded of him
for the conduct of life and the attainment of happiness, he is practically
compelled on his own account to put forward a theory about it, and to
adopt both the plausible impression and that which is at once plausible and
undiverted and scrutinized. (M.7. 166, own trans.)

This theory, as described by Sextus, relies upon a distinction be-

tween an impression's relationship to its apparent source and its
relationship to the person having the impression. Sextus presents
Carneades as arguing along the following lines (M. 7. 167-89). An
impression that does not accurately represent an existing object
can nevertheless be apparently true, and apparently true impres-
sions are either obscure and indistinct or clear and vivid. Now the
impression that is obscure and indistinct 'will not be a criterion;
for because of its not indicating clearly either itself or that which
caused it, it is not of such a nature as to persuade us or to induce
us to assent' (M. 7. 172). However the impression which appears
true and appears so vividly, i.e. the plausible impression, can serve
" Ibid. 2. 78, trans. Rackham (Loeb), 567 .
.. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14.7, pp. 736 D-737 A (own trans.).
 The New Academy and Aenesidemean Pyrrhonism 61
as a criterion of truth, and the rare occurrence of cases where such
impressions are false 'should not make us distrust the kind which
"as a general rule" reports truly' (M. 7. 175).
Impressions, though, are seldom judged in isolation from each
other, and this leads to our initial criterion being supplemented
by a second criterion: namely, the impression which is both plaus-
ible and undiverted. An undiverted impression is, in essence, an
impression that coheres with all the other impressions that accom-
pany it, and the greater the degree of coherence, the greater the
credibility we assign to that impression. Even more credible than
the plausible and undiverted impression, however, is the plausible
and undiverted impression that has been thoroughly scrutinized.
In this case we actively investigate the background conditions in
order to see whether we can find anything that tells against the
supposition that the impression will continue to cohere with all our
other impressions. If this investigation reveals nothing untoward,
then, once again, our confidence in the impression increases:
just as in ordinary life we question a single witness when we are looking
into a trivial matter, but several in a greater matter, and we cross-examine
each of the witnesses about the testimony of the others when the matter
investigated is still more important-so likewise, says Carneades, in trivial
matters we employ as the criterion only the plausible impression, but in
greater matters the undiverted, and in matters that contribute to happiness
the scrutinized impression. (M. 7. 184, own trans.)

If we take Sextus' report at face value, then it seems that we must

inevitably conclude that Carneades did take the view that it was
appropriate for him to hold beliefs about matters of objective fact.
Sextus explicitly presents the plausible impression in its various
formS as Carneades' criterion (see, in particular, M. 7· 173, 179,
and 184); and Sextus also strongly links the plausible impression
with assent. As we have just seen, the impression that is obscure
and indistinct is rejected as a criterion because it fails to persuade
us or induce us to assent to its propositional content. This clearly
implies that the impression that appears vividly to be true succeeds
in being a criterion only because it does induce assent. Moreover
one of the illustrative examples cited by Sextus involves someone
assenting to the fact that it is not the case that the body presented
to him is a snake (M. 7. 188), and Sextus immediately goes on to
ascribe to Carneades the general thesis that 'when we see something
62 Chapter 4
very plainly we assent to its being true when we have previously
proved by testing that we have our senses in good order' (M. 7. 188).
It is important to bear in mind, however, that Carneades is gener-
ally acknowledged to have used the same methods of argument as
those employed by Arcesilaus. Thus we can expect that Carneades
would have made extensive use of ad hominem arguments and the
device of arguing on both sides of the question. Indeed, one of
the most famous anecdotes relating to Carneades concerns a visit
to Rome, where he delivered on two successive days a lecture in
which he defended the virtue of justice and a lecture in which he
attacked justice. According to Lactantius,
With the object of refuting Aristotle and Plato, supporters of justice,
Carneades in his first discourse assembled all the arguments in favour
of justice in order that he might overturn them, as he did ... not because
he thought justice ought to be disparaged, but to show that its defenders
had no certain or firm arguments about it.· 3

Moreover the work of Pierre Couissin and Richard Bett has shown
that this alleged Carneadean theory of plausibility draws exten-
sively on Stoic distinctions and terminology.14 This, of course, is
precisely what one would be likely to find if Carneades had in-
tended his comments about the plausible impression to counter-
balance some dogmatic thesis propounded by his Stoic rivals. It
seems, therefore, that it is quite possible that Sextus or his source
has simply misread one of Carneades' dialectical manreuvres as an
exposition of a position to which Carneades was personally com-
mitted.
The credibility of this suggestion, however, depends on our be-
ing able to locate either some line of thought that can be juxtaposed
with Carneades' account of the plausible impression in such a way
that the ultimate result is suspension of judgement or some thesis
that Carneades might have wished to foist upon the Stoics by us-
ing their beliefs as the starting-point for his arguments. Now it is
sometimes claimed that Carneades' appeal to the plausible impres-
sion is intended to counterbalance the case he assembles in support

., Lactantius, Divine Institutes, 5. 14, trans. Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic
Philosophers, i. 442 .
•• See P. Couissin, 'The Stoicism of the New Academy', in M. Burnyeat (ed.),
The Skeptical Tradition (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983), 31-63 at 46-5°; and R.
Bett, 'Carneades' Pithanon: A Reappraisal of its Role and Status', Oxford Studies in
Ancient Philosophy, 7 (1989),59-94 at 78-9.
 The New Academy and Aenesidemean Pyrrhonism 63
of the conclusion that there is no criterion of truth. '5 However it
seems clear that this would have been a wholly unnecessary display
of ingenuity on Carneades' part. There is no independent evidence
that the Stoics were so overwhelmed by Carneades' arguments that
they were in danger of coming to the dogmatic conclusion that
Carneades had succeeded in establishing that one was rationally jus-
tified in holding that no such criterion could exist; and if Carneades
himself had been tempted to succumb to this conclusion, it would
have been a simple matter for him to have counterbalanced his
negative arguments with the many positive arguments for the ex-
istence of a criterion of truth that had already been constructed by
dogmatic philosophers.
Would it be more sensible, then, to suggest that Carneades' dis-
cussion of plausibility is intended to be juxtaposed with the Stoics'
contention that the criterion of truth is the apprehensive impres-
sion? According to Sextus, the Stoics held that an apprehensive
impression (l(a'TaATJ7TTlI(~ .pal''Taa{a) was 'one caused by an existing
object and imaged and stamped in the subject in accordance with
that existing object, of such a kind as could not be derived from a
non-existent object' (M. 7. 248). Thus it has been proposed that
Carneades is attempting to counteract the Stoic case for supposing
that the apprehensive impression is the criterion of truth by con-
structing an equaJIy persuasive case in support of the contention
that the criterion of truth is actuaJIy the plausible impression. U n-
fortunately, the arguments that can be assembled in favour of re-
garding the plausible impression as capable of carrying out the
functions assigned to a criterion of truth cannot counterbalance the
arguments that can be assembled in favour of regarding the appre-
hensive impression as capable of carrying out that function. If the
Stoics' "arguments are persuasive and Carneades' arguments are
equally persuasive, then we shaH merely arrive at the conclusion
that both the apprehensive impression and the plausible impres-
sion are criteria of truth; and it is difficult to see why Carneades
would have had any interest in persuading people to adopt that
view. Carneades does, on the other hand, have an obvious inter-
est in inducing us to abandon the belief that there is a criterion
of truth, but that could only be achieved by counterbalancing the
case urged in favour of particular candidates for this role with a set
'S See e.g. D. Sedley, 'The Motivation of Greek Skepticism', in Bumyeat (ed.),

The Skeptical Tradition, 9-29 at 18.

 Chapter 4
of arguments leading to the conclusion that they are not capable
of fulfilling such a role. Arguments that something else might be
equally good are simply irrelevant here.
Nor is it particularly credible to suppose that Carneades' dis-
cussion was intended to reassure the Stoics that they would still
retain the ability to act in a purposeful manner even if they were
to abandon the belief that the apprehensive impression constituted
a genuine criterion of truth. 16 The appeal to TO m8a1l611 is simply
too strongly associated with Carneades for this association to be
adequately explained by postulating that he occasionally sought to
allay his opponents' anxieties in this way. If we are to succeed in
rescuing Carneades from the charge that this doctrine is one to
which he gave his assent, then we need to display it as a move in an
ad hominem argument that serves some function that would have
been important to Carneades.
Now we have already seen that Sextus presents Carneades' appeal
to the plausible impression as a response to the demand that he set
out a criterion for the conduct of life. Who, then, was making this
demand? The obvious answer to this question is that Carneades
was challenged to produce a criterion by philosophic opponents
who were intent on pressing home the charge that his attack on
the criterion of truth and his professed stance on assent made it
impossible for him to provide any account of his voluntary actions.
In essence, therefore, Carneades' invocation of the plausible im-
pression was intended to form part of a response to some version
of the a.71pat{a argument.
In the case of Carneades' predecessor, Arcesilaus, we came to the
conclusion that he had responded to the a.7Tpat{a argument with
an ad hominem argument that embraced the framework of thought
that initially seemed to make voluntary action without assent im-
possible but used elements inherent in that framework to construct
a persuasive account of how such action could occur. Would it be
possible, then, to interpret Carneades' discussion of the plausible
impression as a move within another piece of ad hominem argumen-
tation intended to disarm the a.7Tpat{a argument? If so, this would
serve to explain why Carneades' invocation of the plausible im-
pression played a part in his overall philosophical posture that was
prominent enough to attract the attention of his contemporaries;
.6 This interpretation can be found in Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philoso-
phers, i. 459-60.
 The New Academy and Aenesidemean Pyrrhonism 65
but we would still be free to deny that Carneades gave his assent to
any of the substantive claims made in the course of his discussion.
At first sight, however, an insurmountable obstacle stands in the
way of any attempt to interpret Carneades as offering an ad hominem
reply to a version of the d1Tpagra argument that concentrates, like
the one raised against Arcesilaus, on the objection that voluntary
action is impossible without assent. Sextus' account of Carneades'
discussion of the plausible impression seems to make it plain that
Carneades regarded these impressions as inducing assent, and it is
obviously impossible to rebut the charge that voluntary action im-
plies assent by putting forward an account of voluntary action that
relies upon people being guided by considerations of plausibility to
give their assent to various claims about the world.
It is worth noting, though, that the account of Carneades' views
presented by Sextus in Against the Dogmatists seems to derive
from the writings of Antiochus of Ascalon. When Sextus sets out
Carneades' attack on the criterion of truth, he makes use of some
material that is explicitly attributed to Antiochus (see M. 7. 162).
Yet Sextus' discussion of Carneades' attitude towards the plausible
impression comes immediately after his exposition of Carneades'
attack on the criterion of truth, and it seems unlikely that Sex-
tus would have switched sources in the middle of his summary of
Carneades' views. However Antiochus' insight into the philosophic
stance of the Middle and New Academies seems to have been pri-
marily shaped by the time he spent as a pupil of Philo of Larissa; '7
and we have already noted that Cicero ascribes to Philo the view
that Carneades held that the wise man might hold opinions. More-
over Antiochus' principal philosophical works were written from
the perspective of someone who had come to the conclusion that
the-attacks launched against the Stoics by Arcesilaus and his suc-
cessors had led people away from the truth rather than towards it.
Indeed, Sextus himself reports that 'it was even said of him [An-
tiochus] that "In the Academy he teaches the Stoic philosophy";
for he tried to show that the dogmas of the Stoics are already pre-
sent in Plato' (PH I. 235). Thus Antiochus would have had strong
polemical motives, irrespective of the actual facts of the matter, for
presenting Carneades as failing to withhold assent on all matters;
and such a reading of Carneades' position would have been highly
congenial to Sextus, who appears to be absolutely determined to
'7 Cicero, Academica, 2. 69.
66 Chapter 4
portray the members of the New Academy as subscribing to a dog-
matic philosophical position that has very little in common with
his own scepticism.
Cicero's testimony, however, allows us to proceed with more con-
fidence. Cicero explicitly rejects Philo's claim that Carneades ac-
cepted that the wise man sometimes assents; 18 and Cicero says that
he agrees 'with Clitomachus when he writes that Carneades really
did accomplish an almost Herculean labour in ridding our minds of
that fierce wild beast, the act of assent, that is of mere opinion and
hasty thinking'. 19 Moreover Cicero sometimes supports his own
assertions about suspension of judgement and its relationship to
our ability to act by offering paraphrases of passages taken directly
from books and letters written by Clitomachus. This particular
form of testimony is especially valuable because Clitomachus was
one of Carneades' closest students and eventually became head of
the Academy around 128 Be. zo And one of the passages paraphrased
by Cicero introduces a clarification of the claim 'The wise man
withholds assent' that is highly pertinent to our present concerns.
According to Cicero, Clitomachus made the following comments
about that claim:
'The wise man withholds assent' has two senses: one, when it means that he
assents to nothing at all; the other, when he checks himself from responding
in such a way as to accept or reject something, with the result that he neither
denies nor asserts something. This being so, he adopts the former, so that
he never assents, but retains the latter, with the result that by following
convincingness he can respond 'yes' wherever it is present or 'no' wherever
it is missing."

It appears, then, that Clitomachus was prepared to concede that it

was not wholly inappropriate to talk of someone who had embraced
the £TrOX~ espoused by the New Academy as nevertheless assenting
to some things. However the assent at issue here was merely a mat-
ter of being guided in one's actions by plausible impressions and
acquiescing in some of the verbal responses that would have been
forthcoming from an ordinary person who happened to be con-
fronted by similarly plausible impressions. Assent of this minimal
kind was, accordingly, wholly consistent with the £TrOX~ introduced
,s Ibid. 2. 78. '9 Ibid.
2. 108, trans. Rackham (Loeb), 607.
'0 See D.L. 4. 67 and Cicero, Academica, 16 .
2.
.. Cicero, Academica, 2. 104, trans. Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers,
i·454·
 The New Academy and Aenesidemean Pyrrhonism 67
into the Academy by Arcesilaus: beliefs about objective matters of
fact are excluded in both cases.
When the ordinary person has a plausible impression of, for ex-
ample, a piece of coiled rope on the ground before him, then he will,
except in special circumstances, form the belief that there really is
a piece of coiled rope on the floor. Moreover if he is asked whether
there is piece of coiled rope on the floor, he will reply 'Yes'. In
contrast, someone who assents to such an impression in the min-
imal way picked out by Clitomachus in the passage cited above
will merely form the belief that if he were to investigate further,
he would continue to have an impression of a piece of rope. This
expectation may be all that is required to guide his actions so that
they resemble those of the ordinary person, but it is not the same
thing as the ordinary person's belief that there really is a piece of
coiled rope on the floor. And this, in turn, means that the person
who has embraced the form of brox~ espoused by Carneades and
Clitomachus will, in philosophical contexts, refrain from saying that
there is a piece of coiled rope on the floor. In everyday contexts,
however, it would be excessively pedantic and disruptive for such a
person to insist on distinguishing his belief about his future impres-
sions from the ordinary person's belief about a matter of objective
fact. Thus if he is asked, in an everyday context, whether there is a
coiled piece of rope on the floor, he too will usually reply 'Yes'. 22
It seems, therefore, that even if Sextus is correct in representing
Carneades as sometimes speaking in terms of assenting to plausible
impressions" this does not establish that Carneades' explanation
of how volur:ltary action is compatible with E7TOX~ committed him
to the view that voluntary action presupposes assent of the kind
eschewed by Arcesilaus. Moreover it is surely highly significant
that Plutarch describes Antipater of Tarsus, who became head of
the Stoic school after Carneades took over the leadership of the
Academy, as concentrating in his disputes with the Academics on
'the doctrine that without assent there is neither action nor impul-
sion, and that they are talking nonsense and empty assumptions
who claim that, when an appropriate impression occurs, impulsion
" It may well be this willingness to accommodate ordinary ways of talking in
non-philosophical contexts that gives rise to Numenius' allegation that 'although
from his jealousy of the Stoics he [Carneades] stirred up confusion in public, he
would himself in secret with his own friends agree, and speak candidly, and affirm,
as much as any other ordinary person'. See Numenius in Eusebius, Praeparatio
Evangelica, 14. 8, p. 73B D, trans. Gifford, ii. 795.
68 Chapter 4
ensues at once without people first having yielded or given their
assent' .Z3 This line of attack would clearly have been highly appo-
site in the case of Arcesilaus, who, as we have seen, did attempt
to disarm the inactivity argument by arguing that the framework
of thought within which this argument initially appeared to be a
compelling one failed to exclude the possibility that an impres-
sion might sometimes generate an impulse without the assistance
of an act of assent. However it would have been a hopelessly mis-
directed line of attack if it had been directed against someone who
had explicitly put forward an account of voluntary action that in-
volved agents giving their assent, as the Stoics understood assent,
to plausible impressions. Thus Antipater's willingness to deploy
this objection against Carneades appears to show that the Stoics of
Carneades' time were in no doubt that Carneades continued to fol-
low Arcesilaus in purporting to suspend judgement on all matters
of objective fact.
We can conclude, then, that although Carneades was indirectly
responsible for the philosophic stance espoused by Arcesilaus being
abandoned by the Academy, there appear to be no strong grounds
for supposing that Carneades himself ever repudiated Arcesilaus'
philosophical methodology or his commitment to €1TOX~' As we
have seen, Carneades does seem to have deployed ad hominem ar-
guments against the Stoics that made use of the premiss that the
wise man sometimes assents; and it is easy to understand how this
dialectical device might have persuaded some of Carneades' listen-
ers that he genuinely held that the wise man sometimes assents.
Moreover Carneades' appeal to the plausible impression as a crite-
rion of action was a fecund source of misunderstandings. Even if we
set aside his apparent willingness to employ the terminology of as-
sent (avYKaT&.8wL,) in a loose manner that differs markedly from the
usage insisted upon by the Stoics, there is still the problem that in
most cases where people are guided in their actions by plausible im-
pressions, beliefs about matters of objective fact are involved. Thus
the examples used by Carneades to illustrate the different levels of
plausibility that can be possessed by an impression have the un-
fortunate effect of reinforcing the association between plausibility
and assent. Although we are familiar with the wayan individual
impression's plausibility can be enhanced by the way it coheres
23 Plutarch, On Stoic Self-Contradictions, 1057 A, trans. Long and Sedley, The

Hellenistic Philosophers, i. 317.

 The New Academy and Aenesidemean Pyrrhonism 69
with other impressions, this additional plausibility usually leads to
a firmer belief about a matter of objective fact. Similarly, an im-
pression that successfully undergoes rigorous testing does possess
greater plausibility than an untested impression, but the upshot of
this testing is usually an increase in the confidence with which we
hold some belief about the real properties of the world. It is not
surprising, therefore, that Carneades' appeal to TIl 1T,(Ja"6,, had the
effect of persuading many people that he had abandoned the €1TOX~
professed by Arcesilaus in favour of a stance that permitted one to
hold beliefs about matters of objective fact as long as one admitted
the potential fallibility of those beliefs and stood ready to revise
them in response to any new evidence that might be forthcoming.

4. The New Academy after Carneades

Carneades retired as head of the Academy in 137 BC, and it seems
that his immediate successors were Carneades, son of Pole march us,
and Crates of Tarsus. 24 During this time Clitomachus appears to
have taught outside the Academy;2 5 but after he became head of
the Academy around 128 BC, he made strenuous efforts to present
Carneades as staying close to the philosophic stance espoused by
Arcesilaus. However Clitomachus' interpretation of Carneades was
rejected by many members of the Academy, who preferred to give
their allegiance on this issue to other people who had also been
pupils of Carneades.
We have already noted that Metrodorus of Stratonicea is pre-
sented by Cicero as someone who taught that Carneades had held
that the wise man sometimes holds opinions!6 And Charmadas,
another of Carneades' pupils, is mentioned by Cicero as play-
ing a prominent role in the affairs of the Academy in the final
years of Clitomachus' leadership,2 7 even though Sextus links Char-
madas with the so-called Fourth Academy of Philo (see PH I. 220)
in a way that strongly suggests that Charmadas also interpreted
Carneades as accepting, in some circumstances, the legitimacy of
assent. Philo, on the other hand, was a pupil of Clitomachus rather

2. See J. Glucker, Antiochus and the Late Academy (Gottingen, 1978), 304.
25 Ibid. 26 See sect. 2 above.

%7 Cicero, De oratore, I. 45-7, ed. and trans. E. W. Sutton and H. Rackham (2

vols.; Loeb Classical Library; Cambridge, Mass., 1942), i. 34-7.

 Chapter 4
28
than Carneades. However Cicero, as we have already seen, rep-
resents Philo as agreeing with Metrodorus that Carneades had ac-
cepted that assent was sometimes legitimate. And it is also clear that
at some point after Philo's election as head of the Academy around
110 BC, he even attempted to maintain that substantive knowledge
was available to the Academic philosopher even though nothing
could meet the conditions that the Stoics mistakenly thought had
to met in order for genuine knowledge to exist. 29
Thus Philo's election as head of the Academy inaugurated a
period of about twenty-five years in which the Academy lost most
of its connection with the radical critique of our cognitive claims
undertaken by Arcesilaus. Instead, it came to be associated predom-
inantly with indecisive vacillation between a position of epistemo-
logical fallibilism and the position that a repudiation of the Stoics'
account of what is required for knowledge allows us to recognize
that we do, in fact, possess some modest amount of knowledge.
Moreover Philo's death in exile around 83 BC seems to have marked
the end of the continuous succession of scholarchs that had linked
Plato's immediate successors with Arcesilaus, Carneades, and Cli-
tomachus. JO The Academy as an organized philosophical school
with its own property in Athens and an elected head ceased to exist;
and this meant that there would never be any opportunity for a re-
vival of Arcesilaus' philosophical outlook within the Academy itself.
It seems clear, therefore, that the final years of the Academy would
have been dispiriting ones for anyone who found that the investi-
gation of competing claims left them with no inclination to believe
that any specific claim was ever better justified than some contrary
claim. Even when Clitomachus was still its head, the Academy
seems to have degenerated into a set of factions peddling rival in-
terpretations of Carneades' stance on £1TOX~ and the legitimacy of
holding opinions. Moreover some of the most vociferous of these
factions openly maintained that their inquiries had led them not

2' See Cicero, Academica, 2. 17.

29 Sextus describes Philo as asserting 'that objects are inapprehensible so far
as concerns the Stoic criterion ... but are apprehensible so far as concerns the
real nature of the objects themselves' (PH I. 235); and in Cicero's Academica the
character Lucullus claims that Philo's attack on the Stoic criterion of knowledge
necessarily leads, despite Philo's attempt to argue otherwise, to 'the inference that
nothing can be grasped--so incautiously does he come round to the position that he
most wants to avoid' (Academica, 2. 18, trans. Rackham (Loeb), 491.
,0 See Glucker, Antiochus and the Late Academy, 98-120.
 The New Academy and Aenesidemean Pyrrhonism 7I
to £7TOXTJ but rather to the conclusion that some claims about mat-
ters of objective fact were rationally justified claims. And when
Philo was elected as head of the Academy, this position came to
have the imprimatur of the scholarch himself. We might expect,
accordingly, that at least some people who were dissatisfied with
the Academy's gradual slide from the austere philosophical stance
originally adopted by Arcesilaus to an undistinguished epistemo-
logical fallibilism and ultimately an acceptance of the existence of
some knowledge would have defected from the Academy in order
to attempt the task of expounding the case for scepticism in an
environment where it was not necessary to engage in internecine
disputes over the interpretation of former heads of the Academy.
And it will become clear in the next chapter that an impressive case
can be assembled in support of the conclusion that Aenesidemus of
Cnossus was one of those defectors.
 5
Pyrrhonism from Aenesidemus
to Sextus Empiricus
I. Aenesidemus of Cnossus

ALTHOUGH Aenesidemus' own writings no longer survive, we do

possess a long summary of Aenesidemus' Pyrrhonist Discourses
compiled by Photius, patriarch of Constantinople (ninth century
AD), and included in his Bibliotheca. According to Photius, Aenesi-
demus dedicated the Pyrrhonist Discourses to 'Lucius Tubero, one
of his colleagues from the Academy, a Roman by birth, with an
illustrious ancestry and a distinguished political career'. I It seems,
therefore, that we can safely conclude that Aenesidemus was, at
one point, a member of the Academy. However the Pyrrhonist Dis-
courses are written from the perspective of someone who wishes
to emphasize the superiority of those thinkers who call themselves
Pyrrhonists over the Academics of his time. We accordingly find
that Photius represents Aenesidemus as saying that 'the followers
of Pyrrho, in determining nothing, remain absolutely above re-
proach, whereas the Academics ... incur a scrutiny similar to that
faced by other philosophers' and accusing the Academics of failing
to recognize that they are contradicting themselves, whereas 'the
Pyrrhonists, by entertaining doubts about every thesis, maintain
consistency and do not conflict with themselves'" Thus it seems
clear that by the time of the composition of the Pyrrhonist Dis-
courses Aenesidemus had ceased to think of himself as an Academic
philosopher, and had chosen to align himself with the philosophic
stance espoused by people he picked out as Pyrrhonists.
Photius' description of the contents of the Pyrrhonist Discourses
also seems to show that this work was written during the time when
, Photius, Bibliotheca, 169-70, trans. A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic
Philosophers (2 vols.; Cambridge, 1987), i. 469. ' Ibid.
 PYTThonismfTom Aenesidemus to Sextus EmpiTicus 73
Philo was head of the Academy. Aenesidemus is represented as
writing that 'the Academics ... , especially those from the present-
day Academy, are sometimes in agreement with Stoic beliefs, and to
tell the truth turn out to be Stoics fighting with Stoics'.3 Now this
assessment of the state of the Academy could scarcely have been
made significantly later than Philo's death as the only organized
body of thinkers referring to themselves as Academics after this date
belonged to Antiochus' schismatic Old Academy, 4 and Antiochus
and his followers, as we have already noted, openly embraced and
defended the principal doctrines associated with Stoicism. Thus
the members of Antiochus' Academy would not have struck anyone
as engaged in conflict with the Stoics, yet Aenesidemus is clearly
talking of an Academy that still purports to be strongly opposed
to Stoicism even though it has, in his judgement, embraced too
many Stoic beliefs and assumptions. It seems, therefore, that we
can conclude, given that Philo is generally held to have died no later
than 83 BC, that Aenesidemus composed his Pyrrhonist Discourses
no later than 80 BC.
How, though, are we to establish the earliest possible date for the
composition of that work? Fortunately, Photius also tells us that
Aenesidemus claimed that the Academics of his time had absorbed
so much Stoic thinking that they disagreed with the Stoics only
about the existence of the apprehensive impression. s This amply
confirms that Aenesidemus is not referring to the members of An-
tiochus' Old Academy, as Antiochus accepted the existence of the
Stoic criterion of truth, but it establishes too that Aenesidemus is
writing witlh Philo very much in mind. It is, after all, Philo who
is specifically picked out by Sextus as conceding that things are
apprehefuible in themselves and denying only the existence of ap-
prehensive impressions of the kind insisted upon by the Stoics (see
PH I. 235). Moreover Sextus treats this concession as the aspect
of Philo's views that was principally responsible for people com-
ing to talk of Philo as having inaugurated a Fourth Academy that
differed significantly from the New Academy of Carneades and
Clitomachus.
Additional confirmation that Aenesidemus must have written

J Ibid.

• See J. Glucker, Antiochus and the Late Academy (Gottingen, 1978), 108-12.
S Photius, Bibliotheca, 169-70, trans. Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philoso-

phers, i. 469.
74 Chapter 5
the Pyrrhonist Discourses after Philo became head of the Academy
comes from the fact that this book is, as we have seen, dedicated
to a Roman citizen and politician called Lucius Tubero. The only
person of this name who can confidently be ascribed both an il-
lustrious political career and the sort of philosophic interests that
might have led him to spend some time studying in the Academy
was Cicero's friend Lucius Aelius Tubero.6 As Cicero was born in
106 Be and there is no evidence to suggest that L. Aelius Tubero
was significantly older than Cicero himself,' it is very difficult to see
how Lucius Tubero could have struck Aenesidemus as a suitable
recipient for a dedication if Aenesidemus had written the Pyrrhonist
Discourses before Philo was elected scholarch around 110 Be.
I t has been objected that if Aenesidemus had genuinely written
the Pyrrhonist Discourses while Philo was still alive or within a few
years of his death, then Cicero would have mentioned Aenesidemus
at some point in his extensive philosophical writings. 8 After all, we
have just suggested above that the dedicatee of Aenesidemus' book
was one of Cicero's close friends, and the contents of Cicero's Aca-
demica make it clear that Cicero had more than a passing interest
in epistemological issues. Yet Aenesidemus' name does not occur
anywhere in Cicero's extant philosophical works; and, as we have
already pointed out, on the very few occasions when Cicero men-
tions Pyrrho, he simply treats him as a discredited moralist. 9 Thus
it might be suggested that it is wholly implausible to suppose that
Aenesidemus could have written the Pyrrhonist Discourses before
Cicero had completed the Academica. And as Cicero wrote the Aca-
demica in 45 Be,'° this would mean that the Pyrrhonist Discourses
were actually written at least forty years after Philo's death.
This line of argument, however, does not appear to be sufficiently
powerful to overturn the chronological evidence provided by Aen-
esidemus' precise specification of the views espoused by the Aca-
demics of his time. It will be recalled that Aristocles of Messene
6 See Glucker, Antiochus and the Late Academy, 116.
7 According to Cicero, L. Aelius Tubero was legate to Cicero's younger brother
Quintus while Quintus governed the province of Asia (6~-59 Be). See Cicero, Epis-
tulae ad Quintum Fratrem, I. I. 10, in Cicero, Letters to his Friends, ed. and trans.
W. Glyn Williams (4 vols.; Loeb Classical Library; Cambridge, Mass., 1929), iii.
396-7.
• See Eduard Zeller, Die Philosophie deT GTiechen, 5th edn., rev. E. Wellmann, (3
vols.; Leipzig, 1919-23), iii. I I. • See Chapter 2, sect. 3 .
•0 H. Rackham, 'Introduction', in Cicero, Academica, ed. and trans. H. Rackham
(Loeb Classical Library; Cambridge, Mass., 1933), 399-405 at 399-400.
 Pyrrhonismfrom Aenesidemus to Sextus Empiricus 75
claimed that Aenesidemus was in Alexandria when he attempted to
stir up interest in Pyrrhonism, and it might be thought that it is not,
in fact, particularly surprising that a Roman lawyer and politician,
albeit one with an enduring interest in philosophy, should prove to
be unaware of philosophical developments so far away from Rome.
However it has also been suggested that Cicero's silence about
Aenesidemus and philosophers calling themselves Pyrrhonists is a
matter of deliberate policy. John Glucker has drawn attention to
the way in which the surviving portions of Cicero's Academica do
not report any of the attacks launched directly against Philo by
Antiochus even though the bulk of the text that has come down to
us consists of material that is clearly taken from one of Antiochus'
own works. Glucker plausibly suggests that Cicero, who had been
II

one of Philo's pupils in Athens, suppressed these attacks out of

respect for his former teacher. Aenesidemus, however, seems to be
especially hostile towards Philo's Academy. Thus Glucker argues
that Cicero's desire to protect Philo's reputation might also have
led him to avoid mentioning Aenesidemus by name or discussing
his views in any detail. 12
I t appears, then, that we can safely take Aenesidemus to have been
a former Academic who discarded his allegiance to the Academy
at some point during Philo's time as scholarch in order to set out
the case in favour of an assessment of our cognitive capacities that
was far more negative than the assessment offered by Philo and
his followers. However this account of Aenesidemus' philosophi-
cal anteced~nts clearly indicates that we need to be very cautious
about taking at face value Aenesidemus' decision to call himself
a Pyrrhonist. In the light of Aenesidemus' background in the
Academy, it is difficult to resist the suspicion that the principal
influence on his Pyrrhonism was the philosophic stance espoused
by Arcesilaus rather than the position adopted by Pyrrho himself.
We concluded in Chapter 2 that Pyrrho's philosophical position
was not the stance of a sceptic as envisaged by Sextus. Yet Sextus
appears to have no problems about classifying Aenesidemus as a
sceptic. We also concluded that the supposed chain of master-pupil
relationships linking Pyrrho to Sextus is simply a myth, and it will
be recalled that the most obvious break in this alleged chain oc-
curred before the time of Aenesidemus. Thus we cannot explain
Aenesidemus' decision to call himself a Pyrrhonist by supposing
" Glucker, Antiochus and the Late Academy, 84-8. u Ibid. 116 n. 64.
 Chapter 5
that he had defected from the Academy to join a group of thinkers
who were part of an unbroken Pyrrhonean tradition stretching back
to the teachings of Pyrrho himself. And in Chapter 3 we saw that
Sextus finds the similarities between his own Pyrrhonean scepti-
cism and the philosophical stance espoused by Arcesilaus to be so
striking that he is willing to say that 'Arcesilaus ... definitely seems
to me to share in the Pyrrhonean way of thinking, so that his mode
of life and ours are all but one' (PH I. 232, own trans.). Now Aen-
esidemus, as a former Academic, would undoubtedly have been fa-
miliar with interpretations of Arcesilaus' philosophical stance that
ascribed to Arcesilaus the kind of views to which Sextus is respond-
ing so enthusiastically in the passage just quoted. Thus the conclu-
sion that seems to be pushed upon us by the above considerations is
that Aenesidemus' Pyrrhonism is likely to be a repackaged version
of Arcesilaus' philosophic stance rather than a genuine revival of
Pyrrho's views.
If it is indeed the case, though, that the immediate inspiration
for Aenesidemus' Pyrrhonism comes from Arcesilaus rather than
Pyrrho, why is Aenesidemus unwilling to acknowledge this fact?
Why does Aenesidemus write with approval of 'he who philoso-
phizes after the fashion of Pyrrho'IJ when he could have chosen
to expound instead on the merits of the person who philosophizes
after the fashion of Arcesilaus?
To some extent the choice of Pyrrho as the figurehead for a re-
vival of Arcesilaus' approach to philosophy can be explained in
terms of Aenesidemus' desire to avoid becoming entangled in in-
terminable disputes over the interpretation of the views of previous
Academics. Aenesidemus studied in the Academy at a time when
it devoted more effort to arguing about the correct interpretation
of Carneades' philosophical position than it did to opposing the
dogmatic views of the other philosophical schools. Moreover it is
clear from Cicero that Philo at least was prepared to maintain that
the position of the Academy had not changed significantly from
the time of Plato to his own time as scholarch;I4 and this version
of the history of the Academy would have forced Philo to inter-
pret even Arcesilaus as someone who had always accepted that
things were apprehensible by nature and had never gone beyond
refuting the specific criterion of truth put forward by the Sto-
') Photius, Bibliotheca, 169-70, trans. Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philoso-
phers, i. 468. '. Cicero, Academica, I. 13·
 Pyrrhonismfrom Aenesidemus to Sextus Empiricus 77
ics. It is quite plausible, therefore, to suppose that Aenesidemus
might have wished to bypass such interpretative issues by eschew-
ing any claim that he was merely reviving Arcesilaus' philosophical
outlook. But once Aenesidemus had decided to conceal the link
between his position and Arcesilaus' position, Pyrrho would have
been an obvious choice as an alternative source of intellectual re-
spectability.
Pyrrho was already strongly associated in people's minds withL
suspension of judgement and a deep pessimism about our cogni-
tive capacities. However Aenesidemus would also have been aware
that linking his position with that espoused by Pyrrho had the sig-
nificant advantage of making it look as though the origins of the
epistemological stance set out in the Pyrrhonist Discourses predated
Arcesilaus' Middle Academy. Moreover at least two of Arcesilaus'
contemporaries had satirized him as someone who had acquired
his great philosophical reputation by furtively stealing ideas from
Pyrrho. Timon, in one of his poems, said of Arcesilaus that 'Hav-
ing the lead of Menedemus at his heart, he will run either to that
mass of flesh, Pyrrho, or to Diodorus' (D.L. 4. 33); and the Stoic
philosopher Ariston of Chios described Arcesilaus in the following
terms: 'Plato the head of him, Pyrrho the tail, midway Diodorus'
(D.L. 4. 33). This latter description appears to be modelled on
Homer's description of a chimera in the Iliad, IS and Laertius is
surely correct to interpret it as the product of Ariston's belief that
Arcesilaus had taken his dialectical methods from Diodorus Cronus
and the goal pf suspension of judgement from Pyrrho. Thus Ae-
nesidemus would have been free to explain away the similarities
between his.' Pyrrhonism and Arcesilaus' philosophical stance by
presel1 ting them as the result of Arcesilaus' surreptitious appropri-
ation of Pyrrho's views.
There is, however, one important respect in which Aenesidemus'
Pyrrhonism does seem to have been genuinely influenced by Pyrrho
rather than Arcesilaus. Arcesilaus professed to withhold assent on
all matters, but he does not seem to have explicitly maintained that
this 17TOX~ leads to happiness and peace of mind. Aenesidemus, in
contrast, is described by Photius as saying that 'he who philoso-
phizes after the fashion of Pyrrho is not only happy in a general
way but also, and particularly, in the wisdom of being aware that he
., Homer, Iliad, 6. 181, ed. and trans. A. T. Murray (2 vols.; Loeb Classical
Library; Cambridge, Mass., 1924), i. 286-7.
 Chapter 5
apprehends nothing'. ,6 How, then, are we to explain this important
innovation? The obvious answer is that Aenesidemus has come to
see l7TOX~ as a potentially attractive option by reflecting on the way
Pyrrho lived his life.
Many of Pyrrho's contemporaries praised and admired his way
of life. Laertius, for example, tells us that
even Nausiphanes when a young man was captivated by him: at all events
he used to say that we should follow Pyrrho in disposition but himself
in doctrine; and he would often remark that Epicurus, greatly admiring
Pyrrho's way of life, regularly asked him for information about Pyrrho;
and that he was so respected by his native city that they made him high
priest, and on his account they voted that all philosophers should be exempt
from taxation. (D.L. 9. 64)

Moreover Timon asks, in a fragment of poetry preserved by Laer-

tius:
This, Pyrrho, this my heart is fain to know,
Whence peace of mind to thee doth freely flow,
Why among men thou like a god dost show?
(D.L. 9. 65)

And Timon's own answer to this question seems to be set out in

the passage from his writings reproduced by Aristocles. As we saw
in section I of Chapter 2, Aristocles represents Timon as claiming
that Pyrrho held that 'we should be unopinionated, uncommitted
and unwavering, saying concerning each individual thing that it no
more is than is not, or it both is and is not, or it neither is nor is
not' ." However Aristocles also reports Timon's assessment of the
effects of this mental posture: 'The outcome for those who actually
adopt this attitude, says Timon, will be first speechlessness, and
then freedom from disturbance."s
It is clear, therefore, that Pyrrho's life was interpreted by some
of his contemporaries as revealing that wide-ranging suspension
of judgement could help one to arrive at a state of tranquillity
and contentment. And it is surely plausible to suppose that it was
reflection on Pyrrho's way of life that first inspired in Aeneside-
•• Photius. Bibliotheca. 169. in Long and Sedley. The Hellenistic Philosophers. ii.
459 (own trans.).
'7 Aristocles. in Eusebius. Praeparatio Evangelica, '4. 18. 4. trans. Long and

Sedley. The Hellenistic Philosophers. i. IS .

• 8 Aristocles, in Eusebius. Praeparatio Evangelica, '4. 18. 5. trans. Long and
Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, i. 15.
 Pyrrhonismfrom Aenesidemus to Sextus Empiricus 79
mus the thought that suspension of judgement might help to bring
about a state of mind that many people found highly appealing. It
seems, then, that Aenesidemus' own stance can be seen as combin-
ing Arcesilaus' techniques for inducing suspension of judgement
with the idea that suspension of judgement can, as happened in
Pyrrho's case, come to be a source of enduring tranquillity and
peace of mind.
I t is essential, however, that we retain a sense of proportion here.
Even if the example provided by Pyrrho's lifestyle did play the
crucial role identified above, it remains true that the means by
which Aenesidemus lU"rives at suspension of judgement are radi-
cally unlike those that seem to have been responsible for Pyrrho's
suspension of judgement. Aenesidemus follows Arcesilaus in op-
posing the arguments brought forward by other philosophers with
his own detailed and highly specific arguments. Pyrrho, in contrast,
seems to have been dismissive of the need to balance arguments for a
particular thesis against arguments supporting some contrary pos-
ition. Once Pyrrho had arrived at the view that 'things are equally
indifferent, unmeasurable and inarbitrable', he was free to reject
any less general claim about reality as neither true nor false with-
out bothering to concern himself with the details of the arguments
offered on its behalf. And we find, accordingly, that Timon praises
Pyrrho for standing aloof from the intellectual controversies stirred
up by other thinkers:
o Pyrrho, 0 aged Pyrrho, whence and how
Fo~.md'st thou escape from servitude to sophists
Their dreams and vanities: how didst thou loose
The bonds of trickery and specious craft?
, ~Nor reck'st thou to inquire such things as these,
What breezes circle Hellas, to what end,
And from what quarter each may chance to blow.
(D.L. 9· 65)

Aenesidemus' Pyrrhonism seems, therefore, to have been a modi-

fication of Arcesilaus' philosophic stance masquerading as a revival
of the position originally espoused by Pyrrho. And this explains the
difficulties encountered by Sextus when he attempts to specify the
differences between his scepticism and Arcesilaus' approach to phi-
losophy. We have already noted that Sextus is forced to confess that
Arcesilaus' mode of life is almost identical to the one embraced by
80 Chapter 5
the Pyrrhonist. It is particularly illuminating, however, to observe
what happens when Sextus attempts to argue that the two modes
of life are not absolutely identical.
The principal point of difference identified by Sextus is that
Arcesilaus declares that suspension of judgement really is good
whereas the Pyrrhonist merely reports that it appears good to him.
However we argued in the second section of Chapter 3 that reports
that portray Arcesilaus as claiming that suspension of judgement
is something we ought to embrace are simply the product of his
enthusiasm for confronting the Stoics with ad hominem arguments
that seek to show that anyone operating with their assumptions is
committed to the conclusion that he ought to withhold assent on all
matters. '9 But once we have rejected the supposition that Arcesilaus
genuinely endorsed the normative claim that we ought to suspend
judgement in response to his arguments, we are left with only one
point of difference between Arcesilaus and a Pyrrhonist. According
to Sextus, Arcesilaus does not explicitly link suspension of judge-
ment with peace of mind: Arcesilaus presents suspension of judge-
ment as the outcome of his inquiries, and it is left to the Pyrrhonist
to say that this suspension of judgement is accompanied by tran-
quilJity (see PH 1. 232). However we have already accepted that
Aenesidemus' willingness to put forward suspension of judgement
as a way of bringing about peace of mind was a modification of the
stance adopted by Arcesilaus and one that was genuinely inspired
by Aenesidemus' awareness of the practical example provided by
Pyrrho's way of life. Thus Sextus' meagre list of the respects in
which Pyrrhonism differs from Arcesilaus' philosophical stance is
actually a forceful reminder of how little work Aenesidemus would
have needed to do in order to transform Arcesilaus' approach to
philosophy into the Pyrrhonism endorsed by Sextus.

2. Pyrrhonism after Aenesidemus

The fate of Aenesidemus' Pyrrhonism in the years between its cre-

ation and Sextus' emergence as a leading exponent of Pyrrhonean
scepticism is unfortunately extremely unclear. Sextus does not
identify any specific person other than Aenesidemus as a scep-
tic; and if we search Sextus' writings for the name of anyone else
'9 See Chapter 3. sect. z.
 Pyrrhonismfrom Aenesidemus to Sextus Empiricus 81
mentioned in the succession of Pyrrhonean philosophers set out by
Laertius, all we find is one possible mention of Menodotus at PH I.
235. Moreover Glucker has presented a strong case for interpreting
the succession of philosophers supposedly linking Aenesidemus to
Sextus as little more than a haphazard list, organized in roughly
chronological order, of the names of people who were in some way
associated with Pyrrhonean scepticism!O Now this does not pre-
clude the possibility that some of the master-pupil relationships
mentioned in Laertius' list did exist; but it does mean that it would
be dangerous to assume that the years between Aenesidemus' advo-
cacy of Pyrrhonism and Sextus' much later writings on scepticism
did riot contain lengthy periods when Pyrrhonean scepticism lacked
any active advocates. And it is significant here that when Seneca,
who was a tutor and political adviser to the emperor Nero, com-
posed his Naturales quaestiones around AD 63, he included Pyrrhon-
ism in a list of philosophical movements that had ceased to exist:
according to him, there was no longer anyone to hand down the
teachings of Pyrrho. 21 Moreover the way Sextus attributes the ten
tropes to Aenesidemus (M. 7. 345) and 'the older sceptics' (PH I.
36) while assigning a radically different set of five tropes to 'the
later sceptics' (PH I. 164) is suggestive of a discontinuity in the
Pyrrhonean tradition that went beyond a mere change in dialectical
technique. Thus it is not implausible to suppose that the Pyrrhon-
ism advocated by Aenesidemus failed to retain any committed ad-
herents much beyond the early years of the first century AD.
I t seems clear, however, that even if the development of Pyrrhon-
ism was interrupted at that point, the years between Aenesidemus'
writings on Pyrrhonism and Sextus' exposition of the case for scep-
tkism
,
did see
/
Pyrrhonean scepticism come to some prominence as
a (1hilQsophical movement. Thus we find, for example, that the
second-century Latin author Aulus Gellius claimed in his Attic
Nights that the issue of the extent to which the Pyrrhoneans dif-
fered from the Academics was 'an old question, treated of by many
Greek writers', and Gellius also picked out the word aK€7TTLKo{ as a
term used to designate these Pyrrhonean philosophers.2Z

'0 Glucker, Antiochus and the Late Academy, 3S 1-4.

" Seneca, Naturales quaestiones, 7. 32. 2, cited in Glucker, Antiochus and the Late
Academy, 338.
" Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, II. I and 6, ed. and trans. J. G. Rolfe (2 vols.; Loeb
Classical Library; Cambridge, Mass., 1927), ii. 308-11.
82 Chapter 5
The writings of Galen of Pergamum similarly indicate that Pyr-
rhonism exerted considerable influence in the second century AD.
We saw in the first section of Chapter 2 that Galen's familiar-
ity with the medical and philosophical writings of the Empiricist
Menodotus (second century AD) led him to describe Menodotus as
someone who praised Pyrrho and purported to suspend judgement
on all non-evident matters of inquiry. However Galen's surviv-
ing books also reveal that Galen himself had almost succumbed to
Pyrrhonism when he was a young man;3 and in On the Distinction
of Pulses he criticized Pyrrhonism in terms that make it clear that
he was combatting views professed by a significant number of the
philosophers and medical theorists of his own era. 24
We can also find evidence of the vitality of Pyrrhonean scepti-
cism at this time in the writings of Lucian of Samosata!5 In the
humorous dialogue Philosophies for Sale one of the philosophers
for sale at the auction is a sceptic called Pyrrhias, and the satiri-
cal presentation of the views of this fictional philosopher reveals
that Lucian was sufficiently familiar with some of the more salient
features of the Pyrrhonism espoused by Aenesidemus and his suc-
cessors to exploit those features for comic effect. 26 Moreover the
fact that Lucian chose to introduce Pyrrhias as a sceptic rather than
a Pyrrhonist"7 indicates that Lucian's satire was primarily directed
against Pyrrhonean sceptics active after the time of Aenesidemus.
Photius' precis of Aenesidemus' Pyrrhonist Discourses makes it clear
that Aenesidemus referred to people sharing his philosophical out-
look as Pyrrhonists or followers of Pyrrho: the term UKE7TTLKO" in
contrast, does not appear even once in Photius' summary.28 And
the supposition that Aenesidemus did not use aKE7TTtKO, as another
'3 See Galen, De libris propriis, in Galen, Opera Omnia, ed. C. G. Kuhn (20 vols.

in 22; Leipzig, 1821-33), xix. 40.

'. Galen, De dignoscendibus pulsibus, in Galen, Opera Omnia, ed. Kuhn, viii.
776-86.
'5 It is generally agreed that Lucian of Samosata was an author active in the later
part of the 2nd cent. AD; and the nature of his writings suggests that he was part of,
or at least strongly influenced by, the 2nd-cent. movement known as the 'Second
Sophistic', which brought about an upsurge of interest in the rhetorical techniques
employed by the sophists of the 5th cent. BC.
z. Lucian, Philosophies jor Sale, in Lucian, ed. and trans. A. H. Harmon, K.
Kilburn, and M. D. Macleod (8 vols.; Loeb Classical Library; Cambridge, Mass.,
1913-67), ii. 450-51 I.
'7 Lucian, Philosophies jor Sale, 27, ed. and trans. Harmon et al. (Loeb), ii. 506.

,8 Photius, Bibliotheca, 169-70, Greek text edited by Long and Sedley, The Hel-
lenistic Philosophers, ii. 459-60, 473.
 Pyrrhonismfrom Aenesidemus to Sextus Empiricus 83
epithet for thinkers sharing his particular views appears to be con-
firmed by the fact that even though Philo of Alexandria's work
On Drunkenness contains an extensive selection of material that has
clearly been taken from some Pyrrhonean account of the ten tropes,
the same work still uses UK€1T'TtK6<; as a way of referring to dogmatic
as well as sceptically inclined philosophers.29 Thus it seems safe
to assume that Lucian was acquainted with the writings of some
post-Aenesidemean Pyrrhonists when he set about the composition
of Philosophies for Sale.
Lucian's dialogue Hermotimus, on the other hand, is an attempt
at a serious discussion of an important philosophical issue. JO Her-
motimus is introduced to the reader as a Stoic philosopher who has
devoted many years to the study of the doctrines of that particu-
lar school of philosophy, but Lycinus, the other character in the
dialogue, undertakes to persuade Hermotimus that no one has any
reason to give their allegiance to any specific school of philosophy.
Significantly, Lycinus' arguments are, at times, strongly reminis-
cent of the five tropes attributed by Sextus to 'the later sceptics'.
In particular, Lycinus argues that we can have no confidence in
those who profess to have philosophical expertise because the at-
tempt to find a neutral and trustworthy arbiter to judge the merits
of such claims simply launches us on an infinite regress, and he also
maintains that philosophical arguments characteristically attempt
to compel belief in their conclusions by appealing to assumptions
that are ~rbitrary and subject to dispute. J• Moreover Lycinus crit-
icizes as\circular the practice of supporting one's assumptions by
showingtl:tat one's assumptions and the conclusions drawn from
them are mutually entailing.J2 Thus Lucian has allocated to Lyci-
nus arguments that parallel three of the five tropes listed by Sextus
as handed down by the later sceptics, and it is noteworthy that these
three tropes are the ones that carry the epistemological burden of
trying to persuade us that we cannot make a rationally justified

'. Philo of Alexandria's use of material taken from a Pyrrhonean source is illumi-
natingly discussed in J. Annas and J. Barnes, The Modes of Scepticism (Cambridge,
1985), 26-7. A complete English translation of Philo's reworking of the ten modes
is included in appendix A of that book.
)0 Lucian, Hermotimus, in Lucian, ed. and trans. A. H. Harmon, K. Kilburn, and

M. D. Macleod (8 vols.; Loeb Classical Library; Cambridge, Mass., 1913-67), vi.

260-4 1 5.
)' Lucian, Hermotimus, 70, ed. and trans. Harmon et al. (Loeb), vi. 390-3 .
.1' Ibid. 74, ed. and trans. Harmon et al. (Loeb), vi. 396-9.
 Chapter 5
choice between the options presented to us by conflicting opinions
and the relativity of perception. 33 It seems, therefore, that just as
Lucian's use of the term (JK£1TTlKO., as a way of referring to Pyrrhias
in Philosophies for Sale indicates that Lucian was acquainted with
the writings of some post-Aenesidemean Pyrrhonists, the nature of
the arguments that he allocates to Lycinus indicates that Lucian
was familiar with patterns of sceptical argument that were first set
out in a systematic fashion many years after Aenesidemus wrote his
books on Pyrrhonism.
In addition to this evidence of the influence of post-Aenesi-
demean Pyrrhonism on people who had no inclination to think
of themselves as Pyrrhonists, we possess the names of numerous
thinkers with Pyrrhonean sympathies who were active in the inter-
val between Aenesidemus and Sextus. Laertius' list of Pyrrhonean
philosophers provides us with the names of Zeuxippus, Zeuxis,
Antiochus of Laodicea, Menodotus of Nicomedia, Theodas of
Laodicea, and Herodotus of Tarsus (see D.L. 9. 116). However
there are other names that need to be taken into account here.
One particularly important name missing from Laertius' list is
that of Agrippa. We have already mentioned the fact that Sextus
contrasts the ten tropes expounded by the older sceptics with the
five tropes handed down by the later sceptics. Moreover it will be
shown in the next chapter that Sextus' own argumentative practice
draws extensively on these five tropes and makes much less use of
the ten tropes, even though an account of the ten tropes is allocated
a prominent place in the first book of the Outlines of Pyrrhonism. 34
Now Sextus himself does not give the credit for the formulation
of the five tropes to any particular person, but Laertius asserts
that they were added to the sceptic's repertoire of arguments by
'Agrippa and his school' (D.L. 9. 88). And Agrippa's life and philo-
sophical innovations presumably formed the subject-matter of the
eponymous book attributed by Laertius to the otherwise unknown
sceptic Apellas (see D.L. 9. 106).
Another interesting figure omitted from Laertius' succession list
of Pyrrhonean sceptics is Theodosius, whom Laertius describes
elsewhere as the author of a book entitled Sceptic Chapters, in which
he denied that scepticism should be called Pyrrhonism (see D.L. 9.
70).35 Theodosius' reluctance to call himself a Pyrrhonean seems
33 See Chapter 6, sect. 3. 34 See ibid.

JS Scruples of this kind are also recorded by Galen. In An Outline of Empiricism,

 Pyrrhonismfrom Aenesidemus to Sextus Empiricus 85
to have arisen in part from an unwillingness to adopt any title that
implied that we can sometimes arrive at rationally justified beliefs
about the contents of another person's mind. However he also had
some specific objections to aligning scepticism too closely with the
example provided by Pyrrho: according to Laertius, Theodosius
maintained that 'Pyrrho was not the founder of Scepticism, nor
had he any positive tenet' (D.L. 9. 70).
It seems, therefore, that we can legitimately enlist Theodosius as
an early witness to the truth of the supposition that the Pyrrhon-
ism espoused by Aenesidemus is not to be interpreted as a simple
revival of the philosophical outlook embraced by Pyrrho. Indeed,
Theodosius appears to have taken the view that Pyrrho never made
any attempt to explain or defend his unopinionated way of living.
This latter aspect of Theodosius' position would appear to be ad-
equately refuted by the testimony from Timon preserved by Aris-
tocles;3 6 but Theodosius' historical scruples may well have been
partially responsible for the fact that Sextus uses the term OKE7T-
TtKOC; far more frequently than he uses the term llvppwvwc;. And this

pattern of usage is repeated in Laertius' discussion of Pyrrhonean

scepticism. Even though this discussion forms part of what is os-
tensibly an account of Pyrrho's life and views (D.L. 9. 61-108),
Laertius invariably employs the expression 0 OKE7TTtKOC; to refer to
the person holding the philosophical views under discussion in the
non-biographical portion of this account.
Fin-ally, it is also worth mentioning three sceptics who seem to
have\been practising doctors or writers on medical subjects. In An
Outline of Empiricism Galen refers to a Pyrrhonean called Cassius
and asserts - that- he wrote a book about the patterns of inference
appropriately employed by a doctor belonging to the Empiricist
school of medicine. 37 This Cassius is described by Celsus (first
century AD) as the most able doctor of the day;3 8 and it seems likely
that Cassius the doctor and Pyrrhonist is also the same person as

I, he states, 'All doctors who are followers of experience, just like the philosophers
who are called Sceptics, refuse to be called after a man, but rather want to be known
by their frame of mind.' See Galen, Three Treatises on the Nature of Science, ed. M.
Frede, trans. R. Walzer and M. Frede (Indianapolis, 1985), 23.
" See Chapter 2, sect. 2.
37 See Galen, An Outline of Empiricism, 4, in Galen, Three Treatises on the Nature

of Science, ed. Frede, 27.

,8 Celsus, De medicina, 'Prooemium', 69, ed. and trans. W. G. Spencer (2 vols.;
Loeb Classical Library; Cambridge, Mass., 1935-8), i. 36-7.
86 Chapter 5
the sceptic called Cassius who is said by Laertius to have launched
an attack on the moral and political views of Zeno of Citium. Un-
fortunately, no detailed account of Cassius' philosophical views is
extant, but we possess slightly more information about the stance
espoused by the sceptic Dionysius of Aegae. Photius' summary in
the Bibliotheca of the contents of Dionysius' Dictyaca makes it plain
that this work was a sceptical handbook on medicine structured
around fifty pairs of antithetical chapters in which the otherwise
unknown author first presented the case in favour of a particular
claim about a medical matter and then argued at equal length in
support of the opposite conclusion. 39 And the third of this group
of sceptics is Mnaseas. Numenius describes Mnaseas as a scep-
tic in The Revolt of the Academics against Plato,4 but the name 0

Mnaseas also features in several lists of Methodist doctors, includ-

ing the one contained in Galen's On the Therapeutic MethodY As
the Methodist school of medicine seems to have come into being in
the early years of the first century AD,4 Z we are led to the conclusion
that if Mnaseas was both a sceptic and a Methodist doctor, then
he was a sceptic active no earlier than the beginning of the first
century.

3. Pyrrhonism and the art of medicine

The connection between Pyrrhonean scepticism and ancient medi-

cine is an intriguingly strong one. Examination of the list of Pyr-
rhonean philosophers at D. L. 9. I 16 reveals that many of the people
included on that list can plausibly be seen as sharing an interest in
medicine with the three sceptics discussed in the previous para-
graph. We noted in Chapter 2 that Menodotus of Nicodemia was
a prominent member of the Empiricist school of medicine,43 and
Laertius explicitly describes both Sextus and his pupil Saturninus
as Empiricists. Moreover Jonathan Barnes has drawn attention to
J. Photius, Bibliotheca, 18S, 211, ed. I. Bekker (Berlin, 1824), 129-30, 168-9.
4 Numenius, in Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 14. 6, p. 731 B, trans. E. H.
0

Gifford (2 vols.; Oxford, 1903), ii. 787 .

• ' Galen, On the Therapeutic Method, I. 7. 5, trans. R. J Hankinson (Oxford,
1991), 27·
4' Celsus is generally held to have written De medicina during the reign of Tiberi us

(AD 14-37); and the emergence of a group of doctors who thought of themselves as
Methodists rather than Empiricists or Rationalists is presented throughout that
work as a very recent development. ., See Chapter 2, sect. 3.
 Pyrrhonismfrom Aenesidemus to Sextus Empiricus 87
the fact that it is possible to match many of the other names on
Laertius' list with those of prominent doctors and medical theo-
rists.44 He points out that Galen's writings contain references to
Empiricists called Heraclides, Zeuxis, and Theodas,4s while both
Galen and Celsus refer to a doctor called Ptolemy, who might well
be identical with Ptolemy of Cyrene. And even though Theodosius'
name does not have a place on Laertius' list, Barnes indicates that
there is good evidence to show that Theodosius was an Empiricist
as well as a Pyrrhonean sceptic.
Initially, however, it might be thought that it is highly perplex-
ing that practising physicians and thinkers concerned with the way
medical expertise is appropriately acquired would have any inclina-
tion to associate themselves with a radical form of epistemological
scepticism. How can one have any credibility as a doctor if one
explicitly embraces the view that medical knowledge is unattain-
able and no course of treatment is any better justified than any
other course of treatment? If we are to succeed in explaining why
such a stance might nevertheless have proved appealing to Hel-
lenistic physicians, then it is essential to be aware of the way med-
ical Empiricism arose as a response to the pretensions of theorists
who attempted to distinguish between the art of medicine and the
practices of traditional healers by arguing that effective medical
treatment needed to be based on an understanding of the hidden
... J Barnes, 'Ancient Skepticism and Causation', in M. Burnyeat (ed.), The Skep-
tical Tradition (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983), 149-203 at 189 n. 14.
'5 As Barnes also notes, however, Galen's Zeuxis appears to have lived before
his Heraclides, whereas Laertius presents Heraclides as living much earlier than
Zeuxis. Thus there may well be considerable merit in E. Pappenheim's sugges-
tion (' Der Sitz der Schule der pyrrhoneischen Skeptiker', A rchiv fur Geschichte der
Philosophie, 1(1888),41-2) that Laertius' Heraclides is actually Heraclitus of Tyre,
a prominent Academic and pupil of Clitomachus and Philo. Cicero describes Her-
aclitus as residing in Alexandria at the time when Philo first advanced the thesis
that the Academy had never gone beyond criticizing the views of the Stoics about
how we could arrive at knowledge of the real nature of the world, and Cicero also
makes it plain that neither Philo's doctrinal innovations nor Antiochus of Ascalon's
defence of Stoic epistemology met with Heraclitus' approval (see Cicero, Academ-
ica, 2. 11-12). As Laertius claims that his Heraclides was Aenesidemus' teacher and
we have already placed great emphasis on the connection between Aenesidemus'
Academic background and his advocacy of Pyrrhonism, it does seem plausible to
suppose that Heraclitus, a distinguished defender of Clitomachus' interpretation
of Cameades' philosophical stance and someone who was present in Alexandria at
approximately the time when Aenesidemus was formulating the ideas put forward
in the Pyrrhonist Discourses, might easily have been Aenesidemus' teacher or, at
the very least, a major influence on his assessment of the views of Arcesilaus and
Cameades.
88 Chapter 5
constitution of the human body and the non-evident causes of par-
ticular illnesses. 46
This attempt to give medicine an intellectually respectable foun-
dation in physiological theory and natural science did initially lead
to some therapeutic improvements; and the insistence that a com-
petent doctor needed to be familiar with the conclusions reached
by philosophers and other theoreticians also provided doctors wor-
ried about protecting their social status with a convenient way of
separating themselves from the lowly and relatively uneducated in-
dividuals who offered medical treatment to slaves and the poor.4-?
However the fourth century Be saw doctors appealing to increas-
ing numbers of theories that appeared to contradict one another,
and there was no agreement about how to determine the relative
merits of these competing theories. Moreover some thinkers inter-
ested in medical matters began to suspect that the supposition that
a doctor needed to guide his therapeutic practice by drawing on
a set of beliefs about unobservable entities whose existence could
be confirmed only by the use of a priori reason merely obscured
the fact that genuine improvements in treatment tended to come
about as a result of the observation of overt regularities that were
discernible by anyone who cared to give his attention to such mat-
ters. Thus the author of the Hippocratic work De vetere medicina
claimed that progress in medicine actually came about as a result of
trial and error, and he also maintained that even those doctors who
professed to base their therapies on some more abstruse standard
were deluding themselves because their theories lacked the detailed
content required to guide their choice of specific treatments. 48
Uneasiness about the. practical utility of physiological theory and
accounts of the hidden causes of illnesses subsequently gave rise to a
way of thinking about the art of medicine that explicitly repudiated
all attempts at medical theorizing. Exponents of this approach to
medicine came to be known as Empiricists, and ancient writers on
medicine seem to have been generally agreed that the Empiricist
school of medicine was founded by Serapion towards the end of the
.0 See M. Frede, 'Introduction', in Galen, Three Treatises on the Nature of Science,
ed. Frede, pp. ix-xxxiv; and id., 'Philosophy and Medicine in Antiquity', in Frede,
Essays in Ancient Philosophy (Oxford, 1987),225-42.
'7 A striking example from a later era of the unedifying preoccupation with this
issue is provided by Galen's attack on Thessalus, the founder of the Methodist
school of medicine, in book 1 of On the Therapeutic Method. See in particular I. 5,
3. 2. •• Hippocrates, De vetere medicina, 2, 5.
 Pyrrhonismfrom Aenesidemus to Sextus Empiricus 89
third century BC. 49 Unfortunately, we have almost no information
about the specific views held by Serapion, but the general accounts
of Empiricism given by later authors like Celsus and Galen do allow
us to identify some of the characteristic features of the Empiricist's
position.
All Empiricists seem to have shared the view that there was
no need for a competent doctor to rely on anything other than
experience of observable regularities to guide his treatments. In
many cases he would be appropriately guided by his own expe-
rience, but on other occasions he would need to have recourse to
reports of other people's experiences. Thus he might, for example,
have observed for himself that a particular diet is followed by the
cessation of some digestive disorders. In contrast, if he was con-
fronted by an illness that was new to him, then he would turn
to other people's accounts of the way this illness tends to unfold
and the type of therapy that has previously proved to be suc-
cessful in restoring people suffering from the condition to good
health.
There was, however, considerable disagreement among Empiri-
cists over the way a doctor should respond to cases that involved
illnesses that had never previously been encountered. Most Empiri-
cists appear to have appealed at this point to a procedure they called
'transition to the similar'. so If a doctor had no personal experience
of a particular illness and no access to anyone else's experience of
that illness, he was expected to adapt a line of treatment that had
previously led to a successful outcome in the case of the illness
that struck him as most closely resembling the one he was attempt-
ing to treat. It seems, though, that some Empiricists took the view
that inferences based on similarity needed no further support in
order to be well-founded inferences, whereas other Empiricists, in
particular Menodotus, held that transition to the similar merely
provided the doctor with a means of generating potentially fruitful
,. See e.g. Celsus, De medicina, 'Prooemium', 10, ed. and trans. Spencer (Loeb),
i. 6-7, and ps.-Galen, Introductio seu medirus, in Galen, Opera Omnia, ed. Kuhn,
xiv. 682. Moreover Galen's An Outline of Empiricism records a dispute amongst
later Empiricists over the form of inference known as 'transition to the similar' that
makes it clear that the participants thought that the way to determine whether this
mode of inference had constituted part of Empiricism as originally formulated was
to investigate the views held by Serapion (Galen, An Outline of Empiricism, 4, in
Galen, Three Treatises on the Nature of Science, ed. Frede, 27).
,0 See Galen, On the Sects for Beginners, 2, and An Outline of Empiricism, 4,9, in
Galen, Three Treatises on the Nature of Science, ed. Frede,s, 27, 36-9.
90 Chapter 5
hypotheses about the appropriate course of therapy.5 1 And Galen
tells us that the Pyrrhonean sceptic Cassius wrote a book in which
he argued for the extreme position that the Empiricist 'does not
even make use of this kind of transition'. 52
There also seems to have been a more fundamental dispute re-
garding the status of the overall Empiricist account of medical
practice. Michael Frede asserts that 'the early Empiricists do not
show a trace of skeptical reservation concerning the faculties by
means of which we do, according to them, attain knowledge, namely
the senses and memory';53 and Galen undeniably tends to present
Empiricism as purporting to give a description of the correct way
to arrive at knowledge of efficacious methods of treatment. How-
ever it is also possible to interpret Empiricist accounts of the art of
medicine as simply offering a naturalistic description of the practice
of those people who generally strike other people as being success-
ful doctors; and such a naturalistic description would be perfectly
compatible with the judgement that no one, not even those doctors
who appear to be able to treat a wide range of illnesses effectively,
has any rationally justified beliefs about the correct way to treat
particular illnesses.
Now it would, of course, be difficult to persuade anyone to settle
for an account of the art of medicine that does not endorse even
one medical belief as a rationally justified belief or piece of know-
ledge. Nevertheless it will be argued in subsequent chapters that
Pyrrhonean scepticism of the kind espoused by Sextus does com-
mit its adherents to the renunciation of the supposition that they or
anyone else has any rationally justified beliefs about even the sim-
plest matters. Moreover Sextus himself appears to be fully aware of
the need to renounce this supposition. Thus it seems plausible to
conclude that those Empiricists who were also post-Aenesidemean
Pyrrhonists are likely to have embraced a naturalistic and wholly
non-normative account of the way doctors arrive at their beliefs
about appropriate treatment. And this, in turn, suggests that Em-

S' Galen summarizes Menodotus' views on the status of transition to the similar

in ch. 9 of An Outline of Empiricism, in Galen, Three Treatises on the Nature of

Science, ed. Frede, 36-7. The claim that some Empiricists regarded this kind of
inference as constituting 'reasonable experience' is made in ch. 4 of the same work.
s> Galen, An Outline of Empiricism, 4, in Galen, Three Treatises on the Nature of
Science, 27.
53 M. Frede, 'The Ancient Empiricists', in Frede, Essays in Ancient Philosophy,

243-60 at 249.
 Pyrrhonism from Aenesidemus to Sextus Empiricus 91

piricism evolved significantly over time. Even if Frede is right to

claim that the early Empiricists thought of themselves as specify-
ing the way to arrive at rationally justified beliefs about medical
matters, it seems that by the first century AD some Empiricists had
abandoned that stance in favour of the view that it is experience
that appears to guide competent doctors in their treatments even
though neither experience nor any form of reasoning is capable of
justifying their beliefs about how to proceed.
We have concentrated so far on the positive account of the art
of medicine offered by the Empiricists. But if we examine their
critique of the attempt to found medicine on supposedly justified
beliefs about unobservable entities like molecules of matter and
invisible pores, we again find that there seems to be an important
difference between the position held by the early Empiricists and
the views of those later Empiricists who regarded themselves as
being both Empiricists and Pyrrhonean sceptics.
All Empiricists agreed that their rivals, the so-called Rationalist
or Dogmatic doctors, had not yet succeeded in justifying any of
their many claims about unobservable entities. However the early
Empiricists appear to have been convinced that it was impossible
to apprehend unobservable entities and properties. We find, for ex-
ample, that Galen describes the Empiricists as arguing that 'since
an analogism is not in a position to be used to uncover what it is pre-
tended it can uncover, no art will be realized on the basis of it, nor
will human life, on the basis of it, make progress';54 and as Galen
is specifically referring here to inference from evident matters of
inquiry to conclusions about unobservable entities or properties
(dva'\oytOfLO,), it seems clear that he is ascribing to the Empiricists
the view that the attempt to justify belief~ about unobservable en-
tities cannot succeed. Similarly, Sextus claims in the Outlines of
Pyrrhonism that it is only the Methodist school of medicine that
appears to avoid rash claims about non-evident matters of inquiry
(see PH I. 237). This plainly implies that members of the Em-
piricist school did tend to indulge in such claims. However a claim
about a matter of inquiry that is always non-evident amounts to
a claim about an entity or property that is, in itself, unobservable
(see PH 2. 97-8 and M. 8. 145-7). No Empiricist, then, would
have permitted himself any first-order claims about non-evident
S4 Galen, On the Sects for Beginners,s, in Galen, Three Treatises on the Nature of

Science, ed. Frede, 9.

92 Chapter 5
matters; and it accordingly seems clear that the rashness criticized
by Sextus must have manifested itself in assertions about the im-
possibility of anyone ever arriving at a justified belief about entities
or properties that can never be observed in their own right.
We have already noted, though, that Laertius claims that Sex-
tus himself was an Empiricist: indeed, it seems likely that the
name 'Sextus Empiricus' ultimately derives from Laertius' refer-
ence at D.L. 9.116 to 'Sextus the Empiricist [.E'~TO' <> €fL1THptKO,],.
Moreover the pseudo-Galenic work Introductio seu medicus simi-
larly includes Sextus in a list of Empiricists: Sextus is paired with
Menodotus as two thinkers who were responsible for adding sub-
stantially to the rigour and precision of Empiricist thought. 55 We
are also told by Sextus himself that he was the author of a set of
discourses (tJ1TOfLv7JfLara) on Empiricism (M. I. 61), and it is often
suggested by present-day commentators that this might be the same
work as the set of discourses on medicine mentioned at M. 7.202. 56
If this identification is correct, then it is difficult to see why Sextus
would have written a general work on medicine that could also be
described by its author as a set of discourses on Empiricism un-
less Sextus was at that time a member of the Empiricist school of
medicine. And even if we are actually dealing with two quite sepa-
rate works, the fact that Sextus mentions a book specifically about
the Empiricist school of medicine but fails to refer to any work
of his own devoted exclusively to a discussion of one of the rival
schools does tend to corroborate the other evidence that Sextus was
an Empiricist.
How, then, are we to reconcile the external evidence indicating
that Sextus was an Empiricist with Sextus' criticisms of the Em-
piricist school of medicine at PH I. 236-7? According to Sextus,
'it must be recognized that if in fact this form of Empiricism pos-
itively affirms the inapprehensibility of non-evident matters, then
it is not the same as scepticism, nor would it be appropriate for the
sceptic to embrace that system ofthought' (PH I. 236, own trans.).
Moreover Sextus, as we have seen, says that the Methodist school
of medicine appears to be the one school that avoids rash assertions
about the non-evident; and he even goes on to claim that when the

55 Ps.-Galen, Introductio seu medicus, in Galen, Opera Omnia, ed. Kuhn, xiv. 683.
,6 See e.g. Barnes, 'Ancient Skepticism and Causation', 194 n. 47; and D. K.
House, 'The Life of Sextus Empiricus', Classical Quarterly, NS 30 (1980), 227-38
at 234.
 Pyrrhonismfrom Aenesidemus to Sextus Empiricus 93
Methodist school is 'viewed not simply by itself, but in comparison
with the other Medical Schools, it has more affinity [with scepti-
cism] than they' (PH I. 241). It might be suggested, therefore, that
if Sextus did belong to the Empiricist school of medicine, he was
behaving in a way inconsistent with his own assessment of what
was proper for a Pyrrhonean sceptic.
This latter conclusion, however, is forced upon us only if we
ignore the possibility of drawing a distinction between the views
held by mainstream Empiricists and those put forward by people
who thought of themselves as reforming the school and purifying
it of its past mistakes and dogmatism. It seems highly significant,
therefore, that the passage we have already examined from the In-
troductio seu medicus presents Sextus as a reforming Empiricist.
Furthermore Sextus is described by Agathias (AD c.530-80) in his
Historiae as an exponent of a particular kind of Empiricism: namely,
sceptical Empiricism. 57 Thus it seems plausible to suppose that al-
though Sextus did not shy away from criticizing certain aspects of
Empiricist orthodoxy, he also took the view that there was scope
for medical Empiricism to take a form that was compatible with
Pyrrhonean scepticism. If one could not be an Empiricist unless
one dogmatically affirmed the in apprehensibility of all entities that
are not even potentially observable while treating sense-perception
as an unproblematic source of justified beliefs about evident mat-
ters of inquiry, then Sextus would have accepted that it would not
be appropriate for the sceptic to give his allegiance to the Empiricist
school of medicine. In those circumstances it would indeed be more
appropriate for the sceptic to become a member of the Methodist
school. But if a doctor could justly claim to be an Empiricist simply
because he had no inclination to believe that any non-evident mat-
ter of inquiry had so far been apprehended and he was willing to
allow his therapeutic practice to be guided by the different forms of
experience tabulated by people like Serapion and Glaucias,5 8 then
Sextus would not have seen any incompatibility between scepticism
and membership of the Empiricist school of medicine.
It is clear, accordingly, that the form of Empiricism acceptable
57 Agathias, Historiae. 2. 29. 7. ed. R. Keydell (Berlin, 1967), 79. Biographical
information about Agathias can be found in Averil Cameron, Agathias (Oxford,
1970), I-II.
5· An early Empiricist (active c.17S Be) who was criticized by Galen for his pre-
occupation with tenninological disputes. See Galen, An Outline of Empiricism, I I,
in Galen, Three Treatises on the Nature of Science, ed. Frede, 43.
94 Chapter 5
to Sextus differed significantly from the way of thinking associated
with the first Empiricists of the third and second centuries Be in its
attitude towards claims about unobservable entities. Moreover the
fact that so many of our sources have no qualms about describing
Sextus as an Empiricist indicates that significant numbers of Sex-
tus' contemporaries concurred with him in regarding his position
as modifying but not repudiating Empiricism. We can conclude,
therefore, that even if Sextus' cautious refusal to affirm that claims
about unobservable entities can never be apprehended failed to
achieve the status of a new Empiricist orthodoxy, the fact that this
approach towards claims about the unobservable had come to be
seen by Sextus' time as a legitimate option for an Empiricist is itself
a manifestation of the way in which Empiricist thought developed
over the years.
In the case we have just been discussing, we saw Empiricism
evolving in a direction that allowed a person to be both an Em-
piricist and a Pyrrhonean sceptic. However, as we have already
noted, the move towards a naturalistic interpretation of the Em-
piricist account of the way in which a doctor arrives at his methods
of treatment also appears to have served precisely that function.
But if the pressure on medical Empiricism to evolve from an un-
critical confidence in the justificatory powers of sense-perception
and a dogmatic denial of the apprehensibility of unobservable en-
tities towards a naturalistic account of the role of experience and
suspension of judgement in respect of the apprehensibility of un-
observable entities was primarily the product of a desire to make
Empiricism compatible with Pyrrhonean scepticism, we need to ex-
amine the origins of that desire. How did the relationship between
Empiricism and Pyrrhonean scepticism come to be so close that a
number of thinkers were driven, when confronted by putative in-
compatibilities between the two stances, to attempt to remove those
incompatibilities instead of simply abandoning one of these stances
in favour of the other?
If we reflect first on the situation of someone who was primarily
an Empiricist, it seems very plausible to suppose that such a person
might have been interested in exploiting the destructive power of
the Pyrrhonist's argumentative techniques in order to undermine
more effectively the pretensions of Rationalist doctors. However
an Empiricist who set about exploiting those techniques to dis-
comfort the Rationalists would not have found it easy to avoid the
 Pyrrhonismfrom Aenesidemus to Sextus Empiricus 95
conclusion that the arguments used by the Pyrrhonist also called
into question the status of beliefs arrived at by means of sense-
perception. Furthermore reflection on the scope of the Pyrrhon-
ist's arguments would have forced the Empiricist to consider the
possibility that Pyrrhonean argumentation ultimately undercuts its
own conclusions. If no claim can ever be rationally justified, then it
is also true that we cannot justify the claim that no claim can ever
be rationally justified. Thus an Empiricist who was unable to find
any principled ground for treating the Pyrrhonist's arguments as
restricted in their scope would have been compelled to accept that
the categorical belief that no claims about unobservable entities can
ever be rationally justified was itself a belief that lacked a rational
justification; and it appears psychologically plausible to suppose
that such a realization would have had the effect of markedly weak-
ening his commitment to that belief. It seems, therefore, that we
can conclude that some Empiricists would have been driven to seek
an accommodation with Pyrrhonean scepticism because they were
unwilling to refrain from making use of the extremely powerful
patterns of argument associated with that stance even though these
same patterns of argument also threatened to undermine certain
views that had hitherto formed part of Empiricism itself.
We seem to have succeeded, then, in explaining why an Em-
piricist might have cause to modify his position so as to make it
more compatible with Pyrrhonean scepticism. However it would
be very satisfying if we could also find some way of explaining
why someone who was primarily a Pyrrhonean sceptic might have
wished to present himself as an Empiricist, albeit an Empiricist of
an unconventional kind.
In order to construct such an explanation we must first recognize
that the post-Aenesidemean Pyrrhonist concedes that his actions
are sometimes guided by the instruction he has received in the pre-
cepts of a particular art or profession. According to Sextus, the
Pyrrhonist's life is shaped by four principal influences: 'one part of
it lies in the guidance of Nature, another in the constraint of the
passions, another in the tradition of laws and customs, another in
the instruction of the arts' (PH I. 23). However it is clear that the
Pyrrhonist is not in a position to embrace all forms of instruction
in the arts. If the instruction on offer requires that the person being
taught should acquire a set of beliefs about non-evident matters of
inquiry, then the Pyrrhonist cannot admit that he is influenced by
 Chapter 5
such instruction because he explicitly claims to suspend belief on all
non-evident matters. S9 Thus the Pyrrhonist cannot legitimately ap-
peal to the instruction of the arts to explain his actions unless he can
offer an account of what is involved in such instruction that permits
us to see it as an activity that does not necessarily involve the incul-
cation of beliefs about non-evident matters. We also need to take
into account, however, the fact that the art of medicine was of par-
ticular interest to the educated people who formed the natural au-
dience of thinkers like Menodotus and Sextus. In the ancient world
the prospective patient needed to be able to carry out his own checks
on the competence of people describing themselves as doctors, and
this meant that many laymen were careful to acquaint themselves
with the basic elements of medical thought. 60 Moreover this practi-
cal concern with the art of medicine was reinforced by the art's role
as a paradigm of an organized body of expertise that had advanced
well beyond the traditional crafts practised by mere artisans.
The Pyrrhonist, accordingly, would almost inevitably have faced
a challenge to explain how his characterization of what was involved
when one received instruction in an art or profession applied to the
particular case of the art of medicine. Indeed, even if this challenge
had not been forthcoming from the Pyrrhonist's opponents, the
Pyrrhonist himself would have wished to have some assurance that
personal participation in a sophisticated art like the art of medicine
was consistent with his account of the four major influences regu-
lating his life.
It is clear, therefore, that the Pyrrhonist could not afford to con-
cede that the Rationalist account of the art of medicine was the
correct one, for the Rationalist account implied that one could be-
come fully competent in the art of medicine only through a process
of acquiring beliefs about unobservable entities. The rival Empiri-
cist account, however, eschewed all beliefs about such entities, and
had accordingly been forced to develop a way of characterizing
what had been learnt by a competent doctor that mentioned only
beliefs about evident matters of inquiry. It seems plausible to con-
clude, then, that the Pyrrhonist would have been greatly attracted
by this aspect of the Empiricist's views, for Empiricism appeared
to provide not only a template for constructing explanations of how

59 See Chapter 6, sect. 2.

60 See M. Frede, 'Philosophy and Medicine in Antiquity', in Frede, Essays on
Ancient Philosophy, 225-42, esp. 225-6.
 Pyrrhonismfrom Aenesidemus to Sextus Empiricus 97
a Pyrrhonist might acquire medical expertise without repudiating
his suspension of belief about non-evident matters but also a de-
tailed specification of a set of beliefs about evident matters that
yielded methods of treatment that were at least as successful as
those employed by Rationalist doctors. On the other hand, early
Empiricism, as we have emphasized already, did have some fea-
tures that could not have been endorsed by a Pyrrhonean sceptic.
Thus the Pyrrhonist would appear to have had a powerful mo-
tive for appropriating in its entirety the Empiricist characterization
of the doxastic content of the art of medicine while rejecting its
claims about the justificatory powers of sense-perception and the
impossibility of ever apprehending unobservable entities.
We appear, then, to have had some success in uncovering the
philosophical connections between medical Empiricism and Pyr-
rhonean scepticism. However we also need to examine briefly the
potential scope for combining Pyrrhonean scepticism with the ac-
count of the art of medicine put forward by the Methodist school
of medicine. We noted earlier that it is not implausible to suppose
that the sceptic Mnaseas did combine Pyrrhonean scepticism with
allegiance to that school; and in the Outlines of Pyrrhonism Sextus
undeniably seems keen to draw attention to aspects of Methodism
that strike him as fitting together particularly well with the stance
espoused by the Pyrrhonist.
One of the principal attractions for Sextus of the Methodist ac-
count of medicine lay in the fact that it refrained from any categor-
ical assertion that it was impossible to apprehend the truth about
non-evident matters of inquiry. According to Sextus,
He [the sceptic] could more easily, in my opinion, adopt the so-called
'Method'; for it alone of the Medical systems appears to avoid rash treat-
ment of things non-evident by arbitrary assertions as to their apprehen-
sibility or non-apprehensibility, and following appearances derives from
them what seems beneficial, in accordance with the practice of the Scep-
tics. (PH I. 236-7)
Sextus also presents the way in which the Methodist doctor pur-
ported to arrive at the appropriate therapy for a particular illness
as a special case of the constraint of the passions. We saw above
that Sextus includes the constraint of the passions in his list of
the four influences responsible for shaping the sceptic's life; and
Sextus claims that we do not need to invoke anything other than
 Chapter 5
the constraint of the passions to explain the Methodist doctor's
response to his patient's illnesses:
So then, just as the Sceptic, in virtue of the compulsion of the affections,
is guided by thirst to drink and by hunger to food, and in like manner to
other such objects, in the same way the Methodical physician is guided by
the pathological affections to the corresponding remedies-by contraction
to dilation ... or by fluxion to the stoppage of it ... (PH I. 238)

Now it might initially be thought that Sextus must be exagger-

ating the extent to which the Methodist regards himself as psycho-
logically compelled to adopt particular treatments in response to
his observations of the patient's condition. However Galen's tes-
timony seems to support Sextus' interpretation of the Methodist
doctor's position. Galen tells us that the Methodists claimed that
all diseases fell into one of three basic categories: 'they say that
each disease is either costive or fluent or a combination of both.
For when the natural bodily outflows are interrupted, one calls
this "costive"; when they flow too freely, one calls it "fluent" .'61
Moreover these states of the body were supposed to make plain
the treatment required: the Methodists insisted that the doctor did
not need to observe patients and the outcomes of their illnesses in
order to arrive at the conclusion that costive diseases needed to be
treated by means of relaxation whereas constriction was the appro-
priate remedy in the case of a fluent disease. 62 Equally, however,
the Methodists did not regard this awareness of what to do as the
product of some rationalistic inference based upon a theory about
the inner constitution of the body: according to Galen, they pro-
fessed to concern themselves only with evident matters. 63 It seems,
therefore, that the Methodists thought of themselves as guided by
a set of innate dispositions that were automatically brought into
play by certain observable features of the patient's condition. And
this, in turn, means that Sextus' comparison between the responses
of the Methodist doctor and the natural instincts of animals (see
PH I. 238-9) is one which the Methodists themselves would have
found highly apposite.
We are led, then, to the conclusion that the general account of the
art of medicine offered by the Methodists could consistently have
6, Galen, On the Sects for Beginners, 6, in Galen, Three Treatises on the Nature of

Science, ed. Frede, 10.

6, Ibid. 7, in Galen, Three Treatises on the Nature of Science, ed. Frede, 12-13.
6, Ibid. 6, in Galen, Three Treatises on the Nature of Science, ed. Frede, I I.
 Pyrrhonismfrom Aenesidemus to Sextus Empiricus 99
been combined with the Pyrrhonean scepticism described by Sex-
tus. However this abstract compatibility between the two stances
does not guarantee that the actual treatments recommended by
the Methodist school of medicine would have found favour with
a sceptic who had experience of the therapeutic consequences of
such treatments. Galen claims that the Methodists professed to
treat people solely on the basis of the condition they were in when
they presented themselves to the doctor. 64 Thus the patient's prior
history, for example, was set aside as therapeutically irrelevant.
However Galen points out that experience tells us that if one treats
an open wound caused by the bite of a mad dog in the same way
that one treats an open wound caused by the bite of a dog that is
not suffering from the symptoms of madness, the outcome is in-
variably disastrous as the patient first develops a fear of water and
then dies after a series of agonizing convulsions. 6s Moreover the
Methodists also maintained that such things as the age or the sex of
the patient were therapeutically irrelevant even though the experi-
ence of most of their contemporaries was that taking these factors
into account sometimes helped one to arrive at a successful form of
treatment. 66 Thus their own experience or the experiences of other
people might well have sufficed to persuade most Pyrrhonists that
it appeared that the forms of treatment recommended by the Em-
piricist school of medicine tended to be significantly more effective
than those advocated by the Methodists. Consequently Pyrrhonean
scepticism would have continued to be associated primarily with
Empiricism rather than Methodism; and it does seem to be worth
noting here that whereas we are aware of numerous people who are
described by our sources as being both Pyrrhonean sceptics and
Empiricists, Mnaseas is the only person described as a sceptic who
can plausibly be identified with an acknowledged member of the
Methodist school of medicine.

4. Sextus Empiricus: his life and writings

So far our survey of the history of Pyrrhonean scepticism has forced

us to concentrate on the task of reconstructing the stance of thinkers
., Ibid. 7, in Galen, Three Treatises on the Nature of Science, ed. Frede, 12.
·s Ibid. 8, in Galen, Three Treatises on the Nature of Science, ed. Frede, 13-14 .
.. Ibid., in Galen, Three Treatises on the Nature of Science, ed. Frede, 14.
100 Chapter 5
who abstained from writing down their philosophical Views or
wrote only books that have not survived for us to read. Pyrrho,
Arcesilaus, and Carneades all wrote nothing on philosophical top-
ics. Instead they set forth their respective positions in discussion
and public lectures. Aenesidemus, Theodosius, and Menodotus, in
contrast, wrote extensively about Pyrrhonism and related subjects,
but not one of their many books is still extant. In the case of Aen-
esidemus the richest surviving piece of testimony is the summary
of his Pyrrhonist Discourses contained in Photius' Bibliotheca. And
Theodosius and Menodotus have been served even worse by the
vagaries of history: their literary legacy amounts to little more than
one or two casual comments by Laertius and some passages in
Galen's writings in which he criticizes Menodotus' alleged views.
It is fortunate, therefore, that so much of Sextus' writing is
still available to us. The names of Sextus and his pupil Saturni-
nus occupy the final two places in Laertius' chronological list of
Pyrrhonean philosophers (D.L. 9. 116), and we lack any informa-
tion about specific Pyrrhonists who can confidently be identified
as coming after Saturninus. Thus it seems that we can plausi-
bly take Sextus as a representative of the culminating years of the
Pyrrhonean tradition. Moreover Sextus himself announces at the
beginning of the Outlines of Pyrrhonism that he is attempting to
provide an overview of the sceptical stance (see PH I. 4); and he
never claims at any point in his extant works to be a philosophical
innovator. It appears, then, that we can safely treat Sextus as seek-
ing to offer an account of Pyrrhonean scepticism that would have
been generally acceptable to the other Pyrrhonists of his period
rather than an account of a novel version of Pyrrhonism reflecting
his own idiosyncrasies and preferences.
Three of Sextus' works survive today: a group of three books
bearing the collective title Outlines (V7TOTV1TWUHS) of Pyrrhonism, five
books that are commonly grouped together under the title Against
the Dogmatists, and six books entitled Against the Professors (I-ta8T}-
t-taTtKoL). But even in Sextus' case we can identify some important
writings that no longer exist.
We have already mentioned that Sextus wrote at least one work
on medicine,6 7 but there are also references in Against the Professors
and Against the Dogmatists to a work on the soul (see M. 6. 55 and 10.
284). Furthermore, Sextus appears at M. I. 282 to be referring to
·7 See sect. 3 above.
 Pyrrhonismfrom Aenesidemus to Sextus Empiricus 101

some lost writings on Pyrrho and Pyrrhonism. Although the phrase

Toi, llvppwl'EiOt, could, if taken by itself, indicate that Sextus is
simply talking about the Outlines of Pyrrhonism, the contents of the
writings mentioned at M. I. 282 do not correspond to the contents
of the Outlines. According to Sextus, the particular writings on
Pyrrhonism under discussion at M. I. 282 contained an explanation
of Pyrrho's enthusiasm for the poetry of Homer. Yet Sextus says
nothing in the Outlines about Pyrrho's attitude towards poetry.
Indeed, that work does not even contain any general comments
about the relationship between scepticism and poetry.
The most intriguing lost work that can plausibly be attributed
to Sextus, however, is a book or pair of books that once bore the
same relationship to the five books of Against the Dogmatists as the
first book of the Outlines of Pyrrhonism now bears to the other two
books collected under that title. Sextus introduces the first book
of Against the Dogmatists by reminding us of what he has already
achieved: 'The general character of the sceptic way has now been
indicated by the appropriate method, as it has been delineated first
by means of direct description but also by distinguishing it from
similar philosophies' (M. 7. I, own trans.). This would, in fact, be
an excellent description of the contents of book I of the Outlines of
Pyrrhonism. But Sextus' next comments strongly suggest that he is
referring to the contents of some other work. According to Sextus,
the completion of his account of the general character of scepticism
leaves him facing the task of applying the argumentative techniques
of scepticism to the claims made in every area of philosophy; and
in the course of the five extant books of Against the Dogmatists he
goes on to investigate the claims made in the areas of logic, physical
theory, and ethics. However Sextus also investigates the claims
made in those areas of philosophy in books 2 and 3 of the Outlines.
Thus the supposition that the opening section of book I of Against
the Dogmatists refers to book I of the Outlines would commit us to
the highly implausible conclusion that Sextus has chosen to use one
book from the Outlines to provide an essential supplement to the
material contained in Against the Dogmatists while simultaneously
implying that the discussions of logic, physics, and ethics in the
latter work have no parallels elsewhere in his writings, even though
those discussions are, for the most part, nothing other than revised
and expanded versions of the discussions that form the content of
the two other books of the Outlines.
102 Chapter 5
The loss of the opening book or books of Against the Dogma-
tists is, however, greatly mitigated by the fact that in the Outlines
of Pyrrhonism we continue to have access to a complete work on
Pyrrhonean scepticism written by someone who was himself a lead-
ing exponent of that way of philosophizing. Thus we are fortunately
still able to read a detailed presentation of the case for Pyrrhonean
scepticism that has survived in the form in which it was originally
written.
Sextus himself indicates in the Outlines that it was usual for
expositions of Pyrrhonean scepticism to fall into two parts with
one offering a general account of the sceptic way and the other
applying sceptical arguments to the claims made in particular areas
of discourse:
Of the Sceptic philosophy one argument (or branch of exposition) is called
'general', the other 'special'. In the general argument we set forth the dis-
tinctive features of Scepticism, stating its purport and principles, its logical
methods, criterion, and end or aim; the 'Tropes', also, or 'Modes', which
lead to suspension of judgement, and in what sense we adopt the Scep-
tic formulae, and the distinction between Scepticism and the philosophies
which stand next to it. In the special argument we state our objections
regarding the several divisions of so-called philosophy. (PH I. 5-6)

And when we examine the contents of book 1 of the Outlines, we

find that Sextus has meticulously included material on all the topics
mentioned above as forming part of the general argument. Books 2
and 3, on the other hand, set out the 'special' part of the exposition.
Book 2 discusses the claims made in the areas of epistemology and
logic; and book 3 discusses the claims made in the areas of physical
theory and ethics.
I t is widely accepted today that Sextus wrote the Outlines of
Pyrrhonism before his two other surviving works. Karel Jamicek's
examination of passages in Against the Dogmatists that parallel pas-
sages in the Outlines has revealed that the vocabulary of the former
is considerably richer and more varied than the vocabulary of the
latter. 68 Furthermore the structure of Sextus' sentences in Against
the Dogmatists appears to be more complex than those found in
the Outlines. 69 We can conclude, therefore, that the Outlines could
have been written after Against the Dogmatists only if Sextus had

68 K. Janacek, Prolegomena to Sextus Empiricus (Olomouc, 1948).

6q Ibid. 35-8, 4', 45-9·
 Pyrrhonismfrom Aenesidemus to Sextus Empiricus 103

deliberately chosen to simplify his style in order to provide a more

accessible introduction to Pyrrhonean scepticism. However this
possibility seems to be rendered unlikely by Janacek's discovery
that sentences occurring in passages in the Outlines that corre-
spond to passages in Against the Dogmatists frequently suffer from
a lack of clarity and precision that could easily have been remedied
with the aid of the vocabulary and sentence constructions found
in the other work.7° Although one might well simplify one's style
in order to produce an introductory work, it seems implausible to
suppose that one would allow this simplification to make the sense
of one's sentences more opaque when a remedy lies readily to hand.
It appears to follow, then, that there are substantial though by no
means overwhelming grounds for concluding that the Outlines of
Pyrrhonism predates Against the Dogmatists.
I f we do take the view that Sextus wrote the Outlines of Pyrrhon-
ism before he wrote Against the Dogmatists, the many parallels be-
tween these two works seem inexorably to force upon us the con-
clusion that Sextus based the text of Against the Dogmatists upon
that of his earlier work." Indeed, Janacek sums up the result of his
philological investigations in the following manner:
The fact I have discovered is that MVII-XI is derived from PH to a much
larger extent than has been supposed hitherto. Each of my new parallels
shows its close connection with PH, and all that cannot be found in PH
appears more and more clearly to consist of insertions in both form and
matter. Therefore it is possible to call MVII-XI an enlarged and improved
edition of PH 11_111.72

In general terms the two books M. 7 and M. 8 correspond to

the contents of PH 2. These two books bear the collective title
Against the Logicians, and most of the material in these books that
cannot be found in PH 2 consists of lengthy accounts of the views
of non-sceptical philosophers on proof, signs, and the criterion of
truth. In PH 2 the exposition of the dogmatic views rejected by the
sceptic is much more concise, and Sextus concentrates on setting
out the balancing counterarguments that are intended to induce
suspension of judgement.
The three other books of Against the Dogmatists cover the topics
70 Ibid. 62-3.
7' See e.g. PH 2. 130 and M. 8. 279, PH 2. 139 and M. 8. 311, PH 3.85 and M.
9· 297, PH 3. 88 and M. 9· 308-10, PH 3. 267-8 and M. I I. 241-2, PH 3. 271-2
and M. II. 246. " Janacek, Prolegomena to Sex/us Empiricus, 62.
104 Chapter 5
discussed in PH 3. M. 9 and 10 bear the collective title Against
the Physicists; and they examine and criticize the views of dogmatic
philosophers on such matters as divine existence, causation, the
fundamental constituents of the universe, space, plurality, time,
and the reality of motion. M. I I, in contrast, has the title Against
the Ethicists and is primarily a longer version of the material on
ethics found in the final third of PH 3.
Sextus' third surviving work, as we have already noted, is Against
the Professors, and this seems to have been written after Against the
Dogmatists, as there is a reference at M. 3. 116 to earlier discourses
against the grammarians (71pO, 7'OU, ypap.p.aTtKOv,) and against the
physicists (1TpO, 7'OU, tfovaLKov,). If the reference to a discourse against
the physicists is considered in isolation, then it could be interpreted
as nothing more specific than a reference to a work taking the doc-
trines of physical theorists for its subject matter. However the ref-
erence to a discourse against the grammarians clearly seems to be
intended to draw the reader's attention to the specific title of M. 1
as this book bears the title 1TPO, ypap.p.aTtKOV, and contains the only
substantial discussion of the art of grammar to be found in Sextus'
extant writings. This strongly suggests that the associated reference
to a discourse against the physicists is also intended to pick out a
work by means of its title as well as its particular subject matter,
and in Greek the collective title of M. 9 and 10 is 1TPO, tfovaLKOlJ,.
Additional evidence that Against the Professors was written after
Sextus had written the five books that make up Against the Dog-
matists is provided by Sextus' references at M. I. 29, 2. 106, and 6.
52 to his sceptical discourses (7'0. aK£1TTtKo. lJ1Top.IJ'TJp.a7'a). Although
Sextus says nothing about the contents of these sceptical discourses
that conclusively rules out the possibility that he is talking about
the Outlines of Pyrrhonism, the words Sextus employs to designate
the work at issue here make it very unlikely that he is referring to
the Outlines. Sextus' marked preference, even in the Outlines, for
talking in terms of scepticism and the sceptic rather than Pyrrhon-
ism and the Pyrrhonist might have persuaded him at the time of
writing Against the Professors to adopt the convention of charac-
terizing the Outlines as a sceptical rather than a Pyrrhonean work.
However it is highly implausible to suppose that this terminologi-
cal change would also have been accompanied by the repudiation of
the term lJ1To7'v1T(vaf.t, in favour of the less specific term lJ1Top.v7Jp.a7'a.
In contrast, if we reflect on the nature of the work that would have
 Pyrrhonismfrom Aenesidemus to Sextus Empiricus 105

resulted if the five existing books of Against the Dogmatists had

originally been combined with one or two books giving a general
exposition of scepticism, then we can readily see that the designa-
tion TIl O"Kf1TTtKa lJ7To/LlIT}/LaTa would have been a most appropriate
way of referring to that work.
The subject matter of Against the Professors differs markedly
from that of the Outlines and Against the Dogmatists. Instead of
setting out a general account of Pyrrhonean scepticism or a cri-
tique of the claims made in specific areas of philosophy, Against the
Professors concentrates on the task of examining the claims made
by the practitioners of the various arts that formed the basis of
general, pre-professional education at the time when Sextus was
writing. Sextus does not include an examination of the art of logic,
presumably on the basis that he has discussed this particular art at
great length elsewhere in his writings, and detailed consideration of
the art of astronomy is omitted in favour of a critique of the related
art of astrology. Consequently the six books that make up this work
address themselves in turn to the claims made by grammarians,
rhetoricians, geometers, arithmeticians, astrologers, and musicians.
Sextus responds to these claims with a curious mixture of ar-
guments. Many of his arguments seem to carry a force that is
completely independent of the credibility of his general case for
radical scepticism. We find, for example, that Sextus' criticisms of
astrology in M. 5 engage with the details of that art in such a way
that even someone who is wholly unpersuaded of the case for em-
bracing radical scepticism could still endorse virtually everything
Sextus says in the course of this particular book. And if we exam-
ine Sextus' discussion of the art of rhetoric in M. 2, it becomes
apparent that one of his principal criticisms of this art is based on
the robustly common-sensical point that rhetorical flourishes are
no substitute for a sensitivity to common usage and a thorough
acquaintanceship with the subject under discussion:
And, to speak succinctly, rhetoric does not create good speech. For it does
not suggest to us the technical rules for it, as for instance that the man
who uses good speech is, firstly, he who does not pervert the language in
common use ... , and secondly, he who is securely master of the subject in
hand; for if the subjects are not understood, the language wanders off the
point, and so, in view of this, we say that every man is a good orator about
his own pursuits. (M. 2. 52)
106 Chapter 5
Some of Sextus' arguments, however, pose a much greater chal-
lenge to our customary view of the world. At the beginning of
Against the Grammarians he deploys arguments that purport to
show that no subject of learning exists because 'neither does the
subject exist nor the teacher nor the learner nor the method of
learning' (M. I. 9). And even when Sextus subsequently turns his
attention to specific arts, many of his ostensible conclusions appear
to controvert beliefs held by almost everyone who is not a radical
sceptic. We find, for example, that he argues in Against the Arith-
meticians that number does not exist (see M. 4. 10, 2 I, and 34), and
in Against the Musicians he argues that musical notes do not exist
because sound does not exist (M. 6. 52-8).
I t seems, therefore, that we cannot plausibly interpret Against
the Professors as the product of a change in Sextus' thought which
led him away from radical scepticism towards a stance more in
keeping with common-sense patterns of thought. The presence
of far-reaching arguments of the kind identified above appears to
guarantee that the underlying philosophical position of the author
of Against the Professors is one that is no less radical than the pos-
ition expounded more directly in the Outlines of Pyrrhonism and
Against the Dogmatists.
How, then, are we to explain the increased prominence in Against
the Professors of arguments that could be endorsed with enthusi-
asm by people who regard themselves as having no allegiance to
any form of general scepticism? And why does Sextus sometimes
draw a distinction between arts that the sceptic does not wish to
criticize and arts or ways of thinking about particular arts that do
stand in need of sceptical criticism? Some commentators have sug-
gested that these aspects of Against the Professors can be explained
in terms of Sextus' emphasis on Pyrrhonean scepticism as a form of
therapy for intellectual perplexity.73 Where the perplexity is only
superficial, it can be eliminated by arguments that are relatively
restricted in their scope. But in cases where an individual is af-
flicted by more deeply rooted perplexities, then a full cure requires
the use of arguments capable of persuading that person that he
has hitherto been far too confident about the prospects for arriv-
ing at rationally justified beliefs about matters of interest to him.

73 See e.g. J. Barnes, 'The Beliefs of a Pyrrhonist', Proceedings of the Cambridge

Philological Society, 28 (1982), 1-29 at 18-19; and R. J. Hankinson, The Sceptics
(London, 1995), 253-4·
 Pyrrhonismfrom Aenesidemus to Sextus Empiricus 107

It is possible to maintain, therefore, that Against the Professors is

primarily intended to show how the sceptic sets about treating the
intellectual perplexities of people who do not need to undergo the
radical therapy of the Outlines and Against the Dogmatists in order
to be restored to a tranquil state of mind. Now this explanation of
the manner in which Sextus has organized and structured Against
the Professors does go a long way towards enabling us to see all three
of Sextus' extant works as products of a philosophical stance that
remained essentially unchanged from the time he began work on
the first book of the Outlines to the time when he completed the
final sections of his critique of the art of music in M. 6. Nevertheless
another factor also seems to have played an important role in shap-
ing Against the Professors; and we can best come to appreciate the
influence of this second factor by reflecting on some of the points.
we have already made about the relationship between Pyrrhonean
scepticism and medicine.
When we discussed the Pyrrhonist's attitude towards the art of
medicine, we noted that the Pyrrhonist needed to be able to offer
an account of the content of that art that refrained from conceding
that one could master it only if one were willing to acquire beliefs
about non-evident matters of inquiryJ4 However no Pyrrhonist
could have maintained with any show of plausibility that the art of
medicine was the only art that ever helped to determine a Pyrrhon-
ist's actions. It follows that the Pyrrhonist would have found it
necessary to offer accounts of these other arts that explained how
they could guide a person's behaviour even if that person had no
beliefs about any non-evident matters of inquiry. And Against the
Professors appears to be Sextus' attempt to discharge this obliga-
tion.
In the case of medicine, most Pyrrhonists seem to have adapted
for their own ends the account of this art set forth by the Em-
piricists. I t is not surprising, therefore, to find that in Against the
Professors Sextus presents the Pyrrhonean sceptic as having no
quarrel with those arts that rely exclusively on expectations about
the course of one's future experience that are based on experiential
regularities that have manifested themselves on previous occasions
(see e.g. M. I. 49-56 and 5. 1-2). Sextus' critical fire is concen-
trated instead on arts that go against experience or arts that make
inflated claims about non-evident matters. Astrology, for example,
74 See sect. 3 above.
108 Chapter 5
appears to be an art of the first kind. The claims of astrologers
are undermined by experience, and astrology is, in consequence,
not an art that ever guides the actions of a Pyrrhonist. In the case
of arithmetic, however, we find that the exponents of this art as-
sert that the underlying structure of the universe is a mathematical
one, and Sextus accordingly responds in M. 4 with a set of argu-
ments intended to persuade us to withhold assent from this claim
by showing us that even the bare claim that number exists is not
rationally justified.
It seems, therefore, that one of the primary functions of Against
the Professors is to provide an account of how the Pyrrhonean sceptic
interprets those arts that do guide him in the course of his daily life.
However the account that emerges from Against the Professors is, in
one important respect, incomplete. Sextus responds to an art like
the art of grammar in the same way that the Empiricists responded
to the art of medicine. Thus we find that Sextus maintains that all
that is useful and important about the art of grammar lies in its
description of the way different kinds of people actually speak and
write in specific circumstances. Nevertheless this attempt to display
the useful aspects of the art of grammar as based on nothing more
than the observation of manifest regularities in the way people use
words does not determine how we should interpret the sceptic's
appeals to experience and observation. It could be the case that
the Pyrrhonean sceptic accepts that we have experience of physical
objects and other people. Alternatively, he might find himself with
no inclination to hold that anything is immediately presented to us
in experience other than our own mental states. And if a sceptic
holding this latter view were confident that anything an ordinary
person might wish to describe as an experiential regularity would
also constitute a regularity at the subjective level, then he would
not feel that there was anything improper about conceding that he
was guided by an experiential regularity of the kind identified by,
for example, doctors or grammarians even if he had not carried out
any explicit reduction of the claim that such a regularity exists to a
claim about the contents of people's minds.
It is possible, accordingly, that those passages in Against the Pro-
fessors where Sextus appears to be endorsing beliefs about the ob-
jective world that are the product of experience and trained observa-
tion should be interpreted as passages where Sextus has not found it
worthwhile to supply an explicit account of how he would set about
 Pyrrhonismfrom Aenesidemus to Sextus Empiricus 109

reducing these beliefs to beliefs about the subjective realm. If Sex-

tus is primarily attempting to show how and to what extent the
various arts discussed in Against the Professors can guide the scep-
tic's actions without breaching the sceptic's €7TOX~' then he might
well have felt that the challenging aspect of this undertaking lay
in the need to persuade us that everything that actually influences
the sceptic can be exhibited as nothing more than an awareness of
manifest experiential regularities. Once this step had been achieved,
anyone who so wished could have generated a full explication of the
sceptic's relationship to arts like grammar and music simply by in-
terpreting statements about experience in terms of Sextus' usual
account of the content of this experience. In effect, therefore, it
may be the case that we should discard the supposition that Against
the Professors sees Sextus drawing closer to common-sense views
in favour of the supposition that his dialectical objectives for this
work meant that the task of displaying the experiential basis of the
arts under examination had priority over any further discussion of
the sceptical account of experience set out in his other works.
Now that we have listed all of Sextus' extant works and briefly
reviewed their contents, it is almost time to turn to a detailed exam-
ination of the philosophical stance expounded in those works. But
before we do this, it is worth pausing for a moment to discuss what,
if anything, Sextus' writings tell us about his personal history.
Although some commentators have placed Sextus early in the
second century AD, most have taken the view that he wrote his
sceptical works towards the end of that century.'s The principal
difficulty confronting any attempt to maintain that Sextus was ac-
tive in the early years of the second century arises from Galen's
conspicuous failure to mention him despite the fact that Galen is,
as we have seen, one of our major sources of information about
medical Empiricism and post-Aenesidemean Pyrrhonism. Galen
was born in AD 129, and he seems to have completed his medical
7' Defenders of the view that Sextus should be assigned to the early 2nd cent. AD
include F. Kudlien and W. Vollgraff. See F. Kudlien. 'Die Datierung des Sextus
Empiricus und des Diogenes Laertius', Rheinisches Museum, 106 (1963). 251-4;
and W. Vollgraff, 'La vie de Sextus Empiricus', Revue de philologie, NS 26 (1902),
195-210 at 210. The claim that Sextus should be placed in the second half of the
2nd cent. is advanced by e.g. M. M. Patrick, Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism
(Cambridge, 1899), 10; V. Brochard, Les Sceptiques grecs, 2nd edn. (Paris. 1981),
314-15; E. Zeller, Outlines of the History of Greek Philosophy, 13th edn., rev. W.
Nestle (New York, 1980), 278; and M. Dal Pra, Lo scetticismo greco, 2nd edn. (2
vols.; Rome and Bari, 1975), ii. 463.
110 Chapter 5
studies around AD 157, when he returned to Pergamum, the place
of his birth, to become official physician to the city's gladiatorial
school. 76 We can safely assume, therefore, that the large number
of works by Galen that survive today were written after AD 157.
Moreover Galen refers by name to many individual Empiricists,
and often uses their writings to corroborate his own account of
Empiricist doctrine. Thus it seems most unlikely that the name of
Sextus 0 EfL1THP'K6, would be entirely absent from Galen's extant
works if Sextus had come to prominence as a sceptic and Empiricist
in the first half of the second century.
I t might be thought, however, that Galen's failure to refer to Sex-
tus strongly suggests that we should discard even the more popular
view that Sextus was active in the final years of the second century
in favour of the supposition that he wrote his works on Pyrrhonean
scepticism at the beginning of the third century. Although Galen
is traditionally held to have died in AD 199, modern scholarship
appears to indicate that he might well have lived until some time
between AD 2 I 0 and 2 15. 77 Moreover Galen himself tells us that he
lost many of his writings in the fire that destroyed Rome's Temple
of Peace in AD 192. 78 It seems, therefore, that we can explain the
impressive number of works in existence today only by assuming
that he was a particularly productive author in the final years of
his life. Thus the absence of any reference to Sextus in Galen's
writings is still extremely puzzling even if we suppose that Sextus
belongs to the second rather than the first half of the second cen-
tury. And if we also take into consideration the fact that works that
could, unlike Galen's, have been written much later in the third
century than AD 2 15 do mention Sextus by name,'9 it does appear
7· See V. Nutton, 'Galen and Medical Autobiography', Proceedings of the Cam-
bridge Philological Society, 18 (1972),50-62, and 'The Chronology of Galen's Early
Career', Classical Quarterly, !'IS 23 (1973), 158-71.
77 See V. Nutton, 'Galen in the Eyes of his Contemporaries', Bulletin of the History
of Medicine, 58 (1984), 315-24.
8
7 Galen, De libris propriis, in Galen, Opera Omnia, ed. Kuhn, xix. 19.
79 Laenius' dates are unknown. The fact that Laertius does not claim that Pyr-
rhonean scepticism no longer had adherents at the time when he was writing even
though his list of Pyrrhonean philosophers terminates with the name of one of
Sextus' pupils suggests that he should be placed one generation after Sextus. Thus
if we could determine when Sextus lived, we would at least be able to arrive at a
plausible conjecture about Laertius' dates. However the controversy over Sextus'
dates and the absence of any other evidence that would suffice to fix Laertius' dates
mean that we cannot say when Laenius was active as an author. And when we turn
to the question of what dates we should assign to the author of the Introductio seu
 Pyrrhonismfrom Aenesidemus to Sextus Empiricus I I I

that there are substantial grounds for concluding that it is unlikely

that Sextus began writing about Pyrrhonean scepticism before the
end of the second century.
Supporters of the view that Sextus wrote his extant works in the
second century insist, though, that the amount of effort he devotes
to rebutting the claims of the Stoics should suffice to persuade us
to reject the supposition that Sextus is primarily a third-century
author. 80 It is argued that Stoicism had lost most of its vigour and
influence by the beginning of the third century, and would not,
therefore, have been capable of provoking anyone writing at that
time to engage in the impassioned attacks on Stoicism that can be
found in Sextus' surviving works.
This popular line of argument seems, however, to lack any real
cogency. I t is quite true that Sextus' writings contain lengthy dis-
cussions of the views held by the Stoics, and Sextus invariably
responds to those views by arguing for some contrary position in
order to bring about the suspension of belief that characterizes the
mature Pyrrhonist's response to all claims about philosophical mat-
ters. But it is also true that Sextus discusses in considerable detail
the views of thinkers like Epicurus, Aristotle, and Democritus; and
it would obviously be absurd to treat this as evidence that Sextus
must have been writing at a time when Epicureans and followers of
Aristotle and Democritus were flourishing and attracting popular
acclaim. It seems, therefore, that if we are to conclude that Sextus
was engaged in intense debate with his Stoic conteJl1poraries, then
we need to appeal to something other than his willingness to argue
at length against Stoic doctrine. However virtually no other aspect
of Sextus' writings has even the slightest tendency to suggest that
he thought of the Stoics of his own era as constituting his primary
philosophical opponents: Sextus overwhelmingly gives the impres-
sion that he is intent on systematically extirpating each and every
manifestation of the impulse to engage in philosophical system-
building.
The only passage in Sextus' writings that could be interpreted as
an overt announcement that he held that his Stoic contemporaries

medicus, we find ourselves confronted by a similar dearth of evidence. It seems,

therefore, that both Laertius and ps.-Galen could have embarked on their literary
activities many years after Galen's death.
80 See e.g. Brochard, Les Sceptiques grecs, 314-15; and Patrick, Sextus Empiricus
and Greek Scepticism, 8 and 10.
I 12 Chapter 5
posed the principal challenge to his attempts to persuade people to
embrace Pyrrhonean scepticism occurs in book I of the Outlines.
Sextus says at PH 1.65 that 'according to those Dogmatists who are,
at present [IIUII], our chief opponents-I mean the Stoics-internal
reason is supposed to be occupied with the following matters'.
However this comment is embedded in a discussion of whether it
is appropriate to treat the sense-impressions vouchsafed to animals
as having the same credibility as the sense-impressions received by
human beings. Thus it would undoubtedly be possible to interpret
Sextus as asserting that the Stoics of his day are, when everything
is taken into consideration, his principal philosophical opponents.
But it would also be possible to interpret him as asserting that
the Stoics of his day are his principal opponents in respect of the
specific issue under discussion at that point in the Outlines. And
one could even reject the supposition that Sextus is referring to
any group of contemporary Stoics: it might be the case that he
should be interpreted as averring that he has reached a stage in his
exposition of the case for Pyrrhonean scepticism where the main
opposition to what he is saying comes from arguments put forward
by past Stoics. It seems, therefore, that D. K. House's assessment
of this passage is a judicious one:
PH I 65, however one might translate it, does not reveal very much about
the state of Stoicism in Sextus' day. It is remarkable that such an obscure
and nondescript passage is the best testimony that scholars can call upon
to prove that Sextus was deeply immersed in a polemic with his contem-
poraries. s,

The case for supposing that Sextus must have been active at
a time when Stoicism was flourishing is thus too weak to pro-
vide any substantial support for the assumption that Sextus' works
on Pyrrhonean scepticism must have been written before Galen's
death. And we are accordingly free to conclude that Galen's failure
to mention Sextus means that it is more plausible to place Sextus
in the early years of the third century rather than the final years of
the second.
It is important to bear in mind, however, that the evidence avail-
able to us on this matter is so tenuous that it would be extremely
rash to treat the above conclusion as anything more than a conjec-
ture that is marginally more credible than any rival conjecture. At

8. House, 'The Life of Sextus Empiricus'. 228-9.

 Pyrrhonismfrom Aenesidemus to Sextus Empiricus 113

one time it was thought that we could at least affirm with confi-
dence that some of Sextus' writings were composed before AD 236
because the early Christian author Hippolytus, who died in 235
or 236, included in his Refutatio omnium haeresium various pas-
sages that seemed to have been copied from Against the Dogmatists
and Against the Professors. 82 However Janacek's examination of the
differences that do exist between Hippolytus' version of these pas-
sages and Sextus' version appears to indicate that the supposition
that Hippolytus copied Sextus is less plausible than the supposition
that both authors made use of one or more common sources that are
now lost to us. 8J Janacek points out that the relationship between
the style of passages in the Refutatio and the parallel passages in
M. 5 and lois the same as the relationship between the style of
passages in the Outlines and parallel passages in Sextus' other ex-
tant works. 84 But it would be absurd to suppose that Hippolytus
would have gone to the trouble of systematically modifying Sextus'
text so that it took on the form it would have had if it had been
composed in the style Sextus used when writing the Outlines. Thus
we seem to be forced towards the conclusion that the difference
in style stems from the fact that the Refutatio contains a relatively
faithful copy of some common source material that was revised by
Sextus so that it incorporated the stylistic features characteristic of
Against the Dogmatists and Against the Professors. 8s
The supposition that Hippolytus was acquainted with Sextus'
works on scepticism also appears to be incompatible with Hippoly-
tus' account of the connection between Pyrrhonism and Academic
philosophers like Arcesilaus and Carneades. Hippolytus refers to
Pyrrho of Elis as 'Pyrrho the Academic' ,86 and he explicitly claims
that Pyrrho was the founder of the Academic sect. 87 However no one
who had read book J of the Outlines could have believed that Pyrrho
was an Academic; and although it is true that Sextus' other ex-
tant works do not contain an explicit discussion of the relationship
between the Academy and Pyrrhonean scepticism, the contrasts

0, See Hippolytus, Refutatio omnium haeresium, ed. Miroslav Marcovich (Berlin,

1986). The contents of 10. 6. 2-10. 8. 6 correspond closely to the contents of M. 10.
310-19; and much of M. 5 is paralleled by 4. 1-7 and 4· 13· 3--9.
8) K. Janacek, 'Hippolytus and Sextus Empiricus', Eunomia: Ephemeridis Listy
filologicke Supplementum, 3 (1959), 19-21.
o. Ibid. 19. Janacek sets out some examples to support this claim on p. 20.
05 Ibid. 19. 86 Hippolytus, Refutatio, I, 'Contents', ed. Marcovich, 53.
·7 Ibid. I. 23. I, ed. Marcovich, 85.
114 Chapter 5
Sextus repeatedly draws between the views of the Academics and
the stance espoused by the Pyrrhonist would appear to be sufficient
to persuade a moderately attentive reader that the terms 'Pyrrhon-
ist' and 'Academic' are not synonyms.
It seems, therefore, that if we wish to determine the latest date
at which Sextus might have been active as an author, we are re-
duced to appealing to the evidence provided by Laertius' list of
Pyrrhonean philosophers. According to Laertius, 'Menodotus was
the instructor of Herodotus of Tarsus, son of Arieus, and Herodotus
taught Sextus Empiricus, who wrote ten books on Scepticism and
other fine works' (D.L. 9. 116). Galen, however, frequently refers
to Menodotus, and one of those references occurs in the very early
work On Medical Experience. 88 Moreover Galen never implies that
Menodotus was one of his contemporaries, and his references to
Menodotus often make use of the past tense. Thus it seems plaus-
ible to suppose that Menodotus was active as an author no later than
the middle of the second century AD. Yet the compiler of the succes-
sion list reproduced by Laertius has chosen to interpose only one
person's name between the names of Menodotus and Sextus. Now
it is, of course, true that we have already been forced to conclude
that this list contains serious inaccuracies. 89 Nevertheless it appears
unlikely that the person responsible for fabricating it would have
failed to provide more names to bridge the gap between Menodotus
and Sextus if Sextus had come to prominence as a Pyrrhonean scep-
tic more than two or three generations after Menodotus; and this
implies that Sextus embarked on his literary career no later than
AD 230-40.
When we turn to the question of where Sextus was living when
he composed his Pyrrhonean works, the evidence is even flimsier
than the evidence that can be brought to bear on the issue of his
dates. One of Sextus' examples in the Outlines of Pyrrhonism does
appear to establish that he did not write that work in Alexandria:
Sextus asserts at PH 3. 221 that 'in Alexandria they offer a cat to
Horus and a beetle to Thetis-a thing which no one here would do'.
Furthermore his exposition in Against the Dogmatists of the distinc-
tions drawn within the general category of non-evident things by
dogmatic philosophers includes the claim that these philosophers
would classify the city of Athens as non-evident 'to us at the present
88 Galen, On Medical Experience, 2, in Galen, Three Treatises on the Nature of
Science, ed. Frede, 51. 89 See, in particular, Chapter 2, sect. 3.
 Pyrrhonismfrom Aenesidemus to Sextus Empiricus 115

moment; for though it is naturally manifest and pre-evident, owing

to the intervening distance it is rendered non-evident' (M. 8. 145).
Thus it seems clear that at least one book of Against the Dogmatists
was written when Sextus was neither in nor close to Athens.
Unfortunately, it appears that it is not possible to advance beyond
these two negative points to any positive conclusion about Sextus'
place of residence when he was active as an author. Some commen-
tators have claimed that Sextus must have written his works on
Pyrrhonean scepticism while he was living in a city where the Sto-
ics maintained an active and influential presence. They have then
argued that once we have eliminated Alexandria and Athens on the
basis of the considerations discussed in the previous paragraph, we
are forced to conclude that Sextus composed his principal works
on Pyrrhonism while he was living in Rome. 90 However this ar-
gument depends on the wholly arbitrary assumption that Sextus
wrote the Outlines and Against the Dogmatists in the same place:
if we do not make this assumption, we are at liberty to hold that
he wrote the Outlines in Athens and then wrote Against the Dog-
matists while he was living in Alexandria. 91 Moreover the claim
that Sextus must have resided in one of the centres of Stoicism
clearly presupposes that Sextus saw himself as primarily engaged
in an intellectual struggle against the views advocated by his Stoic
contemporaries, and we have already drawn attention to the fact
that there is virtually no evidence to suggest that this supposition
is correct. It seems, then, that the attempt to construct an elimi-
native argument in favour of the conclusion that Sextus wrote the
Outlines and Against the Dogmatists while he was residing in Rome
is a complete failure.
The upshot of the attempt to determine where Sextus lived while
he was pursuing his literary career is thus a most disappointing
one. The evidence available to us is so unsatisfactory that it seems
foolishly rash to venture even a provisional conjecture: no matter
90 This line of thought is developed at length in Patrick, Sextus Empiricus and

Greek Scepticism, 12-21.

9' At PH 2. 98 Sextus does cite Athens as an example of an object that was,

according to the classificatory scheme favoured by the dogmatists, non-evident to

him at that particular moment. However the crucial claim that Athens was non-
evident because of the intervening distance occurs only in Against the Dogmatists.
Thus Sextus' comments in the Outlines are entirely compatible with the supposition
that Athens was non-evident to him at that time only because his view of Athens
was obstructed by some obstacle like trees or a wall.
116 Chapter 5
what city or combination of cities one proposes, there are invari-
ably alternative candidates that possess at least the same degree of
plausibility.
We can, on the other hand, come to a definite conclusion about
Sextus' profession. We have already discussed Sextus' interest in
medical theory, and we saw then that there are good grounds for
concluding that he thought of himself as an Empiricist despite his
favourable comments on the Methodist school of medicine in the
Outlines of Pyrrhonism. Nevertheless Sextus' writings on medicine
and his apparent willingness to align himself with a suitably chas-
tened form of Empiricism do not, of themselves, suffice to show that
Sextus was both a Pyrrhonean sceptic and a doctor. Sextus' con-
nection with the Empiricist school of medicine might have come
about simply as a result of his concern to explain how his sceptical
views could be reconciled with the role played in ordinary life by
arts as complex as the art of medicine. There are, however, three
offhand remarks in his extant works that enable us to set aside these
scruples and conclude that Sextus was a doctor.
The remark that provides the clearest piece of evidence that Sex-
tus was a doctor by profession occurs at M. I. 260. At this point in
Against the Grammarians Sextus is attempting to persuade us of the
unreliability of the stories told about famous people, and he uses
the following example to support his arguments:
For instance (for it is not out of place to use familiar and appropriate
examples of the facts), the historians adopting a false assumption say that
Asclepius, the founder of our science [TOV dpX"7Yov ~f.LWV nil" "1T!aT~f.L"7I"], was
struck by lightning, and not content with this falsehood they invent many
variations of it ...

Significantly, Asclepius was traditionally regarded as the founder

of the science of medicine; and it accordingly seems plain that we
can explain Sextus' decision to speak of 'our science' in this context
only on the assumption that Sextus was himself a doctor.
Another remark that tells strongly in favour of the conclusion that
Sextus was a doctor can be found at PH 2. 238. In the course of an
argument that seeks to cast doubt on the ability of formal logic to
expose the kind of sophisms that might actually impose themselves
on someone, Sextus uses two medical examples to support his thesis
that it is experience rather than formal reasoning that enables one
to detect dangerous instances of ambiguity and equivocation. Now
 Pyrrhonismfrom Aenesidemus to Sextus Empiricus 117
the fact that these medical examples are the only examples Sextus
offers when he is trying to illustrate what will be discerned by 'the
experts in each particular art' (PH 2.236) is itself an indication that
Sextus takes himself to have a particularly good understanding of
the art of medicine. However the exact words he uses at PH 2. 238
provide even better evidence of Sextus' profession: he constructs
a sentence that seamlessly moves from talking in the third person
about the way the doctor responds to different kinds of abatements
in illnesses to the claim in the first-person plural that 'it is not for
this [a temporary abatement] but for the general abatement in the
disease that we recommend the varied diet'.
Moreover the above pieces of evidence seem to be corroborated
by a remark Sextus makes in Against the Dogmatists when he is
attempting to show the wide variation in people's opinions about
what kinds of thing are objectively valuable. Sextus says at M. I I.
47 that as he does not want to prolong unduly the discussion of this
topic, 'we shall base our exposition on one example only-namely
health, since the discussion of this is specially familiar to us'. Now
it has to be conceded that the question of the value to be placed
on good health was extensively discussed by philosophers, and the
authors subsequently cited by Sextus are predominantly poets and
philosophers rather than medical theorists and doctors. However
the fact that he claims a special familiarity with the dispute re-
garding health does suggest that Sextus' interest in this area went
significantly beyond what would be expected of a person whose
concern with health did not extend beyond its role as a stock ex-
ample in disputes between rival schools of philosophy.
Although this internal evidence does appear to establish that Sex-
tus was a doctor rather than someone who merely had an interest
in exploring the epistemological and metaphysical underpinnings
of the art of medicine, the lack of autobiographical detail is most
striking. It is true that he frequently uses medical examples to il-
lustrate arguments that are not specifically concerned with medical
matters (see, amongst other cases, PH 2.239-41; 3. 280-1; M. 8.
I88, 219-20; I. 95, 307-8; 2. 49); and this means that the art of
medicine has a distinctive place in Sextus' writings, for if we set
aside the special case of his exposition of the ten tropes, he usu-
ally displays his command of the details of a particular art or topic
only when it is the explicit object of his investigations. Nevertheless
Sextus never speaks of his own experiences as a doctor, and all of
1I8 Chapter 5
his medical examples are presented as though he is simply drawing
on facts and theories that would be familiar to all doctors.
On the whole, therefore, our review of the information we have
about Sextus' personal life has simply served to emphasize how
meagre and inconclusive that evidence is. There does appear to be
satisfactory evidence that Sextus was a doctor; and this is a valuable
conclusion in the light of our earlier suggestion that a Pyrrhonist
who gave his allegiance to the Empiricist school of medicine rather
than the Methodist school would not have been expressing a pref-
erence for the general account of the art of medicine offered by
the Empiricists but would have been responding instead to the de-
tails of the therapeutic and diagnostic methods employed by the
two schools. It also seems that the supposition that Sextus com-
posed his works on Pyrrhonean scepticism in the early years of the
third century AD actually possesses marginally greater plausibility
than the more popular supposition that he wrote those works in
the second half of the second century. However we were unable to
determine where Sextus was living when he was active as an author,
and all other aspects of his personal life remain completely opaque
to us.
In marked contrast, Sextus' extant writings are a rich store of
information about his philosophical position. The fortuitous sur-
vival of these works permits us to explore the strengths and com-
plexities of Pyrrhonean scepticism in a way that would have been
quite impossible if we had been confined to attempting to recon-
struct this form of scepticism from isolated fragments preserved
by undiscriminating compilers like Laertius or hostile critics like
Galen and Aristocles. And the remaining chapters of this book will
accordingly be devoted to the task of elucidating the exact nature
of Sextus' Pyrrhonism and showing that it constitutes a form of
radical scepticism that is both self-consistent and philosophically
appealing.
 6
An Outline of Sextus' Pyrrhonism
I. Ends and means

THE notion of bTOX~ lies at the heart of Sextus' Pyrrhonism. How-

ever Sextus, unlike Arcesilaus and his immediate Academic succes-
sors, does not construe bTOX~ or suspension of judgement as a mere
matter of refraining from belief about matters of objective fact. We
saw in section 2 of Chapter 3 that Arcesilaus was prepared to treat
lTTOX~ as equivalent to the Stoic notion of refraining from assent.
And as the Stoics took the view that a person counted as assent-
ing to something only if that person held a belief about a matter
of objective fact, Arcesilaus' interpretation of €7TOX~ has the con-
sequence that the claim that a particular person espouses a stance
of universal €7TOX~ does not contradict the claim that this person
has a great many beliefs about subjective phenomena. In contrast,
Sextus maintains that the term €7TOX~ is 'derived from the fact of
the mind being checked [€7Te'xe-aOat] so that it neither affirms nor de-
nies anything owing to the equipollence of the matters in question'
(PH I. 196). Yet a person who believes that p is clearly someone
who mentally affirms that p. Hence we are forced to conclude that
when Sextus refers to €7TOX~, he is referring to nothing other than
suspension of belief. I
It should not be assumed, however, that the fact that Sextus and
the Academics differ in their understanding of the notion of €7TOX~
means that the €7TOX~ espoused by the Pyrrhonean sceptic does not
leave him in the same state of mind as the philosophers of the
Middle Academy. When an exponent of the stance espoused by the
Middle Academy claims to suspend judgement about everything,

, Another account of the Pyrrhonean notion of '1TOX~ that arrives at the same
conclusion is provided by D. Sedley, 'The Motivation of Greek Scepticism', in M.
Burnyeat (ed.), The Skeptical Tradition (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983), 9-29 at
19-20 .
120 Chapter 6
only those mental acts that would qualify in Stoic terminology as
acts of assent are at issue. Sextus, on the other hand, favours a
looser interpretation of what constitutes assent (see in particular
PH I. 13); and he also takes the view that any belief constitutes
a mitigation of a person's €7TOXT}/suspension of judgement. It is
accordingly true that if Sextus were to claim that the Pyrrhonist
espouses universal 17ToXT}, then he would be making the extremely
strong claim that the Pyrrhonist eschews all beliefs irrespective of
their content. However it will become apparent in section 2 of this
chapter that Sextus is careful to emphasize that the Pyrrhonean
sceptic purports only to suspend judgement on all non-evident
matters of inquiry. And this means that if the Pyrrhonist should
happen to take the view that claims about subjective states of mind
are not claims about non-evident matters, then the range of beliefs
eschewed by a Pyrrhonist who suspends belief in respect of all
non-evident matters would turn out to be identical after all with
the range of beliefs eschewed by someone who qualifies, from the
perspective of Arcesilaus and the Middle Academy, as an exponent
of universaI17ToXT}.
In subsequent chapters we shall attempt to determine the precise
scope of the Pyrrhonist's €7TOXT}. At the present point in our inves-
tigation, however, we need only note that this €7TOXT} is of crucial
importance to the Pyrrhonean sceptic because it is his €7TOXT} that
allegedly enables him to achieve the peace of mind that constitutes
his ultimate end or dAo<;.
According to Sextus, the Pyrrhonean sceptic begins his philo-
sophical inquiries because he is disturbed by his failure to arrive at
definitive answers to various questions about the nature of the world
and his place in that world (see PH I. 12 and 25). Consequently the
future Pyrrhonist initiates a systematic programme of investigation
and research that is intended to uncover the truth about the matters
troubling him. Unfortunately, his inquiries fail to uncover the truth
about these matters. Indeed they merely succeed in bringing into
question opinions he had formerly held with complete confidence
(see PH I. 8-10, and 26). Thus his efforts to restore his peace of
mind are apparently doomed to fail ignominiously.
In practice, however, the sceptic-to-be is succoured in a most un-
expected way. The result of his investigations is that there are now
vast numbers of topics that place him in the following predicament.
I n each case he finds himself confronted by at least two claims about
 An Outline of Sextus' Pyrrhonism 121

the topic at issue that strike him as incompatible with one another.
Hence he cannot bring himself to accept that they are all true. Yet
each of these claims seems to be supported by a chain of justifica-
tion that is no worse but no better than those that can be adduced
in support of the other claims pressing in upon him. Thus any
decision in favour of one claim rather than its rivals would be ut-
terly arbitrary and a reckless abnegation of the future Pyrrhonist's
provisional policy of ordering his beliefs and actions in accordance
with the dictates of reason. In most cases, therefore, he is compelled
to suspend belief (see PH I. 26, 29; 2. 192; M. 8. 159, 298).
Naturally the extensive bTOX~ that results from these develop-
ments starts out as little more than a desperate expedient that of-
fers the future Pyrrhonist a temporary escape from an otherwise
intolerable situation. After a time, however, this stance becomes
increasingly comfortable, and the urgency of the quest for a defini-
tive conclusion about the matters perplexing him begins to fade.
Indeed, suspension of belief ultimately comes to provide the very
tranquillity that had originally been expected to arise from the ac-
quisition of knowledge or rationally justified beliefs. Sextus com-
pares this experience to one that is supposed to have befallen the
painter Apelles:
Once, they say, when he was painting a horse and wished to represent in
the painting the horse's foam, he was so unsuccessful that he gave up the
attempt and flung at the picture the sponge on which he used to wipe the
paints off his brush, and the mark of the sponge produced the effect of
a horse's foam. So, too, the Sceptics were in hopes of gaining quietude
by means of a decision regarding the disparity of the objects of sense and
thought, and being unable to effect this they suspended judgement; and
they found that quietude, as if by chance, followed upon their suspense,
even as a shadow follows its substance. (PH I. 28-9)

Moreover it is important to keep in mind that the Pyrrhonist does

not suspend judgement through an act of will. 2 The Pyrrhonist, of
course, finds that peace of mind or dTapa~{a fortuitously happens to
accompany his l7TOX~' But he also finds that his inability to discern
any reason for preferring a particular claim to its contradictory
usually leads to his being psychologically constrained to suspend
belief.
, This is a point that is rightly emphasized in M. Bumyeat, 'Can the Sceptic Live
his Scepticism?', in M. Schofield, M. Burnyeat, and j. Barnes (eds.), Doubt and
Dogmatism: Studies in Hellenistic Epistemology (Oxford, 1980), 20-53.
122 Chapter 6
Nor, indeed, is this phenomenon especially surprising. Consider,
for example, the claim that there are an even number of grains of
sand in the Libyan desert. When we encounter this claim, suspen-
sion of belief supervenes automatically and effortlessly. We do not
assess the evidence for this claim, and then will ourselves to sus-
pend judgement because this is the only rational response available
to anyone who can discover no reason to believe that a given claim
is any more or any less likely to be true than some conflicting claim.
Instead our inability to persuade ourselves that there is any reason
to believe that there are an even rather than an odd number of grains
of sand in the Libyan desert makes it psychologically impossible
for us to believe, or positively disbelieve, the claim that there are
actually an even number of grains of sand. Hence there is no ques-
tion of our needing to suppress an inclination to come to a positive
decision. We find, in fact, that we cannot settle on a belief about the
matter even if we attempt to force a belief upon ourselves. It follows
that if the Pyrrhonist is genuinely unable to discern any reason for
preferring a particular claim to its contradictory, then suspension
of belief is exactly the outcome we would expect.

2. The limits of Errox~

So far, however, we have deliberately refrained from any detailed

discussion of the extent of the mature Pyrrhonist's €7rOx~. We have
implied that the Pyrrhonist eventually finds himself suspending be-
lief on an unusually wide range of topics, but we have not attempted
to specify the boundaries of this €7rOx~. Such caution is essential if
we are not to prejudge the case against some popular interpreta-
tions of Pyrrhonism that will be fully discussed in later chapters.
Nevertheless we can, even at this stage, profitably examine some of
the formal limits that Sextus places on Pyrrhonean €rrox~.
At PH I. 13 Sextus asserts that 'the Pyrrhonean philosopher as-
sents to nothing that is non-evident'; and similar explanations of
what is involved in being a Pyrrhonist are also provided at PH 1.201
and 225. Furthermore Sextus frequently describes the Pyrrhonist
as lacking SOYfLa-ra. Yet this amounts to the same thing as saying
that he assents to nothing that is non-evident. For Sextus is at pains
to stress .that a person holds a SOYfLa only when he assents to some-
thing that is non-evident. However it would be highly misleading to
 An Outline of Sextus' Pyrrhonism 12 3

describe the Pyrrhonist as assenting to nothing that is non-evident

if the Pyrrhonist actually assents to nothing at all. Consequently
Sextus' repeated references to the Pyrrhonist as someone who as-
sents to nothing that is non-evident entitle us to conclude that
the Pyrrhonist does assent to matters that are evident. Moreover
Sextus never states that the Pyrrhonist's assent does not amount
to belief; so it seems plausible to suppose that Sextus would be
quite happy to accept that the Pyrrhonist has beliefs about evident
matters of inquiry. I t follows that it would be a mistake to hold
that the Pyrrhonist's professed J1TOX~ commits him to eschewing all
belief.
The same conclusion can also be reached by examining Sextus'
account of the two senses of SOYfLaT{~w. At PH I. 13 Sextus states:
We say that the sceptic does not dogmatize [lloYfLaT{~£Lv], not in that wider
sense of 'dogma' according to which various people assert that a dogma
consists in acquiescing to a thing [EvlloKEiv nv; 1TpaYfLan] ... ; but we say
that he does not dogmatize in that sense of 'dogma' according to which
some people assert that it consists in assent to a non-evident matter of the
type investigated by the sciences ... (own trans.)

However Jonathan Barnes has shown that Hellenistic I56YfLaTa were

invariably philosophico-scientific tenets or evaluative judgements
with immediate practical consequences. 3 Thus Sextus' claim that
some people use the term 'dogma' in a broader sense forces us to
infer that he is referring to a usage prevalent before the Hellenistic
period. Yet SOYfLa originally meant no more than 'belief' or 'opi-
nion', and that was the sense in which the term was used by Plato
and Aristotle. 4 Consequently we arrive at the conclusion that PH
I. 13 is intended to make the point that the mature Pyrrhonist does
have some beliefs even though he rigorously eschews all beliefs
about philosophico-scientific topics.
What, however, does Sextus regard as an evident matter of in-
quiry? Initially, at least, it is tempting to suppose that an answer
can be found at PH 2. 97-9. Sextus reports here that the dogma-
tists hold that all objects of inquiry are either pre-evident or non-
evident. In addition, the class of non-evident objects of inquiry is
further divided into three sub-classes: the altogether non-evident,
3 J. Barnes, 'The Beliefs of a Pyrrhonist', Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological

Society, 28 (1982), 1-29 at 6--9.

4 See Burnyeat, 'Can the Sceptic Live his Scepticism?', 26; Sedley, 'The Motiva-

tion of Greek Scepticism', 28 n. 67.

124 Chapter 6
the naturally non-evident, and the occasionally non-evident. And
the four categories that result from these divisions are explained as
follows:
Pre-evident are, as they assert, those which come to our knowledge of
themselves, as for example the fact that it is day-time; altogether non-
evident are those which are not of a nature to fall within our apprehension,
as that the stars are even in number; occasionally non-evident are those
which, though patent in their nature, are occasionally rendered non-evident
to us owing to certain external circumstances, as the city of Athens is now
to me; naturally non-evident are those which are not of such a nature as to
fall within our clear perception, like the intelligible pores; for these never
appear of themselves but may be thought to be apprehended~ if at all,
owing to other things, such as perspirations or something of the sort. (PH
2.97-8)

Significantly, then, this account of the evident/non-evident dis-

tinction does not say that it is pre-evident that it appears that it
is day-time: instead the claim is made that it is pre-evident that it
is day-time. Thus we are confronted by a statement about a mat-
ter of objective fact that is being presented as a statement that is
evidently true. Moreover it is plain that the description of occa-
sionally non-evident objects of inquiry as 'patent in their nature'
indicates that they are supposed to be capable of being pre-evident
in suitable circumstances. Consequently it must be the case that the
existence of the city of Athens is supposed to be pre-evident in suit-
able circumstances. However the city of Athens is a physical object.
When someone makes a claim about that city, he is not making a
claim about mere appearances. Rather he is making a claim about a
part of the objective world. Hence this example provides us with a
second instance of its being assumed that matters of objective fact
are sometimes pre-evident.
It may seem, therefore, that we are entitled to argue along the
following lines. The mature Pyrrhonist has beliefs about evident
matters of inquiry. However the above account of the evident/
non-evident distinction shows that Sextus holds that some claims
about matters of objective fact are evidently true. Consequently
the Pyrrhonist's E7TOX~ does not preclude him from having a wide
variety of beliefs about matters of objective fact.
Unfortunately, that line of reasoning is only superficially cogent.
The account at PH 2. 97-9 comes immediately after a major dis-
 An Outline of Sextus' Pyrrhonism
cussion of the criterion of truth, and Sextus sums up this discussion
as follows:
And since the criterion of truth has appeared to be unattainable, it is no
longer possible to make positive assertions either about those things which
(if we may depend on the statements of the Dogmatists) seem to be evident
or about those which are non-evident: for since the Dogmatists suppose
they apprehend the latter from things evident, if we are forced to suspend
judgement about the evident, how shall we dare to make pronouncements
about the non-evident? (PH 2. 95)

Thus Sextus is claiming that his critique of the criterion of truth

reveals that we cannot legitimately make assertions about the things
which the dogmatists regard as being evident. And if we suppose
that Sextus agrees that these things genuinely are evident, then
we are really considering a claim to the effect that the Pyrrhonean
critique of the criterion of truth means that we cannot legitimately
make positive assertions about even those matters that are evident.
However we have already convinced ourselves that the Pyrrhonist
does not purport to suspend belief about matters that are evident.
Thus we are compelled to conclude that Sextus does not believe
that the dogmatists are correct in their assessment of what is and
what is not an evident object of inquiry. It follows that none of the
examples used to illustrate the dogmatists' account of the evident/
non-evident distinction can be treated as illustrating Sextus' own
views on the subject.
The discussion at PH 2. 97-9 is also misleading in one other im-
portant respect. This discussion places occasionally non-evident
matters of inquiry firmly in the category of non-evident matters
of inquiry. However Sextus is a staunch defender of the use of
commemorative signs (see PH 2. 102; M. 8. 156-8), and com-
memorative signs are supposed to guide us to beliefs about matters
that are occasionally non-evident (see PH 2.99-100; M. 8. 151-
2). Consequently he must accept that it is sometimes allowable for
the Pyrrhonist to have beliefs about matters that are occasionally
non-evident. But we are also aware that Sextus' Pyrrhonist assents
only to matters that are evident. Thus we cannot avoid the con-
clusion that when Sextus says that the mature Pyrrhonist does not
assent to anything non-evident, Sextus is not making use of the
categories set out at PH 2. 97-8. In Sextus' own favoured termi-
nology, anything that genuinely falls into the dogmatic categories
 Chapter 6
of the pre-evident or occasionally non-evident is classified as an
evident object of inquiry.
It is clear, then, that Sextus' explicit comments about the scope of
the Pyrrhonist's £'rroxTJ do not enable us to determine its limits with
any confidence. We do seem to have established that even the mature
Pyrrhonist admits to having some beliefs. However our efforts to
discover what sorts of beliefs are regarded as permissible have been
almost entirely unsuccessful. All we can say at the moment is that
it appears that the Pyrrhonist's beliefs are supposed to be confined
to matters that strike him, rather than anyone else, as being pre-
evident or occasionally non-evident.

3. The arguments
Queries about the source of the Pyrrhonist's frroXTJ are, in contrast,
relatively easily answered. As we have already seen, Sextus empha-
sizes that the Pyrrhonist suspends belief because he is confronted
by conflicting claims that strike him as being equally plausible.
Moreover Sextus explicitly defines scepticism as follows:
Scepticism is an ability which opposes both things that appear and in-
tellectual judgements in any manner whatsoever, with the effect that we
arrive, as a consequence of the equal weight of the conflicting things and
judgements, initially at a state of suspension of judgement and then achieve
mental tranquillity. (PH I. 8, own trans.)

And he continues: 'In the definition of the Sceptic system there is

also implicitly included that of the Pyrrhonean philosopher: he is
the man who participates in this "ability'" (PH I. 1 I).
Why, though, does the Pyrrhonist keep finding himself in the
situation of being confronted by conflicting claims that seem to be
equally plausible? After all, even the dogmatists would concede that
J7TOXTJ is the natural and correct response to such a situation. Hence it
follows that as the Pyrrhonist's €7TOXTJ is much more extensive than
the J7TOXTJ practised by the dogmatists, the Pyrrhonist must find
himself faced by equally plausible, conflicting claims considerably
more frequently than the dogmatists do. It is clear, therefore, that
this difference between the Pyrrhonist and the dogmatists urgently
stands in need of an explanation.
One factor that undoubtedly contributes to the Pyrrhonist's per-
 An Outline of Sextus' Pyrrhonism 127
sistent tendency to find the arguments on either side of a question
equally plausible is his awareness of the many unresolved disputes
that have arisen among philosophers and other speculative thinkers.
Suppose, for example, that the Pyrrhonist is considering the claim
that the void does not exist. Obviously the bare claim that the void
does not exist carries no conviction in its own right. It follows that
if that claim is to be made more plausible than its contradictory,
then it needs to backed by a supporting argument. However the
Pyrrhonist is most unlikely to be persuaded by any such argument,
for his studies have acquainted him with Democritus' arguments
in favour of the claim that the void does exist. Consequently the
arguments brought forward in favour of the claim that the void
does not exist are nullified by Democritus' opposing arguments,
and the Pyrrhonist is forced to suspend belief. Of course, this is
just one instance of the Pyrrhonist arriving at suspension of belief.
However the underlying principle is a sound one. Whereas many
people are convinced by the first persuasive argument that comes to
their attention, the Pyrrhonist remains unconvinced because he is
usually sensible of the existence of an opposing argument of similar
apparent cogency.
Thus we have uncovered here one of the main factors respons-
ible for the Pyrrhonist's persistent failure to discern any grounds
for choosing between competing claims. Moreover it is vital to bear
in mind that the importance of this factor tends to be obscured
by the dual role played by the Pyrrhonist's argumentation. The
developing Pyrrhonist moves towards his mature J1TOX~ under the
influence of various forms of reasoning which he is inclined to re-
gard as rationally compelling. But one result of this J1TOX~ is that
he loses much, perhaps all, of his former confidence in the ratio-
nal merits of his own arguments (see PH 2. 187-8; M. 8. 480-1).
Nevertheless these arguments are still recycled as a means of in-
ducing J1TOX~ and peace of mind in other people. And this new role
frequently leads to the arguments being presented in a form that
fails to reflect their original function.
When we read the Outlines or Against the Dogmatists, we often
find that Sextus responds to a dispute about the existence of some
particular entity or class of entities by bombarding us with ar-
guments that purport to show that such entities do not exist.
Understandably, this practice leads to many people interpreting
the Pyrrhonist as some kind of negative dogmatist. Whereas the
128 Chapter 6
orthodox dogmatist claims to know, for example, that indicative
signs exist, the Pyrrhonist is seen as someone who would claim
to have good reason to believe that indicative signs do not exist.
However this interpretation fails to allow for the fact that Sextus'
writings are the work of someone who has already arrived at a state
of mature £7TOX~' and is now primarily concerned to promote £7TOX~
in other people. Thus we are not reading an unadorned account
of the factors that led Sextus himself to suspend belief so widely.
Rather we are confronted by a set of texts that are attempting to
provide arguments capable of persuading other people to suspend
belief. Sextus does not concentrate on negative existential argu-
ments because the conclusions of those arguments represent his
own views: he concentrates on them because they are the antidote
to the more familiar positive arguments placed in circulation by the
Stoics and the other schools of philosophy.
If, for instance, we examine Sextus' discussion in the Outlines
of the criterion of truth (see PH 2. 14-79), we are immediately
struck by the fact that he fails to offer a single argument in support
of the claim that a criterion of truth does exist. Consequently it
is all too easy to be lulled into thinking that Sextus is himself of
the opinion that a criterion of truth does not exist. However any
such conclusion is incompatible with the explicit warning inserted
at PH 2.79:
But one should notice that we do not propose to assert that the criterion
of truth is unreal (for that would be dogmatism); but since the Dogma-
tists appear to have established plausibly that there really is a criterion of
truth, we have set up counter-arguments which appear to be plausible; and
though we do not positively affirm either that they are true or that they are
more plausible than their opposites, yet because of the apparently equal
plausibility of these arguments and of those propounded by the Dogmatists
we deduce suspension of judgement.

Moreover similar warnings are affixed to the majority of Sextus'

philosophical discussions (see in particular PH 2. 103, 192; M. 7.
443; 8. 159,476-7). Thus it is clear that the Pyrrhonist's nega-
tive arguments are not intended to be assessed independently of
the positive arguments offered by the dogmatists. A person who
concentrates exclusively on the apparent force of the negative argu-
ments would not achieve £7TOX~ and peace of mind: he would merely
exchange one set of dogmatic beliefs for another set. If a person is
 An Outline of Sextus' Pyrrhonism 129
to achieve bTOX~ on a given topic without the need for an effort of
will, it is necessary that he should find the arguments ranged on
either side equally convincing. In those circumstances his mind is
paralysed because it is being pulled equally strongly in two oppo-
site directions at the same time. If one set of arguments, however,
is more plausible than the other, the mind is free to move and it
can be checked only by making a deliberate effort to maintain sus-
pension of judgement. Furthermore that sort of mental struggle is
itself destructive of the peace of mind sought by the Pyrrhonist (see
M. II. 213-14). Consequently the Pyrrhonist deploys his negative
arguments in order to cancel out the positive arguments brought
forward by dogmatic thinkers. And it follows that if Hellenistic phi-
losophy had been dominated by doctrines that denied the existence
of indicative signs or a criterion of truth, then the Pyrrhonist would
have responded by deploying a mass of arguments purporting to
demonstrate that such things definitely do exist.
It is impossible, then, to form a just appreciation of Pyrrhonean
scepticism unless we acknowledge that the developing Pyrrhonist
finds the dogmatists' positive arguments just as plausible as the
negative, destructive arguments that are so prominent in the writ-
ings of a mature Pyrrhonist like Sextus. Sextus can afford to omit
those positive arguments because the audience he is addressing is
already familiar with them. However Sextus' own €7TOX~ is very
much a product of his inability to see any reason for preferring the
negative arguments to the positive ones or the positive arguments
to the negative ones.
Of course, it can scarcely be supposed that the Pyrrhonist is al-
ways able to nullify the arguments in favour of a particular claim by
opposing them with plausible arguments in favour of that claim's
contradictory. Take the claim that snow is white. This might be
supported by arguing that snow looks white to all normal people,
and therefore it is white. Intuitively this argument somehow seems
far more plausible than Anaxagoras' infamous counter-move of ar-
guing that snow is black because snow is frozen water and water
is black (see PH I. 33). In these cases a second mechanism comes
into play.
Not only is the developing Pyrrhonist an assiduous student of
past developments in philosophy and science, but he is also someone
who is determined to pursue his inquiries as rigorously as lies within
his power. For he blames two things for his previous lack of success
13 0 Chapter 6
in arriving at definitive answers to the questions troubling him.
First, he puts some of the blame on his ignorance of what has been
said by the great thinkers of the past. But second, and even more
importantly, he also blames his former willingness to be satisfied
with views that rest on nothing more than unexamined opinion.
Thus the future Pyrrhonist is strongly committed to questioning
all the presuppositions and assumptions that mark the customary
limits of our inquiries. And he accordingly becomes acutely aware of
the difficulties attendant upon any attempt to show that a purported
justification of a claim is genuinely successful. Indeed, these dif-
ficulties eventually come to seem virtually insurmountable.
I t follows that in some cases the developing Pyrrhonist finds him-
self unable to choose between a claim and its contradictory because
his investigations have convinced him that cogent justifications are
simply unattainable in that area. Even though the claim that p
may be backed by arguments that are intuitively more plausible
than those that can be adduced on behalf of the claim that not-p,
the developing Pyrrhonist is aware of certain lines of reasoning that
purport to show that neither set of arguments can possess any ratio-
nal worth. Thus the mechanism at work here is not that of two sets
of equally plausible arguments cancelling each other out. Rather it
is a matter of one highly compelling piece of reasoning persuading
the Pyrrhonist that two other sets of arguments are both wholly
worthless despite the fact that one of those sets initially struck him
as far more plausible than the other.
One line of reasoning that seems to have fulfilled this crucial role
for many Pyrrhonists is exemplified by Aenesidemus' ten tropes. s
These tropes are based upon the elementary point that if some
things both appear and are real, while others appear but are not
also real, then the fact that something appears to be so will only
give us a reason to suppose that it really is so if we have some
criterion that will establish which impressions are to be trusted
and which are to be rejected. Once this premiss has been accepted,
however, the sceptical argument proceeds smoothly by way of two
further steps (see PH 1.40-163). First, it is argued that we cannot
, Further discussion of the philosophical significance of Aenesidernus' ten tropes
can be found in C. L. Stough, Greek Skepticism (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969),
67-97; G. Striker, 'The Ten Tropes of Aenesidemus', in Burnyeat (ed.), The Skepti-
cal Tradition, 95-116; J. Annas and J. Barnes, The Modes of Scepticism (Cambridge,
1985); R. J. Hankinson, The Sceptics, rev. pbk. edn. (London, 1998), 155-81; and
Chapter 8 of the present work.
 An Outline of Sextus' Pyrrhonism 13 1

reasonably hold that the fact that p appears to be the case always
gives us good reason to suppose that p is the case. Consequently we
do indeed need a criterion to distinguish between veridical and non-
veridical impressions; and it is then argued that no such criterion
is available. Thus we arrive at the conclusion that our impressions
of the world are quite incapable of providing us with any grounds
for our assertions concerning the real nature of the world.
In Against the Dogmatists Sextus actually deploys an ingenious
argument to the effect that if anyone sincerely judges that not all
impressions correctly represent objective reality, then it is not the
case that all impressions correctly represent objective reality (M. 7.
389-90). He claims that a person's sincere judgement that some-
thing is or is not the case will invariably be based on the way the
world appears to be. Hence a sincere judgement that not all im-
pressions correctly represent the real nature of the world implies
that it appears to at least one person that it is not the case that
all impressions are veridical. However the doctrine rejected by this
person entails that whatever appears to him to be the case is the
case. But it appears to him that this doctrine is false. Thus if the
doctrine is true, then it is false. Therefore it is false.
The ten tropes of Aenesidemus, however, achieve the same result
in a rather less stylish fashion. Instead of appealing to the self-
refuting nature of the position that all impressions are veridical,
the tropes rely on the generally accepted principle that the same
thing cannot both have the property P and not have the property
P at the same moment in time. Thus the argument can proceed
in the following manner. It is a fact that sometimes a thing will
both appear to have property P and appear not to have property
P. However it cannot be the case that both impressions accurately
reflect the real nature of the thing in question. Otherwise the prin-
ciple of non-contradiction would clearly be violated. Therefore it
must be the case that at least one of the conflicting impressions is
false. Hence not all impressions accurately reflect objective reality.
Of course that piece of reasoning depends on the assumption that
impressions do sometimes conflict in the way specified. Conse-
quently Aenesidemus' tropes include a mass of examples that are
supposed to convince us that this is actually an extremely common
occurrence.
The first trope endeavours to persuade us that the world does not
appear to animals in the same way as it does to human beings, while
13 2 Chapter 6
the second trope argues that the world varies in its appearance even
from person to person. The third trope reflects on the conflicting
judgements of the various senses. Sextus' examples here include
paintings that seem to the eye to have recesses and projections but
are smooth to the touch, and sweet oils that please the sense of
smell but taste unpleasant. In contrast, the fourth trope chooses to
emphasize that even the judgement of a single sense can vary with
our mental and physical condition; and the fifth trope is based on
the effects of variations in position, distance, and location. Sextus
draws our attention to the fact that the same tower appears round
when seen at a distance but square at close quarters, and he also
offers the example of the hue of a dove's neck varying with the way
it happens to be turned.
The sixth trope reminds us that we always perceive an object
in some sort of combination with other objects. Thus 'the same
sound appears of one sort in conjunction with rare air and of an-
other sort with dense air' (PH I. 125), while 'our eyes contain
within themselves both membranes and liquids. Since, then, the
objects of vision are not perceived apart from these, they will not
be apprehended with exactness; for what we perceive is the resultant
mixture, and because of this the sufferers from jaundice see every-
thing yellow, and those with blood-shot eyes reddish like blood'
(PH I. 126). The seventh trope points out that certain objects af-
fect us differently in accordance with their quantity and manner of
composition: one of Sextus' iIlustrations here is that silver filings
appear black when they are by themselves, but are sensed as white
when united to the whole mass. The eighth trope is that of relativity,
and effectively subsumes the other nine tropes. In the ninth trope
we find the suggestion that our judgement of things is affected by
their rarity or familiarity. The tenth trope deals with laws, rules of
conduct, and dogmatic opinions, and it claims to discern there a
mass of conflicting judgements best explained by the supposition
that the world appears in different ways to different people.
Once this remorseless piling up of examples has persuaded us
to concede that impressions do conflict in a way that means that
they cannot all be veridical, the only premiss of the sceptical argu-
ment that still needs vindicating is the claim that we do not possess
any criterion capable of discriminating between veridical and non-
veridical impressions. However Sextus endeavours to support that
premiss with arguments like the one that occurs at PH I. 122-3.
 An Outline of Sextus' Pyrrhonism 133
Sextus insists here that anyone who attempts to choose between
appearances without offering some proof of the correctness of his
choice is unworthy of credence. However a person who does ad-
duce a proof does not fare any better. If he concedes that the proof
offered is erroneous, then he simply confutes himself. But if he
claims that the proof offered is sound, then he will need to pre-
sent a proof of this further claim. Moreover he will also need to
establish the soundness of that second proof, and this regress of
justification cannot be brought to a satisfactory, non-arbitrary ter-
mination. Furthermore an unfinished regress of justification does
not provide us with any reason to accept the claim that is suppos-
edly being justified. Consequently Sextus concludes by saying that
we cannot, for the foregoing reasons, hope to pass judgement on
the trustworthiness of any specific impression.
Nevertheless it seems obvious that although Sextus treats Ae-
nesidemus' tropes in a respectful manner, Sextus himself is more
impressed by the five tropes of suspension supposedly handed down
by Agrippa and his followers (see PH I. 164-77; D.L. 9. 88-9).6
Agrippean arguments recur with almost monotonous regularity
throughout the Outlines and Against the Dogmatists (see e.g. PH
2.19-20 ,9 1-3, 121-3;3· 7-9, 33-6;A1·7·3 I S- 16 ,427-9;8. 19-23,
340-3; 1 I. 174-8), and no other pattern of argument attains any-
thing like this degree of prominence. Moreover Sextus occasionally
states quite openly that Agrippean arguments render his other ar-
guments virtually redundant (see in particular PH I. 18S-6 and 2.
21). Thus we can safely assume that Sextus' own E'TfOX~ is primarily
a product of the influence exerted by the type of reasoning set out
in Agrippa's five tropes.
According to Sextus, the later sceptics hand down the following
five tropes leading to €'TfOX~: 'the first based on discrepancy, the
second on regress ad infinitum, the third on relativity, the fourth
on hypothesis, the fifth on circular reasoning' (PH I. 164). Tropes
one and three are perhaps best thought of as intended to set up
the problem. Trope one is the trope that 'leads us to find that with

b Detailed and very helpful examinations of Agrippa's tropes can be found in

L. E. Goodman, 'Skepticism', Review of Metaphysics, 36 (1983), 819-48, and J.
Barnes, The Toils of Scepticism (Cambridge, 1990). Chapter 9 of the present work
contains a discussion of Agrippa's tropes and the appeal to 'self-evident' truths,
and I. T. Oakley's paper 'An Argument for Scepticism concerning Justified Beliefs',
American Philosophical Quarterly, 13 (1976), 221-8, has some interesting things to
say about circular arguments and regresses of justification.
134 Chapter 6
regard to the object presented there has arisen both amongst ordi-
nary people and amongst the philosophers an interminable conflict'
(PH I. 165). This confronts us with the problem of settling which
of the competing opinions is correct. Trope three, the one based on
relativity, is that 'whereby the object has such or such an appearance
in relation to the subject judging and to the concomitant percepts'
(PH I. 167). Here we are faced with the problem of determining
which of these appearances represents the true nature of the object
in question. It then becomes the task of tropes two, four, and five
to show that there is no way of solving these problems.
Trope two is that 'whereby we assert that the thing adduced
as a proof of the matter proposed needs a further proof, and this
again another, and so on ad infinitum, so that the consequence is
suspension, as we possess no starting-point for our argument' (PH
I. 166). The idea here is that a purported justification of some
proposition carries no weight until it has been shown that it has
true premisses and a valid inferential form'? And tropes four and
five are intended to rule out the possibility of any escape from the
threatened regress. The trope based on hypothesis is invoked when
'the Dogmatists, being forced to recede ad infinitum, take as their
7 It is sometimes suggested that the apparent force of this trope depends upon a
failure to take due account of the distinction between having the power to complete
an infinite series of tasks and having the power to carry out any particular task in
that series. If the belief that p can be justified for A only if A can complete the task
of generating an infinite number of supporting premisses, then it seems obvious
that this belief cannot be justified for A if A is a being of finite mental powers. But
if it is sufficient for A to have the ability to formulate any particular premiss from
an infinite set of supporting premisses, it might be argued that it is less clear that a
being of finite mental powers cannot possess that ability.
One response to this objection would be to insist that no matter what level of finite
mental powers one chooses to specify for A, an infinite set of supporting premisses
would have to contain at least some premisses that would be so complex that they
would not be comprehensible by A. However it also seems possible to argue that this
objection betrays a failure to understand the real thrust of Agrippa's second trope.
Although one can interpret that trope as contending that a being of finite mental
powers who attempts to defend a belief with a supporting chain of argument must
eventually find himself arguing in a circle or relying on an arbitrary assumption, it is
also possible to interpret it as making the point that the transmission of justification
does not create justification ab initio. Even if A has somehow succeeded in generating
an infinite set of supporting premisses for his belief that p, this achievement does
not help to justify the belief that p unless at least one of those premisses has some
degree of justification that exists independently of the place it occupies in that set
of premisses. And if the achievement of actually generating an infinite number of
supporting premisses for a belief is probatively useless unless this latter condition
is met, it is plain that the mere existence of an ability to fonnulate any particular
premiss belonging to that set will not possess any additional probative force.
 An Outline of Sextus' Pyrrhonism 135
starting-point something which they do not establish by argument
but claim to assume as granted simply and without demonstration'
(PH I. 168). The decisive objection to any such manreuvre is that
if the dogmatist is to be considered worthy of credence when he
makes an assumption, then the sceptic will be equally worthy of
credence if he makes the opposite assumption. Finally, the trope of
circular reasoning is relevant to those cases 'when the proof itself
which ought to establish the matter of inquiry requires confirmation
derived from that matter; in this case, being unable to assume either
in order to establish the other, we suspend judgement about both'
(PH I. 169). This is really just a more complicated case of the
trope based on hypothesis, for, in a circular argument, the argument
intended to establish the truth of the dogmatist's claim depends for
its effect on the assumption that the claim in question can already
be taken as true.

4. Pyrrhonism and non-demonstrative reasoning

We have seen that the Pyrrhonist's E-rrOX~ arises because he is baffled

by the morass of conflicting dogmatic opinions, and deeply im-
pressed by arguments similar to the tropes ascribed to Aeneside-
mus and Agrippa. However that £7TOX~ is also supposed to arise
without the Pyrrhonist needing to make any effort to suspend be-
lief. And although we have been able to explain how this effortless
£7TOX~ might supervene on the Pyrrhonist's recognition that he has
absolutely no reason to prefer a particular claim to its contradic-
tory, it is important to note that this explanation would no longer
be available if the Pyrrhonist were persuaded merely that he does
not have absolutely conclusive reasons for preferring that claim to
its contradictory.
If a genuinely rational person accepts that he has good but defeas-
ible reasons for holding that it is true that p, then he will find
the claim that p to be more plausible than the claim that not-po
Moreover it is obvious that his mind, in those circumstances, would
not be checked at all. Rather he would naturally come to form the
belief that p, and he would be able to prevent this outcome only by
struggling determinedly against it.
However the Pyrrhonist's suspension of belief is not supposed
to be the result of an act of will. Consequently the developing
 Chapter 6
Pyrrhonist can suspend belief on a claim which he takes to be
rationally justified only if he behaves irrationally and fails to find
that claim more plausible than its contradictory. But the developing
Pyrrhonist would not willingly lay himself open to the charge of
behaving irrationally: at that stage in his philosophic journey the
Pyrrhonist still thinks of himself as a diligent and skilful seeker of
the truth. It follows that the developing Pyrrhonist will suspend
belief on the claim that p only when he takes himself to have no
good reason to hold that p.
Thus true Pyrrhonean £7TOX~ can arise only when the Pyrrhonist
cannot discern any good reason for preferring a claim to its contra-
dictory. Nevertheless the mature Pyrrhonist suspends belief on all
claims about matters that strike him as non-evident. Consequently
we are forced to conclude that the Pyrrhonist must hold the radical
view that no claim about a non-evident matter of inquiry is ratio-
nally justified to even the slightest degree. And it is clear, therefore,
that any interpretation of Pyrrhonism that regards the Pyrrhon-
ist as concerned only to deny our claims to absolute certainty is
irretrievably mistaken.
Moreover the nature of the Pyrrhonist's favourite epistemological
arguments strongly corroborates the conclusion that the Pyrrhonist
is concerned to deny our claims to rationally justified belief as well
as our claims to knowledge. If a person merely hypothesizes that
p, then that assumption does not give us any reason whatsoever to
believe that it is true that p. Thus Agrippa's fourth trope cannot be
circumvented by retreating to the position that p is probable rather
than certain. However Agrippa's fifth trope is, as we have already
pointed out, nothing more than a complicated case of the trope
based on hypothesis. I t follows that if mere assumption cannot give
us any reason to believe that p, then neither can any circular ar-
gument. Consequently the only way left to justify the claim that
p necessitates the provision of a series of non-circular arguments
that does not terminate in a set of arbitrary assumptions. Yet that
would apparently force us into an infinite regress of justification,
and such a regress does not suffer merely from the limitation of not
providing us with an absolutely conclusive justification of the claim
purportedly being justified. An infinite regress of justification fails
to provide even the slightest justification for accepting its conclu-
sion as true. Hence it is clear that Agrippa's tropes are every bit as
effective at exposing the inadequacies of avowedly probabilistic jus-
 An Outline of Sextus' Pyrrhonism 137

tifications as they are at exposing the inadequacies of justifications

that claim to establish matters with complete certainty.
Similarly, Aenesidemus' tropes do not yield merely the conclu-
sion that there is some small chance of error in all our inferences
from claims about impressions to claims about how things really
are. Although Sextus' presentation of these tropes is frequently
couched in terms of our inability to prove whether or not an im-
pression is veridical, it is plain that Sextus' argument at PH I.
122-3 against the existence of a discriminatory criterion would not
be affected in any important respect if we were to replace all of
Sextus' references to proof with references to some other favoured
means of justification. And this remains the case even if the alter-
native means of justification being put forward does not purport to
yield conclusions that are demonstrably certain.
Indeed, an expanded version of the argument at PH I. 122-3 oc-
curs at PH I. 114-17; and that version makes it plain that Sextus is
fully aware of the wide potential scope of this pattern of reasoning.
Instead of arguing that one cannot choose between impressions on
the basis of a proof, Sextus specifically argues that one cannot make
a rational choice on any basis at all. Thus Aenesidemus' tropes can-
not be disarmed by simply pointing out that we normally take the
view that a claim can be rationally justified even if that claim is not
demonstrably certain. The only way of answering Sextus' argument
against the existence of a criterion is to show that there is at least
one form of justification that does not have the viciously regressive
character which Sextus ascribes to all forms of justification.

5. Disingenuous ad hominem arguments

So far, then, the following picture of Sextus' Pyrrhonism has

emerged. The mature Pyrrhonist does not believe that any claim
about a non-evident matter of inquiry is rationally justified. Conse-
quently he suspends belief on all non-evident matters. Moreover it
is clear that the Pyrrhonist's inability to discern any good reason for
assenting to any claim about a non-evident matter of inquiry comes
about because of the influence exerted on him by various negative
epistemological arguments. However it is less clear that the mature
Pyrrhonist's E7TOX~ is sustained by his continuing assent to those
arguments; and there are definitely strong grounds for holding that
 Chapter 6
Sextus would accept that some of the arguments deployed in his
writings do not have any rational value.
At the conclusion of the Outlines we find the following curious
passage:
The Sceptic, being a IDver Df his kind, desires tD cure by speech, as best
he can, the self-cDnceit and rashness Df the DDgmatists. SD, just as the
physicians whD cure bDdily ailments have remedies which differ in strength,
and apply the severe Dnes tD thDse whDse ailments are severe and the milder
tD thDse mildly affected,---SD too the Sceptic propDunds arguments which
differ in strength, and employs those which are weighty and capable by
their stringency of disposing of the Dogmatist's ailment, self-conceit, in
cases where the mischief is due to a severe attack of rashness, while he
employs the milder arguments in the case of those whose ailment of conceit
is superficial and easy to cure, and whom it is possible to restore to health
by milder means of persuasion. Hence the adherent of Sceptic principles
does not scruple to propound at one time arguments that are weighty in
their persuasiveness, and at another time such as appear less impressive,-
and he does so on purpose, as the latter are frequently sufficient to enable
him to effect his object. (PH 3. 280-1)

Thus Sextus seems to be openly admitting here that the Pyrrhonist

will sometimes make use of arguments that the Pyrrhonist himself
considers to be fallacious or constructed around premisses that have
no rational justification.
Moreover the Pyrrhonist's use of arguments that have no claim on
the Pyrrhonist himself is a natural outcome of his altruistic desire
to bring about J7TDX~ and aTapag{a in other people. Someone who
is intent on helping other people to discover truths will obviously
be unable to rest content with arguments he regards as fallacious
or as possessing unjustified premisses. To see an argument in that
light is precisely to see it as failing to establish its conclusion as
being more probably true than false. Consequently such a person
will be strongly motivated to avoid incorporating arguments of
that kind in his philosophical writings. However someone who is
trying to induce mental tranquillity does not have the same grounds
for rejecting these arguments. It may be true that a person is not
usually persuaded by arguments which that person takes to contain
unjustified premisses or fallacious inferences. But this point does
not show that the arguments in question will fail to persuade other
people. Hence these arguments may still have a useful role to play in
the Pyrrhonist's therapeutic endeavours. No sensible doctor would
 An Outline of Sextus' Pyrrhonism 139
refuse to prescribe a particular drug simply because it fails to work
on him. Similarly, it would be ridiculous for the Pyrrhonean sceptic
to eschew the use of certain arguments simply because he views
them as mistaken with the result that they have no persuasive force
for him.
I t follows that we can expect to find that the Pyrrhonist makes
extensive use of arguments that are intended to appear plausible
only to the people he is attempting to treat. As long as those people
believe the premisses and endorse the inference patterns, then the
arguments in question will suffice to persuade the people who need
persuading. The fact that these ad hominem arguments are power-
less to influence the Pyrrhonean therapist himself is totally irrele-
vant.
Nevertheless many interpreters of Sextus' philosophic position
fail to allow for the Pyrrhonist's use of ad hominem argumentation.
All too often it is simply assumed that the premisses of Sextus'
arguments reflect Sextus' own beliefs. 8 However it is plain that this
is a very dangerous assumption. If we happen to have picked out
one of Sextus' ad hominem arguments, then the premisses utilized
within the argument would merely reflect Sextus' views about the
beliefs held by the dogmatists. There would be no grounds what-
soever for maintaining that those premisses provide any guide to
Sextus' own opinions about the topics concerned. Hence it is clear
that the enterprise of reconstructing Sextus' alleged positive views
from the premisses of his arguments can be legitimately undertaken
only if we confine our attention to premisses that are being used in
arguments that are definitely not ad hominem. Unfortunately, argu-
ments of that type are remarkably hard to find, and very few people
even recognize the need to seek them out. We also have to be wary
of the conclusions of Sextus' arguments. These too cannot be taken
at face value.
If we are considering a freestanding argument that p, then we can
at least be sure that Sextus does not regard himself as having good
reason to believe that not-po After all, even an ad hominem argument
is intended to relieve the dogmatist's intellectual worries, and it
would be absurd for the Pyrrhonist to attempt to promote £7TOXTJ

8 One of the few people to have freed themselves completely from the tendency to
make this assumption is Michael Frede. See, in particular, his stimulating paper 'The
Skeptic's Two Kinds of Assent and the Question of the Possibility of Knowledge',
in Frede, Essays in Ancient Philusuphy (Oxford, 1987), 201-22.
 Chapter 6
about the claim that p when the Pyrrhonist is in possession of good
reasons for believing that not-po In those circumstances the simplest
way for the Pyrrhonist to relieve the dogmatists' intellectual worries
over the claim that p would be for him to tell them his reasons
for holding that not-po On the other hand, if the Pyrrhonist is
putting forward a sincere argument that p rather than an ad hominem
argument, then it follows that he believes that it is true thatp. Thus
he is obviously precluded from believing that he has good reason to
believe that not-po We can see, therefore, that it makes no difference
whether the Pyrrhonist is deploying a sincere argument that p or
an insincere argument that p. Either state of affairs would entitle us
to conclude that the Pyrrhonist does not regard himself as having
good reason to believe that not-po Consequently that conclusion can
safely be drawn even if we are unable to be sure that the Pyrrhonist's
argument is not an ad hominem argument.
However we normally suppose that a philosopher who argues
that p believes that p. Thus it is disappointing to discover that
all that can be inferred from Sextus' willingness to argue for a
particular conclusion is that he does not believe that he has good
reason to believe that the conclusion in question is false. Moreover
even that inference is unsafe if the argument under consideration
is a sub-argument in some larger piece of ad hominem reasoning. If
the Pyrrhonist is primarily concerned to induce bTOXTJ on the claim
that q, then it may be convenient for him to use an argument that
delivers the intermediate conclusion thatp, even though he himself
is actually convinced that it is not the case that p.
Thus it is now apparent that anyone interpreting Sextus' writ-
ings faces a particularly intractable problem. It is normally safe to
assume that a philosopher endorses the premisses and the conclu-
sions of the arguments he advances. However we have just seen that
Sextus' use of a specific claim as a premiss in one of his arguments
does not permit us to conclude that he himself regards that claim
as true. Similarly, Sextus' readiness to offer an argument for the
conclusion that p does not allow us to infer that Sextus believes
that p. If we wish to make those inferences, then we need to be
able to establish that the arguments involved are definitely not ad
hominem. Thus the interpreter of Sextus' writings is virtually ex-
cluded from making any use of the mass of argumentation that fills
the Outlines and Against the Dogmatists. In most cases a philoso-
pher's arguments reveal his beliefs as clearly as if he had set them
 An Outline of Sextus' Pyrrhonism 141

out in tabular form. In this particular case, however, we are rarely

in a position to move beyond the judgement that if Sextus argues
for the conclusion that p or for the conclusion that we must suspend
belief on the claim that not-p, then he does not suppose that he has
good reason to hold that it is true that not-po
Moreover it is quite possible that Sextus' comments at PH 3.
280-1 actually serve to obscure the full extent of his detachment
from the arguments set out in his writings. The task of assessing
Sextus' own views is, of course, greatly complicated by his admis-
sion that the Pyrrhonist cheerfully employs arguments that strike
the Pyrrhonist himself as flawed and unconvincing. Nevertheless
we are still left with a relatively reassuring picture of the mature
Pyrrhonist as someone who mixes conventional proofs with a hand-
ful of ad hominem arguments that are intended to assist him in the
altruistic project of promoting arapagta in other people.
However Sextus' comments at PH 3. 280-1 need to be read
in conjunction with those passages where he suggests that the
Pyrrhonist's arguments should be seen as annihilating themselves
as well as the doctrines espoused by the dogmatists. At M. 8. 480-1,
for example, Sextus offers the following assessment of the Pyrrhon-
ist's argument that proof does not exist:
And even if it does banish itself, the existence of proof is not thereby
confirmed. For there are many things which produce the same effect on
themselves as they produce on other things. Just as, for example, fire after
consuming the fuel destroys also itself, and like as purgatives after driving
the fluids out of the bodies expel themselves as well, so too the argument
against proof, after abolishing every proof, can cancel itself also. And again,
just as it is not impossible for the man who has ascended to a high place
by a ladder to overturn the ladder with his foot after his ascent, so also it
is not unlikely that the Sceptic after he has arrived at the demonstration of
his thesis by means of the argument proving the non-existence of proof, as
it were by a step-ladder, should then abolish this very argument.

Moreover we find at PH I. 15 that Sextus states that the sceptic

enunciates his pronouncements concerning things non-evident 'so
that they are virtually cancelled by themselves'; and this warning is
repeated at PH I. 206, where Sextus specifically extends the purge
metaphor to encompass all the sceptic's pronouncements about
non-evident matters of inquiry.
Nor, indeed, can we legitimately ignore the fact that Sextus ex-
plicitly cautions us that he is not prepared to make any positive
 Chapter 6
assertion regarding the number or validity of the sceptical tropes
that serve to bring about the Pyrrhonist's broXTJ: 'for it is possible
that they may be unsound or there may be more of them than I shall
enumerate' (PH I. 35). Similarly, Sextus uses his arguments about
the regressive nature of justification to persuade us that we have
no grounds for believing that proofs or indicative signs exist (see
M. 8. 340-3 and PH 2. 121-3 respectively); and yet he dissociates
himselffrom those arguments at M. 8. 476 and PH 2. 187.
It seems clear, therefore, that if we reinterpret PH 3. 280-1 in
the light of these other remarks, then this part of the Outlines no
longer supports the view that the Pyrrhonist mixes ad hominem ar-
guments with conventional arguments. If one were trying to pick
out the arguments that exercise the greatest influence on Sextus'
philosophical position, then it would be impossible to avoid the
conclusion that the most influential ones are the tropes ascribed
to Aenesidemus and Agrippa. As we have seen, however, Sextus
strongly implies that the mature Pyrrhonist does not give his assent
even to those arguments. It follows that if Sextus is seeking to draw
a distinction between arguments that contribute to the Pyrrhon-
ist's €7TOXTJ and those that are merely used to produce €7TOXTJ in other
people, then the distinction being made must be one between argu-
ments that once commanded the Pyrrhonist's assent but do so no
longer, and arguments that have never commanded the Pyrrhonist's
assent.
Consequently we appear ultimately to arrive at the following
unforeseen picture of the mature Pyrrhonist's relationship to the
arguments he puts forward. The mature Pyrrhonist does not hold
that any of his sceptical arguments have any rational value. However
his €7TOXTJ is nevertheless a product of his former assent to some of
those arguments, notably Aenesidemus' ten tropes and Agrippa's
five tropes. Moreover he continues to use these latter arguments as
a means of inducing €7TOXTJ in other people, but supplements them
in this therapeutic role with other arguments, which have never
exercised any influence over him.

6. Catachresis and statements about the way things are

We have seen, then, that the interpretation of Sextus' writings is

made especially difficult by the mature Pyrrhonist's unusual rela-
 An Outline of Sextus' Pyrrhonism 143
tionship to his own arguments. However there is at least one other
pitfall awaiting the incautious interpreter: the surface form of Sex-
tus' statements is not always a reliable indication of the way in
which he wishes us to understand those statements.
It can be very tempting to suppose that the thesis that the Pyr-
rhonisl holds beliefs about matters of objective fact is amply con-
firmed by Sextus' readiness to advance claims that are couched in
the form of statements about the objective world. For Sextus is not
merely describing Pyrrhonism: he also exemplifies that philosophic
posture. Consequently it may seem to follow that the presence in
Sextus' writings of claims with the surface form of objective state-
ments indicates that Sextus and all other Pyrrhonean sceptics pos-
sess beliefs about matters of objective fact. The sheer profusion
of such statements prevents us from dismissing them as inconse-
quential slips or oversights. Yet if Sextus had wished to confine his
claims to the realm of appearance, then he could have easily cast
them into the form of statements explicitly concerned with appear-
ances. The fact that he fails to take this precaution indicates that
he is completely untroubled by the prospect of being understood
as making claims about the objective world. And the obvious ex-
planation of this unconcern is that Sextus really is making some
claims about the objective world.
Of course, we are now aware that this reasoning is unacceptably
simplistic. If these apparent claims about matters of objective fact
occur in the course of ad hominem arguments, then they are simply
premisses that Sextus has borrowed from the dogmatists. Conse-
quently the presence in Sextus' writings of claims about matters of
objective fact serves to indicate only that the dogmatists hold be-
liefs about these matters. Nevertheless this line of criticism is not
entirely conclusive. Sextus sometimes makes apparent statements
about matters of objective fact in contexts where he is describing
his Pyrrhonism rather than trying to induce €7TOX~ in other people.
It follows that not all instances of statements taking the form of
statements about matters of objective fact can be explained away as
borrowings from Sextus' dogmatic opponents.
Even these latter cases, however, fall within the scope of Sextus'
remarks at PH I. 4. Sextus claims there that all of his following
statements are intended to be no more than records of how the
world appears to him at the moment of making those statements:
144 Chapter 6
Now it will be best for others to speak of the other systems; but we instead
shall give an outline description of the sceptical mode of life, first giving
warning that we do not positively maintain in the case of any of our state-
ments that matters stand in every way just as we say, but we announce, as
in a historical narrative, each thing as it now appears to us. (own trans.)

I t is clear that even when we do uncover an apparent assertion about

a matter of objective fact that cannot be set aside as a move in some
complicated piece of ad hominem reasoning, we are still unable to
conclude that the assertion in question signifies that Sextus believes
that matters objectively stand as the assertion states them to stand.
For PH I. 4 provides us with unambiguous textual support for the
supposition that this apparent assertion about the objective world
is intended to be read as a claim about the way things appear to
Sextus himself.
But nor does it seem to be possible to pass over PH I. 4 as noth-
ing more than an un repeated aberration. Sextus' extensive discus-
sion of the Pyrrhonist's use of expressions such as 'All things are
undetermined' and 'All things are non-apprehensible' (see PH I.
187-208) places great emphasis on the fact that their surface form
is misleading. When they are employed by the Pyrrhonist, they
are not intended to be claims about the objective properties of the
world. Instead, they are intended to be reports on the way matters
appear to stand. Thus at PH I. 198 Sextus remarks that 'whenever
the Sceptic says "All things are undetermined," he takes the word
"are" in the sense of "appear to him"'. And at PH I. 203 Sex-
tus offers the following guidance on the interpretation of 'to every
argument an equal argument is opposed':
So whenever I say 'To every argument an equal argument is opposed,'
what I am virtually saying is 'To every argument investigated by me which
establishes a point dogmatically, it appears [<pa{V€Ta,] to me there is opposed
another argument, establishing a point dogmatically, which is equal to the
first in respect of credibility and incredibility'; so that the utterance of the
phrase is not a piece of dogmatism, but the announcement of a human state
of mind which is apparent to the person experiencing it.

Sextus' discussion of these passages makes it plain, therefore, that

the Pyrrhonist habitually and deliberately uses statements with
the surface form of assertions about matters of objective fact as a
means of announcing how matters appear to him. Hence PH I. 4
is by no means an isolated warning about the need to reinterpret
 An Outline of Sextus' Pyrrhonism 145
the Pyrrhonist's apparent claims about matters of objective fact as
disguised appearance-statements.
The view that PH I. 4 is an integral part of Sextus' exposition of
Pyrrhonism receives still further support from M. II. 18-20. Sex-
tus is discussing here the statement 'Of existing things some are
good, others evil, others between these two.' This has the form of a
statement about the real properties of things; and it is not one of the
rather stylized formulae conventionally used by the Pyrrhonist to
express his sceptical attitude and state of mind. Consequently the
statement at issue does not provide us with any indication whatso-
ever that it is not a completely normal assertion about a matter of
objective fact. Nevertheless Sextus explains that when this state-
ment is made by a Pyrrhonist it is to be understood as meaning
no more than 'Of existing things some appear good, others evil,
others between these two.' Thus it is quite clear, just from this
example, that we cannot take it for granted that any of Sextus' pu-
tative statements about matters of objective fact constitute genuine
claims about such matters. PH I. 4, therefore, merely confirms a
conclusion which derives independent support from several other
sources.

7. Conclusions

Sextus' Pyrrhonean scepticism is a radical scepticism that leads to

him suspending belief on all non-evident matters of inquiry because
it seems to him that we are unable to give a rational justification
of even one claim about such matters. However the scope of this
form of scepticism has yet to be determined. In particular, our
conclusion that the Pyrrhonist possesses at least some beliefs does
not show that Pyrrhonean scepticism is not intended to be a global
scepticism about rational justification. For it is possible that Sextus
holds some beliefs while simultaneously purporting to regard them
as lacking any rational justification.
In the next three chapters, then, we shall be considering a vari-
ety of interpretations that try to construe Sextus' Pyrrhonism as
a restricted form of radical scepticism. However these interpreta-
tions all lead eventually to the conclusion that Sextus' exposition
of Pyrrhonism is incoherent or self-contradictory. This outcome
makes it clear that there is nothing to be gained from restricting
 Chapter 6
the supposed scope of Sextus' Pyrrhonean scepticism in an attempt
to make it a more plausible philosophical position. Only the bold
strategy of endeavouring to make sense of Pyrrhonism as a global
scepticism about rational justification ultimately holds out any hope
of enabling us to see Sextus' Pyrrhonism as an intelligible way of
thought.
 7
A Life without Beliefs?
I. An alleged distinction between
belief and assent to appearances
I N the preceding chapter we argued that it seems clear that Sextus'
explicit account of the extent of the Pyrrhonist's lnoXT] does not
have any tendency to suggest that the mature Pyrrhonist eschews
all belief. On the contrary, that account strongly implies that even
the mature Pyrrhonist has beliefs about evident matters of inquiry.
However Myles Burnyeat insists in his paper 'Can the Sceptic Live
his Scepticism?' that Sextus is committed to the view that the ma-
ture Pyrrhonist has no beliefs at all. I Thus Burnyeat is naturally
led to consider the question of how it would be possible for the
Pyrrhonist to act without beliefs, and Burnyeat attempts to over-
come this problem by introducing a distinction between belief and
mere assent to appearances. 2
Burnyeat maintains that truth was, for the Greeks, a matter of
correspondence with external reality. However the claim that a per-
son believes that p is equivalent to the claim that he holds that
it is true that p. Thus Burnyeat contends that the fact that state-
ments about appearances do not say anything about how things
stand objectively would have led the Greeks to conclude that these
statements are incapable of being either true or false and hence are
incapable of being believed or disbelieved. From this viewpoint,
then, the Pyrrhonist is in a position to accept a great many claims
about appearances without giving way to belief. Moreover his as-
sent to such claims means that we can explain his actions in terms
of what appears best to him, without needing to ascribe to him
any beliefs whatsoever. Consequently there is no longer any force
, M. Burnyeat, 'Can the Sceptic Live his Scepticism?', in M. Schofield, M.
Burnyeat, and J. Barnes (eds.), Doubt and Dogmatism: Studies in Hellenistic Episte-
mology (Oxford, 1980), 20-53. 2 Ibid. 25-7.
 Chapter 7
to the charge that the Pyrrhonist's actions betray his possession
of beliefs that he officially claims to regard as lacking any rational
justification.
Of course, it is one thing to show that Sextus takes himself to
be in a position to draw a distinction between belief and assent to
appearances, but quite another to show that he is correct in thinking
that he can legitimately draw such a distinction. The present-day
view of the matter is that the statement that it appears that p is true
if, and only if, things really do appear the way the statement says
they do. Thus we might be prepared to accept that Sextus thinks he
can draw a distinction between belief and assent to appearances, but
we would deny that this distinction genuinely exists. It follows that
Burnyeat can present Sextus' defence of Pyrrhonism as adequate
only if Burnyeat is prepared to question our assumption that state-
ments about appearances are capable of being true or false. And we
find, in fact, that he does not shirk this challenge.
When Burnyeat is discussing the response that descriptions of
how things appear ought to be regarded as true if, and only if,
things really do appear as described, he comments:
[This] objection, though natural, is anachronistic. The idea that truth can
be attained without going outside subjective experience was not always the
philosophical commonplace it has corne to be. It was Descartes who made
it so, who (in the second Meditation) laid the basis for our broader use of
the predicates 'true' and 'false' whereby they can apply to statements of
appearance without reference to real existence.]

But if Descartes had to lay 'the basis for our broader use', then
it is clear that he was doing more than merely introducing some
terminological innovation. Burnyeat is thus representing Descartes
as someone who has brought us to a new understanding of the
concepts of truth and falsity. How, then, can we explain the long
dominance of the older understanding of these concepts? The only
plausible answer is that there must be features of the concept in
question that genuinely encourage such an interpretation. Yet if
this interpretation is not totally groundless, can we be sure that the
modern understanding of the concepts of truth and falsity is really
to be preferred?
Consequently we find that Burnyeat is very careful not to en-
dorse our modern view as the correct one. Instead he simply de-

3 Ibid. Z5 n. 8.
 A Life without Beliefs? 149
scribes it as having become a 'philosophical commonplace'. The
implication, therefore, is that we cannot allow ourselves to assume
without question that we now have a better understanding of the
concepts of truth and falsity than that possessed by the Greeks. We
must rather view the issue as still open to philosophical inquiry,
and acknowledge that the final result of this inquiry might be the
discovery that Descartes' reinterpretation of the two concepts was
actually a retrograde step. At the moment, then, we are supposedly
not in a position to state definitively that the Greeks were wrong
to treat appearance-statements as neither true nor false, and hence
we are supposedly not in a position to rule out the suggestion that
assent to appearances is not the same as having beliefs.

2. Four kinds of appearance-statement

Before we go any further, however, it is essential to make a pre-

liminary classification of the different ways in which appearance-
statements, as formulated in English, can be used. 4 In some cases 'It
appears to me that p' is used to record an inclination to believe that
p. Thus I might say that it appears to me that some particular proof
is valid, and part at least of what I meant by this assertion would
be that I am inclined to believe that the proof is valid although
I do not feel completely certain about the matter. Again I might
use the assertion to indicate that there is good but not conclusive
evidence that p. I have checked the proof in question once, but I
was in rather a rush at the time. If asked whether the proof is valid,
I might well seek to indicate my possession of adequate but not
decisive evidence by asserting that it appears as though the proof is
valid. Alternatively, I might use an appearance-statement so as to
be able to disclaim the responsibilities that would be incurred if I
were to say 'It is the case that p.' If it later turns out that the proof
is not valid, my decision to limit myself to the claim that it appears
to be valid will allow me to avoid being reproached for providing
false information.
Now these three uses of appearance-statements are obviously
closely related. In normal circumstances someone will be inclined
to believe that p only if he takes himself to have some evidence
4 The four uses mentioned here are taken from H. H. Price's infonnative paper

'Appearing and Appearances', American Philosophical Quarterly, 1 (1964),3-19.

 Chapter 7
that p. Similarly, if someone takes himself to have decisive evidence
that p, then he will normally be quite certain that p. Consequently
appearance-statements will typically be employed in the first of
these uses only in circumstances where it would be equally legiti-
mate to employ them in their second role. Equally, the second type
of use will normally occur only in circumstances that would also
justify the employment of an appearance-statement in the first of
the three specified uses. Moreover it seems clear that a sincere use of
an appearance-statement in its role as a disclaimer of responsibility
for any mistake demands that the utterer should have at least some
tendency to believe that the objective, unqualified version of the
statement is true. Yet if someone did feel completely certain that
p, he would have no motive for safeguarding himself by using an
appearance-statement rather than an orthodox, categorical state-
ment. We can conclude, therefore, that although these three uses
are distinguishable in terms of the utterer's purposes and inten-
tions, the conditions that must normally obtain for such assertions
to be legitimate are precisely the same in all three cases. Whenever
an appearance-statement is legitimately employed in any of these
ways, it will generally be true that the conditions for its correct use
in the other two ways so far discussed are also met.
The result, of course, is that we cannot regard Burnyeat as sug-
gesting that the Pyrrhonist assents to appearance-statements as
construed above. Burnyeat is seeking to explain how the sceptic
can live a life without belief; and, as we have seen, his solution
to the obvious difficulties of such an undertaking is to argue that
appearance-statements are neither true nor false, and hence assent
to such statements is not a matter of coming to have a belief. But
this attempt to protect the Pyrrhonist from the charge that he does
possess beliefs will obviously founder if an analysis of appearance-
statements reveals that they can be used legitimately only in a situ-
ation where the utterer has various inclinations towards beliefs. 5
And that conclusion is precisely what we seem to have established
about the uses of appearance-statements that we have considered
so far.
, It might be claimed that having an inclination to believe that p is not the same
as believing, even very weakly, that p. However if the Pyrrhonist is committed to
suspending belief on all matters, then any impulse to believe something is incompat-
ible with the Pyrrhonist's h,oX~ because this £"'OX~ is not a state of mind the sceptic
maintains by an act of will. The Pyrrhonist insists that he finds himself forced to
suspend belief.
 A Life without Beliefs?
Fortunately for Burnyeat's interpretation, however, there is at
least one other use for appearance-statements. Suppose we have
volunteered to participate in some psychological experiments in the
field of perception. The psychologist conducting the experiment
places some curious lenses in front of our eyes, and tells us that
these lenses will alter the perceived colour of the objects around us.
He then asks us to describe what we can see through them. Now
it is quite clear that we would find it natural and unproblematic to
couch this description in terms of particular objects appearing to be
red, green, and various other colours. Nevertheless it is impossible
to construe this use of appearance-statements as an instance of the
types of use already distinguished.
Thanks to the psychologist's warning, we do not have the slight-
est inclination to believe that the colours we perceive are the real
colours of the objects in question. Similarly, we take ourselves to
know that the lenses will prevent objects from being seen in their
true colours. Consequently we do not suppose that we have any evi-
dence at all for the claim that the objects we describe as appearing
to be red are really red. As for the 'safety first' use of appearance-
statements, we have already argued that a sincere statement of this
type presupposes at least some tendency to believe that things really
are as they are stated to appear. But, even if we waive this last point,
it would remain utterly mysterious why, in the circumstances de-
scribed, we should choose to make any sort of claim about the real
colour of any particular object. Suppose the description we recount
to the psychologist contains the claim that the object on the left of
the table appears to be red. If this statement is held to be merely an
instance of the appearance-statement as a disclaimer of responsi-
bility for any mistake in the matter, then we are obviously owed an
explanation of why we should wish to assert, in however guarded
a manner, that the object on the table is red rather than any other
colour. Why should the idea that this particular object is red occur
to us at that particular time?
The answer, of course, is obvious to anyone whose thought has
not been corrupted by the demands of some philosophic theory of
perception. Our claim that the object appears to be red is the result
of the fact that the object does actually look red in those particular
conditions. In other words, our experience is such that the quality
of redness enters into our experience rather than our thoughts or
the propositions we happen to entertain. Thus Price, in the course
 Chapter 7
of his discussion of a hallucination of a pile of dead leaves, asks how
his situation was like what it would have been if he had been seeing
real dead leaves. It appeared to him that he was confronted with a
pile of dead leaves, and this impression had a definite resemblance
to normal or veridical perceptions of dead leaves. In what, however,
does this resemblance consist? Price answers as follows:
there was something 1 actually experienced, something actually present
in my visual field along with the walls, floor, etc., which were physically
before my eyes; and this something was very like what would have been
present if 1 had been seeing a real pile of large dead leaves, in the veridical
sense of the word 'see' .... [moreover] one has to use the word 'see' in
describing this experience because it was in fact a visual experience; and
though what was experienced was not physically there, it had colour, shape
and location, just as the other parts of the visual field had (the walls, the
floor, the legs of the bed which 1 saw at the same time).6
We might, therefore, claim that talk of objects appearing to be
red is equivalent to talk about the features shared in common by
veridical perceptions of red objects, hallucinations of red objects,
awareness of red after-images, and perceptions of white objects
illuminated by red lights. Something appears to be red when the
situation is such that these common features are present. Though
this is not to say that 'x appears to be red' is equivalent in meaning
to 'x is a red object seen in normal conditions, or a hallucination
of a red object, or a white object seen under red lights, or .. .'.
This primary and literal sense of 'appears to be so-and-so' is so
basic and fundamental that it is impossible to give any informative
verbal definition of the notion in question.
It seems, then, that we can put Burnyeat's account into the fol-
lowing terms: the mature Pyrrhonist assents to statements about
the way things appear when these statements are examples of this
fourth use of appearance-statements. And, for convenience's sake,
we can refer to this fourth type of use as the 'phenomenological' or
'non-epistemic' sense of appearance-statements. However the situ-
ation is complicated by the fact that Burnyeat is most insistent that
the Pyrrhonist's distinction between appearance and real existence
is a purely formal one. In particular, he denies that the Pyrrhonist's
impressions are to be interpreted as sensory impressions alone:
Time and again Sextus warns that sceptic formulae such as 'I determine
(, Price, 'Appearing and Appearances', 19.
 A Life without Beliefs? 153
nothing' and 'No more this than that' (PH 1. 15), or the conclusions of
sceptic arguments like 'Everything is relative' (PH I. 135), or indeed the
entire contents of his treatise (PH I. 4), are to be taken as mere records
of appearance. Like a chronicle (PH I. 4), they record how each thing
appears to the sceptic, announcing or narrating how it affects him (his
millo,) without committing him to the belief or the assertion that anything
really and truly is as it appears to him to be (cp. also PH I. 197). Clearly
it would be impossible to regard all these appearances as impressions of
sense. 7

Unfortunately, we have so far only been able to illustrate the phe-

nomenological use of appearance-statements with material drawn
from cases of sense experience. And there must be some doubt as to
whether this particular use of appearance-statements is applicable
elsewhere.

3. Bypassing belief without bypassing truth?

When it appears to someone that there is a square tower standing

before him, then that person, according to Burnyeat's account of
the matter, has an awareness of this impression that is strongly ana-
logous to having the belief that it appears that there is a square tower
standing before him. But, although the analogy may be very close,
Burnyeat's account precludes us from supposing that he does have
that belief. For if it is incorrect to treat descriptions of appearances
as possessing truth-values, then we can be assured that whatever
the precise nature of the cognitive relation at issue here may happen
to be, it is not an instance of belief. After all, believing that p and
believing that it is true that p are straightforwardly equivalent.
Similarly, Burnyeat's account entails that if someone expects that
it will continue to appear to him that there is a square tower stand-
ing before him, then this is not an instance of someone believing
that it will continue to appear that there is a square tower stand-
ing before him. Nevertheless if the Pyrrhonist can allow himself
expectations about how the world will appear to him under par-
ticular conditions, then the criticism that the mature Pyrrhonist
will be unable to act would seem to be misplaced. Suppose that it
appears to the Pyrrhonist that the sea breeze is disagreeably chill.
If he also expects that it will continue to appear to him that the sea
7 Burnyeat, 'Can the Sceptic Live his Scepticism?', 34-5.
154 Chapter 7
breeze is disagreeably chill unless he takes some steps to alter the
circumstances in which he appears to find himself, then it is readily
explicable that some action should be forthcoming from even the
most rigorous sceptic. Whereas if it is al1eged that there is a logical
link between the concepts of voluntary action and belief such that
any voluntary action necessarily counts as grounds for attributing a
belief to the agent concerned, then this can be deflected by counter-
claiming that a person's awareness of the way the world appears to
him is sufficiently similar to the possession of beliefs about how the
world appears to substitute for these beliefs when we are drawing
out the implications of people's actions.
However it is important to note that it is only the truth-valueless
thesis that enables us to see the Pyrrhonist's awareness of his im-
pressions as something other than belief. If appearance-statements
can take a truth-value, then the similarities between belief and the
Pyrrhonist's awareness of his own impressions would force us to
conclude that the mature Pyrrhonist acts on the basis of his beliefs
about the way things appear to stand. Hence the great advantage of
Burnyeat's account is that it provides a guarantee that the Pyrrhon-
ist's awareness of his impressions can never amount to an instance
of someone having beliefs. Without that guarantee, we would be in
a position to deny that the mature Pyrrhonist has beliefs about his
impressions only if we were prepared to maintain that his impres-
sions lead to action without the aid of any mediating awareness of
those impressions.
One commentator who does seem to be wil1ing to give serious
consideration to this latter possibility is Michael Frede. In his pa-
per 'The Sceptic's Two Kinds of Assent and the Question of the
Possibility of Knowledge', he writes as fol1ows:
It might be the case that action does not require that one take the impression
one is acting on to be true .... All that may be needed is one's acquiescence
in the impression, and all this may amount to is that in the series of
impressions one has reached an impression which produces an action rather
than the kind of disquiet which would make one go on to consider the
matter further ... 8

Frede is not claiming in this passage that we cannot have beliefs

about the way things appear; and it follows that he is not committing
• M. Frede, 'The Skeptic's Two Kinds of Assent and the Question of the Possi-
bility of Knowledge', in Frede, Essays in Ancient Philosophy (Oxford, 1987),201-22
at 208.
 A Life without Beliefs? 155
himself to the thesis that appearance-statements cannot be true or
false. However Frede does suggest that it might be possible for
a person's actions to be explained in terms of that person having
impressions without there being any need to suppose that he has
any beliefs about his impressions. Consequently Frede is apparently
willing to concede to Burnyeat that it might be possible for the
Pyrrhonist to act without possessing any beliefs; but Frede explains
this in terms of the Pyrrhonist reacting to impressions without any
further thought, whereas Burnyeat alleges that the Pyrrhonist can
consciously reflect on, and reason about, his impressions without
coming to have any beliefs about them. Of course the price of
embracing Burnyeat's view is that one has to accept the uninviting
doctrine that truth is wholly a matter of correspondence with an
external reality. On the other hand, if one attempts to apply the type
of explanation Frede is considering here to all the varied actions
undertaken by the Pyrrhonean sceptic, it rapidly becomes clear that
it succeeds in avoiding the metaphysical complications associated
with Burnyeat's view only at the cost of offering a grossly distorted
picture of the way the Pyrrhonist decides how to act.
Genuinely purposeful behaviour of the type that lies at the heart
of anything recognizable as a proper life for a human being is not
simply a matter of a reflex response to an anterior stimulus. If some-
one's hand unexpectedly comes into contact with a hot boiling-ring,
then his hand will automatically be pulled away from the source of
the pain. Similarly, anyone who suddenly becomes aware of an ob-
ject moving towards his eyes will instinctively avert his face. In
both of these cases the specified stimulus would bring about the
reaction described even if the person involved were to have no be-
liefs whatsoever about the future effects of keeping his hand on the
boiling-ring or allowing himself to be struck in the face. However
it would be absurd to suppose that the majority of human actions
can be subsumed under this simple model. Most human actions
demand to be explained in terms of the agent's expectations about
the future course of events.
We might, for instance, be satisfied at first with the explanation
that a person A took an umbrella with him because he saw some
dark clouds in the sky. Suppose, however, we were then told that
A did not believe that the dark clouds meant that it was going to
rain. In these circumstances we would undoubtedly conclude that
A's action remains totally unexplained. Nor would it really help
 ChapteT 7
matters if we were told that A always seizes an umbrella whenever
he sees dark clouds in the sky. This would serve to explain A's ac-
tion only by placing it within a framework of obsessive behaviour
that needs to be understood in purely causal terms. But obses-
sive behaviour is no less marginal than the reflex responses just
discussed. The overwhelming majority of everyday human actions
do not fall into either category. Indeed, a description of someone
whose actions never advanced beyond reflex responses and obses-
sional performances would not be a description of a philosopher
attempting to order his life in accordance with his philosophic doc-
trines. It would, in fact, be a description of someone who is beset by
a serious mental illness and is in urgent need of medical treatment.
I t seems clear, therefore, that the attribution of expectations about
future events plays an essential part in explanations of mainstream
human actions. If we experiment at constructing explanations that
do not ascribe any beliefs or expectations to an agent but retain
their plausibility even in the face of the most determined efforts
to sabotage them by drawing our attention to the agent's lack of a
particular belief or expectation, then we find that the explanations
that survive this scrutiny invariably place the explained action in
one of the marginal categories identified above.
However we normally suppose that a person's expectations are
merely beliefs by another name. We would, for example, be quite
unable to make any sense of the claim that A expects a bus to ar-
rive within the next five minutes but does not believe that a bus will
arrive within the next five minutes. Thus Frede's account of the ma-
ture Pyrrhonist's actions is confronted by the following dilemma. If
the explanations offered refer only to the Pyrrhonist having various
impressions, then these explanations will inevitably marginalize the
actions being explained. However if the explanations offered also
refer to the mature Pyrrhonist's expectations about the impressions
he will have in the future, then the explanations at issue may be cap-
able of accounting for mainstream human actions. Nevertheless the
need to appeal to the Pyrrhonist's expectations indicates that we are
no longer describing a person who has no beliefs at all. The mature
Pyrrhonist emerges instead as a person who has numerous beliefs
about the way things appear to stand.
Thus we are forced to conclude that Frede's account is not a vi-
able alternative to the account put forward by Burnyeat. If we do
not ascribe to the mature Pyrrhonist expectations about the future
 A Life without Beliefs? 157
course of his impressions, then we cannot explain any of his main-
stream actions. However the presumption must be that a person's
expectations are to be included among his beliefs. Consequently
that presumption needs to be overturned if we are to succeed in
maintaining that the mature Pyrrhonist eschews all belief. And the
only way of overturning it is to invoke Burnyeat's truth-valueless
thesis; if descriptions of appearances lack truth-values, then a per-
son's expectations about how things appear to him in the future
cannot be beliefs. It follows, though, that the view that the mature
Pyrrhonist eschews all belief can no longer be regarded as inde-
pendent of Burnyeat's truth-valueless thesis. No one who rejects
the truth-valueless thesis can plausibly go on to maintain that the
mature Pyrrhonist has no beliefs.

4. Sextus and the truth-valueless thesis

We have seen, then, that Burnyeat holds that the Pyrrhonist's ability
to act without beliefs needs to be explained in terms of a distinction
between belief and assent to impressions. Moreover Burnyeat also
makes it clear that this distinction can be drawn only by a person
who holds that statements about how things non-epistemically ap-
pear are neither true nor false. However this leads to a major prob-
lem for Burnyeat's interpretation of Pyrrhonism. Even if the truth-
valueless thesis is correct, there are strong grounds for maintaining
that Sextus and other Hellenistic philosophers shared our con-
temporary view that appearance-statements do have truth-values.
Consequently Sextus' own understanding of Pyrrhonism must be
radically unlike the interpretation offered by Burnyeat. In particu-
lar, Sextus' explanation of the mature Pyrrhonist's ability to act
cannot have anything to do with the supposed distinction between
belief and assent to appearances.
Burnyeat's argument for attributing the truth-valueless thesis to
Sextus is straightforward. 9 In effect he starts from the premiss that
the only Greek word that functions as a synonym of 'true' is d'\1)8~s.
He then claims that this word is never applied to statements that
merely record how things appear. And he concludes from this that
the Greeks did not accept that such statements are capable of being
true or false.
9 Burnyeat, 'Can the Sceptic Live his Scepticism?', 25.
 Chapter 7
However this argument fails to take into proper account the fact
that claims involving 'true' or one of its synonyms are not the only
means of ascribing truth to some statement or possible statement.
The English language, in particular, has a wide range of resources in
this area. 'What he says is correct' is a perfectly adequate substitute
for 'What he says is true'. Similarly, we can say that a statement
is 'an accurate account of the facts', 'completely reliable', 'utterly
trustworthy', 'a correct report of how things stand', or 'free from
any mistake'. In appropriate circumstances all of these expressions
can be used to convey the thought that a statement is true.
Of course, we do not always use 'true' with explicit reference to
some actual statement. 'It is true that grass is green' does not men-
tion any statement, but is nevertheless idiomatic English. However
it is not unnatural to see this as equivalent in content to 'The state-
ment that grass is green is true.' Thus truth is still ascribed to a
potential statement. In any case there are plenty of substitutes for
'true' even in this second role. 'The world is such that .. .', 'It is a
fact that .. .', 'the reality is that .. .', and' It is the case that .. .'
can all be pressed into service here. Indeed, it does not seem to be
an exaggeration to say that the word 'true' could be excised from
the English language without there being any diminution in the
expressive powers of the language.
Consequently the Greeks' reluctance to apply the word dA1)O~S' to
appearance-statements can hardly be regarded as decisively show-
ing that they did not in general view such statements as capable
of truth or falsity. If they did apply the Greek equivalent~ of some
of the substitutable constructions mentioned above, then the cor-
rect inference to draw from this reluctance would be that dA1)O~S' is
not, in fact, used as a precise synonym of our 'true'. Instead, one
would be led to conclude that it is generally used as an equivalent
of 'true of the objective world', while the broader coverage of 'true'
is handled by these other constructions. And this sober assessment
of the situation seems intuitively more plausible than Burnyeat's
wild speculations about truth-valueless appearance-statements.
It is important, then, to discover whether Sextus, in particu-
lar, uses such constructions in conjunction with non-epistemic
appearance-statements. And it seems clear that he actually has
no inhibitions about applying to appearance-statements the Greek
equivalent of the 'It is a fact that .. .' construction. At PH I.
19 Sextus states 'when we question whether the underlying object
 A Life without Beliefs? 159
is such as it appears, we grant the fact that it appears ['T() P.EV OTL
4>U{VIETUL o{Sop.lEv]'. Later on in the Outlines we read 'the view about
the same thing having opposite appearances is not a dogma of the
Sceptics but a fact which is experienced not by the Sceptics alone
[dUd. 7Tpayp.u ou p.ovov Tois aKlE7TTLKOis ... V7T07Ti7TTOV] but also by the
rest of philosophers and by all mankind' (PH 1.210). And at PH 2.
63 Sextus remarks, 'For it is certain, at any rate, that from the fact
that honey appears bitter to some and sweet to others [ap.'!'''' youv EK
TOU TO P.'t.L Toia8IE P.EV 7TLKpOII Toia8IE 8E yt.VKV 4>a{VlEa8aL], Democritus
declared that it is neither sweet nor bitter, while Heracleitus said
that it is both.'
Now it might be argued that this last example, at least, merely
shows that Sextus supposed that Democritus and Heracleitus took
it to be a fact that honey appears bitter to some and sweet to others,
and that the example therefore fails to establish that Sextus himself
took this to be a fact. However this interpretation is equally fatal
to Burnyeat's case. If Sextus can casually ascribe such a view to
two philosophers as diverse as Democritus and Heracleitus, then
we must assume that it was fairly common practice among Greek
philosophers to speak in terms of it being a fact that x appears to
have property P. And a claim that it is a fact that p can reasonably
be paraphrased as a claim that it is true that p. Thus Burnyeat's
inference, from the alleged general prevalence of the view that non-
epistemic appearance-statements are neither true nor false to the
conclusion that Sextus shares this view, would be exposed as having
false premisses. Whereas if we do read the example as implying that
it is Sextus' own view that it is a fact that honey appears bitter to
some and sweet to others, then we do indeed have strong evidence
that Sextus is an exception to the supposed orthodoxy of the period.
Burnyeat's argument for ascribing the truth-valueless thesis to
Sextus also suffers from another serious defect: it is simply not
true that the Greeks never applied dt.1J8~s to phenomenological
appearance-statements. At least one counter-example to Burnyeat's
claim exists in the writings of Sextus himself. In the course of his
description of the doctrines of the Cyrenaics, Sextus remarks:
For, say they, ... just as the sufferer from vertigo or jaundice receives a
yellowish impression from everything, and the sufferer from ophthalmia
sees things red, and he who pushes his eye sideways gets as it were a
double impression, and the madman beholds a 'doubled Thebes', and sees
the image of a doubled sun, and in all these cases, while it is true [dAT/B..],J
160 Chapter 7
that they have this particular affection (have, for instance, a feeling of
yellowness or of Hushing or of doubleness), yet it is supposed to be false to
say that the object which impresses them is yellow or reddish or double,-
so also it is most reasonable to hold that we are not able to perceive anything
more than our own immediate affections. (M. 7. 192-3)

Nor indeed is this the only point at which Sextus' account of

Cyrenaic doctrine features a use of d'\1J8~S' that is incompatible with
Burnyeat's claim about Greek usage. It is, of course, quite com-
mon for Greek philosophers to describe appearances, as opposed
to appearance-statements, as true or false where this amounts to
the claim that the appearances in question are veridical or non-
veridical. And this type of usage is equally prevalent in English:
the appearance that x has property P is true if x does exist and
has property P, but false otherwise. However we do have another
pattern of use where we say that it is true that it appears that x
has property P if, and only if, things really do appear in that way.
Naturally Burnyeat is not seeking to deny that the Greeks treat
appearances as being veridical or non-veridical. His target is the
supposition that they also treat them as true or false in the second
of the two ways just distinguished. Indeed, his formulation of his
position as a denial that the Greeks regarded appearance-statements
as possessing truth-values is specifically intended to focus our at-
tention on the notion of truth rather than veridicality. Consequently
a description by a Greek writer of an appearance as true or false,
where it is clear that this is not intended as an assessment of its
veridicality, would be equally fatal to Burnyeat's stance. For the
transition, from the claim that it is true that it appears that x has
property P to the claim that the statement that it appears that x has
property P is a true statement, is philosophically uncontroversial.
In this case the crucial passage runs as follows:
Hence we must posit as apparent either the affections or the things pro-
ductive of the affections. And if we assert that the affections are apparent,
we must declare that all apparent things are true and apprehensible; but if
we term the things productive of the affections apparent, all the apparent
things are false and non-apprehensible. For the affection which takes place
in us reveals to us nothing more than itself. (M. 7· 193-4)

The word translated here by 'true' is d'\1J8~s; and there is no pos-

sibility that it is being used in the sense of ·veridical'. Sextus is
clearly ascribing to the Cyrenaics the view that all affections, i.e. all
 A Life without Beliefs?
perceptual appearances, are true in some sense or other. Suppose,
however, that we attempt to interpret this as the view that all per-
ceptual appearances are veridical. It would then be impossible to
account for such reported opinions as 'whereas we are all unerring
about our own affections, as regards the external real object we all
err' (M. 7. 195) and 'that we feel whiteness or sweetness is a thing
we can state infallibly and incontrovertibly; but that the object pro-
ductive of the affection is white or is sweet it is impossible to affirm'
(M. 7.191).
In fact it is quite obvious that Sextus takes the essence of the
Cyrenaic position to be the claim that we can never know, or even
have any reason to believe, that objects really do have the properties
they appear to have. Consequently it is scarcely plausible to sup-
pose that Sextus would also attribute to the Cyrenaics the blatantly
inconsistent doctrine that all perceptual appearances are veridical.
Thus the view that all affections are true must be interpreted as
the view that anyone's sincere reports about the way the world
perceptually appears to him must be true in the sense that things
really do appear to him in that way. And this gives us our second
counter-example to Burnyeat's claim about the usage of dA1J8~,.
It might, however, be objected that these apparent counter-ex-
amples can be disregarded because they occur only in descriptions
of the philosophical position of the Cyrenaics, who were notorious
for purveying an extreme subjectivism which allowed that we are
certain of the nature of our own experience and nothing else. Io And
Cyrenaic terminology is generally acknowledged to have been both
eccentric and highly innovatory. II Consequently there seems to be
every chance that talk of appearance-statements as true or false was
a purely Cyrenaic idiosyncrasy that was not taken up by any other
significant group of Greek thinkers. Thus Burnyeat could still be
correct in claiming that the overwhelmingly dominant tendency in
Greek philosophical usage is for dA"78~, to be applied only to claims
about real existence as opposed to mere appearance. In particular,
it might be thought that this will undoubtedly be Sextus' usage
when he is speaking on his own behalf.
'0 See D. Sedley, 'The Protagonists', in Schofield et al. (eds.), Doubt and Dogma-

tism, 1-17 at 14, and M. Bumyeat, 'Idealism and Greek Philosophy: What Descartes
Saw and Berkeley Missed', The Philosophical Review, 91 (1982), 3-40 at 27.
" See Burnyeat, 'Can the Sceptic Live his Scepticism?', 45; id., 'Idealism and
Greek Philosophy', 27-8; and C. C. W. Taylor, 'All Perceptions are True', in
Schofield et al. (eds.), Doubt and Dogmatism, IOS-Z4 at 117-18.
 Chapter 7
Unfortunately the difficulty is less tractable than this response
suggests. We are dealing with statements that are supposed to be
understood in terms of the phenomenological sense of 'appears' as
this occurs in English. Consequently there must be strong prima fa-
cie grounds for taking these statements as possessing truth-values.
And Burnyeat's only basis for a rebuttal of this presumption is his
claim that the orthodox use of Greek non-epistemic appearance-
statements is such that they are never described as true or false.
The Cyrenaic treatment of these statements as capable of truth
and falsity, therefore, would force Burnyeat to distinguish between
two quite separate linguistic practices in this area. The vast ma-
jority of Greek philosophers do not apply d'\1/8~S' to non-epistemic
appearance-statements, though they are evidently prepared to re-
port such a usage; and Burnyeat would have to take this as revealing
that these philosophers do not attribute truth-values to such state-
ments. But as the Cyrenaics display no qualms about using d'\1/8~S' in
conjunction with non-epistemic appearance-statements, Burnyeat
would be unable to avoid the conclusion that the Cyrenaics do as-
sign truth-values to this category of statements. Furthermore Sex-
tus' account of their doctrines makes it clear that he, at least, is fully
conversant with Cyrenaic usage. It follows that if Sextus really is
committed to the view that non-epistemic appearance-statements
lack truth-values, then we can expect him explicitly to reject the
Cyrenaic interpretation of these statements. However there is no
trace of any such rejection in Sextus' extant works.
I t can scarcely be maintained that the distinction between the
two interpretations would not have been sufficiently important for
Sextus to bother bringing it to the attention of his readers. On
Burnyeat's account of Pyrrhonism, the mature Pyrrhonist suspends
belief on all topics. And such a purported way of life is not even su-
perficially coherent unless it is allowed that assent to non-epistemic
appearance-statements does not involve holding any beliefs. Con-
sequently it might be thought that it would have been distinctly ad-
visable for Sextus to safeguard himself against possible misdirected
criticisms by specifically dissociating himself from the Cyrenaic in-
terpretation of this crucial class of statements. Burnyeat, of course,
is likely to reply that there is no need for such a disclaimer as the
Cyrenaic position here was so seldom adopted by Greek philoso-
phers that it would naturally have been assumed by Sextus' readers
that he held to the truth-valueless thesis. However this response
 A Life without Beliefs?
fails to take into account Sextus' admission at PH I. 2 I 5 that 'some
assert that the Cyrenaic doctrine is identical with Scepticism'. If
people were confusing the two philosophic schools, then Sextus
would surely have taken care to set out all the main points of dis-
agreement.
Indeed, Sextus devotes a considerable portion of the first book
of the Outlines to clarifying the relationship between scepticism
and connected philosophic systems. But when he comes to discuss
the Cyrenaics in the section just mentioned, he points to just two
differences. The first of these concerns the respective ends of the
two schools: Sextus claims that the end adopted by the Cyrenaics
is 'pleasure and the smooth motion of the flesh', whereas the end of
the sceptic is Q.rapagtaor mental tranquillity. The second difference
is that the Cyrenaics are supposedly prepared to make the defi-
nite claim that it is impossible to attain knowledge or even reason-
able belief concerning the real nature of external objects, while the
sceptic simply suspends judgement about their nature. No mention
is made of the purported disagreement over the interpretation of
non-epistemic appearance-statements, even though this would have
been highly pertinent to Sextus' attempt to represent the Cyrenaics
as negative dogmatists. This otherwise inexplicable omission would
thus seem to be good evidence that no such disagreement actually
exists. And, as Burnyeat would have to accept that the Cyrenaics do
treat even phenomenological appearance-statements as possessing
truth-values, it is difficult to see how he can legitimately avoid the
conclusion that the Pyrrhonist also treats such statements as true
or false.
Even if we concede the extremely dubious claim that there is no
genuine danger of a Greek reader mistakenly assuming that Sextus
regards non-epistemic appearance-statements as capable of truth
and falsity, the difficulty does not go away: it merely changes its
form. Given the above concession, Burnyeat would be able to pro-
vide an explanation of Sextus' failure to protect himself from such
a misinterpretation. However the Cyrenaics' truth-valued phe-
nomenological appearance-statements and Sextus' supposed truth-
valueless appearance-statements cannot coexist. One of the two
treatments must be mistaken.
If asked to give an example of a truth-valued phenomenological
appearance-statement, the Cyrenaics would have given illustrations
that would have been equally acceptable to Sextus as illustrations
 Chapter 7
of his own version of phenomenological appearance-statements.
Thus we find, for example, that Sextus offers the case of the suf-
ferer from jaundice, who allegedly receives a yellowish impression
from every object around him (M. 7. 192), as an illustration of a
situation that the Cyrenaics describe in terms of someone having a
particular affection-in this instance an affection of yellowness. Yet
at PH I. 126 the same yellowish impressions provide the Pyrrhon-
ist with a case of objects appearing yellow. Consequently if Sex-
tus does hold that the Pyrrhonist's phenomenological appearance-
statements lack truth-values, then we would have a situation in
which Sextus and the Cyrenaics have embraced incompatible and
radically different interpretations of exactly the same class of lin-
guistic acts.
Moreover it is fairly obvious that the mere application of 'true',
'false', or their synonyms to some class of statements can scarcely
be regarded as constitutive of their possession of truth-values. I t fol-
lows that if we wish to maintain that a particular class of statements
is such that those statements are incapable of truth or falsity, then
we are committed to holding that any statements that do possess
truth-values must be used differently from these first statements,
and we are also committed to holding that this difference must be
describable without mentioning any words whatsoever.
However Sextus' appearance-statements and the Cyrenaics' re-
ports on sensory affections have virtually identical uses. In fact, the
only difference seems to be that the Cyrenaics sometimes apply the
word aATJ81Js to their reports, whereas Sextus does not apply this
word to his appearance-statements. However this difference is not
specifiable without mentioning some particular Greek word. It is
not a difference, therefore, that is capable of providing a foundation
for any difference in the logical properties of the two types of state-
ment. If the Cyrenaics' reports on sensory affections do possess
truth-values, then Sextus' appearance-statements will also possess
truth-values.
It is possible, therefore, that Sextus might sincerely intend to
keep to appearance-statements that lack truth-values, and yet be
mistaken in thinking that such statements exist. Even if his readers
would not have been in any doubt about how Sextus intends these
statements to be taken, there remains the question of whether this
intention has succeeded. And it is noteworthy that Sextus com-
pletely fails to address himself to this seemingly vital issue. As we
 A Life without Beliefs?
have seen, he is fully aware of the fact that the Cyrenaics hold
that their statements about sensory affections have truth-values.
Moreover we have just established that if the Cyrenaics are correct
here, then Sextus' own non-epistemic appearance-statements will
also possess truth-values. If Sextus does subscribe to the truth-
valueless thesis, then it is utterly mysterious that he should omit to
present the arguments that enable him to reject the Cyrenaic view.
It is tempting to conclude, therefore, that this otherwise surprising
omission is best explained by allowing that Sextus actually takes
precisely the same view as the Cyrenaics: namely, that even non-
epistemic appearance-statements do have truth-values. Moreover,
as Sextus nowhere troubles to set out this view, it is clear that he
must expect nearly all of his readers to be of the same opinion.

5. The implications of Sextus'

use of appearance-statements

The preceding section was primarily concerned with the question of

whether Sextus holds the view that assent to appearance-statements
does not amount to belief because appearance-statements lack
truth-values. However we did point out that Sextus' willingness to
embrace that view would not guarantee that his use of appearance-
statements is genuinely consistent with the truth-valueless thesis.
And that issue is of considerable independent interest even though
we have concluded that Sextus does not accept that appearance-
statements lack truth-values. For our discussion so far leaves open
the possibility that the truth-valueless thesis nevertheless provides
the only satisfactory explanation of the Pyrrhonist's ability to act
without renouncing his scepticism. But if Sextus uses appearance-
statements in a way that presupposes that they have truth-values,
then it would follow that the truth-valueless thesis is not even po-
tentially capable of explaining the actions of the Pyrrhonean sceptic
depicted by Sextus. Thus we turn now to an examination of the role
played by appearance-statements within Sextus' writings.
One major difficulty with the supposition that Sextus' non-epi-
stemic appearance-statements might lack truth-values is the fact
that they frequently feature as the premisses of arguments. Indeed,
Aenesidemus' ten tropes are little more than attempts to exploit
examples of conflicting appearances for epistemological purposes:
166 Chapter 7
the conflict of appearances, taken in conjunction with our inabil-
ity to provide reasons for preferring one appearance to another, is
supposed to force us to suspend belief concerning the real nature
of things. Moreover we have already argued that reasoning like
that found in Aenesidemus' tropes plays an important part in the
evolution of the mature Pyrrhonist's final state of £7TOX~." How-
ever an argument will obviously have no influence over a person
who does not give his assent to that argument. Thus we are led
to the conclusion that the mature Pyrrhonist's £7TOX~ depends on
the developing Pyrrhonist giving his assent to arguments that use
appearance-statements as premisses.
But we normally suppose that the function of an argument is to
transmit truth from the premisses to the conclusion. In less meta-
phorical terms, an argument is supposed to reveal that the truth
of the premisses would suffice to ensure that the conclusion is also
true, or at least more likely to be true than false. Yet an advocate of
the truth-valueless thesis is in no position to regard Aenesidemus'
tropes as transmitting truth from premisses to conclusion. For this
would be to admit that the appearance-statements which serve as
the premisses are capable of being true. Consequently it is essential
for such an advocate to provide some other account of the relation-
ship between the premisses and the conclusion of these arguments.
And this is not an easy task to discharge successfully.
One suggestion might be that the function of the arguments is to
transmit the plausibility of the premisses to the conclusion. After
all, a statement can be plausible without being true. However to say
that a statement is plausible is surely the same as saying that it is
easy to believe that the statement is true. Consequently a statement
that is incapable of being either true or false is equally incapable
of being either plausible or implausible. Anyone who has correctly
grasped the content of such a statement would be aware that it
lacks a truth-value. Therefore a claim that it is easy to believe that
statement to be true would merely betray a failure to refer to the
particular statement at issue.
Again it might be proposed that the arguments are intended to
reveal that anyone who accepts the premisses must also accept the
specified conclusion. But what does 'accepts' mean here? It can
hardly be intended to be taken in that sense of 'accept' in which
someone might accept a parcel from the postman. Similarly, one
<2 See Chapter 6, sect. 5.
 A Life without Beliefs?
does accept premisses, but not in the sense of resigning oneself to
the impossibility of altering some given situation. The fact is that
the sense of 'accepts' involved here is that of 'accepting as true'.
Hence the notion of accepting a premiss is of no use to someone
who holds that the premisses of the ten tropes are incapable of being
either true or false.
Nor, indeed, is it possible to maintain that Aenesidemus' tropes
are intended to show that an incompatibility exists between the
premisses of the tropes and the negation of their conclusion. For
what does this incompatibility amount to if it is not a case of the
premisses and the negation of Aenesidemus' conclusion contradict-
ing one another? Yet it is obvious that two statements contradict
one another only when it is impossible for them both to be true.
Naturally the above observations cannot prove that it is impos-
sible for a defender of the truth-valueless thesis to provide an ad-
equate account of the relationship between the premisses and con-
clusion of Aenesidemus' tropes. However we have succeeded in
showing that some of the more obvious approaches to this task
are wholly unsuccessful. Consequently it seems that we can legiti-
mately challenge adherents of the truth-valueless thesis actually to
produce a satisfactory account of this crucial relationship. Until an
account is produced that is capable of withstanding critical atten-
tion, there must be a presumption that no such account will ever
be forthcoming, and that the use of appearance-statements as the
premisses of arguments is incompatible with their supposed lack of
truth-values.
Furthermore it is also relevant to note that Aenesidemus' tropes
cannot be construed as arguing that we must suspend judgement
because it appears that we have no ground for preferring any claim
about a matter of objective fact to its contradictory. In the non-
epistemic sense of 'appears', it is possible for x to appear to us
to have property P even though we take ourselves to know that x
does not really have property P. It follows that if Aenesidemus'
tropes are to persuade the developing Pyrrhonist to abandon his
original beliefs about matters of objective fact, then these tropes
will have to deliver the conclusion that it is the case that we have
no grounds for preferring any claim about a matter of objective fact
to its contradictory. Thus the mature Pyrrhonist's bTOX~ will act~­
ally depend on the developing Pyrrhonist assenting to arguments
168 Chapter 7
that use premisses about appearances to support conclusions about
matters of objective fact.
I t is clear, therefore, that if someone wishes to maintain that the
Pyrrhonist's appearance-statements can legitimately be interpreted
as lacking truth-values, then he will need to explain how truth-
valueless statements can be connected with truth-valued statements
in such a way that both types of statement play an integral part in
the same argument. Thus our first objection stressed the difficulties
facing the attempt to explain how truth-valueless statements can
feature in any kind of argument. Whereas the point being empha-
sized here is that any explanation of that phenomenon will also need
to cope with the fact that the developing Pyrrhonist apparently re-
gards these statements as capable of entailing, and being entailed
by, truth-valued statements.
The principal difficulty with the truth-valueless thesis, however,
stems from the intimate relationship between asserting that p and
stating that it is true that p. If a person makes the statement 'It is
true that Paris is the capital of France', then he has said no more
than he would have said if he had made the bare assertion 'Paris is
the capital of France.' Or, eschewing the mention of any statements
at all, we might say that if Paris is the capital of France, then it is
true that Paris is the capital of France. Hence it seems to follow that
the claim that we cannot regard the utterances of some particular
indicative sentence as either true or false is equivalent to the claim
that these utterances do not, despite their surface form, constitute
assertions at all.
Now it is actually extremely difficult to provide any concrete
evidence to support these remarks. It is all too easy to fall into
the trap of attempting to support the more evident by means of
the less evident. In some ways, then, it might be best to leave the
adjudication of the issue to our general grasp of the two concepts
involved. Nevertheless it is perhaps not completely inappropriate
to appeal to the obvious incoherence of the statement 'Paris is
the capital of France, but it is not true that Paris is the capital of
France.' It seems clear that this statement is highly anomalous,
and it is tempting to explain its oddity by postulating an implicit
contradiction.
Of course this type of explanation is not always admissible. It
is notorious, for example, that the anomalous nature of 'It's rain-
ing but I don't believe it' cannot be explained by the supposition
 A Life without Beliefs?
that the statement is self-contradictory. The fact that it is raining
is unfortunately completely compatible with any particular per-
son not believing that it is raining. However it is significant that
we can split our original statement about Paris into the separate
statements 'Paris is the capital of France' and 'It is not true that
Paris is the capital of France' without weakening our impression
that these claims are incompatible with one another. Indeed, this
impression remains even if we undertake the thought experiment
of self-consciously ascribing these claims to different speakers. On
the other hand, there is no temptation to treat the claims 'It's rain-
ing' and 'I don't believe it' as incompatible when they are made
by different individuals. Thus we do seem to have good cause to
treat 'Paris is the capital of France, but it is not true that Paris is
the capital of France' as self-contradictory. And, if this statement
does contain an implicit contradiction, this can only result from 'It
is true that Paris is the capital of France' having no more content
than the bare assertion 'Paris is the capital of France.'
Nevertheless a defender of the view that the Pyrrhonist's state-
ments about appearances lack truth-values might be inclined to
object that the preceding example begs the question. He could ar-
gue that the equivalence between 'Paris is the capital of France' and
'It is true that Paris is the capital of France' is irrelevant because
these statements are obviously statements about matters of object-
ive fact, whereas the truth-valueless thesis is intended to apply only
to statements about appearances.
Despite this objection, however, the existence of such an equiva-
lence does seem to be rather damaging to the truth-valueless thesis.
The point is that the move from 'Paris is the capital of France' to
'It is true that Paris is the capital of France' seems to rely merely
on the fact that the first statement is an assertion. There is no par-
ticular reason to suppose that it is essential for the statement to
be an assertion about the objective world. And it is, in fact, easy
to nullify the objection completely. Instead of specifying the state-
ments involved in such a way that it is apparent whether they are
statements about appearances or objective fact, we can simply refer
to the statement that p. Once we are informed that this statement
is an assertion, rather than a command, question, or other speech-
act, we can immediately proceed to the conclusion that 'p' and 'It
is true that p' say precisely the same as each other. Similarly, our
intuitions are such that we take it to be obvious that the fact that
170 Chapter 7
'p' is an assertion means that 'p and it is not true that p' is thor-
oughly paradoxical. We do not stop to ask ourselves whether 'p' is
an appearance-statement or a statement concerning the objective
world: our sole concern is with the question of whether 'p' is an
assertion or some other speech-act. And this shows that the deep
relationship between assertion and holding something to be true
is not confined to the special case of assertions about matters of
objective fact.
Thus it seems that the only way forward for anyone who holds
that the Pyrrhonist's appearance-statements lack truth-values is to
claim that these statements are instances of some speech-act other
than assertion. But it is not enough simply to point to the theoret-
ical possibility of treating the Pyrrhonist's appearance-statements
as being non-assertoric speech-acts. If this is to provide us with a
workable explanation of how Sextus' Pyrrhonist can lead a life with-
out belief, we need to be able to specify the particular speech-act
involved. Yet it is clear that the Pyrrhonist's appearance-statements
cannot be construed as questions, commands, or any kind of per-
formative. Hence we are left with an extremely restricted range of
options.
Indeed the sole suggestion that has any prima facie plausibility is
Jonathan Barnes' proposal that we should interpret the Pyrrhonist's
appearance-statements along the lines ofWittgensteinian avowals. 13
Barnes presents the central idea behind this interpretation as fol-
lows:
Children cry when they are in pain; they thereby express their pain, but
they do not state that they are in pain (they state nothing at all). Adults,
when they are in pain, may utter the sentence '1 am in pain' (or some vulgar
equivalent): they thereby express their pain, but they do not (according to
Wittgenstein) state that they are in pain (they state nothing at all). The
Pyrrhonist of PH, when he is mentally affected, may utter the sentence
'The tower seems round': he thereby expresses his 1TalJo~, but he does not

I.
state that he is experiencing a certain 1TalJo~ (he does not state anything at
all).

Of course, the immediate problem with this suggestion is that

cries and moans are not part of a language. And that fact invites
the response that if they were parts of a language, then they would
constitute assertions. Thus the ability of a person's cries to express
• 3 J. Barnes, 'The Beliefs ofa Pyrrhonist' , Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological

Society, 28 (1982), 1-29 at 4-5· •• Ibid. 5·

 A Life without Beliefs? 171

that he is in pain without those cries constituting an assertion that he

is in pain does not, in itself, suffice to give any significant plausibility
to the supposition that our everyday first-person pain-statements or
the Pyrrhonist's appearance-statements could act as signs of pain or
as signs of the way the world affects particular individuals without
these statements being genuine assertions.
On the other hand, the uttering of 'I am in pain' is plainly a
linguistic performance of some kind. It follows that if Wittgenstein
is able to identify some aspect of the way this utterance is used
that suffices to convince us that it does not, despite its surface
form, constitute any kind of assertion but simply expresses the
speaker's pain, then we undoubtedly would have grounds for giving
serious consideration to the possibility that it would similarly be
a mistake to interpret the Pyrrhonist's appearance-statements as
assertions.
Why, then, does Wittgenstein maintain that it is incorrect to treat
'I am in pain' as an assertion that the speaker of those words is in
pain? According to Wittgenstein, sensation words are linked, when
used in the first person, with 'the primitive, the natural expressions
of the sensation and used in their place. A child has hurt himself
and he cries; and then adults talk to him and teach him exclamations
and, later, sentences. They teach the child new pain-behaviour."s
Now it seems appropriate to concede at once that if the uttering of
'I am in pain' is a direct substitute for such behaviour as crying and
holding the affected part of the body, then there would indeed be
a major difference between first-person pain-statements and real
assertions. However although it is not implausible to suppose that
statements like 'Ouch! That hurts!' simply replace more primi-
tive types of pain behaviour, this interpretation is already strained
when it is applied to the dispassionate statement 'I am in pain.'
Moreover when we attempt to interpret all the Pyrrhonist's varied
appearance-statements along these lines, it rapidly becomes appar-
ent that the crucial link with pre-linguistic behaviour breaks down
completely.
Consider the statement 'The tower seems round.' Barnes sug-
gests that we should interpret this as an avowal expressing the
Pyrrhonist's impression that there is a round tower before him.
However there is no such thing as the natural physical manifestation
., L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 2nd edn. (Oxford, 1958), sect.
244·
17 2 Chapter 7
of being mentally affected by an impression of a round tower. And
anyone who feels disposed to dispute this claim would be well ad-
vised to reflect on the embarrassment that would result from an
invitation to describe the difference between the supposed natural
physical manifestation of being mentally affected by an impression
of a round tower, and the natural physical manifestation of being
mentally affected by an impression of an octagonal tower. Conse-
quently the uttering of the statement 'The tower seems round' does
not supersede any specific pattern of physical behaviour; and it is
clear, therefore, that the statement fails to meet the requirements
for being a Wittgensteinian avowal. Moreover if so elementary an
appearance-statement as 'The tower seems round' cannot be inter-
preted as an avowal, then it seems obvious that hardly any of the
Pyrrhonean sceptic's appearance-statements will be open to such
an interpretation.
It is also worth noting that even the words 'I am in pain' can
enter into complex sentences in a way that seems incompatible
with the supposition that the statement 'I am in pain' normally
lacks a truth-value. Let us suppose, for example, that we encounter
a tennis player who seeks to explain his poor performance by saying
'I am serving poorly because I am in pain.' It would generally be
acknowledged that this statement could potentially provide us with
a genuine explanation of his lack of success. However it cannot
provide us with such an explanation unless it is a true statement;
and if a statement of the form 'p because q' is to be true, then
the sentence q must be true. Consequently the supposition that
'I am in pain' lacks a truth-value would commit us to the view
that 'I am serving poorly because 1 am in pain' fails to constitute
a genuine explanation of anything. Similarly, it seems that we can
readily envisage circumstances in which someone who is pretending
to have fully recovered from an injury could truthfully say 'That
doctor is aware that 1 am in pain despite my best efforts to convince
him otherwise.' Yet a statement of the form 'A is aware that p'
cannot be true unless it is true that p. Consequently it seems that
the most straightforward way of accommodating our strong sense
that the sentence just envisaged is one that could be truthfully
uttered in some circumstances requires us to repudiate the thesis
that utterances of 'I am in pain' lack truth-values.
Thus we are forced to conclude that the hypothesis that the
Pyrrhonist's appearance-statements should be interpreted as Witt-
 A Life without Beliefs? 173
gensteinian avowals is of no assistance in explaining how we could
legitimately construe those statements as instances of any non-
assertoric speech-act. Ordinary exclamations lack truth-values, and
they do seem to share many of the characteristics that Wittgenstein
ascribes to avowals. But even in the case of 'I am in pain', which is
Wittgenstein's favourite example of an utterance that does not have
the surface form of an exclamation but is nevertheless supposed to
function as a truth-valueless avowal, we have been able to uncover
substantial grounds for holding that utterances of that sentence
do possess truth-values. Moreover our examination of the multi-
farious appearance-statements made by the Pyrrhonist seemed to
reveal that scarcely any of these could plausibly be represented as
substituting for natural patterns of behaviour in the way that is
supposed to be characteristic of an avowal.
Once it is accepted, however, that it is not credible to deny that
the Pyrrhonist's appearance-statements are assertions, then the link
between asserting something and saying that it is true seems to
guarantee that those statements must have truth-values. It follows
that the truth-valueless thesis is incompatible with the supposition
that the Pyrrhonist's non-epistemic appearance-statements have
any meaning at all. Yet if these statements are merely nonsensical
gibberish, then it is obvious that the mature Pyrrhonist's actions
cannot be accounted for by supposing that he gives his assent to
such statements. Hence the truth-valueless thesis is ultimately of
no help in explaining the Pyrrhonist's alleged ability to act without
beliefs: the Pyrrhonist's non-epistemic appearance-statements are
used in a way that can be legitimate only if they do have truth-
values.
But we have already argued, in section 3 of this chapter, that
the truth-valueless thesis is essential to anyone attempting to de-
fend the view that the Pyrrhonist acts without having any beliefs.
And if that view can be defended neither with nor without the
aid of the truth-valueless thesis, then it cannot be defended at all.
Moreover that conclusion has to be taken in conjunction with our
earlier conclusion that Sextus himself does not have any tendency to
suppose that his non-epistemic appearance-statements lack truth-
values. It has become clear, therefore, that no attempt to explain
how the Pyrrhonist acts without beliefs can hope to succeed, and
that Burnyeat's novel version of this strategy is not, in any case,
one that Sextus would regard as applicable to the Pyrrhonist's
174 Chapter 7
actual situation. Thus it now seems time to switch our attention
to interpretations of Sextus' Pyrrhonism that do allow the mature
Pyrrhonist to have some beliefs.
 8
Pyrrhonism and Common Sense
I. An unlikely champion of ordinary life
I T seems that the view that the mature Pyrrhonist eschews all
belief inexorably leads to the conclusion that Sextus' Pyrrhonism
is deeply incoherent. But what happens if we attempt to ascribe
to Sextus some beliefs which he regards as rationally justified?
This approach would allow us to think of him as offering ratio-
nally compelling arguments in support of his scepticism, and those
beliefs would also be available to serve as explanations of the ma-
ture Pyrrhonist's actions. Thus the theoretical advantages are clear.
However the problems begin to press in upon us as soon as we try
to specify the range of topics about which Sextus has beliefs. No
matter how carefully we delimit those topics, we invariably seem
to find that the supposition that Sextus takes himself to have ratio-
nally justified beliefs about such matters cannot be reconciled with
the nature of his argumentation and his explicit comments about
the scope and purpose of his scepticism.
One popular interpretation which accepts that even the mature
Pyrrhonist has some beliefs that are supposed to be rationally jus-
tified makes the bold claim that the mature Pyrrhonist is entitled to
virtually all of the beliefs that might be possessed by someone who
refrains from philosophy and the more theoretical areas of science.
This interpretation has been defended by Michael Frede, while I

Jonathan Barnes' has suggested that Sextus' account of Pyrrhon-

ism contains elements from several levels of sceptical involvement
and is heavily influenced by this relatively sober form of scepti-
cism that merely demands suspension of belief on speculative and
, M. Frede, 'The Skeptic's Beliefs', in Frede, Essays in Ancient Philosophy (Ox-
ford, 1987), 179-200.
, J. Barnes, 'Ancient Skepticism and Causation', in M. Bumyeat (ed.), The Skep-
tical Tradition (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983), 149-203.
 Chapter 8
abstract topics. Moreover both Richard Watson J and Robert Fo-
gelin-l have chosen to present Sextus and Wittgenstein as sharing
the same concern to persuade people to reject metaphysics in favour
of common sense. However the most forthright exposition of this
interpretation to be found in English is contained in Philip Hallie's
'Polemical Introduction',5 which appears at the beginning of his
collection of excerpts from Sextus' writings.
Hallie is particularly concerned to combat the view that a true
sceptic is someone who lives in a state of philosophically induced
anaesthesia and indifference. And he attempts to undermine this
conception of scepticism by presenting the Greek sceptics as seek-
ing to live in an undisturbed fashion according to the institutions of
the people around them and the dictates of their own 'feelings, ex-
perience, and common sense'. 6 He invites us to consider a situation
where three men belonging to differing Christian denominations
are partaking of a meal together. 7 Hallie points out that when these
people are discussing their work, the weather, or the food on the
table before them, the conversation proceeds smoothly and no irre-
solvable disagreements arise. However if the topic of conversation
should change from a discussion of the taste and provenance of the
bread they are eating with their wine to a discussion of whether the
wafer used in the communion service is transubstantiated into the
flesh of Christ or is merely consubstantial with Christ's spiritual
substance, then unconvincing arguments and discord are inevitable.
Hallie claims that in our original situation the Pyrrhonist would not
think that doubt or suspension of judgement was in any way de-
sirable or justified. It is only when the topic leaves the realm of
everyday experience that the Pyrrhonist endeavours to maintain
his mental tranquillity by eschewing all beliefs about that particu-
lar subject. In Hallie's own words, the sceptic 'turns his back upon
the whole dispute ... and goes back to talking and acting like a
civilized, commonsensical man instead of a pedantic dogmatist'.8
Of course, the Greeks were not themselves preoccupied by dis-

, R. A. Watson, 'Sextus and Wittgenstein', Southern Journal of Philosophy, 7

(1969), 229-37·
4 R. J. Fogelin, 'Wittgenstein and Classical Skepticism', International PhiLosoph-

ical Quarterly, 21 (1981), 3-15.

, P. P. Hallie, 'Classical Scepticism-A Polemical Introduction', in Hallie (ed.),
Sextus EmpiriClls: SeLections from the Major Writings on Scepticism, Man, and God,
trans. S. G. Etheridge, 2nd edn., rev. D. R. Morrison (indianapolis, 1985), 3-28.
6 Ibid. 7. 7 Ibid. 7-8. • Ibid. 9.
 Pyrrhonism and Common Sense 177
putes over transubstantiation. However Hallie is on safe ground
when he maintains that the controversies between the various
schools of Greek philosophers yield many good examples of dis-
putes that have ceased to be responsive to our everyday standards
of evidence and confirmation. Thus we might point to Epicurus'
contention that all the objects of experience are compounded from
atoms and empty space, or to the Stoic claim that there are some
perceptual impressions that cannot have their origin in an object
other than the one that they represent as existing. Hallie's Pyrrhon-
ist, therefore, is someone who suspends judgement on the disputes
that arise in the areas of philosophy and speculative science but who
acknowledges that our ordinary beliefs about the world are perfectly
in order as they stand. Indeed, Hallie concludes his remarks with
the claim that 'you are a Sceptic-in the classical, Greek sense of
that word-in so far as you try to avoid fanaticism and endless
bickering by sharply distinguishing an arbitrary fiction that grabs
you by your imagination from a plain fact that grabs you by your
common sense'.9
The case that can be assembled in support of Hallie's interpre-
tation is, at first sight, fairly impressive. We find, for example, that
at PH I. 12 Sextus claims that 'the main basic principle of the
Sceptic system is that of opposing to every proposition an equal
proposition', and goes on to say that this principle is so funda-
mental 'because we believe that as a consequence of this we end
by ceasing to dogmatize (80YfLa'T{~ELJ)'. In addition, Sextus is in the
habit of referring to the sceptic's opponents as 01 80YfLaTLKo{(see e.g.
PH I. 20; 3. 2,13,280; M. 7. 1,314; 8. 158,300). Consequently
Sextus seems to be implying that the essence of Pyrrhonism lies
in eschewing 86YfLaTa. Yet he himself explicitly states that a person
dogmatizes only when he assents to a non-evident matter of inquiry
(see PH I. 16, 197, 198,202), and Sextus' examples of evident mat-
ters of inquiry include such matters as the existence of the city of
Athens (see M. 8. 145) and it being day-time rather than night-time
(see PH 2. 97). Hence it can appear to be obvious that Sextus re-
gards the mature Pyrrhonist as entitled to have a great many beliefs
about matters of everyday fact; apparently the Pyrrhonist's €7TOX~
need not extend beyond matters that are absolutely non-evident
and such philosophico-scientific tenets as the existence of the in-
telligible pores and an infinite void (see M. 8. 146).
• Ibid. 28.
 Chapter 8
I t is also noteworthy that Sextus regularly contrasts the things
that appear (TO. .patvoJ.L€va) with the external underlying objects or
Tel JKTO~ V7TOK€{J.L€Va (see e.g. PH I. 61, 113, 127). Not only does
he seem to assume without question that there are such entities-
'no one, I suppose, disputes that the underlying object has this or
that appearance' (PH I. 22)-but he also indicates that what is in
dispute, and hence subject to J7TOX~' is the real nature of the under-
lying object (~ .p6Gt~ TOU V7TOKHJ.L€VOV). This portentous wording can
be found at PH I. 59, 93, 1 17, and many other places; and it has
been interpreted by many people as a warning that the Pyrrhonist
should not be viewed as dissenting from, for example, our ordinary
judgements concerning the sweetness of honey. Rather the sugges-
tion would be that the Pyrrhonist is suspending judgement merely
on theories that claim to be able to explain the sweetness of honey
in terms of hidden entities that are not themselves sweet.
Additional evidence for Hallie's account of Pyrrhonism comes
from Sextus' attitude to the distinction between the commemora-
tive sign (TO 1J7T0J.LvTJGTtKOv GTJJ.L€tov) and the indicative sign (TO JVOH-
KTtKOV GTJJ.L€tov). The commemorative sign is explained by Sextus as
follows:
They [the dogmatic philosophers] term a sign 'commemorative' when,
being mentally associated with the thing signified, it by its clearness at
the time of its perception, though the thing signified remains non-evident,
suggests to us the thing associated with it, which is not clearly perceived
at the moment-as for instance in the case of fire and smoke. (PH 2. roo)

And he reports that the indicative sign, in contrast, is supposed

to be 'that which is not clearly associated with the thing signified,
but signifies that whereof it is a sign by its own particular nature
and constitution, just as, for instance, the bodily motions are signs
of the soul' (PH 2. 101). Now Sextus, as we might have expected,
shows scant respect for the indicative sign, and subjects it to fierce
criticism. But he is remarkably enthusiastic in his endorsement of
the commemorative version.
Sextus specifically states that the Pyrrhonist does not argue
against the existence of the commemorative sign (see PH 2. 102;
M. 8. 156). Indeed, the Pyrrhonist conforms to the practice of or-
dinary people and infers 'fire from smoke, and a previous wound
from a scar, and death from a previous puncture of the heart' (M. 8.
157). Moreover it is this adherence to the commemorative sign that
 Pyrrhonism and Common Sense 179
is supposed to provide the Pyrrhonist with a telling reply to those
who accuse him of subverting ordinary life: 'seeing that we affirm
the commemorative sign which ordinary folk employ, but abolish
the sign falsely imagined by the Dogmatists, one should rather say
that not only do we not attack ordinary life but we even act as its
advocates' (M. 8. 158).
For our present purposes, however, the importance of this en-
dorsement of the commemorative sign lies in Sextus' choice of
examples. We might be tempted to dismiss Sextus' examples on
the grounds that he is simply repeating examples used by dogmatic
philosophers to explain what they mean by TO I!7TOjLVT]OTLKOV oT]jL€iov.
I t is by no means obvious, then, that these examples are necessar-
ily ones that meet with Sextus' unreserved approval. Nevertheless
Sextus has every opportunity to dissociate himself from the claim
that smoke is a sign of fire, and he conspicuously fails to do so.
But if smoke does function for the Pyrrhonist as a sign of fire, then
it would seem to be essential that the Pyrrhonist's observations of
smoke would sometimes lead him to the belief that there is also an
as yet unobserved fire. Similarly, if it is true that the sceptic infers
from a scar to some previous wound, then how can this inference
fail to involve the sceptic in coming to have the belief that there
was once a wound at the point where the scar now exists? And
the conclusion that Sextus' examples of commemorative signs do
commit the mature Pyrrhonist to having a wide variety of beliefs
about the objective world would seem to be confirmed by Sextus'
claim that the Pyrrhonist is acting as an advocate of ordinary life.
For it is quite clear that ordinary men and women lead a life that is
replete with beliefs about matters of objective fact. Consequently
any genuine advocacy of ordinary life will involve the Pyrrhonist in
espousing the legitimacy of such beliefs.
Indeed, this latter point brings us neatly to the final significant
source of support for Hallie's interpretation of Pyrrhonism: the
suggestion that the Pyrrhonist is a champion of common sense and
ordinary life is not confined to Sextus' discussion of signs. At PH
2. 246, for instance, Sextus strongly implies that the Pyrrhonist
looks with favour on those people who simply concentrate on the
practicalities of life, and ignore the controversies that exist among
philosophers and scientists: 'For it suffices, I think, to live by expe-
rience and d8ogaoTw> in accordance with the common observances
and preconceptions [7TpoA7Jl/Ju,], suspending judgement concerning
180 Chapter 8
the statements derived from dogmatic over-elaboration and furthest
removed from the needs of ordinary life' (PH 2. 246, own trans.).
Moreover it will be remembered that the tranquillity and peace of
mind that constitutes the Pyrrhonist's goal is reported as coming
from the Pyrrhonist's suspension of judgement (see PH I. 25-30).
Now it is obviously implausible to suppose that Sextus would give
his approval to a way of life that fails to deliver this peace of mind.
Consequently it seems that we must conclude that both Pyrrhonism
and undogmatic engagement with everyday life succeed in yielding
tranquillity. But the tranquillity of the Pyrrhonist arises from his
suspension of belief. How, then, are we to explain the tranquillity
that accompanies pre-reflective participation in ordinary life?
If this peace of mind is the result of something other than a
suspension of belief equivalent to that maintained by the mature
Pyrrhonist, then we would be forced to accept that the Pyrrhon-
ist's chosen method for achieving tranquillity is not the only one
that is successful. Furthermore this alternative method is presum-
ably less demanding than the Pyrrhonean strategy. After all, there
are plenty of people leading lives untouched by theory and spec-
ulative thought, whereas there are very few mature Pyrrhonists.
Thus the Pyrrhonean path would emerge as a needlessly compli-
cated and demanding means of achieving an end that is readily at-
tainable through the simple expedient of immersing oneself in the
day-to-day routine of ordinary life. It would, therefore, be incom-
prehensible that Sextus should have been so concerned to promote
Pyrrhonism as an exemplary way of life.
But as it is essential to the coherence of Sextus' Pyrrhonism that
there should be a convincing explanation of his interest in promul-
gating the merits of Pyrrhonism as a means of achieving peace of
mind, we shall in fact be driven to reject the fatal supposition that
the tranquillity associated with ordinary life and the tranquillity
attained by the mature Pyrrhonist have different sources. Thus we
are forced to accept that the source of this tranquillity is the same
in both cases.
However it is universally agreed that the Pyrrhonist's tranquil-
lity is supposed to derive from his suspension of belief. The dif-
ficulty here is simply one of discovering the extent of the topics on
which the mature Pyrrhonist suspends judgement. But we have now
persuaded ourselves that the tranquillity of the unreflective ordi-
nary person stems from a precisely equivalent suspension of belief.
 Pyrrhonism and Common Sense
Moreover we are well aware of the extent of the suspension of belief
that can plausibly be ascribed to ordinary people. Such people will
obviously have countless beliefs about the physical world and other
people, as well as beliefs about psychological phenomena. Indeed,
their suspension of belief cannot possibly be presented as extending
beyond the speculations of philosophers and scientists. I t follows
that if Sextus is truly endorsing unreflective participation in ordi-
nary life, then the Pyrrhonist's final suspension of belief must also
be viewed as confined to philosophico-scientific tenets.
Thus it is obvious that there is no difficulty in assembling a
prima facie case in support of Hallie's interpretation of Pyrrhonism.
Nevertheless that case is incapable of surviving a more detailed
examination.

2. Some initial objections

Some of the considerations adduced in favour of Hallie's interpre-

tation patently ignore the points emphasized in our earlier outline
of Sextus' Pyrrhonism. I t is, for example, untenable to suppose that
Sextus' two accounts of the evident/non-evident distinction are of
any assistance in determining the scope of his lTTOX~. As we have
already argued, the supposition that Sextus endorses the examples
given in those accounts merely leads to the conclusion that the ma-
ture Pyrrhonist suspends belief on both evident and non-evident
matters of inquiry. 10
Furthermore Sextus' discussion of the commemorative sign is
intimately linked to his discussion of the evident/non-evident dis-
tinction. Indeed, the main function of the latter discussion is to
prepare the ground for Sextus' explanation of the difference be-
tween a commemorative sign and an indicative sign. Once Sextus
has finished his exposition of the evident/non-evident distinction,
he turns to the question of how we are supposed to apprehend the
matters that fall into the various categories mentioned by him. And
it emerges that matters that are temporarily non-evident are appre-
hended with the aid of commemorative signs and matters that are
naturally non-evident are apprehended with the aid of indicative
signs. The following passage occurs in Against The Dogmatists, but
similar remarks are also found in the Outlines at PH 2. 99:
'" See Chapter 6, sect. z.
182 Chapter 8
Since, then, there are four distinct classes of objects ... we assert that not
every distinct class, but some of them, require a sign. For obviously neither
the absolutely non-evident nor the manifest things admit of a sign ... But
things naturally non-evident, and things temporarily so, have need of the
kind of observation effected by sign-the temporarily non-evident because,
in certain circumstances, they are removed from our clear perception, and
the naturally non-evident because they are for ever non-apparent. As,
then, there are two distinct classes of things which require sign, sign also
has revealed itself as twofold-the 'commemorative', which appears chiefly
of use in the case of things temporarily non-evident, and the 'indicative',
which is deemed proper for adoption in the case of things naturally non-
evident. (M.8. 148-51)

Hence it seems clear that we cannot legitimately maintain that

Sextus' examples of commemorative signs tell us anything about his
own views. A commemorative sign is essentially some pre-evident
matter that serves to make manifest something that is, in itself,
occasionally non-evident. At PH 2. 97, however, Sextus gives the
fact that it is day-time as an example of a matter of inquiry that
is pre-evident. Yet we have established that the context of this
example is such that we cannot hold that Sextus regards it as a
genuine example of something pre-evident. Why, then, should we
feel entitled to assert that at PH 2. 100 Sextus happens to provide
us with an example that does exemplify his own views on what
is authentically pre-evident? PH 2. 97 is intended to assist us in
grasping the role played by the various types of sign that Sextus
is about to bring to our attention. Consequently it seems most
unlikely that Sextus would have begun at this point with examples
that are supposed to represent the views of the dogmatists but
not the views of Sextus himself, and then have switched at PH 2.
100, without making any comment about the change, to examples
that are intended to represent his own opinions on the denotation
of the concept of the pre-evident. Similarly, we have seen that
Sextus' examples at M. 8. 144-7 must be regarded as failing to
carry his personal endorsement. Thus it seems equally unlikely that
the examples at M. 8. 152-5 represent a sudden and unannounced
switch to examples that are intended to be ones that Sextus accepts
himself.
Nor, indeed, is there any need to revise this conclusion in order to
accommodate Sextus' comments at M. 8. 157 about the Pyrrhon-
ist's own inferential practice. Sextus states here that the Pyrrhonist
 Pyrrhonism and Common Sense
conforms to the practice of ordinary people and makes use of the
commemorative sign himself. Moreover Sextus gives examples of
the signs involved: 'but as it is, we ourselves also are of the same
mind and infer fire from smoke, and a previous wound from a scar,
and death from a previous puncture of the heart, and oil from a
previous fillet'. Thus it is plain that we cannot dismiss these lat-
ter examples as mere illustrations of the dogmatists' employment
of the expression tJ7TOP.VTJC1TLKOV C1TJP.Eiov: Sextus is undeniably de-
scribing the inferences drawn by the Pyrrhonist rather than the
inferences drawn by his dogmatic opponents. However it is also
clear that claims about the presence of smoke, punctured hearts,
and scars are no more epistemologically secure than claims about
the existence of the city of Athens, or the fact that it is day-time
rather than night-time. Yet Sextus cites claims about these two
topics as examples of claims about matters the dogmatists regard
as paradigmatically pre-evident. It follows that if Sextus does ac-
cept that claims about the presence of smoke, scars, and punctured
hearts are claims about evident matters of inquiry, then he would
not be able to avoid accepting that the dogmatists' paradigms of
evident matters of inquiry are good examples of matters he too
regards as evident. Unfortunately, Sextus' discussion of the crite-
rion of truth reveals that the Pyrrhonist suspends belief on matters
the dogmatists regard as paradigmatically evident. Thus the at-
tempt to put forward the examples at M. 8. 157 as examples of
sign-inferences engaged in by Sextus himself inevitably leads to
the disastrous conclusion that the mature Pyrrhonist suspends be-
lief on both evident and non-evident matters. But that conclusion
cannot be correct; hence we are forced to reject the supposition that
Sextus does wholeheartedly endorse the examples at M. 8. 157.
Of course this outcome does raise the question of how Sextus'
remarks at M. 8. 157 are to be interpreted. We have succeeded in
showing that these remarks cannot be taken at face value, but we still
seem to be a long way from being able to offer a positive account of
their meaning. Nevertheless we are by now extremely familiar with
the phenomenon of the surface form of Sextus' remarks disguising
their true significance, and we are aware that Sextus often uses
statements with the form of statements about matters of objective
fact even when he is actually describing the way things appear to
him. 11 Thus it seems sensible to attempt to reinterpret M. 8. 157 as
" See Chapter 6, sect. 6.
 Chapter 8
a disguised claim about the Pyrrhonist's response to appearances.
We accordingly arrive at a picture of the Pyrrhonist eschewing the
inference from the alleged fact that there is some smoke to the
conclusion that there is a fire, and contenting himself instead with
an inference from the fact that it appears to him that there is some
smoke to the conclusion that further investigation would lead to it
appearing to him that there is a fire.
Moreover this interpretation satisfactorily reconciles M. 8. 157
with Sextus' account of the implications of the Pyrrhonist's attack
on the criterion of truth. As we have already stressed, Sextus in-
sists that this attack compels us to suspend judgement on many
matters the dogmatists regard as evident matters of inquiry. How-
ever the dogmatists hold that claims about appearances and claims
about matters of objective fact can be claims about evident matters
of inquiry. It follows that if the Pyrrhonist holds that only claims
about appearances are ever evidently true, then he would be able to
suspend belief on matters the dogmatists regard as evident with-
out there being any need for him to suspend belief on matters he
also views as evident. Obviously, however, the supposition that the
Pyrrhonist regards it as evident that he is confronted by smoke or a
punctured heart would totally undermine that defence of the claim
that the Pyrrhonist's l7TOX~ does not extend to matters he takes to
be evident: indeed, it is precisely this point that makes it impos-
sible for us to accept that Sextus genuinely treats smoke as a sign
of fire, or a punctured heart as a sign of impending death. But the
supposition that the Pyrrhonist regards it as evident that it appears
to him that there is some smoke or a punctured heart poses no such
problems.
Thus it is clear that if substantial support for Hallie's interpre-
tation of Pyrrhonism is to be forthcoming from any source, then
it will have to come from Sextus' supposed endorsement of ordi-
nary life, or his frequent affirmations that the Pyrrhonist's €7TOX~ is
directed towards claims about the real nature of things. However
an examination of those affirmations in their full context seems
to reveal that they actually provide us with powerful grounds for
rejecting Hallie's interpretation.
It is, of course, true that we sometimes distinguish between the
real properties of an object and the real nature of the object. Thus
a person may sincerely assert 'The fabric of this coat is really a
very dark blue' even though he also holds that the real nature of
 Pyrrhonism and Common Sense
physical objects is such that they have no colour. Moreover we
would normally accept that he is not contradicting himself here.
Consequently Sextus' decision to say that the sceptical tropes lead
to the Pyrrhonist suspending belief on claims about the real nature
of things does initially suggest that the mature Pyrrhonist may
reasonably retain some beliefs about everyday matters of objective
fact. Nevertheless this suggestion is overturned by other features
of Sextus' discussion.
I f we wish to discover what someone means by the claim that
the real nature of x is such that it does not have property P, then
it is important to be aware of what the person making the claim
is taking for granted. Consider a situation where A is entitled to
assume that all the members of his audience are prepared to concede
that it is objectively true that x has property P. In that situation
A's claim about the real nature of x amounts to the claim that a
comprehensively explanatory account of the universe would not
allocate an explanatory role to x's possession of property P. But if
A's audience are prepared to concede only that x appears to have
property P, then we have to attach a very different force to the
claim that the real nature of x is such that it does not have property
P. In this latter situation the claim in question would usually be
understood as the claim that it is not true that x has the property
P. Thus the actual significance of Sextus' talk of the Pyrrhonist
suspending belief on claims about the real nature of things depends
entirely on what Sextus has to say about the claims to which the
Pyrrhonist does give his assent.
In his exposition of Aenesidemus' ten tropes, however, Sextus
invariably contrasts our need to suspend belief about the real nature
of things with our ability to state how things appear to us. At PH
I. 93, for instance, Sextus says, 'Consequently we are unable to
state what is the real nature of each of these things, although it is
possible to state what each thing at the moment appears to be [o1Toiov
cpa{vETaL €KaaTOTE 8uvaTov El1TEiv]'; and similar pronouncements can
be found at PH I. 78, 87, and 123. Moreover if we look at the
stock Pyrrhonean example of honey and its sweetness, we discover
that this too is used to emphasize that what the mature Pyrrhonist
does accept is the claim that honey appears sweet. Thus Diogenes
Laertius reports Pyrrho's pupil, Timon, as saying, 'I do not lay it
down that honey is sweet, but I admit that it appears to be so' (D.L.
9. 105)· While Sextus states, 'For instance honey appears sweet to
186 Chapter 8
us. And this we admit because this sweetness is a part of our sensory
experience. But whether it is really sweet is open to question; for
this is not what appears but something which we say about that
which appears' (PH I. 20, own trans.).
Basically, then, Sextus' claim that the Pyrrhonist suspends be-
lief on the real nature of the things is made in a context where all
that is being taken for granted is the fact that various objects ap-
pear to have certain specifiable properties. It follows that Sextus'
claim is most naturally read as asserting that the mature Pyrrhonist
suspends belief on all claims about how things stand objectively.
If Sextus had wished to make it clear that the mature Pyrrhonist
suspends belief only on philosophico-scientific judgements about
the ultimate constituents of reality, then he would have needed to
contrast the Pyrrhonist's rejection of claims about the real nature
of things with his acceptance of our everyday claims about how
things are. But the contrast he actually draws is with the Pyrrhon-
ist's acceptance of claims about how things appear. Consequently
it is highly implausible to suppose that Sextus regards the mature
Pyrrhonist as having rationally justified beliefs about matters of
objective fact.
Moreover it is worth noting that the assumption that we can
always distinguish between the objective properties of a thing and
the real nature of that thing does not allow for the way we treat
many evaluative judgements. If someone asserts, for example, that
glory is objectively valuable in its own right, and someone else
asserts that the real nature of glory is such that it is not valuable,
then we are not in a position to avoid the conclusion that these two
claims contradict one another. Hence it is impossible to suspend
belief on the claim that the real nature of glory is such that it
is not valuable without simultaneously suspending belief on the
claim that glory is objectively valuable in its own right. However
the mature Pyrrhonist does suspend belief on some claim about the
intrinsic value of glory (see PH I. 158), so it is clear that his £'TTOX~
in this area cannot leave him with any belief more substantial than
the belief that glory appears valuable. Nevertheless Sextus again
chooses to present this as an instance of the Pyrrhonist suspending
belief on the real nature or rpVULS of things (see PH I. 163). It follows
that if Sextus is consistent in his choice of terminology, then all of
his other references to the Pyrrhonist's €7TOX~ concerning the real
nature of things will similarly indicate that the mature Pyrrhonist is
 Pyrrhonism and Common Sense
supposed to confine himself exclusively to beliefs about how things
appear.
So far, then, the alleged evidence for Hallie's interpretation of
Pyrrhonism has proved to be extremely flimsy. Much importance,
however, has often been attached to Sextus' comments on the
Pyrrhonist's attitude towards ordinary life, and it is to those com-
ments that we now turn.
A typical passage of the kind that seems to speak in favour of
Hallie's interpretation of Pyrrhonism can be found at PH I. 226.
Sextus is discussing the differences between the Academic and
Pyrrhonean schools, and he makes the following observation:
the Academicians do not describe a thing as good or evil in the way we do;
for they do so with the conviction that it is more probable that what they
call good is really good rather than the opposite, and so too in the case of
evil, whereas when we describe a thing as good or evil we do not add it
as our opinion that what we assert is probable, but simply conform to life
d8ogaa'Tw, that we may not be precluded from activity.
But people living an everyday life have innumerable beliefs about
matters of objective fact. It follows that if the Pyrrhonist has a
wholehearted commitment to ordinary life or {3[o<;, then he will also
have beliefs about such matters. Is it certain, however, that the ma-
ture Pyrrhonist's commitment to ordinary life is not accompanied
by any significant reservations?
Sextus tells us that the Pyrrhonist conforms to ordinary life. Yet
he is also careful to augment the verb 'conform' (€7TO/-Lat) with the
adverb a8o~ciaTW'i. What, then, is the force of that modifier? The
adverb in question is clearly formed by compounding the prefix a-,
which adds a negative force, with the word 86~a. However the issue
of how to translate S6~a is not a straightforward one. The Stoics
seem to have used this word to refer exclusively to beliefs that failed
to qualify as instances of knowledge; whereas Sextus' account of the
role played by true and attested 86~at in Epicurean doctrine suggests
that Epicurean philosophers were sometimes prepared to describe
even a true and well-grounded belief as a S6~a (see M. 7. 210-16).
If Sextus also embraces the latter pattern of usage, it would
be appropriate to translate a8o~cia'Tw<; as 'without belief'; and we
would have to conclude that Sextus is explicitly warning us that
the Pyrrhonist's commitment to ordinary life does not extend to
endorsing the beliefs that are normally a part of such a way of life.
188 Chapter 8
Moreover this interpretation of the significance of Sextus' decision
to describe the Pyrrhonean sceptic as conforming d8ogauTwS' to or-
dinary life coheres particularly well with the way Sextus employs
d8ogauTwS' at PH 3. 2. He says there that the Pyrrhonist follows
ordinary practice and affirms d8ogauTwS' 'that Gods exist' and rev-
erences them. However the Pyrrhonist's outward piety is not a
product of the religious beliefs that are usually regarded as mak-
ing such piety intelligible because Sextus explicitly claims at M.
9. 19 1 that the sceptic suspends judgement on the existence of a
divine being. Consequently it seems very clear that Sextus' use of
d8ogauTwS' at PH 3. 2 is intended to stress that he is describing a
situation where the Pyrrhonist acts in a certain way even though ~e
lacks the beliefs that normally underpin the actions at issue. "
On the other hand, Sextus does tend to be influenced more by
Stoic philosophical usage than by Epicurean usage. Thus we might
be inclined to translate d8ogaaTwS' as 'without false or ungrounded
beliefs'; and this would mean that if we took the view that the
Pyrrhonist accepts that most common-sense beliefs are known to
be true, then the qualification that he conforms to ordinary life
ci8ogauTwS' would not prevent us from interpreting him as having a
belief-set that is similar to that of an ordinary person. However the
supposition that the Pyrrhonist accepts that most common-sense
beliefs are known to be true is nothing less than a repackaged version
of the very thesis that constitutes the heart of Hallie's account of
Pyrrhonism. It is obvious, accordingly, that the attempt to use PH
I. 226, or any other passage where the Pyrrhonist is described
as conforming d8ogauTwS' to ordinary life, to support that account
would be blatantly circular.
The dangers of blithely assuming that the Pyrrhonist's commit-
ment to ordinary life is an unrestricted commitment are emphasized
by the fact that Sextus is sometimes openly critical of {3{oS' and its
adherents. As we have just noted, Sextus maintains at M. 9. 191
that the sceptic suspends judgement on the existence of a divine
being. However not only does Sextus talk at PH 3. 2 of the ordi-
nary practice of affirming that gods exist, he specifically states at M.
9. 50 that ordinary people believe that a divine being exists. Thus
we have a clear instance of a difference between the belief-stock
of a typical participant in ordinary life and the belief-stock of the
mature Pyrrhonist. The ordinary person believes in the existence
of a divine being; but Sextus' Pyrrhonist suspends judgement.
 Pyrrhonism and Common Sense
However the main illustration of Sextus' lack of enthusiasm for
ordinary life in its unreconstructed form can be found at PH I.
165. Sextus is expounding Agrippa's five tropes, and he says that
the trope 'based on discrepancy leads us to find that with regard
to the object presented there has arisen both amongst ordinary
people [BEep] and amongst the philosophers an interminable conflict
because of which we are unable either to choose a thing or reject
it, and so fall back on suspension'. Now the chief merit of the
Pyrrhonean way is supposed to be its ability to replace the worries
and anxieties of intellectual perplexity with a tranquillity that stems
from suspension of belief. It is clear, therefore, that Sextus cannot
be seen as wholeheartedly endorsing ordinary life and the beliefs
of ordinary people. For PH I. 165 claims that endless controversy
and conflict can be found even amongst ordinary people. Hence
everyday life will be beset by just the sort of intellectual worries
that the Pyrrhonist regards as the cause of unwelcome disquiet and
tension. But the Pyrrhonist's cure for this disquiet is, of course,
suspension of belief. It follows that the Pyrrhonist will endeavour
to induce suspension of belief on all the issues that are generating
these conflicts and controversies. Thus he will be aiming to suspend
belief in areas where ordinary people permit themselves beliefs and
opinions. Consequently it seems obvious that Pyrrhonean brox~ is
intended to amount to something much more radical than a mere
suspension of judgement on the pronouncements of philosophers
and scientists.
Nevertheless Barnes has claimed that Sextus' occasional criti-
cisms of the views of ordinary people do not necessarily indicate
that the Pyrrhonist has any objection to the beliefs that lie at the
core of everyday life. 12 Barnes reminds us that lay people sometimes
venture opinions on topics that engage the attention of savants and
professional thinkers. Hence anyone who suspends judgement on
all the li6Yl-'a-ra enunciated by philosophers and scientists will in-
evitably find himself suspending judgement on some of the claims
made by some ordinary people. And Barnes holds that this over-
lap between the concerns of the lay person and more speculative
thinkers is particularly prevalent in the areas of religion and moral-
ity.'3 But he maintains that the difficulties that arise in these areas

" J. Barnes, 'The Beliefs of a Pyrrhonist', Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological

Society, 28 (1982), 1-29 at 12.
'J Ibid. 27 n. 86.
 Chapter 8
do nothing to show that the Pyrrhonist takes up a uniformly un-
friendly stance towards {3{os.
Unfortunately this ingenious attempt to reconcile Sextus' crit-
icisms of {3{os with the supposition that the Pyrrhonist is deeply
committed to the beliefs that underpin everyday life threatens to
leave us with a very unclear picture of the implications of this
supposed commitment. The Pyrrhonist, we are told, endorses the
beliefs that underpin everyday life. However Barnes subsequently
admits that the Pyrrhonist's lTr0XT] seems to extend to all claims
involving moral concepts. Yet the widespread existence of beliefs
on issues of morality would normally be regarded as a fundamental
feature of everyday life. If the Pyrrhonist's commitment to {3{os does
not suffice to insulate any moral beliefs from his lTr0XT], then we can-
not be sure that this commitment serves to exclude any particular
category of beliefs from his lTr0X~. Moreover Barnes' ingenuity is
perhaps rather wasted here. Diogenes Laertius' presentation of the
trope based on disagreement is extremely forthright, and appears
to set the matter in a clear light: 'The mode arising from disagree-
ment proves, with regard to any inquiry whether in philosophy or
in everyday life, that it is full of the utmost contentiousness and
confusion' (D.L. 9. 88).
On the other hand, there is one passage in Sextus' writings which
seems to represent the Pyrrhonist as embracing ordinary life and
which fails to qualify that commitment as d8o~cfaTws. We have al-
ready noted that at M. 8. 158 Sextus talks of the Pyrrhonean sceptic
acting as the advocate of ordinary life, and it might be thought that
this comment deserves to be given particular weight because Sextus
does not assert that ordinary life must be followed without opin-
ions in order to secure the sceptic's support. However Sextus does
immediately proceed to qualify the sceptic's advocacy of ordinary
life in another important way. According to Sextus: 'not only do we
not attack ordinary life but we even act as its advocates inasmuch
as we refute by means of natural science the Dogmatists who have
risen up against the common judgement and declared that they
discern by means of signs things naturally non-evident'. We can
see, therefore, that Sextus is himself at pains to point out that the
Pyrrhonist's advocacy of ordinary life does not extend beyond his
attacks on the indicative signs employed by dogmatists to license
claims about matters that they themselves accept as being natu-
rally non-evident. Hence Sextus is simply suggesting that ordinary
 Pyrrhonism and Common Sense 19 1

people are not prepared to accept that we can attain to knowledge

or justified belief about matters that are naturally non-evident,
and that this stance is capable of deriving useful support from the
Pyrrhonist's own onslaught on the pretensions of the dogmatists.
However it is clear that the supposition that the Pyrrhonist and
ordinary people share similar suspicions about the legitimacy of
indicative signs does not compel us to accept that the Pyrrhonist
and ordinary people share the same attitudes towards beliefs about
matters of objective fact.
Sextus' assertion that the Pyrrhonist acts as an 'advocate' of ordi-
nary life is accordingly incapable of providing us with any grounds
for supposing that the mature Pyrrhonist allows himself beliefs
about matters of objective fact. Nevertheless M. 8. 158 does include
another description of the Pyrrhonist's attitude towards ordinary
life: Sextus claims that the Pyrrhonean sceptic does not 'attack
ordinary life'. Thus it might be suggested that we need look no
further for a vindication of Hallie's interpretation. We have already
emphasized that ordinary life is thoroughly permeated with beliefs
about matters of objective fact. Consequently anyone who wishes
to maintain that the mature Pyrrhonist does not accept that beliefs
about such matters are rationally justified must be able to explain
how the Pyrrhonist could suppose that his attack on the legitimacy
of those beliefs does not amount to an attack on ordinary life itself.
And it is quite understandable that a supporter of Hallie's interpre-
tation might be confident that this particular challenge is unlikely
to be met successfully.
However it is significant that M. 8. 158 seems to draw a sharp
distinction between the Pyrrhonist's 'advocacy' of ordinary life and
the fact that the Pyrrhonist does not attack ordinary life. If it is
true that the Pyrrhonist combines the lack of enthusiasm shown
by ordinary people for the indicative sign with their readiness to
make claims about matters of objective fact, then it is difficult to
see how he can be regarded as anything less than an unreserved
advocate of ordinary life. Yet Sextus, as we have just noted, is
careful to make it clear that he does not wish to suggest that the
Pyrrhonist's 'advocacy' of ordinary life extends beyond providing
arguments against the dogmatists' claims to apprehend matters that
are naturally non-evident.
Thus the problem is obvious. If the mature Pyrrhonist has ex-
actly the same views as the ordinary person about what is and
19 2 Chapter 8
what is not capableEEf mg apprehended, then the Pyrrhonist's
overall position will e indistinguishable from that held by the or-
dinary person. Hen e the massive amounts of argumentation the
Pyrrhonist deploys in support of his scepticism would also con-
stitute a sustained and powerful defence of everything that enters
into ordinary life. In effect, therefore, we would be committed to
the conclusion that Pyrrhonism is nothing more or less than an
attempt to show that philosophically motivated criticisms of the
beliefs held by ordinary people are either incoherent or unjustified.
Unfortunately, M. 8. 158 reveals that the Pyrrhonist's 'advocacy' of
ordinary life falls considerably short of this level of wholehearted
enthusiasm and support.
Consequently serious consideration must be given to the pro-
posal that we should refrain from supposing that the fact that the
Pyrrhonist does not attack ordinary life means that he accepts the
legitimacy of common-sense beliefs about matters of objective fact.
Such a proposal cannot be dismissed as a dubious expedient that
is motivated solely by the desire to avoid admitting that Hallie's
account of Pyrrhonism is correct. We are, in fact, compelled to pos-
tulate the existence of a difference, between not attacking ordinary
life and accepting the legitimacy of the beliefs that are a part of
ordinary life, by the need to render intelligible Sextus' manifest
unwillingness to present the Pyrrhonist as an out-and-out advocate
of ordinary life.
Of course, we are still confronted by the need to show that it is
not completely impossible to reconcile a strident campaign against
the beliefs about matters of objective fact that are found in every-
day life with the claim that the Pyrrhonist does not attack ordinary
life. However the answer to this conundrum may lie in Sextus'
account of the Pyrrhonist's attitude towards claims that a divine
being exists. As we have already pointed out, Sextus insists that the
mature Pyrrhonist suspends belief on all claims about the existence
of a divine being. Nevertheless he also maintains that the mature
Pyrrhonist participates in religious worship and ceremonies (see
PH 3. 2; M. 9. 49). Suppose, then, that someone were to allege
that the Pyrrhonist is attempting to bring about the destruction of
the religious life. It is fairly clear that Sextus would reply that it is
a mistake to suppose that the Pyrrhonist attacks religion. And he
would back this response by appealing to the fact that the Pyrrhon-
ist, acting 'in conformity with his ancestral customs and the laws ...
 Pyrrhonism and Common Sense 193
declares that the Gods exist, and performs everything which con-
tributes to their worship and veneration' (M. 9. 49).
Now this reply is likely to strike us as deeply unsatisfactory. If the
Pyrrhonist does not have the belief that a divine being exists, then
his participation in religious worship would seem to be little more
than a piece of hypocrisy and dissimulation. Nevertheless Sextus
is apparently not prepared to acknowledge the existence of this
deeper disquiet. It is enough for Sextus that the Pyrrhonist acts in
a way that is virtually indistinguishable from the way in which a
religious believer acts. The fact that the Pyrrhonist lacks the beliefs
that are normally held to motivate the religious believer to act in
such a manner is set aside as irrelevant. Hence we must not allow
ourselves to be misled by the Pyrrhonist's protestations that he does
not seek to undermine religious life. Sextus' discussion indicates
that these reassuring statements really amount to nothing more
than the claim that the Pyrrhonist can be relied upon, in the right
cultural setting, to perform the characteristic actions associated
with religious believers.
But if it is true that the Pyrrhonist's assertion that he does not
attack the religious life must be interpreted in this anaemic way, then
it is plausible to suppose that Sextus' assertion that the Pyrrhonist
does not attack ordinary life should be interpreted in a similar
fashion. Consequently we are no longer compelled to see M. 8.
158 as going beyond the claim that the Pyrrhonist's own way of
life may have an outward form that closely resembles the life led
by the ordinary person. We have, therefore, succeeded in showing
that Sextus' apparent endorsement of ordinary life at M. 8. 158
does not provide Hallie's interpretation of Pyrrhonism with the
support it requires. Moreover M. 8. 158 is the only passage where
the Pyrrhonist's conformity to ordinary life is not qualified by the
word d8ogauTwS'. Thus it is now clear that none of the passages in
which the Pyrrhonist is described as embracing f3{os is of any use
at all to a defender of Hallie's account of Pyrrhonism; and that, in
turn, means that we are forced to conclude that the points usually
cited on behalf of that account fail to give us any genuine grounds
for accepting it as correct.
194 Chapter 8

J. r;'honi,m" <ejection of ou, ev«yday belief,

AlthougH it is important to show that Hallie's interpretation of

Pyrrhonism lacks textual support, a decisive refutation of his inter-
pretation needs to go further. It is necessary, in fact, to establish that
there are powerful positive grounds for rejecting Hallie's account,
and the following discussions attempt to discharge this task. Some
of them concentrate on Sextus' own assessment of his Pyrrhonean
scepticism, while other arguments simply seek to draw out the im-
plications of the arguments employed by Sextus. Of course, if we
hold that Sextus had a clear understanding of the consequences
of his chosen philosophical position, then we shall also view these
latter discussions as helping us to discover how Sextus himself in-
terpreted his Pyrrhonism. Nevertheless the principal purpose of
this second group of discussions is to demonstrate that no coher-
ent account of Sextus' Pyrrhonism can be constructed around the
supposition that the mature Pyrrhonist takes himself to have ratio-
nally justified beliefs about everyday matters of objective fact. And
the evidence about to be presented seems to make that conclusion
unavoidable.

(a) The prevalence of the objection that the Pyrrhonist cannot live his
scepticism
One immediate problem for Hallie's interpretation arises from the
point that the argument that the Pyrrhonist cannot live his scep-
ticism is not a modern invention. We saw in Chapter 1 that this
type of argument goes back at least as far as Aristotle; and it was, as
we have already noted, one of the main criticisms directed against
the philosophical views expounded by Arcesilaus. '4 Moreover even
if one has some residual reservations about the claim that Sex-
tus' Pyrrhonean scepticism is essentially a revival of Arcesilaus'
philosophical stance, it is undeniable that Sextus himself explicitly
acknowledges that Arcesilaus' views are very similar to those held
by the Pyrrhonist:
However Arcesilaus, who was, as we were saying, the head and founder of
the Middle Academy, definitely seems to me to share in the Pyrrhonean
way of thinking, so that his mode of life and ours are all but one. For he
is not found making declarations about the substantial existence or non-
'. See Chapter 3, sect. 2.
 Pyrrhonism and Common Sense 195
existence of anything, nor does he prefer any particular thing to anything
else in respect of its trustworthiness or untrustworthiness, but he suspends
judgement on all things. (PH I. 232, own trans.)

Consequently the reasoning that purports to establish that the €7TOX~

recommended by Arcesilaus would make voluntary action impos-
sible should also suffice to call into question the coherence of the
Pyrrhonist's suspension of belief. Furthermore it is clear that the
Pyrrhonist's contemporary philosophical opponents were not at all
reluctant to exploit the potential here.
Thus we find, for example, that Sextus explicitly presents the
Pyrrhonist's allegiance to the commemorative sign as answering
the charge that the Pyrrhonist 'is turning life upside down' (M.
8. 157). And at M. 1 I. 162 Sextus refers to those 'who fancy that
he [the Pyrrhonist] is confined to a state of inactivity or of in-
consistency'. Nor is it implausible to suppose that Sextus has this
criticism specifically in view when he is discussing the Pyrrhonist's
standard of action, and asserts: 'Adhering, then, to appearances we
live in accordance with the normal rules of life, aoogaaTw"" seeing
that we cannot remain wholly inactive' (PH I. 23). Similarly, Dio-
genes Laertius reports that 'the dogmatic philosophers maintain
that the Sceptics do away with life itself, in that they reject all that
life consists in' (D.L. 9. 104).
If we accept Hallie's interpretation of Pyrrhonism, however, then
the claim that the Pyrrhonist's suspension of belief would prevent
him from acting is totally absurd. Hallie allows that the mature
Pyrrhonist can reasonably believe that he is feeling hungry and that
there is food on the table before him. What more is necessary for the
Pyrrhonist to perform the action of eating that food? And this point
is perfectly general. If the Pyrrhonist's €7TOX~ applies only to the
theories put forward by philosophers and scientists, then the mature
Pyrrhonist will retain a mass of everyday beliefs that will amply suf-
fice to account for a huge range of actions. Consequently Hallie's
account commits its adherents to the conclusion that anyone whu
had even a passing familiarity with the doctrines of the Pyrrhonean
school should have immediately recognized that the charge that the
Pyrrhonist cannot live his scepticism is utterly spurious.
Unfortunately, this recognition does not appear to have been
forthcoming. Of course it does sometimes happen that a philoso-
pher's opinions are widely misunderstood by his contemporaries,
 Chapter 8
and that this misunderstanding becomes the received interpretation
of his philosophical position. Furthermore such misunderstand-
ings are occasionally nurtured lovingly by people who are engaged
in nothing less than deliberate defamation. In this case, however,
we are confronted by a misunderstanding that endured for more
than four hundred years despite the fact that advocates of the two
philosophical traditions misrepresented in this way were actively
teaching and writing throughout the entire period in question.
How, then, can we explain the fact that the arguments brought
forward to show that the broX~ of the Academics would preclude
all voluntary action are still being used, after nearly five centuries
of intense philosophical controversy, to attack the €7TOX~ espoused
by the Pyrrhonist? Why are the Pyrrhonist's opponents persisting
with an objection that can be disposed of so easily? It is hardly to
be imagined that such formidable dialecticians as Arcesilaus and
Carneades would have been anything less than scathingly dismis-
sive of so inept a criticism of their own views. Consequently it
would surely have been foolhardy in the extreme to have dredged
up the very same broken-backed criticism to oppose the renewed
advocacy of €7TOX~ by the Pyrrhonean sceptics. It would seem to
follow that Hallie's interpretation of Pyrrhonism must be inade-
quate: we need an account that enables us to ascribe at least some
prima facie plausibility to the persistent accusation that a consistent
Pyrrhonist would be unable to act.

(b) The interplay between philosophical doctrines and everyday beliefs

Sextus tells us at M. 7. 88 that the dogmatic philosophers Anax-
archus and Monimus 'likened existing things to a scene-painting
and supposed them to resemble the things experienced in sleep or
madness'. Thus these philosophers held the view that the ontolog-
ical status of the objects that are normally supposed to be a part of
the real world is on a par with the ontological status of the objects
encountered in dreams or mad frenzies. Now this is obviously a
piece of philosophic speculation that will be the object of the ma-
ture Pyrrhonist's €7TOX~. But how will the Pyrrhonist react to the
ordinary person's claims about the real existence of such items as
towers and trees?
When ordinary people assert that they can see a real tower in
front of them, they accept that this claim would be false if they
were merely dreaming that there is a tower in front of them. In-
 Pyrrhonism and Common Sense 197
deed, they would be outraged by the suggestion that their reports
on how things really stand are of no more significance than their re-
ports on their dreams. It follows that if we decide that the ordinary
person's claim about the presence of a tower is rationally justified,
then we cannot go on to say that we find the doctrine espoused
by Anaxarchus and Monimus to be no less reasonable than the
view that the objects of our everyday world have a more substan-
tial existence than the objects that appear in dreams. For the claim
made by ordinary people about the existence of a real tower specifi-
cally excludes the possibility that the tower they seem to see before
them has the same ontological status as the towers they sometimes
encounter in their dreams: if the claim made by these people is cor-
rect, then Anaxarchus and Monimus are wrong. Consequently the
supposition that the ordinary person's claim is rationally justified
necessarily commits us to the conclusion that there are good reasons
for rejecting the theory put forward by Anaxarchus and Monimus.
In fact, the only way to defend the propriety of suspending be-
lief on the philosophic doctrine is to take the step of suspending
belief on the ordinary person's claims about the existence of tow-
ers. Moreover the above reasoning applies equally well to all of
the ordinary person's claims about objective existence. Thus the
attempt to vindicate Sextus' claim that the Pyrrhonist suspends
belief on the doctrines of the dogmatists seems to lead inexorably
to the conclusion that the mature Pyrrhonist also eschews all beliefs
about everyday matters of objective fact. And that conclusion is, of
course, incompatible with Hallie's assessment of the scope of the
Pyrrhonist's €7TOX~.
A similar difficulty for Hallie's account emerges when we con-
sider Sextus' comments about the criterion of truth espoused by
the Cyrenaics (see M. 7. 190-8). Sextus claims that the Cyrenaics
'assert that the affections are the criteria, and that they alone are
apprehended and are infallible, but of the things that have caused
the affections none is apprehensible or infallible' (M. 7. 191) More-
over Sextus makes it clear that the Cyrenaics' view that the things
causing our affections are inapprehensible is to be interpreted as
going far beyond the position that we can never be absolutely cer-
tain of the properties of those things. The Cyrenaics do not hold
that we can hope only to have rationally justified beliefs about such
matters. Instead they maintain that we can never have any rational
 Chapter 8
grounds for supposing that the objects that allegedly underlie our
affections have one property rather than another:
For, say they, that we feel whiteness or sweetness is a thing we can state
infallibly and incontrovertibly; but that the object productive of the af-
fection is white or sweet it is impossible to affirm. For it is likely [dK6,] that
a man might be made to feel whiteness by what is not white and sweetness
by what is not sweet. (M. 7. 191-2)

Once again, however, it seems patently obvious that the Cyrenaics'

doctrine about the nature of the criterion of truth is a philosophic
doctrine. Thus Hallie can hardly deny that the mature Pyrrhonist
would suspend judgement on the correctness of that view.
In any case, Sextus specifically states that the existence of a crite-
rion of truth is one of the topics on which the Pyrrhonist suspends
belief (see PH 2.79; M. 7. 443). Consequently the Pyrrhonist can-
not believe that the Cyrenaics' criterion is a genuine criterion. For
that would commit him to the belief that a criterion of truth does
exist.
On the other hand, Sextus makes no attempt to argue that the
criterion advocated by the Cyrenaics is any less plausible than the
competing criteria espoused by the other schools of Greek philo-
sophy. Indeed, his only criticisms of the Cyrenaics' doctrine are
very general ones that are equally applicable to any attempt to
present the senses as a criterion of truth (see M. 7. 343-7). And
it cannot seriously be suggested that Sextus prefers the doctrines
of those who claim that the intellect, or some combination of the
intellect and the senses, constitutes the criterion of truth. Sextus'
objections to these latter possibilities are every bit as emphatic as
his objections to the view that the senses alone act as a criterion (see
M. 7. 348-58). Accordingly it is clear that Sextus does not believe
that he possesses any good reason for holding that the Cyrenaics'
doctrine is false. If he did believe that he had such a reason, then
he would be committed to the belief that he has good reason to
suppose that any proposed criterion of truth must be false; and that
belief would be incompatible with his avowed suspension of belief
on the topic of the existence of a criterion. We arrive, therefore, at
the following position. The Pyrrhonist does not have any reason
to believe that the Cyrenaics' account of the criterion of truth is
correct, but nor does he have any reason to hold that it is incorrect.
Consequently he is compelled to suspend belief.
 Pyrrhonism and Common Sense 199
Hence it is impossible for Hallie to avoid the admission that the
mature Pyrrhonist suspends belief on the Cyrenaics' views about
the criterion of truth. However that admission is a fatal one as far
as Hallie's assessment of the scope of the Pyrrhonist's l7TOX~ is con-
cerned. I t is not particularly implausible to suppose that ordinary
people do not have any definite opinions about their capacity to
know something with absolutely certainty. Nevertheless it is clear
that ordinary people would insist that many of their beliefs about
objects other than their own affections are rationally justified even
though the absolute certainty of such beliefs remains open to ques-
tion. But this is not an attitude which the mature Pyrrhonist can
legitimately share. If the Pyrrhonist were to believe that someone
has rationally justified beliefs about objects other than affections,
then he would not be in the position of suspending belief on the
Cyrenaics' doctrine that the only rationally justified beliefs a person
can possess are beliefs about his own affections. In those circum-
stances the Pyrrhonist would, in fact, be committed to the belief
that the Cyrenaics' doctrine is false. Yet we have just shown that the
Pyrrhonist would suspend judgement on that doctrine. Hence we
can only conclude that the Pyrrhonist lacks the ordinary person's
belief that people have numerous rationally justified but fallible
beliefs about physical objects and other people. And that means
we have uncovered another example of the way in which the need
to sustain l7TOX~ with regard to a philosophic doctrine can force
the Pyrrhonist into eschewing beliefs that are held by the ordinary
person.
Further examples of philosophic doctrines that connect with
everyday beliefs in this manner can be found scattered through-
out Sextus' writings. However one final instance should suffice to
confirm that it cannot tenably be supposed that everyday beliefs
are insulated from philosophic speculation in the way demanded
by Hallie's account of Pyrrhonism. At PH 2. 85 Sextus tells us
that 'there is a controversy amongst the Dogmatists regarding the
"true", since some assert that something true exists, others that
nothing true exists'. But only judgements count as being true or
false (see PH 2.81), so the controversy being discussed by Sextus
actually amounts to a dispute about the existence of true judge-
ments. Obviously ordinary people firmly believe that they fre-
quently make true judgements. But the Pyrrhonist is supposed
to suspend belief on the controversies that spring up amongst the
200 Chapter 8
dogmatists. So it would seem to follow that if some dogmatists
hold that there are no true judgements and other dogmatists main-
tain that true judgements do exist, then we should find that the
Pyrrhonist suspends belief on the existence of true judgements.
Moreover Sextus explicitly argues for the conclusion that true
judgements do not exist (see PH 2. 85-96; M. 8. 2-14°). Con-
sequently we have only two options: we can accept that Sextus
genuinely believes that true judgements do not exist, or we can
conclude that Sextus is simply engaged in the standard Pyrrhonean
manceuvre of opposing the dogmatists' arguments with conflict-
ing arguments in order to promote suspension of belief. It follows
that Hallie could avoid the conclusion that the Pyrrhonist suspends
belief on the existence of true judgements only if Hallie were pre-
pared to embrace the equally disastrous conclusion that the mature
Pyrrhonist has the firm belief that true judgements definitely do
not exist.
Once more, then, we find ourselves confronted by a direct clash
between the Pyrrhonist's €7TOX~ and the beliefs held by the ordinary
person. Nobody who believes that people frequently make true
judgements can be described as suspending belief on the existence
of true judgements. Such a person would obviously have the belief
that true judgements do exist. Unfortunately for Hallie, however,
the Pyrrhonist is committed to suspending belief on precisely that
topic. Hence it is plainly wrong to say that the mature Pyrrhonist
is entitled to the same beliefs as the ordinary person.

(c) The equipollence of philosophical arguments and arguments drawn

from common sense
The case against Hallie's interpretation of Pyrrhonism becomes
even more impressive when we realize that Sextus sometimes at-
tempts to induce €7TOX~ by balancing philosophical arguments
against the supposedly evident facts endorsed by the ordinary per-
son. Instead of sharing the beliefs of the ordinary person, Sextus
explicitly uses the apparent self-evidence of those beliefs in a di-
alectical process that eliminates the ordinary person's beliefs along
with the doctrines espoused by the dogmatists.
At PH 3.64 Sextus begins a discussion of the existence of tran-
sient motion, and he tells us that the dogmatists define transient
motion as 'the motion by which the moving object passes on from
place to place, either wholly or partially-wholly as in the case of
 Pyrrhonism and Common Sense 201

men walking, partially as when a globe is moving around a central

axis, for while as a whole it remains in the same place, its parts
change their places'. Thus the concept of transient motion is not an
esoteric one: transient motion occurs whenever an object, or some
part of an object, moves from one place to another. Nevertheless
Sextus goes on to say that three main views are held about motion:
'It is assumed by ordinary people and by some philosophers that
motion exists, but by Parmenides, Melissus and certain others that
it does not exist; while the Sceptics have declared that it is "no
more" existent than non-existent' (PH 3.65). And Sextus' defence
of the sceptic's position provides us with a highly instructive il-
lustration of the Pyrrhonist's technique for resolving intellectual
dispute and controversy.
In our discussion of the arguments responsible for the hTOX~ of the
mature Pyrrhonist, we stressed that it is impossible to form a just
appreciation ofPyrrhonean scepticism unless we realize that Sextus
is just as committed to the dogmatic arguments that do not appear in
his writings as he is to the negative, destructive arguments that can
be found there in such profusion. IS When Sextus is examining the
doctrines found in the 'Physical division' of philosophy, however,
he abandons his usual practice of confining himself to a statement of
the relevant negative arguments, and offers instead arguments both
for and against the particular dogmatic position being scrutinized.
Moreover Sextus' discussion of transient motion is an especially
fine example of this change of emphasis, and it accordingly affords
us an unusually favourable opportunity to assess the intended target
of the Pyrrhonist's €7TOX~.
On this occasion we are presented with arguments purporting to
establish that transient motion does not exist and arguments pur-
porting to establish that it does. Consequently close examination of
the two sets of arguments should amply resolve any confusion about
the meaning Sextus attaches to the claim that transient motion ex-
ists. That in turn should suffice to establish whether suspension of
belief on the existence of transient motion is compatible with the
beliefs held by the ordinary person.
Sextus' negative arguments actually turn out to be singularly
unilluminating. He relies mainly on an argument taken over from
Diodorus Cronus: 'If a thing moves, it moves either in the place
where it is or in that where it is not. But it does not move in the place
" See Chapter 6, sect. 3.
202 Chapter 8 /
where it is, for if it is in it, it remains ini~et does it move in the
place where it is not; for where a thing is not, there it can neither ef-
fect nor suffer anything. Therefore nothing moves' (PH 3. 7 I). And
that argument could be interpreted as an unconvincing argument
intended to establish that motion as the ordinary person conceives
of it does not exist, or as a much better argument intended to expose
the inadequacies of some philosophers' attempts to articulate the
ordinary person's conception of motion.
Fortunately, however, the arguments adduced in favour of the
claim that transient motion exists are much more instructive. Sextus
tells us that those who affirm the real existence of transient motion
base their position on an appeal to matters of evident fact:
If, say they, motion does not exist, how does the sun move from east to west,
and how does it produce the seasons of the year, which are brought about
by its approximations to us and its recessions from us? Or how do ships
put out from harbours and cast anchor in other harbours very far distant
from the first? And in what fashion does the denier of motion proceed from
his house and return to it again? (PH 3.67)

Thus it is immediately plain that we are not being offered argu-

ments that have any bearing on the existence of a philosophically
satisfactory articulation of the concept of transient motion. Instead
we are being reminded that all our experience speaks in favour
of the existence of motion as this is understood by the ordinary
person: its existence is supposedly obvious to anyone who cares to
reflect on the matter.
Basically, then, the dogmatists' positive response to the negative
arguments devised by Diodorus Cronus and similar philosophers
is brutally straightforward. Daily experience assures us that the
sun, ships, and people move from place to place. But if the sun,
ships, and people move from place to place, then transient motion
exists. Therefore transient motion exists, and those philosophers
who deny that it exists are mistaken. As Burnyeat points out in his
paper 'The Sceptic in his Place and Time', the entire procedure is
very similar to G. E. Moore's famous attempt to prove the existence
of an external world. ,6 In particular, Moore assumed that if he spoke
correctly in saying 'Here is a hand', then it was true that at least one
external object existed. Similarly, the positive dogmatist described

.6 M. Bumyeat, 'The Sceptic in his Place and Time', in R. Rorty, J. Schneewind,

and Q. Skinner (eds.), Philosophy in History (Cambridge, 1984),225-54 at 244-5.
 Pyrrhonism and Common Sense 20 3
by Sextus assumes that if someone can correctly say 'That ship was
here and is now over there', then it is true that transient motion
exists. The thought that Diodorus' claim might still be true even
if the ordinary person correctly speaks of ships and people moving
from place to place would clearly be dismissed out of hand.
Nevertheless Sextus does not appear to have any worries about
the nature of the argumentation being used to bolster the claim
that transient motion exists. He simply balances the arguments just
discussed against various a priori arguments drawn from Diodorus
Cronus and the Eleatic philosophers, and unhesitatingly draws the
conclusion that we must suspend belief:
These, and yet more than these, are the arguments used by those who
reject transient motion. But we, being unable to refute either these argu-
ments or the apparent facts on which the view of the reality of motion
is based, suspend our judgement-in view of the contradiction between
appearances and arguments-regarding the question as to the existence or
non-existence of motion. (PH 3. 81)

Consequently it seems that it is impossible to avoid the conclusion

that the bTOX~ urged upon us at the end of this discussion amounts to
a suspension of belief on the claims made by ordinary people as well
as the claims made by philosophers and scientists. The Pyrrhonist
suspends belief on the existence of transient motion because he is
unable to resolve the conflict between the arguments that appear to
establish that transient motion exists and the arguments that appear
to establish that it does not exist. However we have now become
aware that the arguments that supposedly support the claim that
transient motion exists all rely on the assumption that our everyday
claims about objects moving from place to place cannot be correct
unless the philosophical claim that transient motion does not exist is
false. If that assumption is not true, there would not be any conflict
whatsoever between the two sets of arguments at issue here.
The Pyrrhonist would, in fact, be free to conclude that our every-
day claims about the existence of motion are perfectly proper and
correct even though Diodorus' claims about the non-existence of
transient motion are also perfectly proper and correct. Thus the
Pyrrhonist would not be under any pressure to suspend judge-
ment on the existence of transient motion. As Diodorus' argu-
ments would not be balanced by any relevant counter-arguments,
20 4 Chapter 8
the Pyrrhonist would inevitably arrive instead at the belief that
Diodorus is right to maintain that transient motion does not exist.
It follows that the fact that we do find Sextus suspending be-
lief on the truth of Diodorus' claim must mean that Sextus as a
developing Pyrrhonist also shared the view that Diodorus' philo-
sophical claims clash directly with the ordinary person's claims
about the movement of physical objects. But a person who holds
that a particular pair of claims are incompatible with one another
can suspend belief on the truth of one of the pair only if he does not
have good reason to believe that the other claim is true. Otherwise
he would take himself to have good reason to believe that the first
claim is false. Consequently the fact that Sextus suspends belief on
Diodorus' claims guarantees that Sextus either suspends belief on
the ordinary person's claims or believes them to be false. In either
eventuality Hallie's supposition that the Pyrrhonist has the same
beliefs as the ordinary person would be false.
Furthermore the beliefs ordinary people have about the move-
ments of physical objects form an integral part of their world-
picture. If someone came to suspend belief on all claims about the
internal composition of the human body, he would indeed lack vari-
ous beliefs held by the ordinary person. Nevertheless it would still
be possible to explain the overwhelming majority of the actions of
such a sceptic without invoking anything other than beliefs that
would be shared by the sceptic and the ordinary person. In con-
trast, the actions of someone who did not have any beliefs about
the movement of physical objects would almost invariably demand
explanations that would be very different to those applicable to ac-
tions of the same type when these are performed by the ordinary
person. Thus the conclusion that the mature Pyrrhonist eschews
all the ordinary person's beliefs about the movement of physical
objects does not show merely that the Pyrrhonist lacks a few beliefs
the ordinary person does happen to possess: it actually indicates
that Hallie's project, of explaining the Pyrrhonist's actions by rep-
resenting his mental life as similar to that of any ordinary person
unconcerned with scientific theory and philosophic speculation, is
wholly misconceived.
Nor, indeed, is Sextus' discussion in the Outlines of transient
motion the only occasion on which he explicitly balances philo-
sophical arguments against arguments drawn from our everyday
experience. His discussion of the same topic in Against the Dogma-
 Pyrrhonism and Common Sense 20 5
tists also makes use of this technique (see M. 10. 45-168). And even
more significantly, we find that Sextus' discussions of becoming
and perishing (see M. 10.310-50), space (see PH 3· 119-35; M. 9.
6-36), time (see PH 3. 136-50), and causation (see PH 3.17-29; M.
9. 195-358) unfold in exactly the same manner as his discussions
of transient motion. Consequently it seems that anyone wishing
to defend Hallie's interpretation of Pyrrhonism would have to be
prepared to maintain that the ordinary person's beliefs about the
location of things in space and time, his beliefs about becoming and
perishing, his beliefs about motion and movement, and his beliefs
about the causal relationships that exist in the world are merely an
optional part of the ordinary person's view of the world. But it is
clear that these beliefs are not optional extras: without them the
ordinary person's conception of the world would fall apart. It fol-
lows that even if our attempt to bring out the crucial role played by
the ordinary person's beliefs about the motion of objects had been
unsuccessful, it would still be impossible to hold that the Pyrrhon-
ist's view of the world is at all similar to the one embraced by the
ordinary person.
Moreover Sextus' discussions of the existence of place contain
some particularly interesting comments about the efficacy of ap-
peals to our everyday experience. In Against the Dogmatists he
represents those who affirm the existence of place as arguing as
follows:
If, then, there exist upwards and downwards, and rightwards and leftwards,
and forwards and backwards, some place exists; for these six directions are
parts of place, and it is impossible that, if the parts of a thing exist, the thing
of which they are parts should not exist. But upwards and downwards, and
rightwards and leftwards, and forwards and backwards, do exist in the
nature of things; therefore place exists. Moreover, if where Socrates was,
another man (such as Plato) now is, Socrates being dead, then place exists.
(M. 10. 7-8)

Thus we have yet another incontrovertible instance of claims that

would be accepted as true by the ordinary person being used as the
premisses of arguments intended to balance the negative arguments
brought forward by the Pyrrhonist and various dogmatic thinkers.
And we have already argued above that this use of claims that are
allegedly supported by everyday experience is enough in itself to
establish that the Pyrrhonist's bTOX~ is supposed to extend even to
206 Chapter 8
beliefs that play an absolutely crucial role in the ordinary person's
view of the world. Nevertheless this conclusion also derives support
from Sextus' criticisms of the positive arguments at issue here.
Significantly, Sextus attacks the arguments offered at M. 10. 7-8
by accusing them of begging the question:
For to try to argue from the parts of place that place itself also exists is
perfectly childish; for he who does not grant them that the whole exists will
not concede that the parts of the whole exist. And besides, since the parts
of a thing are that very thing whereof they are the parts, he who argues-'If
the parts of place exist, place exists'-is virtually saying 'If place exists,
place exists.' But this is absurd; for the thing in question is brought in for
the purpose of confirming itself as though it were not in question. And the
same may be said when they deduce the existence of place from the fact
that Plato now exists in the place where Socrates existed. (M. 10. 13-14)
And it is clear that someone who attacks an argument as question-
begging is not claiming that the argument concerned may have
true premisses and a false conclusion. On the contrary, the charge
of begging the question is reserved for arguments that are accepted
as logically valid but which nevertheless seem probatively useless
because the plausibility of their premisses is no greater than the
prior, unsupported plausibility of their conclusions.
Now Sextus is, of course, trying to argue that the case for hold-
ing that place exists is no stronger than the case for holding that
place does not exist. And he supports the claim that place does not
exist with a series of overtly philosophical arguments. Thus Hallie
would have to accept that the claim that place does not exist is a
philosophical claim. But once we have decided that Sextus' nega-
tive arguments are intended to support the philosophical claim that
place does not exist, it becomes obvious that the positive arguments
presented by Sextus will have a counterbalancing effect only if they
are read as ending in the philosophical claim that place does exist.
Let us suppose, therefore, that Sextus, prior to his general sus-
pension of belief on all non-evident matters of inquiry, does not
hold that the positive arguments recounted at M. 10.7-8 are argu-
ments taking as their conclusion the philosophic claim that place
exists. In these circumstances Sextus would not hold that those
positive arguments are valid arguments for the philosophic claim
that place exists: at best he would think of them as constituting valid
arguments for the entirely different 'everyday' claim that place ex-
 Pyrrhonism and Common Sense 207
ists. Hence Sextus would not maintain that the arguments at M. 10.
7-8 are lacking in persuasiveness because of their circularity. For
that charge would concede both their validity and their relevance to
the matter in hand. Instead, he would criticize them as attempting
to refute a claim other than the one at issue.
When we examine the text, however, we find that Sextus does
allege that the arguments drawn from everyday experience are
question-begging. Consequently we are forced to conclude that
Sextus' €7rOX-r7 about the existence of place does indeed develop
under the influence of the supposition that the conclusion reached
by those arguments genuinely contradicts the conclusion reached
by the negative arguments recounted at M. ro. 20-36.
But it is also obvious that the arguments drawn from everyday
experience are built around premisses and inferences that no ordi-
nary person would be willing to reject. Thus the conclusion that
place exists is one that finds a place in the ordinary person's view
of the world: it is not a claim about some esoteric matter that is of
no concern to the ordinary person.
We can, therefore, summarize the situation as follows. Sextus ap-
parently holds that the 'everyday' claim that place exists genuinely
contradicts the philosophical claim that place does not exist. How-
ever anyone who has no beliefs about the truth of the claim that p
must also suspend belief on its contradictory. Hence Sextus' un-
deniable suspension of belief on the philosophical claim that place
does not exist commits him to suspending belief on the 'everyday'
claim that place does exist. And the need for this simultaneous sus-
pension of belief on both claims also indicates that Sextus does not
have any tendency to hold that there is a distinctively philosophical
understanding of claims about place. Sextus' position is an uncom-
plicated one. The ordinary person who asserts something which
entails the claim that place exists is asserting something which en-
tails the negation of any claim that place does not exist.
Thus it is now absolutely clear that Sextus' treatment of the
'Physical division' of philosophy cannot be reconciled with Hal-
lie's account of the scope of the mature Pyrrhonist's suspension
of belief. Sextus balances arguments that appeal to the 'evident'
facts of everyday experience against a priori philosophical argu-
ments in a way which can be explained only on the supposition
that he thinks of these arguments as directly clashing. And this as-
sessment of Sextus' position is confirmed when we realize that he
208 Chapter 8
explicitly criticizes one set of these non-philosophical arguments as
begging the question against the corresponding set of philosoph-
ical arguments. After all, it would hardly be possible for one set
of arguments to beg the question against the other if they are not
concerned with the same question. However once we have come to
accept that Sextus' procedure involves the use of arguments that
contradict one another, we cannot avoid the conclusion that it is im-
possible for Sextus to suspend belief, on the conclusions reached by
overtly philosophical arguments, without simultaneously suspend-
ing belief on the conclusions reached by arguments that happen to
use premisses and inferences endorsed by ordinary people. That in
turn means that we are committed to the supposition that Sextus
eschews all the ordinary person's beliefs about causes, movement,
change, and the locations of objects in space and time. But it is
obvious that if one were to take all those beliefs away from the or-
dinary person's belief-set, then the few remaining beliefs would be
incapable of explaining even one human action.

(d) Aenesidemus' ten tropes

In section 3 of Chapter 6 we argued that Aenesidemus' ten tropes
are structured in such a way that they entail the conclusion that our
impressions of the world are unable to provide us with any rational
grounds for our assertions about the objective features of the world.
That assessment of Aenesidemus' tropes naturally leads us to ask
whether the developing Pyrrhonist's endorsement of those tropes
is compatible with Hallie's interpretation of Pyrrhonism. For it
appears that Aenesidemus' tropes call into question our ability to
justify any claim about matters of objective fact: they do not seem
to discriminate in any way between philosophico-scientific claims
and everyday claims.
Of course, someone might take the view that it is possible to jus-
tify a claim about the objective features of the world without relying
on an inference from the way things appear to stand. However it
is hardly plausible to suppose that one can consciously see, hear,
smell, taste, or feel something without being aware of one or more
sense-impressions. And, although a subliminal sensory awareness
of something may well result in one acquiring various true beliefs,
it cannot by itself justify those beliefs because it merely provides
us with the bare beliefs and nothing extra that could form the raw
material for an investigation into their veracity. Thus it seems that
 Pyrrhonism and Common Sense 20 9

we can at least conclude that no one who endorses Aenesidemus'

ten tropes, and also accepts that most of our beliefs about the ex-
istence and objective properties of physical objects can be justified
only by means of sense-perception, can consistently hold that most
of these beliefs are rationally justified. This means that it is already
doubtful whether the developing Pyrrhonist's assent to Aeneside-
mus' tropes can be reconciled with Hallie's interpretation. For it is
plausible to suppose that ordinary people would themselves insist
that they rely on sense-perception to justify most of their beliefs
about physical objects and other people. Consequently it appears
that the Pyrrhonist can share the ordinary person's opinions about
the justified nature of our beliefs about physical objects only if he
rejects the ordinary person's opinions about the usual source of
their supposed justification.
We can, in fact, go on to show that the conflict, between Aeneside-
mus' tropes and the ordinary person's view of the world, cannot be
reduced to the level of a dispute about the nature of the justifica-
tion enjoyed by our customary beliefs about physical objects and
other people. A careful examination of Sextus' presentation of Ae-
nesidemus' tropes reveals that it contains two passages in which the
suggestion that there may be some non-perceptual, purely a priori
justification of claims about the objective properties of real objects
is firmly rejected.
At PH I. 99 we find the following succinct claim: 'But if the
senses do not apprehend external objects [Tel. €KT05'], neither can the
mind apprehend them.' Similarly, at PH I. 128 we find the doctrine
that the senses are the mind's guides, without which the mind is
totally unable to come to any conclusion about the external real
objects (Tel. €KT05' lI7TOKf.{p.f.Va).
Now we have just established that the reasoning used in Ae-
nesidemus' tropes supports the conclusion that sense-perception
fails to provide a rational justification for any claims about the exis-
tence or objective properties of real objects. And it cannot plausibly
be supposed that Sextus would have failed to appreciate that point.
Thus the frequently repeated conclusion that the senses cannot ap-
prehend V7TOKf.{p.f.Va cannot amount to the mere claim that the senses
are unable to grasp the inner nature of physical objects. However
PH I. 99 and 128 are also couched in terms of some faculty, namely
the mind, being unable to apprehend V7TOKf.{p.f.Va. Moreover both
passages are closely associated with passages in which the inability
210 Chapter 8
of the senses to apprehend IJTrOK£{/L£Va is explicitly reaffirmed. It
follows that the terminology and context of PH I. 99 and 128 force
us to read them as making the strong claim that a priori reasoning
fails to justify any claims about either the existence or the objective
properties of real objects. No other reading can do justice to the
similarities between those passages and Sextus' conclusions about
the justificatory value of sense-perception.
Consequently it is clear that anyone who assents to Aenesidemus'
ten tropes must hold that a priori reasoning and sense-perception
are equally unable to justify claims about the existence or objective
properties of real objects. But if one accepts that sense-perception
is unable to justify such claims, then a priori reasoning is the only
possible alternative. Thus Aenesidemus' ten tropes actually con-
stitute an argument for the conclusion that we do not possess any
means whatsoever of justifying a claim about the existence or ob-
jective properties of real objects. No one who accepts the truth
of Aenesidemus' premisses and the validity of his inferences can
consistently maintain that we nevertheless have rationally justified
beliefs about objects that have an existence that is not merely sub-
jective. The contlict between Aenesidemus' tropes and the ordinary
person's world-view is, therefore, a far-reaching one. Anyone who
assents to Aenesidemus' tropes is committed to the view that not
one of the ordinary person's numerous beliefs about the existence
and objective properties of real objects is capable of being rationally
justified. And even Hallie would not wish to deny that the develop-
ing Pyrrhonist's assent to Aenesidemus' tropes helps to shape the
mature Pyrrhonist's E7rOX~.

(e) The goal of Pyrrhonism

The final objection that needs to be considered revolves around
Sextus' account of the end of Pyrrhonism. The Pyrrhonist sus-
pends belief on all claims about naturally or altogether non-evident
matters of inquiry, and hence achieves tranquillity: moreover this
tranquillity is the goal which he had originally hoped to achieve by
acquiring knowledge and rationally justified beliefs. '7 However if
Hallie is correct in supposing that the Pyrrhonist's final E7rOX~ is
confined to philosophico-scientific doctrines, then it follows that
the Pyrrhonist's tranquillity is achieved by simply returning to the
beliefs held by the ordinary person. Hence it must also follow that
'7 See Chapter 6, sect. I.
 Pyrrhonism and Common Sense 211

the ordinary person already enjoys the tranquillity sought by the

Pyrrhonist. But that conclusion is wholly untenable.
If the ordinary person possesses the tranquillity sought by the
Pyrrhonist, then the Pyrrhonist would have no motive for begin-
ning the philosophical inquiries that eventually lead him to sus-
pend belief. Consequently Sextus' account of the Pyrrhonist's ca-
reer would be incoherent: according to that account the Pyrrhonist
would have to begin his philosophical inquiries in the hope of ac-
quiring the very tranquillity which he already possesses as a result
of his not yet having been engaged in any form of philosophical
speculation. Clearly, however, it is absurd to suppose that Sextus
is really peddling so preposterous an account of the Pyrrhonist's
career. Hence we are forced to conclude that the €7TOX~ practised by
the mature Pyrrhonist must represent some advance on the €7TOX~
generated by the ordinary person's lack of interest in philosophico-
scientific speculation. And that conclusion would seem to lead us
towards the supposition that this advance takes the form of the
Pyrrhonist's €7TOX~ being the broader of the two.
It might be objected, though, that this line of thought overlooks
the point that the mature Pyrrhonist's €7TOX~ may be an advance
over the €7TOX~ practised by the ordinary person because it happens
to be more stable rather than more extensive. If one supposes that
people are sometimes unable to prevent themselves from worrying
over speculative topics, then there would seem to be a possibility
that even someone who had no previous interest in philosophy or
theoretical science might find himself obsessively worrying over
some highly abstract problem. Such a person would then be faced
by the problem of restoring the tranquillity he has inadvertently
lost. Hence it might be suggested that the great recommendation of
Pyrrhonean scepticism is that it provides a therapeutic technique
capable of removing any intellectual anxieties that may come to
disturb the tranquillity usually enjoyed by the ordinary person.
However even this understanding of the Pyrrhonist's enterprise
would still leave Hallie's account facing several major difficulties.
One such difficulty emerges when we consider the question of the
alternatives to Pyrrhonean therapeutics. It seems plain that working
one's way through the intricate reasoning set out by the Pyrrhonean
sceptic is a singularly inefficient way of dealing with metaphys-
ical worries. Instead of tackling those worries head-on, it would
seem easier to arrange for some distraction that would divert one's
212 Chapter 8
attention from the problem generating those worries. Thus one
might, for example, decide to read an engrossing novel or organize
a small dinner party. The options are, in fact, extremely varied,
and it seems most unlikely that someone who has not deliberately
cultivated an interest in philosophico-scientific issues would ever
be so obsessed by such a topic that it becomes impossible to draw
their attention elsewhere. 18
But perhaps the most serious difficulty arises from the fact that
one can hardly regard the ordinary person as leading a life of un-
sullied tranquillity. Ordinary people may be free of those worries
that are generated by theoretical speculation, but they have many
other worries which derive from different sources. In particular,
they are susceptible to worries about their health, their personal
relationships, and their financial circumstances. Consequently the
ordinary person is frequently acutely anxious and disturbed despite
the absence of any purely intellectual worries. And it follows that if
Pyrrhonism is to overcome the main threats to people's tranquillity,
then it will have to address itself to these other sources of anxiety
and distress.
Moreover it is clear that Sextus is himself fully aware that intel-
lectual worries are only one aspect of the overall problem. Indeed,
he explicitly sets out the mechanism by which the mature Pyrrhon-
ist's bTOXTJ insulates him from everyday worries (see PH 3. 235-8;
M. II. 141-8). Basically, Sextus argues that if we were to lack, for
instance, the belief that physical health is a good thing, then we
would not be troubled by the prospect of falling ill. And if we were
to lack the belief that it is important to be wealthy, then we would
cease our anxious efforts to acquire more money. In this way a
suspension of judgement at the level of the ordinary person's un-
philosophical beliefs about what is valuable and good would make
effective contact with all the most important sources of worry and
anxiety, and hence it would eventually generate a peace of mind
that would far exceed anything available to someone who has not
embraced Pyrrhonism.
Nevertheless the cost of this tranquillity is obvious: the Pyrrhon-
ist can attain it only by abandoning all the ordinary person's beliefs
about matters of value and objective worth. It appears, then, that

.8 This strategy receives its most celebrated formulation in book 1 of Hume's

Treatise. See David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge,
2nd edn., rev. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford, 1978), 269-70.
 Pyrrhonism and Common Sense 2 13

we have to conclude that the Pyrrhonist's strategy for achieving his

goal of (iTapagta or tranquillity demands that the mature Pyrrhon-
ist's €1TOX~ should be far more extensive than the €1TOX~ associated
with the ordinary person. Once again, therefore, we find that Hal-
lie's account of the scope of the Pyrrhonist's €1TOX~ is profoundly
unsatisfactory.
 9
Is the Pyrrhonist a
Proto -Phenomenalist?
I. Justified beliefs about appearances
THE preceding chapter seems to have established that if we at-
tempt to maintain that the mature Pyrrhonist takes himself to have
rationally justified beliefs about everyday matters of objective fact,
then it is impossible to give a philosophically satisfactory account
of Sextus' Pyrrhonism. In particular, we came to the conclusion
that the effectiveness of the Pyrrhonist's negative epistemologi-
cal arguments is not confined to the field of philosophico-scientific
speculation: they are equally effective at undermining even the most
trivial claim about a matter of objective fact. Thus it is clear that
if we wish to construct a coherent account of Pyrrhonism around
the supposition that the mature Pyrrhonist does regard himself as
having some rationally justified beliefs, then the only possibility
that remains open to us is to maintain that the beliefs in question
are all beliefs about the way the world phenomenologically appears
to him. But it will be argued in the present chapter that even this
attempt to ascribe to the Pyrrhonist an extremely restricted range of
supposedly justified beliefs yields an account of Sextus' Pyrrhon-
ism that faces insurmountable problems.
It must be conceded, however, that the supposition that the ma-
ture Pyrrhonist lives in accordance with his rationally justified be-
liefs about his own non-epistemic impressions has generally pre-
vailed among commentators on Greek scepticism. In 1869, for in-
stance, Norman MacColl published a work in which he attributed
precisely this stance to the Pyrrhonist and subjected it to criti-
cism from an explicitly Kantian perspective. Shifts in philosophic
I

fashions, however, soon led to the extreme empiricism ascribed to

• Norman MacColI. The Greek Sceptics: From Pyrrho to Sextus (London, 1869).
 Is the Pyrrhonist a Proto-Phenomenalist? 2 15

the Pyrrhonean sceptics being seen as highly meritorious. By 1899

Mary Mills Patrick was endorsing MacColl's account of Pyrrhon-
ism, but treating the Pyrrhonist's alleged position with considerable
sympathy. Z And in 1929 the same author published a book which
claimed that the Pyrrhonean way was virtually identical with the
modern scientific method. 3 Roderick Chisholm, on the other hand,
had rather more reservations about Sextus' philosophical position.
Nevertheless Chisholm still presented Sextus as a distinguished
precursor of logical positivism. 4
Even when the enthusiasm for phenomenalism finally waned, the
Pyrrhonist continued to be regarded as someone who held that the
only beliefs that are rationally justified are those which are con-
cerned exclusively with the way things appear phenomenologically.
The sole change lay in the fact that very few philosophers retained
any optimism about the prospect of establishing that sentences
explicitly describing appearances and sentences purporting to de-
scribe independently existing physical objects are related in such a
way that the truth-conditions of the latter sentences can be exhaus-
tively analysed in terms of the former. Thus Nicholas Rescher 5 and
Oliver Johnson 6 both present the Pyrrhonist as maintaining that we
must content ourselves with beliefs about appearances and forgo
all our beliefs about matters of objective fact. And this was also
the view put forward by Charlotte Stough in her influential book
Greek Skepticism,? which held sway for many years as the most de-
tailed study in English of the epistemological issues associated with
Pyrrhonean and Academic scepticism.
Nor, indeed, is it implausible to hold that Stough and other
advocates of this interpretation are right in thinking that some of
the mature Pyrrhonist's voluntary actions can be explained in terms
of his beliefs about appearances without our having recourse to the
supposition that he also has beliefs about matters of objective fact.
Suppose, for example, that we are trying to account for the fact
that the Pyrrhonist has just eaten a substantial lunch. We might
begin our explanation by saying that he felt very hungry at the time
, M. M. Patrick, Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism (Cambridge, 1899).
1 Ead., The Greek Sceptics (New York, 1929).
• R. M. Chisholm, 'Sextus Empiricus and Modern Empiricism', Philosophy of
Science, 8 (1941), 371-84.
5 Nicholas Rescher, Scepticism: A Critical Reappraisal (Oxford, 1980).

6 Oliver Johnson, Skepticism and Cognitivism (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1978).
7 C. L. Stough, Greek Skepticism (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969).
216 Chapter 9
in question. And this would be a perfectly legitimate first move.
Even someone who has no beliefs about matters of objective fact
can still feel hungry. Moreover he can also have the desire that this
hunger should be brought to an end. Difficulties begin to arise only
when we attempt to explain why this desire should have led him to
eat some food. Why did he not perform three backward somersaults
or whistle loudly? Indeed, why did he perform any action at all?
Perhaps the only way of bringing a feeling of hunger to an end is to
do absolutely nothing until it passes of its own accord.
Normally, of course, such questions would not cause us any
embarrassment whatsoever. We would reply that food was eaten
because it was believed that the act of eating some food would be
followed by the cessation of the hunger. However this reply involves
attributing to the agent concerned a belief about the subjective
consequences of an objective action. And Stough's interpretation
of Pyrrhonism maintains that the mature Pyrrhonist eschews all
beliefs about objective entities and events. Consequently anyone
concerned to defend Stough's interpretation needs to find some
other explanation of the Pyrrhonist's meal.
The solution to this problem, however, is readily forthcoming if
we take the step of attributing to the Pyrrhonist beliefs about the
future course of his non-epistemic impressions. If the Pyrrhonist
believes that he will continue to feel hungry until such time as he
has a particular set of visual, olfactory, and gustatory impressions,
then he will have a motive for bringing it about that he does indeed
experience those impressions. And if he also has the belief that
he will have those impressions only if his phenomenal body takes a
specific path through tactual and visual space, then he will obviously
have a motive for moving his phenomenal body in that way.
But it may be the case that action by the Pyrrhonist's phenomenal
body is almost invariably accompanied by movement in physical
space by a physical body. Moreover this could be true even if the
Pyrrhonist has no reason for believing it to be true. We are all
happy to suppose, for example, that this link does not exist when
someone is dreaming. And it would be difficult to show that the
nature of our impressions when we are awake is such that this
link must obtain then. But if it so happens that there is a stable
correlation between phenomenal actions and physical actions, then
the mature Pyrrhonist's physical actions are simply an unexpected
 Is the Pyrrhonist a Proto-Phenomenalist? 2 1 7
accompaniment to his attempts at altering the nature of his future
impressions.
I t follows that if we do have reason to believe that the Pyrrhonist
has just eaten lunch, then this does not show that he has failed to
live up to his claims to suspend belief on all matters of objective
fact. The eating of the lunch can be explained as a by-product of the
Pyrrhonist's efforts at manipulating the course of his experience by
intervening in sequences of impressions so as to produce sequences
that are similar to those that have had favourable outcomes in the
past. Indeed the real objection to the Pyrrhonist's position would
lie in the fact that we have good reason to believe a claim about a
matter of objective fact, namely that someone has just eaten lunch,
whereas the Pyrrhonist is committed to maintaining that no one
ever has good reasons for believing any claim about the objective
nature of the world.
Hence the weaknesses of the view that the mature Pyrrhonist
lives his life in accordance with his rationally justified beliefs about
his own non-epistemic impressions do not lie in the adequacy of its
explanations of the mature Pyrrhonist's daily actions. If this view
can account for the Pyrrhonist performing an action as complex as
eating lunch, then the same approach should suffice to explain any
action that is forced upon him by the practical exigencies of life.
The real problems are to be found elsewhere. First, some of the
mature Pyrrhonist's allegedly non-epistemic impressions seem to
be nothing less than disguised inclinations towards beliefs about
matters of objective fact. And second, it is not clear that the mature
Pyrrhonist would be entitled to think of beliefs about appearances
as being rationally justified. These points will subsequently form
the basis of our attack on the suggestion that Sextus can be sat-
isfactorily interpreted as someone who seeks to confine his beliefs
exclusively to rationally justified beliefs about phenomenological
appearances. Before we move on to consider such issues, however,
it is important to consider the arguments that have led so many
people to embrace this interpretation, and Stough's commentary
on Sextus' Pyrrhonism provides a particularly thorough exposition
of the case that can be assembled here.
218 Chapter 9

2. The supporting evidence

The key to Stough's strategy lies in her claim that Sextus identi-
fies TO .paLII6fLElIov--the thing which appears-with the impression
received by the subject. s And she supports this crucial claim by
appealing to Sextus' comments at PH I. 22. Sextus states here
that the practical criterion of the Pyrrhonist is 'the appearance [TO
.paLII6fLEIIOV], applying this term to what is, in effect, T~V .paIlTaa{all'.
Thus it seems indisputable that Sextus regards .paLlI6fLElia and .pall-
Taa{aL as identical. Furthermore the sense given to .paIlTaa{a in Hel-
lenistic philosophy is deeply influenced by Stoic usage. However
the Stoics asserted that .paIlTaa{aL were imprints on the mind (see
D.L. 7. 45), and they acknowledged that there were .paIlTaa{aL that
were EfL.paaw; (outward appearances) and nothing more, 'purport-
ing, as it were, to come from real objects' (D.L. 7. 51). Hence it is
clear that Stough is right to insist that Sextus' willingness to use
.paLII6fLEIiOIi as interchangeable with .paIlTaa{a means that he must take
the view that all .paLlI6fLElia are subjective impressions.
Once we have conceded, however, that .paLlI6Wilia are impres-
sions, it becomes apparent that Stough does indeed have substantial
grounds for concluding that Sextus eschews all beliefs about mat-
ters of objective fact and relies instead on beliefs about how things
appear to stand. PH I. 22 occurs in the course of an explanation
of the Pyrrhonist's ability to act. Sextus, of course, had already
claimed that the Pyrrhonean sceptic does not dogmatize (see PH I.
12 and 13-15). Consequently he had laid himself open to the objec-
tion that the Pyrrhonist's refusal to dogmatize precludes him from
having any basis for performing some actions and refraining from
others. And Sextus' answer to this charge is that the Pyrrhonist em-
ploys TO .paLII6fLEIiOIi as his standard (KpLT~pLOII) of action. Thus at PH
I. 23 we find the following uncompromising statement: 'Adhering,
then, to appearances [TOtS" .paLIIOfL€1I0LS") we live in accordance with
the normal rules of life, dtSo~aaTwS", seeing that we cannot remain
wholly inactive.'
Sextus' discussion accordingly seems to confirm that the mature
Pyrrhonist does not allow himself any beliefs about matters of ob-
jective fact. If the Pyrrhonist did hold such beliefs, then they would
obviously be able to serve him as a guide to action. But although
• Ibid. 119.
 Is the Pyrrhonist a Proto-Phenomenalist? 21 9

Sextus is attempting to show that it is incorrect to allege that the

Pyrrhonist lacks a practical criterion, he significantly fails to claim
that the Pyrrhonist has a stock of beliefs about the objective features
of the world. This otherwise bewildering omission can be explained
only by accepting that the Pyrrhonist has no beliefs about matters
of objective fact to which Sextus could appeal at this juncture.
However we have been told that the Pyrrhonist allows himself
to be guided by q,a{vOfL€Va; and we are currently assuming that
q,a{v0ll-€Va are nothing other than impressions. We can conclude,
therefore, that the voluntary actions of the mature Pyrrhonist are
all supposed to be based on his subjective impressions of the world.
Moreover we established in Chapter 7 that the Pyrrhonist's impres-
sions cannot explain his actions unless he has beliefs about these
impressions. Thus it seems that we are forced to agree with Stough
that any satisfactory account of the mature Pyrrhonist's actions
would have to treat them as the product of his beliefs about the way
things phenomenologically appear to him.
I t is also worth noting that the supposition that the mature
Pyrrhonist's only beliefs are beliefs about q,a{vOfL€Va is corroborated
by Sextus' insistence that the Pyrrhonist does not assent to any
claim about a non-evident matter of inquiry. Sextus writes in a way
that makes it plain that he regards all evident objects as falling into
the further category of q,a{v0ll-€Va. In particular, he sometimes be-
gins a discussion by introducing a distinction between pre-evident
and non-evident objects despite the fact that he seems to build
his subsequent argument on a distinction between apparent things
(q,a{vofL€va) and non-evident things (TO. a(1)'\a). Instances of such
unannounced switches can be found at PH I. 138, 18S, and 2.
124; and it is impossible to account for these vacillations unless
we are prepared to accept that Sextus is treating TO. q,a{vOfL€Va and
TO. 1Tpo81J,\a as coextensive terms. However any claim about an ob-
ject that is never pre-evident amounts to a claim about a naturally
or altogether non-evident matter of inquiry. Consequently Sex-
tus' willingness to assume that all pre-evident objects are q,a{vofL€Va
means that Sextus can hold that the Pyrrhonist does not assent to
any claim about a naturally or altogether non-evident matter of in-
quiry only if Sextus holds that the Pyrrhonist confines his assent
to claims about actual and possible q,a{vofL€Va. And that conclusion
makes it clear that if Sextus does identify q,a{vOfL€Va with q,aVTaOLat,
220 Chapter 9
then Stough is quite correct to maintain that Sextus' beliefs are all
supposed to be beliefs about .puvTaa{uL.
Unfortunately, Stough's own attempts to reinforce her main ar-
gument are less successful. For instance, she points out9 that at M.
7.365 Sextus asserts that all things are perceived through affection
(EK 7Ta8ov~). Moreover Sextus goes on to say that an affection is
not the same as the object of presentation that produces it. Thus
Stough insists that these two claims reveal that Sextus is committed
to the view that nothing that is not an affection of the perceiving
subject is ever perceived directly. However Sextus argues at some
length that we are not justified in assuming that our affections are
a reliable guide to the real properties of the objects that suppos-
edly produce these affections (see M. 7.366-8). And it seems clear
that if our affections are not a reliable guide to the properties of
external objects and yet we are unable to apprehend external ob-
jects except through our affections, then these objects completely
elude our apprehension. But it is plainly impossible for us to have
rationally justified beliefs about external objects if they completely
elude our apprehension. Consequently Stough concludes that the
mature Pyrrhonist will suspend belief on all claims about external
objects and confine himself instead to beliefs about his subjective
affections.
Similarly, we find that in Stough's paper 'Sextus Empiricus on
Non-Assertion' she appeals· to Sextus' claim at M. 7. 366 that
Q

'all external things are non-evident [7TavTa EaTt TIl. EKTO~ a01)'\a)'.
This claim is, of course, equivalent to the claim that all matters
concerning external objects are naturally or altogether non-evident.
For it is possible for a matter to be occasionally non-evident only
if examples of the entities and properties at issue are sometimes
pre-evident to us. And it is obvious that this condition cannot be
met if all external objects are non-evident. Thus Stough argues
that if we place Sextus' remarks at M. 7. 366 in the context of
his insistence that the mature Pyrrhonist does not give his assent
to any matter that is naturally or altogether non-evident, then it
once again becomes clear that Sextus' own arguments cannot be
reconciled with the supposition that the mature Pyrrhonist has
beliefs about external objects.

• Ibid. I IS .
•0 C. L. Stough, 'Sextus Empiricus on Non-Assertion', Phronesis, 29 (1984), 137-
64 at 139.
 Is the Pyrrhonist a Proto-Phenomenalist? 221

But arguments of this type are fatally flawed by the fact that
Stough has failed to allow for Sextus' readiness to make use of rea-
soning that is built around premisses and inferences that merely
reflect his views about the beliefs held by his dogmatic opponents.
When we were describing the principal features of Sextus' Pyrrhon-
ism, we argued that Sextus frequently puts forward arguments that
he himself has never accepted as cogent. I I These arguments are
used to induce lTTOX~ in other people, and all that is required for
them to succeed in this task is that they should have premisses and
inferential structures that command the assent of Sextus' philo-
sophical adversaries. Consequently Stough is not entitled to as-
sume that Sextus ever gave his assent to the arguments set out in
the sections around M. 7. 366.
I t is clear, therefore, that Stough's ancillary arguments are wholly
vitiated by her failure to grasp the unusual function served by
much Pyrrhonean argumentation. Nevertheless her distorted view
of Sextus' argumentative practice does not invalidate the argument
she constructs around Sextus' identification of q,a[vO/LHa and q,av-
rau[aL. When Sextus makes this identification, he is not arguing
against any specific dogmatic doctrine. Instead, he is attempting
to describe the way in which the Pyrrhonean sceptic lives his life.
Hence it is plain that we are not confronted here by a premiss in an
ad hominem argument directed exclusively at the dogmatists. And
it follows accordingly that Stough's main argument is one that has
to be taken seriously.

3. Does the Pyrrhonist succeed in eschewing

all beliefs about matters of objective fact?

Stough offers us a straightforward account of Sextus' Pyrrhonism.

She maintains that Sextus has no beliefs about matters of object-
ive fact and acts instead on the basis of his justified beliefs about
non-epistemic appearances. But although Stough may be correct
in thinking that Sextus purports to rely solely on beliefs about his
impressions, it is possible to show that Sextus fails to confine his
beliefs within this circumscribed range. Some of Sextus' alleged
impressions cannot be construed as anything other than disguised
inclinations towards beliefs about the way things stand objectively.
.. See Chapter 6, sect. 5.
222 Chapter 9
This conclusion is one that Stough can accommodate only if she
is prepared to concede that Sextus' Pyrrhonism is radically inco-
herent. For Stough holds that Sextus' epistemological arguments
call into question all claims about matters of objective fact. Con-
sequently she would have to say that if Sextus does have beliefs
about such matters, then it is wrong for him to have these beliefs.
Sextus' possession of beliefs about matters of objective fact would
not only mean that he is mistaken in his claim to rely solely on his
beliefs about impressions, but it would also mean that he has beliefs
that are condemned by his own arguments as totally devoid of any
rational justification.
Let us consider, then, a person's impression that he has not yet
met a rationally justified dogmatic claim. The mature Pyrrhonist
must in some sense be satisfied that there is no rational justification
for accepting as true any of the dogmatic claims he has hitherto
examined. If the Pyrrhonist were not satisfied of this, then his own
inability to find any claims which he can take as rationally justified
would lead, as Myles Burnyeat has pointed out,IZ to anxiety and
worry rather than mental tranquillity. However Stough's account
of Sextus' Pyrrhonism compels her to deny that Sextus has the
belief that it is objectively true that the claims he has considered so
far are no more rationally justified than their contradictories. Thus
Stough can explain Sextus' confidence that he has not overlooked
a genuinely justified dogmatic claim only if she supposes that he
does at least have the non-epistemic impression that none of the
dogmatic claims he has met up to now is rationally justified. And
it follows that if it can be shown that Sextus' impression that he
has never met a rationally justified dogmatic claim would have to
be an epistemic impression, then Stough would be unable to avoid
conceding that the mature Pyrrhonist must have some tentative
beliefs about matters of objective fact.
It seems clear, moreover, that the mature Pyrrhonist's impres-
sion that he has never met a rationally justified dogmatic claim is
the causal product of his exposure to such arguments as the five
tropes of Agrippa and the ten tropes of Aenesidemus. I t may be
true that the Pyrrhonist loses his previous confidence in these ar-
guments when his l7TOX~ is fully developed. But if the Pyrrhonist

" M. Burnyeat, 'Can the Sceptic Live his Scepticism?', in M. Schofield, M.

Burnyeat, and J Barnes (eds.), Doubt and Dogmatism: Studies in Helle1listic Episte-
mology (Oxford, 1980),20-53 at 51-2.
 Is the Pyrrhonist a Proto-Phenomenalist? 223

had not studied and reflected on these arguments, then he would

not have gained the impression that he has never met a rationally
justified dogmatic claim. Furthermore this causal dependence is
itself incompatible with the supposition that this impression is a
non-epistemic impression.
Suppose someone were to say, 'After studying these arguments,
it appears to me that p; but I am not inclined to believe that p.' This
statement immediately strikes us as being linguistically anomalous.
We understand all the words used in the sentence, and we recognize
that the sentence conforms to the rules of English grammar. In spite
of that, however, we are still unable to attach any definite sense to
the statement as a whole. And the simplest explanation of our per-
plexity here is to maintain that the sentence in question contains an
implicit contradiction. Furthermore the unaccompanied statement
'After studying these arguments, it appears to me that p' seems to
be perfectly acceptable. Similarly, we encounter no problems with
the bare statement 'I am not inclined to believe that p.' We begin
to feel uneasy only when these two statements are placed together
so as to describe the same individual at the same point in time.
Thus it seems clear that if there is an implicit contradiction, then
it lies in the attempt to claim that an impression with that particu-
lar provenance can amount to anything less than an inclination to
believe that p.
But if we do conclude that all impressions induced by argument
are invariably epistemic impressions, then the consequences for our
assessment of the Pyrrhonist's impression that he has never met a
rationally justified dogmatic claim are obvious. That impression
is undeniably a product of the Pyrrhonist's reflections on various
sceptical arguments; so we would have to accept that it too is an
epistemic impression. In effect, therefore, we can maintain that
Stough's account of Pyrrhonism describes a coherent intellectual
stance only if we are prepared to deny that the anomalous feel
of 'After studying these arguments, it appears to me that p; but
I am not inclined to believe that p' is correctly explained by the
supposition that this statement is self-contradictory.
Now it does seem to be true that there are occasions when some
other explanation of linguistic anomalies is preferable. Thus we
find, for example that the statement 'It is raining, but I don't be-
lieve that it is raining' offends against our linguistic intuitions in
much the same way as does the statement 'After studying these
224 Chapter 9
arguments, it appears to me that p; but I am not inclined to believe
that p.' Yet it is patently obvious that a person can be unaware of
the fact that it is raining. Even if it is raining outside, a person may
be concentrating so hard on a piece of writing that he fails to notice
that it is raining. Thus we encounter no difficulty in describing cir-
cumstances in which it would be true that it is raining despite some
person not having the belief that it is raining. It follows that the
statement 'It is raining, but I don't believe that it is raining' is not
self-contradictory, and the explanation for its linguistic irregularity
must be sought elsewhere.
In this instance the standard diagnosis is that the impropriety of
'It is raining, but I don't believe that it is raining' stems from the
fact that it falls foul of the rules governing the act of making an
assertion. A statement may be true even if the person making that
statement is speaking insincerely. However the absence of sincerity
is enough in itself to leave the speaker open to legitimate criticism.
And just as there is something paradoxical about statements that are
false in all possible worlds, so too there is something paradoxical
about statements that must be false whenever they are asserted
sincerely. Thus it is alleged that the sense of anomaly generated
by 'I t is raining, but I don't believe that it is raining' is suitably
explained by the supposition that this statement happens to fall
into the second category.
Nobody would wish to deny that a person who sincerely asserts
'It is raining' must believe that it is raining. But if it is true that he
must believe that it is raining, then it follows that any claim that
he does not believe that it is raining must be false. Yet anyone who
asserts 'It is raining, but I don't believe that it is raining' is both
asserting that it is raining and claiming that he does not believe that
it is raining. Hence we can succeed in viewing his assertion that it
is raining as sincere only if we accept that the second half of his
conjunctive statement is false. However a conjunctive statement is
false if any of its constitutive parts are false. Thus it is clear that
the statement 'It is raining, but I don't believe that it is raining'
does indeed possess the curious property of necessarily being false
whenever it is asserted sincerely.
It is possible, therefore, to provide a perfectly adequate explana-
tion of the linguistic impropriety of ' It is raining, but I don't believe
that it is raining' without resorting to the expedient of postulating
that the statement contains an implicit contradiction. However that
 Is the Pyrrhonist a Proto-Phenomenalist? 225

statement originally seemed to give rise to the same sort of perplex-

ities as 'After studying these arguments, it appears to me that p; but
I am not inclined to believe that p.' Consequently it might seem
that no advocate of the view that Stough's interpretation of Sex-
tus' Pyrrhonism describes a coherent intellectual position would
have any qualms about denying that this latter statement is self-
contradictory. For he can claim that our success in explaining the
anomalous nature of 'It is raining, but I don't believe that it is rain-
ing' without assuming that it is self-contradictory makes it plain
that there are no grounds for concluding that 'After studying these
arguments, it appears to me that p; but I do not believe that p'
is self-contradictory simply because it strikes us as being a queer
thing to say.
If we investigate further, however, we discover that the problem
posed by 'It is raining, but 1 don't believe that it is raining' is
not genuinely analogous to the one posed by 'After studying these
arguments, it appears to me that p; but I do not believe that p.'
Consider the statement' It is raining, but he doesn't believe that it
is raining.' If this statement is made at a time tl and the pronoun 'he'
refers to some person N.N., then it makes the same claim about the
world as 'It is raining, but I don't believe that it is raining' when
those words are uttered by N.N. at t l • But it is obvious that the
statement 'It is raining, but he doesn't believe that it is raining'
is not at all paradoxical. On the other hand, the statement 'After
studying these arguments, it appears to him that p; but he is not
inclined to believe that p' strikes us as being every bit as anomalous
as 'After studying these arguments, it appears to me that p; but
I am not inclined to believe that p.' And this indicates that the
impropriety of 'After studying these arguments, it appears to me
that p; but I am not inclined to believe that p' cannot be explained
away as the product of a clash between what is claimed by the
statement and what is implied by the fact that someone has actually
formulated that statement.
Whenever linguistic impropriety is the product of such a clash, it
is invariably possible to find a wholly unproblematic statement that
nevertheless succeeds in making the same claim about the world as
the anomalous statement at issue. Thus the statement 'I am asleep'
as said by N.N. makes the same claim as 'He is asleep' when this
is said of N.N. Yet the latter statement is completely free from any
taint of paradox. Similarly, the statement 'We are not acquainted
226 Chapter 9
with any English words' strikes us as totally absurd, whereas its
French equivalent 'Nous ne connaissons aucun mot anglais' does
not give rise to any problems at all. Again, the statement 'You know
that Prague is the capital of the Czech Republic, but I do not' is
highly anomalous. Yet the statement 'You know that Prague is the
capital of the Czech Republic, but he does not' is clearly acceptable
despite the fact that it can be used to make exactly. the same claim
about how things stand in the world.
In the case of 'After studying these arguments, it appears to
me that p; but I am not inclined to believe that p', however, it
soon becomes clear that any statement capable of making the same
claim about the world would also display the same problematic
qualities as the original statement. We have seen above that the
device of replacing the first-person pronoun 'I' with the third-
person pronoun 'he' fails to produce a statement that conforms to
our linguistic intuitions. But nor is there any advantage to be gained
from translating the offending statement into some language other
than English. And even the manreuvre of altering the tense of the
statement fails to solve the problem. The statement 'After I had
studied these arguments, it appeared to me that p; but I was not
inclined to believe that p' is no less puzzling than the original,
present-tense version.
We are forced to conclude, therefore, that the linguistic impro-
priety of 'After studying these arguments, it appears to me that
p; but I do not believe that p' does not arise in the same way as
the linguistic impropriety of 'It is raining, but I don't believe that
it is raining.' However the suggestion that the former statement
might share the latter's feature of generating a clash between what
is claimed by the statement and what is implied by the making of the
statement constitutes the only serious alternative to the hypothesis
that the problematic character of 'After studying these arguments, it
appears to me that p; but I am not inclined to believe that p' is a con-
sequence of it containing an implicit contradiction. Consequently
the elimination of that alternative makes it impossible to defend
the view that Stough's interpretation of Pyrrhonism describes an
intellectual stance that succeeds in being internally coherent.
The person who claims that 'After studying these arguments, it
appears to me that p; but I am not inclined to believe that p' is
implicitly self-contradictory is providing us with a plausible and
highly specific explanation of the fact that this statement strikes us
 Is the Pyrrhonist a Proto-Phenomenalist? 227

as linguistically anomalous. It follows that anyone who wishes to

maintain that we nevertheless have no grounds for concluding that
this statement is self-contradictory needs to be able to put forward
some other potential explanation of the phenomenon in question.
In particular, it is not sufficient simply to point out that it has not
yet been demonstrated that the self-contradiction hypothesis is the
only one capable of explaining the anomalous character of 'After
studying these arguments, it appears to me that p; but I am not
inclined to believe that p.' There must be some genuine prospect
of a competing explanation being specified in sufficient detail to
compare its merits with those of the self-contradiction hypothesis.
But once we have rejected the suggestion that we might be dealing
with another instance of the content of a statement conflicting with
what is implied by the act of making that statement, we can hardly
avoid the conclusion that no genuine rival to the self-contradiction
hypothesis will ever be forthcoming. After all, the linguistic phi-
losophy developed by such people as Austin and Ryle led to vast
amounts of attention being lavished on the topic of what can ap-
propriately be said in particular situations. 13 Thus the supposition
that even that intense activity failed to uncover anything capable of
serving as a genuine rival in this instance to the self-contradiction
hypothesis would seem to commit us to the view that we have com-
pelling inductive grounds for holding that any future attempts to
specify a rival hypothesis will also be unsuccessful.
Consequently it is now clear that there is a very strong case for
concluding that 'After studying these arguments, it appears to me
that p; but I am not inclined to believe that p' does contain an im-
plicit contradiction. However we have already argued above that if
there is an implicit contradiction to be found in that statement, then
the contradiction must arise from the attempt to present as some-
thing other than an epistemic impression an impression that has
its causal origins in someone's interaction with a set of arguments.
And it follows that we are apparently in a position to conclude
that the Pyrrhonist's impression that he has never met a rationally
justified dogmatic claim is an epistemic impression. Moreover the
mature Pyrrhonist must have this impression if his €TrOX~ is to bring
'3 A brief account ofthis approach to philosophy, written by someone who thought

of himself as an exponent of the new method, can be found in Antony Flew's

introduction to A. G. N. Flew (ed.), Logic and Language, First Series (Oxford,
1951). See also J. L. Austin, Philosophical Papers, 2nd edn. (Oxford, 1970); and
Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (Harmondsworth, 1963).
 Chapter 9
him peace of mind. Thus it seems plain that Stough's view that
the mature Pyrrhonist does not have any beliefs about matters of
objective fact is incompatible with the supposition that Pyrrhon-
ism is capable of yielding the mental tranquillity that constitutes
its official goal.
I t is important that we should also be aware that some of the
mature Pyrrhonist's beliefs about matters of objective fact do not
even receive the backhanded acknowledgement of being passed
off as impressions. These beliefs are the beliefs that underpin the
Pyrrhonist's use of ad hominem arguments.
In section 5 of Chapter 6 we saw that Sextus' writings definitely
contain arguments that do not command the assent of Sextus him-
self. And Sextus, of course, explains this practice by claiming that
such arguments frequently suffice to persuade other people to sus-
pend judgement (see PH 3. 280-1). However it seems clear that
whereas drugs can often suffice to cure the physical ailments of pa-
tients even if those patients have no understanding of the chemical
processes involved, it is very rare for an argument to succeed in
persuading its audience of something unless that audience implic-
itly accepts that the argument has a valid inferential structure and
true premisses. Consequently no one who neither believes nor has
the impression that his audience accepts that his argument has a
valid inferential structure and true premisses can have any expec-
tation that the argument will persuade his audience to accept its
conclusion. Yet it would be absurd for an individual to put forward
an argument even though he has absolutely no expectation that it
will achieve its intended effect. Thus the supposition that some of
Sextus' arguments are purely ad hominem forces us to hold that he
believes or has the impression that some members of his prospec-
tive audience will accept that these arguments have true premisses
and a valid structure.
But the conclusion that Sextus believes that some members of
his audience will accept various specific premisses as true is clearly
incompatible with Stough's account of Pyrrhonism. If the mature
Pyrrhonist is confined to beliefs about his non-epistemic impres-
sions, then he is precluded from having any beliefs about the exis-
tence or objective characteristics of thinking beings other than him-
self. It follows that anyone wishing to claim that Stough's account
of Sextus' Pyrrhonism manages to describe a coherent intellectual
stance must insist that it is sufficient that Sextus should have the
 Is the Pyrrhonist a Proto-Phenomenalist? 229

impression that some members of his audience are prepared to give

their assent to those premisses.
Unfortunately it can hardly be denied that a person who accepts
that matters stand one way rather than another must believe or
have the impression that matters do stand thus. Hence Sextus' pu-
tative impression would actually have to amount to the impression
that some members of his audience believe or have the impression
that matters do stand as stated in the premisses of his ad hominem
arguments. And the suggestion that there can be a non-epistemic
impression of that complexity is thoroughly unconvincing.
When we were discussing the Pyrrhonist's impression that he
has never met a rationally justified dogmatic claim, we argued that
the linguistic impropriety of the statement 'After studying these
arguments, it appears to me that p; but I am not inclined to believe
that p' indicates that it is self-contradictory to claim that an im-
pression that is the causal product of someone's response to a set
of arguments can be anything other than an epistemic impression.
However the statement 'It appears to me that he believes or has
the impression that p, but I am not inclined to believe that he be-
lieves or has the impression that p' is also linguistically anomalous.
Furthermore we again find that this sense of anomaly cannot be
eliminated by altering the tense of the statement or by substitut-
ing the third-person singular pronoun for the first-person singular.
Thus the parallels between the two cases lead us inexorably to the
conclusion that the claim that it is possible to have a non-epistemic
impression that someone else has a particular belief or impression is
as incoherent as the claim that it is possible to create a non-epistemic
impression through the use of argument.
Moreover it is worth noting that we are also in a position to of-
fer some reassurance to anyone who is worried about the extent
to which our criticisms of the philosophic position Stough wishes
to ascribe to Sextus depend on allegations that particular state-
ments are linguistically anomalous. Different people sometimes
have different intuitions about the same statement. Thus it might
be thought that it would be desirable to have a less controversial
foundation for our arguments. And when we are dealing with the
impressions that motivate the Pyrrhonist's ad hominem arguments,
we can indeed go beyond a simple appeal to the supposed impro-
priety of 'It appears to me that he believes or has the impression
23 0 Chapter 9
that p, but I am not inclined to believe that he believes or has the
impression that p.'
At the beginning of this chapter we saw how it would be possible
to explain the Pyrrhonist's action of eating lunch without attribut-
ing to him any beliefs about anything other than his own impres-
sions. But that explanation depends for its plausibility on the sup-
position that feeling hungry is intrinsically unpleasant. If a person
feels hungry, then it is immediately intelligible that he should desire
to bring this feeling of hunger to an end. Consequently there is no
difficulty about explaining his performance of various phenomenal
actions that are intended to replace his impression of being hungry
with some more pleasant impression. However matters will obvi-
ously not go so smoothly if we are dealing with a set of impressions
that does not contain any impression that possesses the quality of
being intrinsically pleasant or unpleasant. In those circumstances
his desire to alter the course of his impressions could only spring
from the belief that they are signs of an undesirable state of affairs
that holds sway in the objective world.
Let us suppose, for instance, that we are attempting to explain the
mature Pyrrhonist's action of feeding someone other than himself.
Normally we could begin our explanation of such an action by
claiming that A fed B because A believed that B was feeling hungry.
Unfortunately, Stough's interpretation of Pyrrhonism precludes us
from explaining the Pyrrhonist's action in this way. For Stough
maintains that the mature Pyrrhonist does not allow himself any
beliefs about the mental state of other beings. Thus we need to
provide some alternative explanation of the Pyrrhonist's action,
and we naturally have recourse to the hypothesis that the Pyrrhonist
had the impression that the other person was feeling hungry.
However the impression that another person is feeling hungry
is not intrinsically unpleasant. Someone might welcome his own
sensations of hunger, but he would do this only if he had some
special beliefs about what is implied by these feelings. He might,
for example, believe that his pangs of hunger are a sign that he
is making some progress towards his goal of being slimmer and
healthier. Nevertheless the sensations concerned would continue to
be distressing and unpleasant, and they would not be sought for
their own sake. In contrast, a person who takes satisfaction from
his impression that another person is feeling hungry is not in the
position of enduring some personal distress that is outweighed by
 Is the Pyrrhonist a Proto-Phenomenalist? 23 1
other considerations. He is, in fact, utterly indifferent to the qual-
ities of the impression itself; and his reaction to the impression is
entirely a function of his beliefs about its signification. If he did not
have any such beliefs, then he would not perform any action in re-
sponse to this impression. Consequently the difference between the
two impressions under discussion is extremely striking. If someone
feels hungry, then it would be his failure to react to this impres-
sion which would require an explanation in terms of his beliefs
about what is implied by the impression. But if someone has the
impression that another person feels hungry, then it would be his
willingness to act on the basis of such an impression which would
demand an explanation.
I t is clear, therefore, that the manceuvre of ascribing to the
Pyrrhonist the impression that another person was feeling hungry
does not advance matters at all. If the Pyrrhonist has the impression
that he himself is feeling hungry, then this is sufficient in itself to
provide him with a motive for attempting to get rid of that particu-
lar impression. And once we have managed to supply an initiating
motive of that type, it is not difficult to see how the Pyrrhonist's
beliefs about regularities in the way his impressions succeed one
another might lead him to undertake various phenomenal actions in
order to achieve the desired end of eliminating the impression that
he is hungry. However we have now come to the conclusion that
the Pyrrhonist's impression that someone else is feeling hungry is
incapable of initiating action unless the Pyrrhonist has some be-
liefs about the signification of that impression; and that conclusion
confronts our explanatory efforts with an insurmountable obstacle.
Obviously we cannot suppose that the Pyrrhonist believes that
the impression that someone else is feeling hungry is a sign of any
objective state of affairs. Such a supposition would be blatantly in-
consistent with Stough's claim that the mature Pyrrhonist suspends
belief on all matters of objective fact. But nor would it be satisfac-
tory to suppose that the Pyrrhonist believes that this impression
is a sign of some future impression or series of impressions. If
these future impressions happen to include an impression that pro-
vides an initiating motive without the aid of supplementary beliefs,
then that is the impression that fulfils the crucial role of giving the
Pyrrhonist an intelligible goal at which to aim. Yet it is also clear
that if these future impressions do not include an impression of
that nature, then we are embarking on a vicious regress that can
23 2 Chapter 9
be brought to a close only by postulating that the Pyrrhonist does
have beliefs of the very types we have been concerned to disallow.
Thus we are compelled to conclude that the restrictions imposed by
Stough's account of the Pyrrhonist's £7TOXTJ would make it impos-
sible to explain the mature Pyrrhonist's feeding of someone other
than himself.
Let us consider, then, the mature Pyrrhonist's readiness to make
use of ad hominem arguments. Why does he offer such arguments?
The use of an argument of this kind is an action that requires an
explanation. And it is an action that seems, in many important
respects, to resemble the action of feeding another person rather
more than it resembles the action of feeding oneself.
If we take PH 3.280-1 at face value, it appears that Sextus brings
forward his ad hominem arguments in order to cure the mental ail-
ments of the dogmatists. Thus Sextus seems to be engaged in the
altruistic project of enabling other people to share the peace of
mind that he already possesses; and a desire to help other people
is a perfectly normal motive for human actions. However Stough,
of course, maintains that the mature Pyrrhonist suspends belief
on all claims about the existence or characteristics of other think-
ing things. Consequently she would have to regard the suggestion
that Sextus engages in ad hominem argument in order to bring the
dogmatists' intellectual confusion to an end as no more acceptable
than the suggestion that the mature Pyrrhonist feeds other people
in order to bring their feelings of hunger to an end.
We can expect, therefore, that Stough would claim that Sextus
offers his ad hominem arguments because he has the impression that
the dogmatists are suffering from intellectual anxieties and confu-
sion. But that impression is not an intrinsically unpleasant one.
Thus we are faced again by the same difficulties we encountered
when we attempted to use the Pyrrhonist's impression that some-
one else is feeling hungry to explain his feeding of that person. Both
impressions provide an initiating motive for the action at issue only
when they are taken in conjunction with the agent's beliefs about
the signification of the relevant impression. And we have argued
above that the beliefs required here must involve the Pyrrhonist
in beliefs about matters of objective fact. For the alternative sup-
position that the Pyrrhonist's impression influences him because
he believes that it is a sign of some future impression or series of
impressions merely defers the problem or leads to the conclusion
 Is the Pyrrhonist a Proto-Phenomenalist? 233
that the Pyrrhonist's initiating motive is actually provided by one
of these future impressions. Yet Stough's interpretation of Sextus'
Pyrrhonism insists that the mature Pyrrhonist cannot legitimately
possess any beliefs about matters of objective fact. Hence it fol-
lows that she is totally unable to give any satisfactory explanation
of Sextus' use of ad hominem arguments.
Thus we have not needed to make any appeal to our intuitions
about linguistic impropriety in order to arrive once more at the con-
clusion that Sextus' use of ad hominem arguments is explicable only
if we are prepared to concede that his beliefs are not confined to
beliefs about his own non-epistemic impressions. On this occasion
we chose instead to explore the consequences that flow from the fact
that we are dealing with an action that would normally be explained
as resulting from the agent's altruism. And it has now become clear
that our ability to offer explanations of the Pyrrhonist's actions
in terms of his expectations about the nature of his future non-
epistemic impressions depends on our ability to isolate a current
or expected impression that has the quality of being intrinsically
pleasant or intrinsically unpleasant. However impressions of that
kind are seldom available to explain an ostensibly altruistic action;
and it is, more specifically, quite plain that the Pyrrhonist's impres-
sion that someone else is suffering from intellectual perplexity does
not have this crucial quality. Consequently we do not, in fact, need
to be able to establish that the Pyrrhonist's impressions of other
people's mental states must be epistemic impressions. It is enough
that we have been able to show that we cannot explain Sextus' use
of ad hominem arguments unless we are prepared to accept that he
has either an epistemic impression that the dogmatists are suffering
from intellectual perplexity, or a non-epistemic impression to that
effect supplemented by various auxiliary beliefs about matters of
objective fact.
It appears, then, that we are forced to conclude that Stough's
account of the mature Pyrrhonist's J7TOX~ is hopelessly inadequate.
Not only does the Pyrrhonist need to have a firm inclination to
believe that he has never met a rationally justified dogmatic claim,
but it is also clear that his use of ad hominem arguments is intel-
ligible only if he has numerous beliefs or epistemic impressions
that relate to the existence and objective characteristics of other
thinking beings. It follows that if Sextus' Pyrrhonism is to be a co-
herent philosophic stance, then he must have at least some beliefs,
234 Chapter 9
or inclinations towards beliefs, that lie outside the narrow limits
specified by Stough.

4. Sextus' rejection of induction

Another problem for Stough's interpretation of Sextus' Pyrrhon-

ism manifests itself when we consider the mature Pyrrhonist's be-
liefs about his future impressions. In section I of this chapter we
saw that we need to be able to ascribe beliefs about future impres-
sions to the mature Pyrrhonist if we are to succeed in explaining
any of his voluntary actions without having recourse to the suppo-
sition that he has beliefs about matters of objective fact. But our
future impressions have yet to come into existence; and it seems
obvious that entities that do not exist can neither act nor be acted
upon. Thus our awareness of the future course of our impressions
has to be understood as the product of our interaction with the
existing forces that will eventually lead to the creation of these im-
pressions. It follows that our awareness of our future impressions
is always indirect: we are always treating some present entity or
state of affairs as a sign of what lies in the future. Moreover Sextus'
criticisms of inferences using signs apparently preclude him from
holding that any such inference is capable of yielding a rationally
justified conclusion.
Sextus shows no desire to challenge the view that all signs can be
classified as either commemorative or indicative signs (see PH 2.
100-2, and M. 8. 151-5). Furthermore Sextus purports to suspend
judgement on the actual existence of any indicative signs (see PH
I. 103,133; M. 8.156-8,298). Hence it follows that if Sextus is to
think of the mature Pyrrhonist's beliefs about future impressions
as rationally justified, then he would have to take the view that they
are justified by inferences based on commemorative signs.
However the passages that introduce the distinction between
commemorative signs and indicative signs also make it clear that
an entity of type x acts as a commemorative sign of an entity of type
y only when entities of type x have frequently been observed to be
accompanied by entities of type y. Thus we can see at once that
inferences based on commemorative signs can be rationally justi-
fied only if it is possible to justify the supposition that previously
observed regularities will tend to continue in the future. But the
 Is the Pyrrhonist a Proto-Phenomenalist? 235
task of justifying that supposition is nothing other than the task of
justifying induction. Moreover Stough herself acknowledges that
the use of commemorative signs is justified only if inductive rea-
soning is rationally defensible. '4 So it now emerges that the view
that the mature Pyrrhonist regards himself as simply living in ac-
cordance with his justified beliefs about his own impressions carries
with it a somewhat surprising commitment to the conclusion that
Sextus fully endorses the validity of inductive inference. And that
conclusion is overwhelmingly implausible.
At PH 2. 204 Sextus explicitly addresses the question of the
legitimacy of inductive reasoning, and he vigorously condemns in-
duction as an unsatisfactory mode of inference:
It is also easy, I consider, to set aside the method of induction [E7Taywy'iS'
Tp07TOV]. For, when they propose to establish the universal from the partic-
ulars by means of induction, they will effect this by a review either of all or
of some of the particular instances. But if they review some, the induction
will be insecure, since some of the particulars omitted in the induction may
contravene the universal; while if they are to review all, they will be toiling
at the impossible, since the particulars are infinite and indefinite. Thus on
both grounds, as I think, the consequence is that induction is invalidated.

Moreover it is important to bear in mind that we cannot get round

this uncompromising passage merely by treating it as yet another
example of the Pyrrhonist's predilection for ad hominem argumen-
tation. When we examined the Pyrrhonist's use of ad hominem ar-
guments, it became obvious that the Pyrrhonist would not gain
anything from putting forward an ad hominem argument that takes
as its conclusion the negation of a claim he regards as rationally
justified.'5 It follows that although it is undeniably true that the
argument recounted at PH 2. 204 does not establish that Sextus
holds that inductive reasoning is intrinsically unreliable, the pres-
ence of this argument does nevertheless appear to guarantee that
Sextus does not hold that we are rationally justified in thinking that
inductive reasoning is reliable.
Stough's own attempts to reduce the impact of Sextus' comments
are equally ineffectual. She claims that the true purport of the pas-
sage at issue becomes clear only when we realize that it occurs in
the middle of a discussion of deductive arguments. ,6 In the course

'. Stough, Greek Skepticism, 137 . '5 See Chapter 6, sect. 5.

• 6 Ibid. 13 8 .
 Chapter 9
of that discussion Sextus repeatedly attacks deductive reasoning as
circular, and Stough maintains that his criticisms of induction are
simply intended to bring out the problems inherent in any attempt
to provide inductive support for the premisses of deductive argu-
ments. Thus Stough regards Sextus' comments as a warning that
the lack of certainty associated with inductive reasoning means that
any conclusion deduced from premisses founded on such reason-
ing will always be uncertain despite the superficial rigour of the
eye-catching move from the premisses to the conclusion. However
the inability of induction to yield results that are absolutely certain
is not obviously incompatible with it having the power to yield re-
sults that are probably true. Hence Stough arrives at the conclusion
that Sextus is opposed only to attempts to exaggerate the conclu-
siveness of inductive reasoning. Induction produces results that are
probably rather than certainly true, and Sextus has no quarrel with
inductive reasoning once this limitation has been recognized. '7
Stough's claims, however, offer an alarmingly distorted picture
of the text on which she is supposed to be commenting. I t is not
true that PH 2. 204 occurs in the middle of a discussion of deduc-
tive arguments. The passage in question is actually located between
Sextus' discussion of deductive arguments and his discussion of
the dogmatists' treatment of definitions. PH 2. 203 concludes with
the remark, 'For the present, then, it will suffice to have said thus
much concerning syllogisms.' Hence it seems quite clear that PH
2.203 marks the end of his discussion of the weakness of syllogistic
reasoning. Yet Sextus presents his account of syllogistic inference
as the final part of his discussion of deductive reasoning (see PH
2. 193-4). It follows that his criticisms of induction at PH 2. 204
are not part of any attempt to show that deductive reasoning is
inevitably circular. Moreover PH 2. 205 begins with the following
two sentences: 'Further, the Dogmatists take great pride in their
systematic treatment of definitions, which they include in the logi-
cal division of their Philosophical System, as they call it. So come
and let us now make a few observations on definitions.' And those
observations about definitions are then followed by an even length-
ier discussion of the topic of 'division' (see PH 2. 213-28). Thus
PH 2.204 is preceded by an announcement that Sextus has finished
his supplementary discussion of syllogisms, and it is succeeded by a
series of discussions that have no bearing on the merits of deductive
'7 Ibid. 139.
 Is the Pyrrhonist a Proto-Phenomenalist? 237
arguments as a means of arriving at true belief. Consequently it is
patently absurd to attempt to pass off PH 2. 204 as an element in
Sextus' attack on deductive reasoning. The immediate context of
the passage concerned is such that it is plain that Sextus' criticisms
are aimed at induction itself rather than at induction considered as
an adjunct to deductive proofs.
Indeed, we find that the point Sextus is supposed to be making
at PH 2. 204 is set out much more plainly at PH 2. 195-7. Sextus
insists there that it is a gross fallacy to deduce a particular propo-
sition from a universal proposition that has allegedly been justified
inductively:
So whenever they argue 'Every man is an animal, and Socrates is a man,
therefore Socrates is an animal,' proposing to deduce from the universal
proposition 'Every man is an animal' the particular proposition 'Socrates
therefore is an animal,' which in fact goes (as we have mentioned) to estab-
lish by way of induction the universal proposition, they fall into the error
of circular reasoning, since they are establishing the universal proposition
inductively by means of each of the particulars and deducing the particular
proposition from the universal syllogistically. (PH 2. 196)

Consequently there is evidently no need for Sextus to repeat himself

at PH 2. 204. Nevertheless Stough's interpretation of the passage
would compel us to accept that it is nothing more than an exces-
sively obscure repetition of the warning already issued at PH 2.
195-7. However it is not at all plausible to suppose that Sextus
would indulge in so pointless a performance, and in fact there is no
pressing need to embrace that supposition: we can, after all, give
PH 2. 204 its natural reading and treat it as a general attack on the
adequacy of inductive inferences. The fact that Stough's interpre-
tation of PH 2. 204 would compel us to conclude that Sextus is
needlessly repeating himself thus tells heavily against the accept-
ability of that interpretation.
We seem to have established, therefore, that Sextus' criticisms
of induction at PH 2. 204 cannot plausibly be construed as part of
his campaign to undermine our confidence in the utility of deduc-
tive reasoning. Hence we have to regard PH 2. 204 as criticizing
all inductive inferences rather than one particular application of
induction. Moreover it is usually safe to assume that whenever
Sextus makes a general criticism of a specific type of reasoning, he
is attempting to persuade us to suspend judgement on the ability
 Chapter 9
of that reasoning to provide any rational justification of the conclu-
sions reached through its use.
Consider, for example, Sextus' attitude towards our efforts to
justify our claims about external objects. Sextus fully endorses Ae-
nesidemus' tropes, yet they lead to the conclusion that none of our
claims about external objects possesses any rational justification
whatsoever. Similarly, Sextus' attack on inferences that rely on the
use of putative indicative signs does not end in the tame conclusion
that these inferences are not infallible. Instead he chooses to argue
that there is no more reason to suppose that any indicative signs
exist than there is to suppose that no such signs exist (see PH 2.
103 and 133; M. 8. 159 and 298). Nor, indeed, are Sextus' criti-
cisms of deductive reasoning confined to the platitude that human
fallibility is such that we occasionally take an invalid inference to
be deductively valid even when we are striving our utmost to avoid
making any mistakes. On the contrary, Sextus takes it upon himself
to deploy a mass of arguments that purport to deliver the conclu-
sion that proof does not exist (see PH 2. 171, 176, 179, 184; M. 8.
39 0 ,395,4 6 2).
We have examined, then, Sextus' criticisms of three distinct types
of reasoning; deductive inference, inferences that rely on indicative
signs, and inferences that attempt to justify our claims about the
external world. In all these cases we have found that Sextus ulti-
mately concludes that we are driven to suspend belief on the ability
of such reasoning to justify any conclusions whatsoever. Hence it
seems implausible that Sextus' criticisms of induction would have
the unique distinction of being aimed at inducing a cautious falli-
bilism rather than suspension of belief.
The implausibility of that supposition becomes even greater
when we reflect on the fact that Sextus moves directly from a discus-
sion of deductive reasoning to his discussion of induction without
giving even the slightest hint that the two discussions are intended
to bring about entirely different results. It should also be borne
in mind that the sections immediately following his discussion of
induction argue that definitions are worthless because they are of
no use for apprehension or instruction (see PH 2.206). Thus PH 2.
204 is embedded within a series of discussions that are all aimed at
compelling us to suspend belief on the merits of the particular ways
of thought under examination; and it would not make any sense for
Sextus to choose that context for his criticisms of induction unless
 Is the Pyrrhonist a Proto-Phenomenalist? 239
those criticisms are also aimed at inducing suspension of belief.
Consequently the nature of the material surrounding PH 2. 204,
combined with Sextus' failure to mark off that discussion as serv-
ing a special purpose, makes it very difficult to believe that Sextus
regards induction as constituting a legitimate form of reasoning.
Nevertheless we have not yet considered the most compelling
objection to the supposition that the mature Pyrrhonist can legit-
imately hold that induction yields rationally justified conclusions.
Our contemporary realization that there is a serious problem about
justifying inductive reasoning has its origins in the work of David
Hume. Hume claims that all inductive inferences are founded on
the principle 'that instances, of which we have had no experience,
must resemble those, of which we have had experience, and that the
course of nature continues always uniformly the same'. ,8 He then
proceeds to argue that it is impossible to justify this crucial presup-
position. However the important point to note about this argument
is that it is possible to reproduce the entire chain of reasoning using
premisses that are used by Sextus.
Naturally, considerable caution is needed here. We have already
argued in a previous chapter that there are strong grounds for con-
cluding that the Pyrrhonist views his own arguments as intrinsically
self-cancelling: by reflecting on those arguments he eventually finds
himself forced to suspend belief on all non-evident matters of in-
quiry, and that leads him to suspend judgement on the cogency of
the very arguments that induced his bTOX~' '9 Moreover it is quite
clear that Sextus is fully prepared to make use of ad hominem ar-
guments that are merely intended to exploit the beliefs held by
his dogmatic opponents. Thus his willingness to put forward an
argument using a particular premiss does nothing to establish that
Sextus, having achieved the status of being a mature Pyrrhonist,
believes that premiss to be true.
On the other hand, we are aware that Sextus has arrived at philo-
sophic maturity only because of his former assent to a wide se-
lection of negative epistemological arguments. Hence it is obvious
that any detailed exposition of the Pyrrhonean way would be se-
riously incomplete unless it gives some account of the sceptical
arguments that are usually responsible for the novice Pyrrhonist
developing into someone who eschews all beliefs about matters
,8 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, 2nd edn.,
rev. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford, 1978), 89. '9 See Chapter 6, sect. 5.
 Chapter 9
that are non-evident. Furthermore Sextus explicitly states that the
first book of the Outlines is intended to serve as a general descrip-
tion of the distinctive features of the Pyrrhonean way (see PH I.
5). And it would seem to follow that we can be confident that the
negative arguments outlined in that book are arguments that would
exercise some influence over a developing Pyrrhonist.
However they could have this influence only if they are argu-
ments the developing Pyrrhonist would accept as having a valid
inferential structure and true premisses. Moreover a person who
accepts that a particular claim constitutes a true premiss when it is
used in one argument is committed to accepting it as a true premiss
when it is used in any other argument. And that means that if it
is true that the novice Pyrrhonist would characteristically give his
assent to the inferential structure and the individual premisses used
within Hume's argument, then he would also be committed to giv-
ing his assent to the conclusion of that argument. Furthermore the
general sceptical arguments set out in the first book of the Outlines
are, as we have just pointed out, arguments that can be expected
to command the assent of the novice Pyrrhonist. It follows that if
it is possible to reconstruct Hume's argument from premisses and
inferences used in those general sceptical arguments, then the de-
veloping Pyrrhonist must be committed to Hume's conclusion that
all inductive inferences are unreasonable.
Of course, the mature Pyrrhonist would presumably discard this
belief when he embraces complete f.1TOX~ on all non-evident matters.
But he would not have any inclination to replace the belief that
all inductive inferences are unreasonable with the positive belief
that some inductive inferences are reasonable. Thus the developing
Pyrrhonist's belief that all inductive inferences are unreasonable
would inevitably lead to the mature Pyrrhonist having to suspend
judgement on the rationality of any inductive inference. And we
can conclude from this that if the mature Pyrrhonist does have
the belief that some inductive inferences are reasonable, then the
developing Pyrrhonist must be illicitly evading the implications of
his own arguments. I t follows that no interpretation of Pyrrhonism
that allows us to regard it as a coherent philosophic stance can avoid
conceding that our ability to recreate Hume's argument out of the
materials used in the general arguments found in the first book of
the Outlines would indicate that even the mature Pyrrhonist cannot
have the belief that induction is a legitimate form of reasoning.
 Is the Pyrrhonist a Proto-Phenomenalist?
The significance of such a reconstruction of Hume's argument
is now plain. Moreover we are not compelled to avoid all use of
material found in other parts of Sextus' writings. There are many
occasions when Sextus is simply describing the Pyrrhonist's own
stance rather than arguing for suspension of belief; and it is ac-
cordingly quite safe to mix premisses culled from those expository
passages with any premisses extracted from the negative epistemo-
logical arguments set out in the Outlines.
What, then, are the details of Hume's argument against the ra-
tionality of induction? One crucial premiss, of course, is the claim
that it is not possible to give a demonstrative proof of the unifor-
mity principle. Hume supports this premiss by insisting that we
can readily conceive of there being a change in the course of nature,
and he goes on to say, 'To form a clear idea of any thing, is an
undeniable argument for its possibility, and is alone a refutation of
any pretended demonstration against it."o
Moreover Hume takes the view that any cogent, non-demonstra-
tive justification of a claim must be based on our experience up to
the time of the attempted justification. Thus his elimination of the
possibility of a demonstrative justification allows him to conclude
that the supposition that the course of nature is not subject to ar-
bitrary changes can be justified only by means of an appeal to the
evidence provided by past experience. And Hume has an impres-
sive argument available to show that any such appeal is completely
worthless.
The supposition that the course of nature is not subject to arbi-
trary changes is not the same as the supposition that no arbitrary
changes have occurred up to now. The first supposition, which is
the object of Hume's concern, can be correct only if it is true that
no arbitrary changes have occurred up to now and also true that
no arbitrary changes will occur at any time in the future. It follows
that it is impossible to justify this supposition without justifying a
claim about events that still lie in the future.
But Hume started from the position that all inferences from our
past experience to conclusions about events we have not yet expe-
rienced are founded on the supposition that the course of nature is
not subject to arbitrary changes. Consequently he maintains that
it is clear that the attempt to justify the uniformity supposition
by appealing to our past experience of the world merely embroils
>0 Hume, A Treatise uf Human Nature, ed. Selby-Bigge, 89.
242 Chapter 9
us in a chain of reasoning that is overtly circular.21 The role ori-
ginally allocated to the uniformity supposition was precisely that
of providing a foundation for our inferences from premisses about
instances that have been observed to conclusions about instances
that have not yet been observed. If the uniformity supposition can-
not be justified, then those inferences would also lack any rational
justification. Thus our experience up to the present can provide
reasonable grounds for accepting the uniformity principle only if
we are already in possession of a justification of the uniformity
principle. In effect, therefore, the appeal to past experience must
beg the question, for this supposed justification of the uniformity
principle relies on its conclusion as one of its premisses.
Furthermore there is no basis for the tedious and frequently re-
peated allegation" that Hume's argument depends on the unwar-
ranted assumption that an inference cannot be a 'good' or 'reason-
able' one unless it is deductively valid. Hume does, as we have seen,
assume that our inductive inferences are not justified unless we are
justified in believing that the uniformity principle is true. However
there is no need to conclude that Hume assumes this because he
holds that a premiss stating the uniformity supposition is required
before we can make a valid deductive inference from claims about
events that have occurred in the past to claims about events that
have yet to take place.
Consider the situation of a scientist who admits that he has abso-
lutely no reason to suppose that the uniformity principle holds true
in the domain of quantum phenomena. What would our reaction
be if he then went on to say that his past observations of quantum
phenomena nevertheless make it reasonable for him to believe that
a specific regularity r will continue to manifest itself in the future?
It seems obvious that our reaction would, in fact, be one of ut-
ter bewilderment. We would find ourselves unable to supply any
plausible interpretation of the statements in question that does not
force us to conclude that at least one of those statements must be
false. Moreover this bewilderment would persist even if we were
reminded that we do not normally reject inferences as unjustified

" Ibid. 89-<}O.

" See Paul Edwards, 'Bertrand Russell's Doubts about Induction', in Flew (ed.),
Logic and Language, First Series, 55-79; P. F. Strawson, Introduction to Logical The-
ory (London, 1952); and D. C. Stove, Probability and Hume's Inductive Scepticism
(Oxford, 1973).
 Is the Pyrrhonist a Proto-Phenomenalist? 243
merely because they happen to be deductively invalid. Hence it ap-
pears undeniable that our understanding of the concept of rational
justification is such that we all implicitly acknowledge that it is im-
possible for past regularities within a given domain to provide any
justification for claims about the future unless we have managed to
justify the belief that the uniformity supposition holds true in that
domain. And it inexorably follows that we would all have to agree
with Hume that none of our inductive inferences can be rationally
justified unless we can justify the claim that the uniformity sup-
position does hold true in some domain or other: our willingness
to consider the possibility of there being good inferences that are
not deductively valid makes no difference at all to the force of his
sceptical argument.
It is apparent, then, that Hume's argument against the rational-
ity of induction has a fairly straightforward structure. Only four
premisses are used; and we have just seen that our concept of ra-
tional justification does not allow us to countenance the suggestion
that an inductive inference in a given domain can be rationally jus-
tified even when we have no justification for supposing that the
uniformity principle holds true in that domain. Consequently it
seems that we would have to regard anyone who rejects Hume's
first premiss as someone who has failed to understand that premiss.
Hume's second premiss, however, is the claim that it is impos-
sible to justify the uniformity principle by means of a demonstrative
proof. Hume, of course, supports this premiss by appealing to the
conceivability of an arbitrary change in the course of nature. But
Sextus never invokes the principle that conceivability implies pos-
sibility. So it might be thought that our attempt to recreate Hume's
argument must inevitably miscarry at this point. Nevertheless such
a pessimistic assessment would, in fact, be grossly premature.
Any supposedly demonstrative proof of the uniformity principle
must fall into one of two categories. It may purport to be a purely
a priori piece of reasoning, or it may endeavour to argue that the
actual course of our past experience has been such that it necessarily
follows that the uniformity principle holds true. Moreover it is not
difficult to locate passages in Sextus' writings that suffice to show
that the developing Pyrrhonist would not be prepared to embrace
either of those two possibilities.
At PH I. 128 Sextus describes the senses as the mind's guides,
and at PH I. 99 he emphasizes that the inability of the senses
244 Chapter 9
to apprehend external objects automatically precludes the intellect
from being able to apprehend external objects. Hence it is clear
that the novice Pyrrhonist would not accept that purely a priori
reasoning can tell us anything about matters of objective or subjec-
tive fact.
Similarly, the supposition that the developing Pyrrhonist would
be able to embrace the second of the two apparent possibilities
is undermined by Sextus' unequivocal insistence that the mature
Pyrrhonist suspends belief on the existence of indicative signs. This
suspension of belief is the product of the developing Pyrrhonist's
acquaintance with an array of arguments that profess to establish
that indicative signs do not exist (see PH 2. 103; M. 8. 159-61),
and the ability of these arguments to bring about this result assures
us that he must be inclined to give his assent to at least some of the
arguments in question.
Moreover Sextus defines the indicative sign as one 'which is not
clearly associated with the thing signified, but signifies that whereof
it is a sign by its own particular nature and constitution' (PH 2.
101). And that definition strongly suggests that an indicative sign
is any sign that relies on the supposed existence of a necessary
connection between itself and the thing signified. Consequently it
is not at all surprising that Sextus has no qualms about asserting
that proofs, i.e. arguments that deduce non-evident conclusions
from pre-evident premisses, are a form of indicative sign (see PH
2. 96, 122, 134; M. 8. 299).
I t is clear, then, that the developing Pyrrhonist's assent to the con-
clusion that no indicative signs exist means that he is also committed
to giving his assent to the conclusion that it is impossible to deduce
the uniformity principle from premisses that merely describe our
past experiences. For the truth of the uniformity principle is not
pre-evident. Hence any such deduction would be a paradigmatic
example of an argument Sextus would classify as a proof, and we
have just seen that anyone who holds that no indicative signs exist
must also hold that no proofs of this kind genuinely exist.
We have succeeded, therefore, in showing that the novice Pyr-
rhonist is implicitly committed to the first two premisses of Hume's
argument against the reasonableness of inductive inferences. And
it seems obvious that the novice Pyrrhonist would not have any ob-
jection to the claim that the uniformity principle cannot be justified
by an appeal to the fact that no arbitrary changes in the course of
 Is the Pyrrhonist a Proto-Phenomenalist? 245
nature have ever occurred in the past. Such a move would indeed be
patently circular, and the first book of the Outlines contains several
forthright denunciations of circular reasoning. Thus we find, for
example, that at PH I. 115-17 Sextus dismisses the possibility of
justifying our criterion of truth by means of a proof on the grounds
that this would inevitably involve us in circularity or an infinite
regress; and he has the following to say about the circularity op-
tion: 'So in this way both the criterion and the proof are involved
in the circular process of reasoning, and thereby both are found to
be untrustworthy; for since each of them is dependent on the cred-
ibility of the other, the one is lacking in credibility just as much as
the other' (PH I. 117). Furthermore the fifth of Agrippa's tropes
deals specifically with circular arguments: Sextus describes it as the
trope invoked 'when the proof itself which ought to establish the
matter of inquiry requires confirmation derived from that matter;
in this case, being unable to assume either in order to establish the
other, we suspend judgement about both' (PH I. 169).
The sole premiss still outstanding is the premiss that only a
demonstrative proof or an appeal to past regularities can possi-
bly provide a justification of the uniformity principle. And our task
here is facilitated by Sextus' willingness to acquiesce in the Stoics'
choice of a fourfold classification of matters of inquiry. This schema
categorizes any possible matter of inquiry as falling under one of
these four headings: pre-evident, occasionally non-evident, natur-
ally non-evident, or absolutely non-evident (see PH 2. 97-8; M.
8. 145-7). Now an absolutely non-evident matter of inquiry is de-
fined as one that cannot be apprehended by any means whatsoever,
but the three other categories are each associated with a distinc-
tive method for acquiring rationally justified beliefs. Pre-evident
matters are supposed to be apprehended through some form of
non-inferential awareness that may either be intellectual or percep-
tual, occasionally non-evident matters are thought of as requiring
the use of commemorative signs, and naturally non-evident mat-
ters are supposed to be apprehended by means of indicative signs
(see PH 2.99; M. 8.149-51). Moreover Sextus never displays any
desire to consider the possibility of there being any other ways of
arriving at rationally justified beliefs. Hence it follows that if the
novice Pyrrhonist were to think of the uniformity principle as be-
ing rationally justified, then he would have to think of it as being
rationally justified by one of the three methods just specified.
 Chapter 9
We can, of course, discard at once the hypothesis that the devel-
oping Pyrrhonist may hold that the uniformity principle is justified
non-inferentially. Nobody would wish to maintain that it is possible
to have direct perceptual awareness of events that are yet to occur.
However the supposition that a person can have an intellectual in-
tuition that justifies him in believing that the uniformity principle
holds true is equivalent to the supposition that human reason oper-
ating wholly a priori is capable of apprehending non-trivial truths.
And we have noted previously that this optimistic assessment of
the value of pure a priori thought is rejected at both PH I. 99 and
PH I. 128.
Thus we actually need to consider just two potential forms of
justification. If the developing Pyrrhonist does not believe that the
uniformity principle is justified by means of an inference making
use of some alleged indicative or commemorative sign, then he does
not believe that the uniformity principle has any rational justifica-
tion. But an inference that is based on an indicative sign yields
a conclusion that must be true if the indicative sign concerned is
genuinely present: it is inconceivable that the sign could be present
when the inference's conclusion is false. Hence any inference based
on an alleged indicative sign would count as a Humean demon-
strative proof. On the other hand, an inference based on an alleged
commemorative sign depends on the supposition that regularities
that have been observed in the past will continue into the future.
Indeed, it is precisely that feature of such signs which originally led
us to conclude that inferences relying on alleged commemorative
signs are rationally justified only if induction is rationally justified.
Consequently it is plain that inferences founded on commemora-
tive signs are not an alternative to inductive inferences: they are
simply inductive inferences dressed up in a variant terminology.
It follows that Hume's fourth premiss, the premiss that the uni-
formity principle cannot be justified at all unless it can be justified
by a demonstrative proof, is also one that would command the as-
sent of the novice Pyrrhonist. And that, in turn, means that we
have now shown that the developing Pyrrhonist is committed to
all the premisses of Hume's argument against the rationality of in-
duction. Moreover the inferential structure of Hume's argument
is so straightforward that anyone who is prepared to endorse any
instances of deductive reasoning would accept that Hume's argu-
ment is valid. Thus·we are driven to conclude that the developing
 Is the Pyrrhonist a Proto-Phenomenalist? 247
Pyrrhonist is committed to giving his assent to the conclusion of
Hume's argument. However that conclusion is the claim that in-
ductive inferences utterly lack a rational justification; and we have
already pointed out that the mature Pyrrhonist can never have cause
to replace the negative epistemological conclusions of his former
self with positive conclusions about the availability of rationally
justified beliefs. Hence it is clear that the mature Pyrrhonist is
committed to either suspending judgement on the rationality of
induction or accepting that it is not rationally justified.
Moreover this conclusion deals a shattering blow to Stough's in-
terpretation of Sextus' Pyrrhonism. The Pyrrhonist's actions can-
not be explained solely in terms of his beliefs about past and present
impressions. Any explanation that relies entirely on the Pyrrhon-
ist's supposed beliefs about impressions must appeal at some stage
to his beliefs about his future impressions. Yet we argued at the
beginning of this section that if the mature Pyrrhonist is to have
any rationally justified beliefs about his future impressions, then
he will need to justify those beliefs inductively. Thus the revela-
tion that he is not entitled to regard induction as yielding rationally
justified conclusions forces us to accept that he is not entitled to
regard his beliefs about his future impressions as rationally justi-
fied. It follows that any successful explanation of a voluntary action
performed by the mature Pyrrhonist must invoke at least one belief
that falls outside the range of beliefs the mature Pyrrhonist can
legitimately regard as rationally justified.

s.
Agrippa's tropes and our
knowledge of our current impressions

In the preceding section we saw that the sceptical arguments fa-

voured by the developing Pyrrhonist leave the mature Pyrrhonist
unable to justify any beliefs about his future impressions, but we
have not yet examined the mature Pyrrhonist's ability to construct
justifications for his beliefs about his current impressions. When
we do so, however, we discover that even the beliefs that form this
last small core of supposedly justified beliefs are not as secure as
Stough claims them to be.
lt is, in fact, natural to assume that Agrippa's five tropes would be
every bit as effective against first-person claims about the Pyrrhon-
 Chapter 9
ist's present impressions as they are against claims about the ob-
jective properties of real objects. Suppose the Pyrrhonist thinks
to himself, 'It appears to me that there is a white sheet of paper
in front of me.' If he then attempts to provide a justification of
that claim, he launches himself on exactly the sort of justificatory
regress which the five tropes exploit so effectively. But if he merely
contents himself with his original claim, he exposes himself to the
charge that he is arbitrarily assuming that it appears to him that
there is a white sheet of paper in front of him.
I t follows that Stough can defend the supposition that the ma-
ture Pyrrhonist is entitled to regard his beliefs about his present
impressions as rationally justified only if she is prepared to take
the line that the mature Pyrrhonist correctly takes these beliefs to
be self-evidently true. If sincere claims about one's own present
impressions are self-evidently true, it would then be possible for
these claims to be rationally justified even in the absence of any
external support, as their justification would not depend on any
other claims being justified. On the other hand, they would not be
mere arbitrary assertions, as their self-evidence would itself pro-
vide all the justification that is necessary. Consequently such claims
would not only be immune to the regressive difficulties exploited
by Agrippa's tropes, but they would also be capable of grounding
the justificatory chains that are essential in the case of less-favoured
claims.
Unfortunately for this suggestion, however, the mature Pyrrhon-
ist's overall stance clearly precludes him from thinking of his claims
about his present impressions as self-evidently true. We have
stressed repeatedly that Sextus acquiesces in the Stoic schema by
which all possible matters of inquiry are classified as falling into
one ofthe four mutually exclusive categories of the pre-evident, the
occasionally non-evident, the naturally non-evident, and the alto-
gether non-evident. But it is clear that a claim that is self-evidently
true cannot be a claim about a non-evident matter of inquiry. For
the truth about matters that are altogether non-evident is not ap-
prehended at all, and the truth about matters that are occasionally
or naturally non-evident can be apprehended only with assistance
from some form of sign. It follows that if the Pyrrhonist does think
of some claims as being self-evidently true, then he must hold that
these claims are claims about matters that are pre-evident. Yet
Sextus does not draw any distinctions within the category of pre-
 Is the Pyrrhonist a Proto-Phenomenalist? 249
evident matters of inquiry: he never suggests that some pre-evident
matters are more securely apprehended than others. Consequently
we are forced to the conclusion that the Pyrrhonist can be in a
position to regard claims as self-evidently true only if he supposes
that the truth or falsity of any claim about pre-evident matters of
inquiry is self-evident. And it seems obvious that no Pyrrhonist
can legitimately suppose any such thing.
The problem here stems from Sextus' willingness to attack the
claims made by the dogmatists even when the dogmatists them-
selves are convinced that they are merely stating the truth about
pre-evident matters of inquiry. At PH 2. 95, for example, Sextus
brings a lengthy discussion of the criterion of truth to a close with
this comment:
And since the criterion of truth has appeared to be unattainable, it is
no longer possible to make positive assertions either about those things
which (if we may depend on the statements of the Dogmatists) seem to
be evident or about those which are non-evident; for since the Dogma-
tists suppose they apprehend the latter from the things evident, if we are
forced to suspend judgement about the evident, how shall we dare to make
pronouncements about the non-evident?
Furthermore the dogmatists' favourite example of a claim about a
pre-evident matter of inquiry is the claim 'It is day' when this is
asserted by someone who is located outdoors and has the full use
of his eyes (see PH 2. 97; M. 8. 144,317). However that claim
is a claim about a matter of objective fact, and we established in
the preceding chapter that Aenesidemus' ten tropes are intended to
call into question even the most banal of our ordinary beliefs about
the objective world. Similarly, we began this discussion because it
appeared that Agrippa's tropes have the power to undermine not
only our beliefs about matters of objective fact but also our beliefs
about our present impressions. Thus the claim that it is day is an
excellent example of the sort of claim that definitely does fall within
the ambit of these five tropes.
Consequently we arrive at the following situation. If we are to
accommodate the notion of self-evident truth within the evident/
non-evident classificatory system, then we have to suppose that all
true claims about pre-evident matters of inquiry are self-evidently
true and all false claims about pre-evident matters of inquiry are
self-evidently false. However we are now aware that the Pyrrhonist
25 0 Chapter 9
holds that many of the claims the dogmatists make about matters
that strike them as pre-evident lack any rational justification. Thus
our desire to make room for the notion of self-evident truth drives
us to conclude that the Pyrrhonist is, in fact, committed to the view
that claims that are totally devoid of any rational justification never-
theless strike some dogmatists as self-evidently true. But it would
be absurd to allege that a claim that is genuinely self-evidently true
can lack any rational justification. Hence we have to assume that
the Pyrrhonist holds that the dogmatists are mistaken in their belief
that the claims in question are self-evidently true.
However the supposition that a person can take a claim to be
self-evidently true even when it is not self-evidently true obviously
threatens to make the appeal to self-evident truth useless as a way of
providing a regress of justification with a satisfactory terminus. For
we are now being asked to accept that a person can be acquainted
with claims that are self-evidently true, namely his claims about
his present impressions, and yet be unable to distinguish between
genuine self-evidence and mere speciosity. But once we accept that
this is a possibility, we are faced by the problem of finding some way
of grounding a decision about which property is actually present.
Thus no progress has been made: the original problem, that of
distinguishing between the truth and the apparent truth, has simply
reappeared at a different point in our reasoning. And this time round
we can hardly appeal to self-evidence as a means of determining
whether something is genuinely self-evident or merely appears self-
evident.
We are compelled to accept, therefore, that Sextus does take up a
stance that prevents him from legitimately taking the view that the
putative self-evidence of a claim can justify that claim. Neverthe-
less someone might concede this point, and yet argue that Sextus
ought to revise his system so as to take into account the existence
of this form of justification. So far our investigations seem to have
revealed that the mature Pyrrhonist would be guilty of gross in-
consistency if he were to hold that he can have rationally justified
beliefs about matters of objective fact or rationally justified beliefs
about impressions that lie in the future. Consequently the fact that
we have now arrived at the conclusion that Sextus is also committed
to rejecting the supposition that he has rationally justified beliefs
about his present impressions may strike some people as a reductio
ad absurdum of Pyrrhonean scepticism.
 Is the Pyrrhonist a Proto-Phenomenalist?
Neither Burnyeat's proposal that the Pyrrhonist relies on a men-
tal state analogous to but separate from belief nor Frede's sug-
gestion that the Pyrrhonist acts on his impressions rather than
his beliefs about impressions has been able to withstand critical
scrutiny. Thus our ability to explain the mature Pyrrhonist's vol-
untary actions remains inextricably bound up with our ability to
ascribe beliefs to him. Yet we seem to have successively eliminated
all the possible categories of rationally justified beliefs. Hence it is
tempting to insist that this process has gone too far: if anything
coherent is to emerge from the Pyrrhonist's destructive dialectic,
then there must be some beliefs that can be recognized as unaffected
by his negative arguments. However only self-evident truths seem
to have any prospect of escaping the Pyrrhonist's well-founded
objections to circular reasoning and non-terminating regresses of
justification.
It is interesting to consider, therefore, the issue of the objective
tenability of the supposition that some truths are self-evidently true
and hence require no additional justification. We argued above that
Sextus' endorsement of the Stoics' schema for classifying possible
matters of inquiry and his attitude towards claims about matters
that are allegedly pre-evident make it impossible for Sextus to ac-
cept that any claim can genuinely have the property of being self-
evidently true. But would someone who does not share those par-
ticular assumptions be entitled to maintain that self-evident truths
exist?
The first obstacle to such a claim is undoubtedly the fact that
it is not necessary to identify self-evident truths with true claims
about pre-evident matters of inquiry in order to be persuaded that
people cannot be viewed as infallible judges of what is and what
is not self-evidently true. Thus we find, for example, that a spec-
tacular instance of someone making a mistake about the supposed
self-evidence of a particular claim occurs in Descartes' Meditations
on First Philosophy. In 'Meditation III' Descartes calmly states,
'it is manifest by the natural light that there must be at least as
much (reality) in the efficient and total cause as in the effect of
that cause'. 23 However when we unpack this opaque pronounce-
ment, we discover that Descartes is claiming, among other things,

'3 Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, in The Philosophical Writings

of Descartes, trans. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch (2 vols.; Cam-
bridge, 1984-5), ii. 3-62 at 28.
 Chapter 9
that it is self-evident that the cause of an idea must have the same
perfections as would be possessed by an instantiation in the actual
world of the object of that idea. 24 And that claim is unlikely to strike
any of us as self-evidently true: indeed, we are far more likely to
regard it as obviously false. In his story The Horla Maupassant de-
scribed an invisible creature whose constitution was more perfect
than that of any human being.25 Consequently we would naturally
say that Maupassant had formed an idea of a being more perfect
than any human being. Yet we would rightly resist the conclusion
that Maupassant himself had superhuman powers.
Another notorious instance of this phenomenon occurred in the
course of Frege's attempt to derive the axioms of arithmetic from
purely logical laws. Frege initially took the view that it is self-
evident that there is, for every predicate expressible by means of
quantification over sets of objects, a set containing just those objects
that satisfy the predicate concerned. Unfortunately, this so-called
axiom of comprehension embroils us in an alarming paradox when
we corne to consider the set of all sets that are not members of
themselves. If we hypothesize that this set is not a member of itself,
then it does have the qualifying property to be a member of itself.
But if we switch to the assumption that it is a member of itself, then
it fails to qualify as a member of itself because only sets that are
not members of themselves qualify. And when Russell brought this
paradox to Frege's attention, Frege found himself forced to concede
that the axiom of comprehension was, despite all his painstaking
efforts to restrict himself to self-evidently true axioms, false!6
Thus it seems clear that even highly able thinkers, concentrating
intently on a particular matter of inquiry, can mistakenly take a
claim to be self-evidently true when it is not. Consequently a person
can cleave to the view that apparent self-evidence provides him with
an epistemological guarantee only if he is prepared to take the heroic
line that his intellectual powers do not suffer from the limitations
which afflict the lesser intellects of the philosophers named above.
Moreover it is plausible to suppose that any person reflecting on
his own intellectual history will recall that there are some claims
Z' See Bernard Williams, Descartes: The Project oj Pure Enquiry (Hannondsworth,
1978), 135-41.
z, Guy de 1\1aupassant, Selected Short Stories, trans. Roger Colet (Harmonds-
worth, 1971),313-45.
z6 See G. Frege, The Foundations oj Arithmetic, trans. J. L. Austin (Oxford, 1950),

234·
 Is the Pyrrhonist a Proto-Phenomenalist? 253
which he now regards as false despite his former confidence in their
self-evident truth. And one particularly fruitful source of such re-
nunciations is the realm of geometrical reasoning. When we first
encounter the suggestion that two straight lines may be parallel for
part of their length and yet subsequently converge without ceasing
to be straight lines, we take the falsity of this suggestion to be self-
evident. Nor does this sense of self-evident falsity differ from the
sense of self-evident falsity that accompanies the claim that 7+ 5 =
I I and the claim that black is a lighter colour than white. Never-

theless the General Theory of Relativity claims that if we wish to

continue to think of a straight line as the shortest distance between
two points, then we have to accept that the situation described above
is not only a possible state of affairs but also a frequently occurring
state of affairs. Z7
Similarly, our intuitive grasp of the properties of the Mobius strip
is usually extremely poor. A Mobius strip can readily be formed by
giving a strip of paper a half twist and sticking the ends together. For
our present purposes, however, the nature of its physical embodi-
ment is irrelevant: we need only concern ourselves with its purely
geometric properties. Suppose the strip were to be divided along
its centre line. What geometrical figure or figures would result from
that operation? Almost anyone who attempts to reason his way to
an answer will conclude that it is self-evident that the result is two
circular, twisted strips. The analogy with an untwisted strip seems
absolutely decisive. However those of us who have experimented on
actual strips of paper would insist that this apparently self-evident
conclusion is false. The experimental evidence convincingly indi-
cates that the result of dividing a Mobius strip in the way specified
is one strip folded in on itself.
It follows that difficulties in distinguishing genuine self-evidence
from apparent self-evidence cannot be dismissed as confined to
other people. Anyone who searches hard enough will inevitably
uncover examples of occasions when he himself has failed to arrive
at a satisfactory decision. Yet if these problematic cases can be
discerned only in retrospect, then it seems obvious that an appeal
to the supposed self-evidence of a particular claim can do nothing
to establish that the claim in question is true.
'7 See Hilary Putnam, 'The Logic of Quantum Mechanics', in Putnam, Philo-

sophical Papers, 2nd edn. (2 vols.; Cambridge, '979), i. '74--97 at '74--'7.

254 Chapter 9
However the last of our objections to the attempt to use self-
evidence as a way of bringing justificatory regresses to an end goes
even deeper than the criticisms outlined above. It is hard to deny
that it is logically possible for any psychological operation to go
wrong without the agent involved having any realization that it has
gone wrong. Anyone inclined to dispute this need only consider the
consequences of Alzheimer's disease or traumatic brain damage.
Moreover a claim's self-evidence cannot justify that claim unless
someone is justified in thinking that he recognizes that claim as
self-evidently true. But this process of recognition is a psychologi-
cal operation. Consequently it is logically possible for someone to
think that he has recognized a particular claim to be self-evident,
even when the claim is not genuinely self-evident. How, then, can
anyone hope to establish that this logically possible situation is not
his actual situation? Yet if it is impossible for a person to show
that he is justified in thinking that he can reliably recognize self-
evidently true claims, then the existence of such 'self-evidently
true' claims would not enable him to justify even one claim. Thus
we are seemingly forced to conclude that the potential fallibility of
all psychological operations means that 'self-evidently true' claims
cannot provide anyone with a reason to believe anything. However
that conclusion, as we have said before, is absurd: a genuinely self-
evident claim must be capable of furnishing someone with good
reason to believe that it is a true claim. Thus the conclusion that
should really be drawn from the above reasoning is that self-evident
truths cannot exist.
It is clear, therefore, that something has gone disastrously wrong
with Stough's interpretation of Sextus' Pyrrhonism. Stough has
assembled an impressive case in support of the contention that
Sextus holds that a consistent Pyrrhonist acts solely on the basis
of his beliefs about his impressions. Unfortunately, all too many of
these impressions turn out to be epistemic impressions of a kind
that involves the Pyrrhonist in having inclinations towards beliefs
about matters of objective fact. Furthermore the negative episte-
mological arguments deployed by Sextus are so radical that even
the mature Pyrrhonist's beliefs about his own future impressions,
beliefs which are essential if the mature Pyrrhonist is to be able
to perform voluntary actions, are called into question as lacking
any rational justification. And we have just seen that the Pyrrhon-
ist's beliefs about his present impressions are no more secure. Not
 Is the Pyrrhonist a Proto-Phenomenalist? 255
only does Sextus' unwillingness to countenance the notion of self-
evident truths render the Pyrrhonist's beliefs about his present im-
pressions acutely vulnerable to Agrippa's five tropes, but we have
also been able to bring forward arguments that appear to show that
Sextus is quite correct to avoid any appeal to such alleged truths.
Consequently we cannot avoid the conclusion that Stough's in-
terpretation fails in two crucial areas. It exaggerates the rigour of
the mature Pyrrhonist's £7TOX~, and it grossly underestimates the
force of Sextus' sceptical arguments. Moreover this diagnosis of
Stough's problems has worrying implications for anyone wishing
to construe Sextus as an advocate of a limited scepticism that per-
mits him to act and reason on the basis of beliefs that strike him
as being rationally justified. If Stough is already exaggerating the
scope of the Pyrrhonist's £7TOX~' how can we possibly bring the
mature Pyrrhonist's beliefs into balance with arguments that are
actually more radical than Stough's interpretation allows?
 10

Arguments and Reasons

I. Some preliminary remarks

Up till now we have principally been concerned to show that it is

impossible to provide a coherent account of Sextus' Pyrrhonism if
we assume that Sextus takes himself or anyone else to have a stock of
rationally justified beliefs. Moreover we seem to have succeeded in
this task: in the course of the previous chapter it became clear that
even a person's beliefs about his own current impressions are called
into question by the negative epistemological arguments endorsed
by the developing Pyrrhonist. It follows that if Sextus' Pyrrhonism
does constitute an intelligible intellectual stance, then Sextus' pos-
ition cannot amount to anything less than a global scepticism about
rational justification.
As we indicated in Chapter I, however, two formidable objections
confront anyone who attempts to defend the view that no claims
are ever rationally justified. First, the person putting forward that
view cannot avoid acting on the basis of beliefs he professes to
regard as lacking any rational justification. And second, his defence
of the view at issue here demands that he should offer arguments
that support the conclusion that good reasons do not exist. Yet if
these arguments do genuinely support their ostensible conclusion,
then the conclusion that it is impossible to provide good reasons for
accepting a claim as true is refuted by the existence of the sceptic's
own arguments.
It is obvious, therefore, that the coherence of Sextus' philosophic
stance depends on his Pyrrhonism having the internal resources to
overcome these well-known criticisms of global scepticism. If Sex-
tus must be seen as an advocate of global scepticism about rational
justification and such scepticism is ultimately unintelligible, then
Sextus' Pyrrhonism also stands condemned as incoherent. Fortu-
nately, however, the self-refutation argument and the argument that
 Arguments and Reasons 257
the global sceptic cannot live his scepticism are not as conclusive as
their reputations suggest. In particular, the Pyrrhonean scepticism
described by Sextus possesses several distinctive features that seem
to make it impervious to the usual lines of attack. The following
chapter will attempt to show how Sextus' comments on the con-
strained nature of the Pyrrhonist's beliefs enable us to construct a
rebuttal of the objection that a global sceptic about rational justifi-
cation ought to eschew all belief. And the remaining sections of the
present chapter will be devoted to showing that the self-refutation
argument fails to allow for the changing role of the Pyrrhonist's
arguments as he moves towards philosophical maturity.
Consequently there is no need for us to be overborne by the
charge that global scepticism is unintelligible. If the ensuing dis-
cussions are successful, then we shall be able to insist both that
Pyrrhonean scepticism is properly understood as a form of global
scepticism about rational justification and that Pyrrhonean scepti-
cism is not vulnerable to the objections that are generally held to
refute any radical scepticism that purports to be all-embracing in
its scope.

2. The impact of the Pyrrhonist's

epistemological arguments

When we are attempting to arrive at a correct assessment of the

force of the self-refutation argument, it is essential to distinguish
between the mature Pyrrhonist's characterization of his arguments
and the characterization offered by his dogmatic opponent. Until
we appreciate the significance of the interaction between these two
very different viewpoints, it is impossible to understand how the
mature Pyrrhonist can genuinely argue with the dogmatist with-
out bringing forward anything that constitutes a good reason for
accepting the Pyrrhonist's sceptical conclusions as true. But if we
do avoid conflating the viewpoint of the mature Pyrrhonist with
the viewpoint of the unregenerate dogmatist, then it is surpris-
ingly easy to see how the mature Pyrrhonist's arguments can be of
great philosophical significance even though they are not rationally
compelling arguments.
Consider, for example, the techniques of argumentation that
make up the five tropes of Agrippa. When we undertook our
25 8 Chapter IO

examination of the arguments that are principally responsible for

the mature Pyrrhonist's E7TOX~, we came to the conclusion that two
of these tropes are intended to serve as reminders of our frequent
need to choose between conflicting claims while the other three are
intended to show that it is impossible to make a choice that has
any rational justification. For our present purposes, however, the
I

important point to note is that the three tropes that are supposed to
establish that no claim is ever rationally preferable to its contradic-
tory rely on principles of reasoning that are all extremely plausible.
Almost no one would wish to maintain that unfinished regresses of
justification, circular arguments, or mere assumption can provide
a person with good reason to believe that some particular claim is
true. Moreover we saw in the final section of the preceding chap-
ter that there are also persuasive grounds for conceding Sextus'
unargued but far-reaching supposition that appeals to a claim's al-
leged self-evidence cannot provide us with a rational justification
for assenting to that claim. It seems clear, therefore, that the indi-
vidual components of Agrippa's tropes would strike most people
as relatively uncontroversial constraints on the notion of rational
justification.
But how would the mature Pyrrhonist choose to describe this
attack on the dogmatist's view that there are some claims that can
be rationally justified? Given the Pyrrhonist's implicit commitment
to a global scepticism about rational justification, he will almost
certainly not regard himself as offering good reasons for rejecting
the dogmatist's position. Instead he would presumably wish to
describe himself as simply seeking to persuade the dogmatist to
abandon his belief that there are such things as good reasons for
accepting some claims and rejecting others.
Now this self-characterization obviously has the virtue of con-
sistency. The Pyrrhonist is no longer engaged in the self-defeating
task of bringing forward reasons to show that no claim is ever ratio-
nally justified. Nor is he incoherently trying to show that the belief
that no belief whatsoever can be rationally justified is in some sense
itself rationally superior to the rival position that some claims can
be rationally justified. No philosophical objections can be brought
to bear against the supposition that it is perfectly conceivable that
someone should succeed in persuading someone else that all our

, See Chapter 6. sect. 3.

 Arguments and Reasons 259
beliefs are ultimately based on animal faith, and that none of them
can be rationally justified.
What does initially remain unclear, however, is why philosophers
should interest themselves in the mechanics of such persuasion. If
the Pyrrhonist has no arguments but only rhetorical tricks and an
ability to manipulate human psychology, how can his scepticism
pose a philosophical challenge? Such scepticism would seem to be
of concern only to those interested in the empirical efficiency of the
propaganda techniques that happen to be employed. To answer this
powerful objection, we need to consider both the particular nature
of the persuasion offered by the mature Pyrrhonist and the type of
response the dogmatist is compelled to make to such persuasion.
The form of persuasion utilized by the mature Pyrrhonist is
quite distinctive in character. He does not endeavour to intimi-
date the dogmatist through the use of forbidding scholastic jargon
and endorsements from the leading intellectual figures of the day.
Similarly, intoxicating style and rhetorical subtlety are conspicu-
ously absent. In short, the resources of illicit opinion-manipulation
are deliberately eschewed. What the Pyrrhonist does offer, however,
are unadorned chains of thought that look very much like rational
arguments.
Indeed, not only do these chains of thought look like good ar-
guments, but the dogmatist is also committed to treating them as
though they are good arguments. Agrippa's second trope claims,
in effect, that it is not rational to believe that p on the basis of a
purported proof unless it is also rational to believe that the proof
has true premisses and a valid inferential form. Now the mature
Pyrrhonist offers this oracular pronouncement as a means of per-
suasion. However when the pronouncement is interpreted in ac-
cordance with the dogmatist's rationalistic code, its status is dra-
matically transformed. The dogmatist has no option, if he is not to
act insincerely, other than to accept that it is irrational to take an
unfinished regress of proofs as affording any rational justification
for a disputed claim. One factor responsible for this lack of free-
dom is that the dogmatist himself rejects attempts to found claims
on the basis of a non-terminating regress. For someone who par-
takes of the dogmatist's enthusiasm for consistency, this provides a
considerable incentive for taking the second trope as a proper con-
straint on any belief that purports to be rationally justified. And the
second factor that leads the dogmatist to give his assent to the trope
260 Chapter IO

in question is that if he rejects that particular trope, then his desire

to be consistent in his decisions will force him to abandon the use of
that trope in disputes with other people. But such an abandonment
would mean that the other party in such a dispute would be able
to establish, by means of a method that the dogmatist is no longer
prepared to criticize, any claim whatsoever as worthy of rational
acceptance. Hence the dogmatist is powerfully motivated to accept
the validity of the second trope. Any attempt to circumvent it would
be viewed as self-betrayal: 'If it is not rational to accept the validity
of the second trope, then I no longer have any grasp on what it
means to be rational in my beliefs and actions.'
Very similar considerations are applicable to the other two critical
tropes. It is clear that the dogmatist would not allow his opponent in
a debate to settle the issue simply by assuming the point in dispute,
or by means of a circular argument. How, then, can he sincerely
object to an identical refusal on the part of the Pyrrhonist? Not
that it would improve matters even if the dogmatist did decide to
accept the mere assumption that p, or the provision of a circular
argument, as a good reason for taking it to be true that p. For
this would mean that he would be committed to supposing that all
beliefs, no matter what their content, are rationally justified. Only
by holding that the belief that p was rationally justified on one basis
(namely, assumption or circular reasoning) while precisely the same
basis was inadequate for the rational justification of the competing
belief, the belief that it was not the case that p, would the dogmatist
be in any sort of position to evaluate a belief as more or less rational
than another-surely the whole point of the practice! And such
a manreuvre would inevitably present itself to the dogmatist as
completely arbitrary and paradigmatically irrational.
Thus the dogmatist is quite unable to avoid accepting the prof-
fered tropes as constraints on rational justification. But once the
tropes have been accepted, the dogmatist will rapidly discover that
these tropes, taken in conjunction with the problems associated
with any appeal to supposedly self-evident truths,' prevent him
from satisfactorily justifying any belief. Indeed, the tropes even
prevent him from justifying the tropes themselves. Consequently
the dogmatist is strongly tempted to abandon the tropes. However
he cannot formulate any alternative constraints that possess any

2 See Chapter 9. sect. 5.

 A rguments and Reasons 261

greater credibility. Hence he is equally firmly committed to holding

on to the tropes.
Now it is plausible to suppose that such unresolved tension is
psychologically unendurable. One solution is to turn one's atten-
tion away from the chain of speculative thought that leads to this
conflict. This can readily be achieved by immersing oneself in the
practical activities of daily life. As Hume reports in the Treatise:
I dine, I playa game of back-gammon, I converse, and am merry with my
friends; and when after three or four hours' amusement, I wou'd return to
these speculations, they appear so cold, and strain'd, and ridiculous, that I
cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther. J
Unfortunately, this solution succeeds only if one is prepared to es-
chew completely all reflection of a distinctively philosophical char-
acter. Otherwise questions concerning justification are bound to
force themselves on one's attention; and the attempt to settle them
will lead to a fresh and calamitous engagement with the objec-
tions of the sceptic. Consequently someone who finds philosoph-
ical speculation at all attractive is likely to be pushed towards the
other solution-the acceptance of the sceptical claim that none of
our beliefs can ever be justified. This immediately absolves one of
the responsibility for selecting criteria of rationality. Hence one's
inability to find any satisfactory candidates is no longer a source of
concern.
How, though, would the dogmatist describe the situation before
his dramatic conversion to global scepticism? Within the dogma-
tist's rationalistic code the Pyrrhonist's chains of reasoning have to
be treated as good arguments. If they are dismissed as mere emo-
tive persuasion, then the dogmatist will effectively have abandoned
what little grasp he ever had on the notion of rational justifica-
tion. The Pyrrhonist's arguments do not just mimic the arguments
customarily employed by the dogmatist in his less reflective mo-
ments (though the fact that they do mimic these arguments is it-
self very significant); they also represent the patterns of argument
the dogmatist finds least impugnable. If those patterns have to be
abandoned, then the dogmatist literally has no idea of what might
replace them. No rival principles have even the same degree of
plausibility, let alone greater plausibility. As far as the dogmatist

1 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, 2nd edn.,

rev. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford, 1978), 269.

262 ChapteT IO

is concerned, therefore, the sceptical arguments are to be taken as

good arguments. But their conclusion is that there is no such thing
as a good argument. If the dogmatist had any plausible alternative
principles of rationality, such a Teductio would be the occasion to
adopt them. In their absence, however, the rationalism of the dog-
matist leaves him in the untenable position of wanting to say both
that he has good reasons to suppose that there are no such things
as good reasons, and, as this conclusion is clearly inconsistent, that
he cannot have good reasons for supposing that there are no such
things as good reasons. Consequently the dogmatist's rationalistic
practice no longer represents a workable language-game; and the
dogmatist abandons his rationalism for scepticism.
An illustration drawn from the writings of Paul Feyerabend may
help, at this point, to bring matters into sharper focus. Indeed Fey-
erabend, despite claiming to be an epistemological anarchist rather
than a sceptic, is perhaps the twentieth-century philosopher who
most clearly conforms to the role and strategy of Sextus' Pyrrhonist.
In his book Against Method Feyerabend apparently seeks to dis-
credit Popperian philosophy of science by showing that its proposed
methodology would actually have hindered scientific progress. 4 At
other points in the book, however, Feyerabend specifically denies
that he knows what constitutes 'real' progress. But if he is unable
to distinguish between progress and mere change, then how can
he be in a position to argue that Popper's proposed methodology
would have retarded scientific progress? For it is natural to assume
that such a claim cannot be well founded unless Feyerabend is
able to establish that there has been some progress. Otherwise there
would be nothing for Popper's methodology to have hindered or
prevented. Yet Feyerabend glories in the admission that he lacks
any reason to suppose that there has been any scientific progress
since the days of the Presocratics. It has seemed to many people,
therefore, that we can safely conclude that Feyerabend's position is
hopelessly self-contradictory. His argument against Popperian phi-
losophy of science can be a good argument only if his claim to lack
criteria for distinguishing between progress and change is false.
Feyerabend's response to this allegation is to point out that his
critics have misunderstood the function of his argument. s The ar-

4 Paul Feyerabend, Against Method (London, 1978).

5 Id., 'Conversations with Illiterates', in Feyerabend, Science in a Free Society
(London, 1978), 125-217.
 Arguments and Reasons
gument is not intended to provide any arbitrary person with a good
reason for rejecting Popperian philosophy of science. Rather it is
intended to reduce the typical adherent of such philosophy to con-
cluding that he has a good reason for abandoning his allegiance.
In this sort of context it does not follow, from the fact that an ar-
gument uses a certain premiss, that the wielder of the argument
accepts the premiss, claims to have good reasons for it, or regards
it as plausible. He may deny the premiss but still use it because his
opponent accepts it and, accepting it, can be driven into making
a desired concession. Thus Feyerabend reaffirms that he does not
claim to possess special knowledge as to what constitutes progress,
and explains that he simply takes his cue from his opponents: 'They
prefer Galileo to Aristotle. They say that the transition Aristotle~
Galileo is a step in the right direction. I only add that this step
not only was not achieved, but could not have been achieved with
the methods favoured by them.'6 Feyerabend's argument therefore
generates difficulties for the Popperian philosopher of science: it
does not provide objective reasons for taking its conclusion as true.
However this apparent deficiency is actually of no significance. The
only people antecedently likely to take its conclusion to be false are
the Popperians; and they are compelled, by their own rationalistic
practice and firmly held beliefs, to hold that the argument is coer-
cive. Hence, if they are to act sincerely, they will have to abandon
their suggested scientific methodology. And this, of course, is just
the result that Feyerabend intended.
Now I take it that most impartial observers would agree that
Feyerabend has defended himself successfully against the mooted
charge of self-contradiction. But if Feyerabend's position here is
acceptable, then so is the position of the Pyrrhonist who seeks
to undermine the authority of reason. For Feyerabend and the
Pyrrhonist argue in the same way. Neither believes that the argu-
ments he happens to put forward are rationally compelling. In-
deed, the mature Pyrrhonist holds that no arguments give us any
rational justification whatsoever for taking their conclusions to be
true. However, just as Feyerabend offers arguments that the sincere
Popperian is in no position to reject as irrational persuasion, so the
Pyrrhonist offers arguments that the sincere dogmatist is forced to
regard as good arguments. The sole difference is that Feyerabend's
arguments leave the Popperian with the possibility of subsequently
6 Ibid. 142 .
 Chapter IO

sincerely characterizing his change of mind as the result of rational

argument. The Pyrrhonist, on the other hand, renders the dogma-
tist's practice so unworkable that he is subsequently prepared to
talk only in terms of persuasion rather than reasons. At no point,
however, is the dogmatist given the option of retaining his belief
that some claims can be rationally justified and yet sincerely char-
acterizing the Pyrrhonist's arguments as irrational.

3. The Pyrrhonist's relationship to his own arguments

In the previous section we argued that the mature Pyrrhonist thinks

of his epistemological arguments as having a purely therapeutic
function. He does not hold that his arguments have any rational
force: instead, he regards them as instruments for bringing about
£7TOX~ in other people. However it is important to be aware of the
fact that the Pyrrhonist's view of his own arguments changes dra-
matically in the course of his philosophical development. When he
begins his intellectual journey towards a global scepticism about
rational justification, he is firmly committed to the objective valid-
ity of the principles of reasoning that underlie the tropes devised by
Aenesidemus and Agrippa. Indeed, it is only the future Pyrrhon-
ist's initial confidence in the validity of these principles that enables
us to explain his subsequent suspension of judgement on all non-
evident matters of inquiry.
At the start of his investigations the Pyrrhonist has a great many
beliefs about non-evident matters of inquiry. However the mature
Pyrrhonist professes to have no beliefs about such matters; and
he assures us that this transformation is the result of his having
been exposed to various arguments that have undermined his trust
in the rationality of his former beliefs.' Thus he is claiming that
these arguments have persuaded him to alter his beliefs. But it is
obvious that a person who has no inclination to believe that a given
argument has true premisses and a valid inferential structure will
not be persuaded of anything by that argument. Consequently the
fact that the Pyrrhonist's beliefs alter as a result of his exposure
to arguments like those devised by Aenesidemus and Agrippa can
be explained only if we are willing to suppose that the Pyrrhonist

7 See Chapter 6, sect. 3.

 Arguments and Reasons 26 5
was, at some point, inclined to accept such arguments as rationally
compelling.
Once the Pyrrhonist has suspended belief on all non-evident mat-
ters of inquiry, however, there is no need to suppose that this €7TOX~
is sustained by a continuing inclination to accept that Aeneside-
mus' arguments or Agrippa's arguments are good arguments. The
elimination of existing beliefs depends on the Pyrrhonist being per-
suaded that the claims in question are less justified than he formerly
supposed. In contrast, the acquisition of new beliefs by a Pyrrhon-
ist who has already suspended judgement on all non-evident mat-
ters of inquiry would depend on his being persuaded that some
particular claims are better justified than he formerly supposed.
Consequently the Pyrrhonist's renunciation of the epistemological
principles that underpin his sceptical arguments does not have any
effect on the stability of his l7TOX~. Although the Pyrrhonist is now
free to adopt a new set of standards, he cannot think of any episte-
mological principles that possess any more plausibility than those
he has just discarded. Thus he is quite unable to come to even a pro-
visional conclusion about the merits of putative justifications. And
this, of course, rules out the possibility of the Pyrrhonist eventually
arriving at the positive conclusion that he does have good reason
to believe that a specific claim is true. Yet suspension of belief on a
given topic is supposed to be a product of one's inability to discern
any good reason for accepting or rejecting any claim about the topic
in question. It seems clear, therefore, that the Pyrrhonist's l7TOX~
will remain stable even when he extends it to cover the very prin-
ciples that originally drove him towards a widespread suspension
of belief.
Thus it is now possible to see that the same argument can have
entirely different functions at different stages in the Pyrrhonist's
philosophic career. The Pyrrhonist starts out as a dogmatist who is
implicitly committed to the epistemological principles used in the
arguments put forward by Aenesidemus and Agrippa. Nevertheless
he has not yet realized the full implications of those principles; so
he does not give his explicit assent to the sceptical arguments just
mentioned. In the course of his subsequent investigations, however,
he becomes increasingly aware that Aenesidemus' and Agrippa's
tropes are merely drawing out the consequences of principles of
reasoning that already enjoy his support. Moreover he cannot think
of any alternative principles he could sincerely endorse. Hence he
266 Chapter IO

embraces the sceptical conclusions of the tropes, and finds himself

forced to suspend belief on an ever widening range of topics. At
this stage, then, the Pyrrhonist views Aenesidemus' and Agrippa's
tropes as rationally compelling arguments that have enabled him to
discover the limits of human reason.
Eventually, however, it occurs to the Pyrrhonist to subject his
basic epistemological principles to the same tests he has been im-
posing on all other claims that purport to be rationally justified.
And when he does this, he is forced to the conclusion that these
principles fail to meet the standards that they themselves lay down.
Thus the Pyrrhonist suspends judgement on the objective cogency
of those principles, and he ceases to regard the tropes as good ar-
guments. As we have already noted, however, this reassessment of
the standard sceptical arguments does not disturb the Pyrrhonist's
bTOX~' Nor, indeed, does the Pyrrhonist stop using the ten tropes
of Aenesidemus and the five tropes of Agrippa. Although he no
longer thinks of them as providing him with good reasons for his
scepticism, he still regards them as an effective means of persuading
other people to suspend belief. Hence the tropes continue to occupy
a central place in the Pyrrhonist's exposition of his scepticism.
I t follows that we have to regard the Pyrrhonist as successively
embracing the two views described in section 2 of this chapter.
And just as it is vital to avoid confl.ating the mature Pyrrhonist's
assessment of the standard sceptical arguments with the assess-
ment made by the dogmatist, so too it is vital to avoid confl.ating
the mature Pyrrhonist's assessment with the one forced upon the
developing Pyrrhonist. The mature Pyrrhonist genuinely sees his
negative epistemological arguments as nothing more than a form
of psychological therapy. However the developing Pyrrhonist is
in the same situation as anyone else who has not yet arrived at a
global scepticism about rational justification: he is wholly unable
to avoid seeing those very same arguments as rationally compelling
arguments.
 I I

Pyrrhonism and Constrained Belief

I. Arguments that prove too much

ONE point that has forcibly emerged from the preceding chapters
is that the arguments associated with the Pyrrhonean tradition are
so radical in their nature that anyone who endorses them will be
driven to conclude that he does not have any rationally justified
beliefs. Moreover this discovery has alarming implications for any
attempt to explain the Pyrrhonist's actions by ascribing to him
beliefs on some narrowly circumscribed set of topics.
Although we have explained how the mature Pyrrhonist can put
negative epistemological arguments to use without endorsing those
arguments, we have also emphasized that the developing Pyrrhon-
ist's eventual arrival at a state of complete £7TOX~ on all naturally
or absolutely non-evident matters can be accounted for only by
supposing that the developing Pyrrhonist does assent to such argu-
ments as Aenesidemus' ten tropes and Agrippa's five tropes. Fur-
thermore it seems clear that the mature Pyrrhonist's £7TOX~ is never
any less extensive than that practised by the developing Pyrrhonist.
Hence we cannot avoid accepting the cogency of the following piece
of reasoning.
The developing Pyrrhonist assents to arguments that deliver the
conclusion that no claims about any subject matter whatsoever are
rationally justified. Consequently he cannot rationally continue to
believe that any claims are rationally justified; and that in turn
implies that if he does believe some particular claim to be true,
then he will either believe that claim to be true while not believ-
ing that it is a rationally justified claim, or he will believe it to be
true because he irrationally retains the belief that it is rationally
justified. In either case, therefore, he will have a belief that can-
not be construed as a rational belief. If the first outcome were to
hold true, then the developing Pyrrhonist would be left clinging
268 Chapter II

to a belief despite the fact that he does not have any inclination
at all to believe that it is a rationally justified belief. Yet if the
second outcome were to hold true, then he would have a belief that
is plainly inconsistent with his beliefs about the force possessed
by certain negative epistemological arguments. I t follows that the
developing Pyrrhonist can avoid an all-embracing suspension of
judgement only at the cost of acquiescing in beliefs that are not
rationally justified. And that, of course, means that the mature
Pyrrhonist will also suspend judgement on all matters unless the
developing Pyrrhonist acquiesces in beliefs that are not rationally
justified.
I t seems clear, then, that the project of presenting the Pyrrhonist
as sometimes acting on the basis of rationally justified beliefs cannot
hope to succeed. Any such interpretation will inevitably find itself
undermined by the existence of a massive gap between the conclu-
sions that can be drawn from the Pyrrhonist's arguments and the
conclusions allowable under the interpretation being offered.
Thus Hallie's interpretation, for example, attempts to explain the
mature Pyrrhonist's voluntary actions by ascribing to the Pyrrhon-
ist all our everyday beliefs about matters of objective fact. However
if the mature Pyrrhonist is to be rationally justified in holding
such beliefs, then the developing Pyrrhonist would have to confine
himself to endorsing arguments that fail to support any conclu-
sion stronger than the conclusion that we cannot justify any claims
about the real and essential nature of things. It follows that Hal-
lie's interpretation is inconsistent with the fact that Aenesidemus'
ten tropes actually entail the conclusion that we cannot justify any
claims about the existence or properties of objects possessing a
more than merely subjective existence.
Similarly, Stough attempts to explain the mature Pyrrhonist's
voluntary actions by advancing the hypothesis that he has a stock of
rationally justified beliefs about his own impressions, and that com-
mits her to the supposition that the developing Pyrrhonist does not
endorse any argument that goes beyond the conclusion that claims
about matters of objective fact and claims about other people's im-
pressions are incapable of being rationally justified. Consequently
Stough's interpretation cannot be reconciled with the fact that Sex-
tus' rejection of the rationality of inductive inferences leaves him
with no means of justifying any beliefs about the future course of
his impressions. Moreover the fact that Agrippa's tropes combine
 Pyrrhonism and Constrained Belief
with the assumption that no claim has the property of being self-
evidently true to deliver the conclusion that no claim about any
subject matter is ever rationally justified would appear to guarantee
that even an interpretation that undertook to explain the mature
Pyrrhonist's voluntary actions by appealing to nothing more than
his justified beliefs about his present impressions would be inad-
missible.
We arrive, therefore, at the conclusion that we cannot explain any
of the mature Pyrrhonist's voluntary actions in terms of his beliefs
without appealing to beliefs that the Pyrrhonist is not rationally jus-
tified in holding. On the other hand, most present-day philosophers
would accept that there is a logical connection between the concepts
of voluntary action and belief such that it is impossible to provide
an account of a person performing some voluntary action without
simultaneously providing grounds for the ascription of some belief
or other. And it is certainly true that our examination of Burnyeat's
proposal that the mature Pyrrhonist should be seen as noting how
things appear, without having any beliefs about the way things
appear, I failed to convince us that this connection can sometimes
be severed. Furthermore Frede's more straightforward suggestion
that there may be impressions that lead us, without any further
thought, into actions 2 was rejected on the grounds that if it is put
forward as a universally applicable explanation of the Pyrrhonist's
actions, it reduces all those actions to a simple stimulus-response
pattern and hence ignores the important part played in life by de-
liberate planning and the contemplation of future possibilities and
past events. Thus it seems that the only possible way of explaining
the full range of the Pyrrhonist's actions is in terms of his having at
least some beliefs; and that in turn means that the only way of de-
fending Pyrrhonism as an intellectually coherent stance is to show
that it is actually quite all right for the Pyrrhonist to have beliefs
he cannot rationally justify.

, Burnyeat specifically talks of the sceptic noting the impression things make on
him: 'Can the Sceptic Live his Scepticism?', in M. Schofield, M. Burnyeat, and ].
Barnes (eds.), Doubt and Dogmatism: Studies ill Hellenistic Epistemology (Oxford,
(980), 20-53 at 36. His view that the Pyrrhonist (correctly?) holds that there can be
no question of having a belief about how things appear because statements recording
how things appear cannot be described as true or false is succinctly set out on pp. 25-
7 of the same paper.
• M. Frede, 'The Skeptic's Two Kinds of Assent and the Question of the Possi-
bility of Knowledge', in Frede, Essays in Ancient Philosophy (Oxford, (987),201-22.
 Chapter I I

2. Obligation and constraint

As we acknowledged in Chapter I, however, many people would

hold that there is an obvious and decisive objection to any attempt
to ascribe to the Pyrrhonist beliefs he cannot rationally justify.
They would insist that a person who holds on to a belief he cannot
justify is acting less rationally than he would if he were to abandon
that belief. Thus if it is true that the Pyrrhonist cannot justify a
particular belief, then he has a clear obligation to suspend belief.
Now that argument can, in fact, be attacked at two points. One
possibility is to ask how the premiss, that a person who holds on to
a belief he cannot justify is acting less rationally than he would if
he were to abandon that belief, can itself be justified. The mature
Pyrrhonist can deploy arguments that appear to show that we have
no reason to suppose that 2 + 3 = 5 or that a square has four sides.
Why, therefore, should we accept that the particular premiss cur-
rently under examination is immune to the difficulties that afflict
these other claims? If all our beliefs are unjustified, then the belief
that we ought not to hold unjustified beliefs will be unjustified too.
Therefore it is not the case that the Pyrrhonist ought to eschew
unjustified beliefs.
The second possible response consists of an appeal to the prin-
ciple that one cannot be under an obligation to perform a task that is
beyond one's powers. At the most one can only be under an obliga-
tion to attempt the task in question. Moreover it is not legitimate to
suppose that a person can at all times and in all conditions achieve
what he can sometimes achieve when conditions are favourable.
Hence the Pyrrhonist can admit that it is sometimes possible to
suspend belief, and yet deny that it is possible to suspend belief
on all occasions when rational grounds for belief are absent. And if
this is impossible, perhaps owing to the biological and psychologi-
cal constitution of human beings, then it cannot be the case that he
ought to eschew all unjustified beliefs.
Thus it seems plain that a sceptic could legitimately maintain
that his actions are motivated by beliefs that lack any rational jus-
tification. Nevertheless we are not discussing some arbitrary cre-
ation of our own devising: we are actually trying to show that the
Pyrrhonism espoused by Sextus Empiricus is intellectually coher-
ent. I t follows that we have to take matters rather further, and
 Pyrrhonism and Constrained Belief
ask ourselves whether the responses outlined above are compati-
ble with everything else that Sextus has to say about the nature of
Pyrrhonism.
Fortunately, it soon becomes apparent that the hypothesis that
Sextus regards himself as acting on the basis of beliefs that are
psychologically inescapable fits the texts remarkably well. Sextus,
of course, is at pains to tell us that the Pyrrhonist does not assent to
anything non-evident. However he never claims that the Pyrrhonist
does not have beliefs about evident matters of inquiry. Thus we are
free to suppose that the Pyrrhonist has a large stock of beliefs about
such matters. On the other hand Sextus has no qualms about talking
as though anything evident is a ,paLv6/J-EIJov. Moreover he explicitly
identifies ,pa{vo/J-€va with ,pavTaalaL or impressions at both PH I.
19 and PH I. 22. Consequently our freedom to suppose that the
Pyrrhonist has beliefs about evident matters of inquiry actually
amounts to no more than the freedom to hold that the Pyrrhonist
has beliefs about his own impressions. Furthermore if we examine
Sextus' comments on the Pyrrhonist's response to his impressions,
we find that Sextus stresses both that the Pyrrhonist holds beliefs
about impressions and that these beliefs are the product of some
form of psychological constraint.
Naturally, we do have to exercise some caution on this issue. At
PH I. 29, for instance, Sextus asserts: 'Nevertheless we do not
think that the sceptic is wholly undisturbed, but we say that he is
disturbed by things unavoidable; for we concede that he is chilled
at times and thirsty, and is affected by various things of that kind'
(PH I. 29, own trans.). But although this passage does indeed refer
to a form of psychological constraint associated with the Pyrrhon-
ist's impressions, it does not have any tendency to show that Sextus
regards the Pyrrhonist as having psychologically unavoidable be-
liefs about impressions. In fact PH I. 29 does not say anything
at all about the Pyrrhonist's beliefs: the point being made here is
simply that the Pyrrhonist has no direct control over the nature of
the impressions received in a particular set of circumstances. If he
is feeling hungry, then he cannot argue himself into feeling pleas-
antly replete. The only way of bringing about that change is to eat
some food.
Nevertheless the overall case for concluding that Sextus does
hold that the Pyrrhonist is constrained to hold beliefs about im-
pressions is quite overwhelming. Consider, for example, Sextus'
 Chapter II

remarks at PH J. 19: 'For, as we said above, we do not overthrow

the affective impressions [<f,avTaO'{av 7TaB1)TLK~v] which induce our
assent [O'vYKaniB€O'Lv] involuntarily; and these impressions are the
appearances ['Ta <f,a{vOfL€Va].' In this passage Sextus is obviously
talking about something more substantial than the Pyrrhonist sim-
ply having an impression that cannot be altered by an act of will.
For he specifically says that the Pyrrhonist is compelled to assent,
and assent always involves belief.
The philosophical use of the term O'vYKa'TaBwL'; originated with
the Stoics. We saw in section 2 of Chapter 3 that the Stoics thought
of assent as a matter of arriving at the belief that some impression
was a veridical impression. Now it is quite true that Sextus is pre-
pared to talk of assent even when he is not referring to a belief about
how matters really stand. However this simply forces us to ask why
he chooses to use the terminology of assent at all. And the only
plausible answer to that question is that Sextus talks of assent in
order to distinguish between having an impression and acquiring a
belief in response to an impression.
Sextus' own account of the Stoic notion of apprehension is suf-
ficient to establish that the Stoics insisted on drawing a sharp dis-
tinction between having an impression and assenting to an impres-
sion. According to Sextus,
apprehension, as one may learn from them, is 'assent [avYKaTa9E'1IS] to the
apprehensive impression', and this seems to be a twofold thing, and to be
partly involuntary, and partly voluntary and dependent on our judgement.
For the experience of an impression is involuntary, and it does not depend
on the person affected, but on the cause of the impression, that he is affected
in this particular way-as, for instance, with a sense of whiteness when a
white colour presents itself, or with a sense of sweetness when something
sweet is offered to his taste; but the act of assenting to this affection lies in
the power of the person who receives the impression. (M. 8. 397)

Once it has been established, however, that the Stoics were not
prepared to equate having an impression with assenting to an im-
pression, it seems clear that the latter must be a matter of coming
to hold some belief or other. Moreover that conclusion is confirmed
by an excerpt from Diocles the Magnesian that has been preserved
by Laertius. Laertius reports Diocles as saying:
The Stoics agree to put in the forefront the doctrine of impression and
sensation, inasmuch as the standard by which the truth of things is tested
 Pyrrhonism and Constrained Belief 273
is generically an impression, and again the theory of assent and that of
apprehension and thought, which precedes all the rest, cannot be stated
apart from that of the impression. For the impression comes first; then
thought, which is capable of expressing itself, puts into the form of a
proposition [AOYcp] that which the subject receives from the impression.
(D.L. 7· 49)

According to Diocles, then, assenting to an impression has to be

identified with giving one's assent to a proposition. Yet giving one's
assent to a proposition cannot be construed as anything other than
a case of someone coming to hold a belief. Consequently assenting
to an impression must also be viewed as a case of coming to hold a
belief.
It follows that Sextus' decision to use the terminology of assent
at PH I. 19 is one fraught with significance. As we have just seen,
the Stoics use the word aVYKaTolhaL, in such a way that assent
cannot exist when belief is absent. Moreover Sextus is presumably
fully aware of this aspect of their usage. After all, a crucial piece
of our own evidence comes directly from Sextus' writings, and
he repeatedly demonstrates in his discussions of other aspects of
Stoic doctrine that he is extremely well informed about the details
of the Stoic system. It seems, then, that Sextus' rejection of the
view that a belief about subjective phenomena does not qualify
as an act of assent means that we can explain his willingness to
describe the Pyrrhonist as being driven to assent only by assuming
that Sextus has chosen to talk in these terms because he wishes to
convey in as clear a manner as possible that he is ascribing some
beliefs to the Pyrrhonist even though these beliefs do not happen
to be about matters of objective fact. Any other interpretation of
Sextus' decision to say that the Pyrrhonist is driven to assent would
inevitably lead to the grossly implausible conclusion that Sextus
has gratuitously chosen to use aVYKanHhat, in a way that has no
connection whatsoever with the way in which the philosophers of
his era were accustomed to use that word.
Moreover Sextus specifically describes the impressions as induc-
ing our assent involuntarily (df30V,\7JTW'). Consequently it is plain
that he is asserting that the Pyrrhonist's beliefs about impressions
are beliefs he is psychologically incapable of resisting. Yet PH I.
19 also goes on to identify the impressions that give rise to these
constrained beliefs with Ta q,aLvofLEVa, and we have already pointed
out that Sextus treats all evident objects as constituting q,aLvofLEva.
274 Chapter I I
It follows that if we read PH I. 19 in conjunction with Sextus'
repeated claims that the Pyrrhonist suspends assent on all non-
evident matters, we obtain a complete picture of the beliefs Sex-
tus attributes to the Pyrrhonist. The Pyrrhonist's only beliefs are
beliefs about his impressions. However these are all involuntary
beliefs. Hence the Pyrrhonist does have beliefs, but he has a belief
only when he is psychologically compelled to hold that belief.
Of course, PH I. 19 is an exceptionally explicit statement of
Sextus' position. If we want further evidence for the supposition
that the Pyrrhonist thinks of himself as acting on the sole basis
of his constrained beliefs about his impressions, then we need to
build a case from remarks scattered throughout Sextus' writings.
Nevertheless this additional evidence is readily available if one is
prepared to search the texts in a methodical manner.
The case for holding that the Pyrrhonist officially eschews all be-
liefs about non-evident objects has already been set out in previous
chapters. Similarly, there is no need to repeat here the arguments
that led us to conclude that Sextus identifies evident objects with
,pu{vop.€VU, and ,pu{vop.€Vu with impressions. We are exclusively con-
cerned at present with just two issues. First, does the Pyrrhonist
admit that he has any beliefs at all? And second, does he think of his
beliefs, supposing he has any, as involuntary? At PH I. 13 Sextus
says that 'the sceptic gives assent [UUYKuTuT{/1n'uL] to the feelings
which are the necessary results of impressions', and at PH 2. 10
he asserts that the sceptic 'assents to what he experiences by way
of subjective impression, according as that impression appears to
him'. Thus we have here two explicit references to the Pyrrhonist
assenting to an impression; and, as we saw above, giving one's as-
sent to an impression is a matter of arriving at a belief as a result
of having that impression. Moreover Sextus tells us that 'both the
Academics and the Sceptics say they are persuaded [md/1€u/1uL] by
some things' (PH 1.230). Yet the expression 7T€{/1€u/1u{ nVL normally
has the same meaning as the English expression 'to believe a thing' j
and although it is true that Sextus distinguishes the Pyrrhonist's
usage from that of the Academic, he is primarily concerned to em-
phasize that the Pyrrhonist, unlike the Academic, does not have
any strong inclination towards the beliefs at issue. 3

3 It is very striking that when Cicero attempts to provide a characterization

of someone who subscribes to the Academic fallibilism endorsed by Philo and
Metrodorus, he describes such a person as 'approving' and 'vehemently' assenting
 Pyrrhonism and Constrained Belief 275
Furthermore PH I. 19 can be supplemented by at least two other
passages where Sextus openly states that the Pyrrhonist's beliefs
are constrained. We find that the passage just cited, PH I. 230,
goes on to say that 'our [i.e. the sceptic's] credence is a matter of
simple yielding without any consent'. And PH I. 193 sees Sextus
stating, 'It must also be borne in mind that what, as we say, we
neither posit nor deny, is some one of the dogmatic statements
made about what is non-evident [7'() ti87JAov]; for we yield to those
things which move us emotionally and drive us compulsorily to
assent [O'vYKaTCI.8€O'I"].'
It seems clear, therefore, that even if we ignore Sextus' striking
comments at PH I. 19, we are still compelled to conclude both
that the Pyrrhonist does accept that he holds beliefs and that he
regards his beliefs as the product of psychological necessitation.
Moreover we have strong independent grounds for holding that
the Pyrrhonist would maintain that he confines himself to beliefs
about impressions. Consequently the picture we derived from PH
I. 19 is amply confirmed: the Pyrrhonist admits that he has beliefs
but insists that they are confined to psychologically inescapable
beliefs about impressions.
We can now see, then, that we need have no worries about in-
voking the defence that the Pyrrhonist is constrained to hold the
unjustified beliefs that serve to explain his voluntary actions. The
supposition that the Pyrrhonist acts solely on the basis of beliefs
that are forced upon him by his biological and psychological con-
stitution is fully compatible with Sextus' account of Pyrrhonism.
Indeed, that supposition is one that must be embraced if we take
Sextus' account seriously. Yet the availability of the constraint de-
fence means that we are no longer troubled by the radical nature
of the arguments endorsed by the developing Pyrrhonist. Those
arguments may lead to the mature Pyrrhonist eschewing all be-
liefs about one claim or action being more rational than another,
but that stance is still compatible with the mature Pyrrhonist hav-
ing a great many beliefs which he is psychologically incapable of
giVIng up.

to various views (see Cicero, Academica, 2. 148). Consequently it seems plausible

to conclude that Sextus' claim that the Pyrrhonist acquiesces to beliefs without
being strongly inclined to defend their truth constitutes another warning that the
Pyrrhonist uues not take the view that his beliefs are rationally justified.
 Chapter I I

3. The Pyrrhonist's endorsement

of the commemorative sign
Of course, one aspect of Sextus' Pyrrhonism that remains rather
problematic is Sextus' insistence that the Pyrrhonist's beliefs are
invariably beliefs about his own impressions. It may be plausible
to suppose that someone who currently has the impression that p
is psychologically unable to avoid believing that he currently has
the impression that p. But why should anyone find himself with
the involuntary belief that he will have such an impression at some
point in the future? Nevertheless an agent's beliefs about his pre-
sent impressions are not, in themselves, sufficient to explain even
one action. 4 Any successful, belief-oriented explanation of an ac-
tion necessarily involves ascribing to the agent some beliefs about
matters of objective fact or the future course of his impressions.
Consequently the supposition that the Pyrrhonist's beliefs are con-
fined to beliefs about his own impressions generates the following
problem. If we are to succeed in explaining the Pyrrhonist's volun-
tary actions by appealing to nothing more than his desires and his
beliefs about his impressions, then we shall have to ascribe to the
Pyrrhonist at least some beliefs about his future impressions. Yet
it is initially difficult to see how those beliefs can be constrained
beliefs; and if they are not constrained beliefs, then it would be
wrong for the Pyrrhonist to have them unless he can provide them
with a rational justification.
It is clear, therefore, that we urgently need to find some way of
enhancing the plausibility of the suggestion that the Pyrrhonist
sometimes finds that he is unable to rid himself of the belief that he
will have a particular impression at a particular point in the future.
Moreover this suggestion has to be made more plausible without
making any appeal to the hypothesis that the Pyrrhonist cannot rid
himself of the belief because he has good reason to suppose that it
is true that he will have that impression at such a time. Consider,
then, the following possibility.
A person A notices an event of type x being succeeded by an
event of type y. Moreover the course of his experience is then such
that he frequently has the opportunity of observing events of type
x. And every time A observes an event of that type, he observes
• See Chapter 9. sect. [.
 Pyrrhonism and Constrained Belief 277
that it is followed, in a short space of time, by an event of type y.
Thus an association of ideas begins to develop: when he thinks of
events of type x, he frequently finds himself thinking about events of
type y as well. Indeed, this association of ideas eventually hardens
into an inflexible regularity: A invariably finds himself thinking
about events of type y whenever he thinks about events of type
x. Furthermore, when A has the belief that an event of type x is
occurring or has occurred, then the ease with which A's mind now
moves from the idea of a type-x event to the idea of a type-y event
tends to give rise to the belief that an event of type y will occur. And
in some circumstances, namely a well-entrenched mental regularity
combining with a firm and unwavering belief that an event of type
x is occurring or has recently occurred, that tendency may prove
psychologically irresistible. s
Such a series of events seems perfectly intelligible despite the fact
that we have been careful to avoid any suggestion that A comes to
believe that an event of type y will occur because he supposes that
his past experience gives him good reason to believe that an event
of type y usually follows an event of type x. In fact, the movement
of thought described above would still be intelligible even if A had
no conscious recollection of ever having observed events of type x
being followed by events of type y. Yet it is plain that if A lacks the
belief that events of type x have been followed by events of type y
in the past, then it is quite impossible for his belief that an event of
type y will occur to be the product of any inference, good or bad,
using the claim that events of type x have been followed by events
of type y in the past as a premiss.
Thus we appear to have established that the supposition that the
Pyrrhonist may unavoidably find himself with the unjustified belief
that a particular event will occur at some point in the future can be
made plausible by setting the Pyrrhonist's belief in an appropriate
context of past observations. And it follows that we are now entitled
to assume that all the beliefs about impressions required to explain
the Pyrrhonist's actions may be involuntary beliefs and hence insu-
lated from the demand that he ought to abandon them as soon as he
comes to regard them as lacking any rational justification. Moreover

S The most famous advocate of the view that all our beliefs about the future have

their origin in psychology rather than reason is, of course, David Hume. See, in
particular, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, 2nd edn., rev. P. H.
Nidditch (Oxford, 1978), 86-106.
 Chapter II

the availability of this explanation of the Pyrrhonist's possession of

constrained beliefs about his future impressions enables us to go on
to clarify the vexed issue of the Pyrrhonist's attitude towards the
commemorative sign.
In the Outlines and Against the Dogmatists Sextus draws a dis-
tinction between two types of sign (see PH 2.99-102; M. 8. 151-5);
and he explicitly says that the Pyrrhonist's negative arguments are
aimed at only one of these two types. Now it is, of course, the
indicative sign which emerges as the specific target of Sextus' .crit-
icisms. The commemorative sign, in contrast, is presented in an
extremely favourable light. Consequently there has been a marked
tendency for interpreters of Sextus' Pyrrhonism to assume that the
Pyrrhonist holds that inferences relying on commemorative signs
are sometimes rationally justified. Nevertheless that assumption
seems to be incompatible with Sextus' criticisms of induction and
his endorsement of Agrippa's five tropes. Hence the exact nature
of the Pyrrhonist's position on the use of commemorative signs has
remained open to dispute.
At M. 8. 152, however, Sextus gives us the following account of
the mechanism underlying the commemorative sign:
Thus, the commemorative sign, when observed in conjunction with the
thing signified in a clear perception, brings us, as soon as it is presented
and when the thing signified has become non-evident, to a recollection of
the thing observed along with it and now no longer clearly perceived-
as in the case of smoke and fire; for as we have often observed these to
be connected with each other, as soon as we see the one--that is to say,
smoke--we recall the other-that is to say, the unseen fire.

And if we compare this account of the way in which the com-

memorative sign works with our account of the way in which the
Pyrrhonist acquires beliefs about his future impressions, then it is
immediately apparent that the observations that are allegedly re-
quired to establish that events of type x are commemorative signs
of events of type yare exactly the same observations as would lead
to the Pyrrhonist acquiring a tendency to think of events of type y
whenever he happens to think of events of type x.
Furthermore the most favourable circumstances for making an
inference employing a commemorative sign exist when the pres-
ence of the purported sign is evident, and past observations of the
correlation between the purported sign and the event signified have
 Pyrrhonism and Constrained Belief 279
been both frequent and invariably positive. Yet these are precisely
the circumstances in which the Pyrrhonist can be expected to be
under an irresistible psychological compulsion to give his assent to
the very claim that forms the conclusion of the sign-inference in
question. Consequently it is clear that the inferential practice of
the Pyrrhonist would be indistinguishable from that of a cautious
user of commemorative signs who happens to share the Pyrrhon-
ist's views about what constitutes an evident state of affairs: given
the same initial set of observational beliefs, both parties would ar-
rive at the same conclusions about what they would observe in
the future. It is not surprising, therefore, that Sextus describes the
Pyrrhonist as sharing the ordinary person's respect for the com-
memorative sign.
On the other hand, nothing in the above account implies that
the Pyrrhonist believes that inferences relying on commemorative
signs are ever rationally justified. It is true that a Pyrrhonist who
is aware of the existence of a commemorative sign tends to draw
a highly specific conclusion about the future course of his impres-
sions. Nevertheless the Pyrrhonist simply thinks of this as a psy-
chological response that lies outside his voluntary control. If he is
correct in that assessment, then there is obviously no need to postu-
late that he really holds his beliefs about the future because he has
some residual confidence that they are rationally justified beliefs.
Furthermore it is, of course, the attempt to represent the Pyrrhonist
as endorsing commemorative sign-inferences as rationally justified
that leads interpreters of Sextus' Pyrrhonism into trouble. Thus the
fact that we are in a position to explain the Pyrrhonist's willingness
to acquiesce in commemorative sign-inferences without needing to
ascribe to him the belief that those inferences are rationally justified
should suffice to persuade us to desist from any further attempts at
presenting the Pyrrhonist as a champion of inductive probabilism.

4. Impressions and hidden beliefs

about matters of objective fact
Unfortunately, the problem of arriving at an understanding of how
the Pyrrhonist's beliefs about his future impressions can be seen
as psychologically constrained beliefs, devoid of all rational justi-
fication, is not the only problem that arises from Sextus' desire to
280 Chapter II

maintain that the Pyrrhonist eschews all beliefs other than those
about impressions. When we were discussing Stough's account of
Pyrrhonism, we argued that there are some occasions when the
Pyrrhonist's purported impressions turn out to be disguised incli-
nations towards beliefs about matters of objective fact. 6 Now that
charge is a particularly effective one against Stough's interpretation
because she wishes to represent the Pyrrhonist as acting on the basis
of beliefs he regards as rationally justified. Consequently Stough's
belief that Aenesidemus' ten tropes suffice to undermine any claim
about a matter of objective fact means that she is precluded from
ascribing to the Pyrrhonist any epistemic impression that would
involve the Pyrrhonist in having an inclination to accept that some
claim about a matter of objective fact is true. Nevertheless even an
interpretation that potentially allows the Pyrrhonist to combine his
negative epistemological arguments with any number of unjustified
but constrained beliefs encounters trouble here. For it seems clear
that Sextus himself is adamant that the impressions that guide the
Pyrrhonist's actions are all non-epistemic impressions.
Sextus, of course, treats the word tPavTaa{a (impression) as in-
terchangeable with tPa'VOP.EVOV (that which appears), which is the
present passive participle of the Greek verb tPa{vw (to bring to light,
make to appear). Consequently the meaning a person ascribes to the
word tPa'VOP.EVOV is fixed by the meaning he ascribes to tPa{vw in the
passive voice. In Sextus' case, however, that meaning is resolutely
non-epistemic.
Consider, for example, Sextus' use of tPa{vop.a, in the course of
his exposition of Aenesidemus' ten tropes. That exposition involves
Sextus in a vast number of references to the way something appears,
yet all those references are unmistakably non-epistemic. At PH I.
119, for instance, Sextus states that the same oar appears 'bent
when in the water but straight when out of the water'. If we were
to attempt to treat that claim as constituting an epistemic use of
tPa{vop.m, then we would have to treat Sextus as asserting that we
are inclined to believe that the oar is bent when it is in the water but
inclined to believe that it is straight when we see it out of the water.
However the claim would then be patently false: no one in Sextus'
potential audience would have been inclined to believe that an oar
changes its shape when immersed in water. Worse still, if anyone
had been inclined to believe that the oar's real shape is different
• See Chapter 9, sect. 3.
 Pyrrhonism and Constrained Belief
in water from what it is out of the water, Sextus would have failed
to establish that there is any conflict between the two appearances.
For only a person who believes that the oar's real shape remains
unchanged in or out of water is under any pressure to conclude that
it is impossible for both of the appearances to be veridical. The
same points can be made about all the other claims about the way
in which things appear. Not one of those claims has any plausibility
whatsoever as a claim about what people are inclined to believe
about matters of objective fact; and if people were inclined to hold
such beliefs, then there would, in fact, be no conflict between the
impressions actually cited by Sextus. The only possible conflict
would be one Sextus conspicuously omits to mention, namely that
between an inclination to believe that the objective properties of
the particular object at issue do alter and an inclination to believe
that they do not.
Furthermore Sextus does provide us with an explicit account of
the meaning the Pyrrhonist ascribes to ¢>a{vETaL, and this account is
clearly an attempt to pick out the non-epistemic use of the verb. At
M. I I. 18 he tells us that the word 'is' has two meanings:
one of these being 'really exists' ... and the other 'appears' [,patv£Ta,): thus
some of the scientists are frequently in the habit of saying that the distance
between two stars 'is' a cubit's length, this being equivalent to 'appears to
be but is not really'; for perhaps it is really 'one hundred stades' but appears
to be a cubit owing to its height and owing to the distance of the eye.
Sextus then uses this distinction to clarify the Pyrrhonist's claim,
'Of existing things some are good, others evil, others between the
two': according to Sextus, the Pyrrhonist's use of 'are' is intended
to make a claim about appearance rather than real existence.
However it is plain that if the Pyrrhonist's claims about appear-
ances have to be interpreted in the same way as the scientists'
claims about the apparent distance between the two stars, then the
Pyrrhonist's claims cannot be interpreted epistemically. For the
key point to note about Sextus' example is that the scientists do not
have any inclination to believe that the stars in question are really
one cubit apart. Consequently the fact that they are still willing to
say that the distance appears (¢>a{vETaL) to be one cubit establishes
beyond all doubt that they are using ¢>a{vETaL in its non-epistemic
sense. It follows that Sextus' decision to employ this example as an
illustration of the Pyrrhonist's own use of ¢>a{vETaL means that we are
282 Chapter I I
unable to avoid the conclusion that Sextus regards the Pyrrhonist
too as using r!>a{vETaL non-epistemicaIly.
It seems, then, that we have finaIly uncovered a genuine incon-
sistency in Sextus' Pyrrhonism. Sextus has to be read as insisting
that the Pyrrhonist has no beliefs other than beliefs about his non-
epistemic impressions. However we established in Chapter 9 that
some of the Pyrrhonist's impressions are nothing other than tenta-
tive beliefs about matters of objective fact. Thus we are forced to
conclude that Sextus is exaggerating the extent of the Pyrrhonist's
€7TOX~: not only does the Pyrrhonist have beliefs about his impres-
sions but he also has beliefs about other people and the objective
inadequacies of the arguments used by the dogmatists.
Nevertheless the fact that Sextus has gone astray here does not
indicate that there is some deep-seated incoherence hidden within
Pyrrhonean scepticism. AIl that Sextus' mistake actually alIows us
to infer is that Sextus, like most of us, sometimes finds it difficult
to determine whether a particular inclination to make use of the
language of something appearing to be the case is a response to a
non-epistemic impression or an epistemic impression.
The fact of the matter is that Sextus' Pyrrhonism can readily
make aIlowance for the Pyrrhonist having beliefs that are not about
impressions. When we were explaining why it is a mistake to sup-
pose that the Pyrrhonist ought to abandon all his beliefs once he
has come to think of them as lacking any rational justification, we
pointed out that the Pyrrhonist thinks of himself as retaining only
those beliefs he is psychologicaIly incapable of giving up. It is clear,
therefore, that if the Pyrrhonist does find that his exposure to the
standard sceptical arguments fails to eradicate his beliefs about, for
example, the existence of other people, then the Pyrrhonist can ac-
commodate those beliefs by treating them as constrained beliefs on
a par with his constrained beliefs about his impressions. Moreover
there are no a priori grounds for the supposition that a person's ne-
cessitated beliefs will fall into one homogeneous group. Hence it is
tempting to conclude that an admission that the Pyrrhonist's con-
strained beliefs cover a variety of different subject matters would
remove some of the suspicious neatness that afflicts Sextus' official
position.
Why, then, is Sextus so committed to the view that the Pyrrhon-
ist's beliefs are all beliefs about his non-epistemic impressions? The
only explanation that readily comes to mind is that Sextus wishes
 Pyrrhonism and Constrained Belief
to be able to give an informative description of the beliefs that re-
main to the mature Pyrrhonist after the onset of E-7TOX~' The bare
statement that they are all constrained beliefs is, of course, singu-
larly unsatisfying because no one can be sure that a particular belief
is a constrained one until it has succeeded in surviving the arrival
of bTOX~' Thus the predictive power of the claim that the mature
Pyrrhonist's beliefs are all constrained beliefs is non-existent. It
follows that it would be natural for Sextus to attempt to discover
a more illuminating account of the mature Pyrrhonist's residual
beliefs. Moreover it is clear that beliefs about his non-epistemic
impressions do have an extremely prominent place in the mature
Pyrrhonist's belief-set. Consequently it would be understandable
if Sextus were to begin by considering the hypothesis that the com-
mon property possessed by the Pyrrhonist's retained beliefs is that
they all happen to be about non-epistemic impressions.
Furthermore anyone attracted by that hypothesis would find that
it is extremely easy to confuse situations where the language of ap-
pearance is being used as a way of expressing an epistemic impres-
sion with situations where the inclination to employ such language
arises from the presence of a non-epistemic impression. Barnes, for
instance, offers 'That argument looks sound-but don't be taken in
by it' as an example of the existence of non-epistemic appearance-
statements that have nothing to do with the way things appear to
perception. 7 However if we reflect on that statement for any length
of time, we find that Barnes' confidence comes to seem increasingly
misplaced. After all, the statement cited by him can be read quite
naturally as saying that most people are initially inclined to believe
that the argument at issue is sound despite the fact that it is really
invalid. Moreover if we were to ask ourselves if we can ever be sure
that this latter sense is not the sense that ought to be attached to
Barnes' statement as uttered by us, then we would have to admit
that such certainty is simply not available. Thus it is clear that
even in the case of the statement chosen by Barnes as a wholly un-
controversial example of a non-perceptual appearance-statement
being used non-epistemically, there is still some real doubt as to
how this statement should be interpreted. And it follows that a
person with a theory to confirm would have no difficulty in per-
suading himself that any beliefs possessed by the Pyrrhonist that
7 J. Barnes. 'The Beliefs of a Pyrrhonist'. Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological

Society. 28 (1982). 1-29 at 4.

 Chapter II

are not beliefs about perceptual appearances are actually beliefs

about non-perceptual appearances.
Consequently Sextus' mistaken view that all of the mature
Pyrrhonist's beliefs are about non-epistemic appearances can be
explained as nothing more alarming than an over-ambitious gen-
eralization. Fortunately for the mature Pyrrhonist's ability to act,
various beliefs survive the onset of €-7TOX~ because they are necessi-
tated by the Pyrrhonist's psychological and biological constitution.
Thus Sextus is led to form the hypothesis that they are all beliefs
about non-epistemic impressions, and his inability to distinguish
with any assurance between situations where his decision to talk in
terms of how things appear to him is prompted by non-perceptual,
non-epistemic impressions and situations where this choice ofvoca-
bulary serves to express his non-perceptual, epistemic impressions
prevents him from realizing that this generalization happens, in
fact, to be false.
However the falsity of Sextus' hypothesis is relatively unimpor-
tant. Sextus never relinquishes his grasp on the fundamental in-
sight that the mature Pyrrhonist's beliefs are constrained beliefs;
and it is, of course, that insight which enables Sextus to reject the
charge that the Pyrrhonist ought to eschew all belief when he ceases
to hold that any beliefs can be rationally justified. It is apparent,
therefore, that the subject matter of the Pyrrhonist's beliefs is only
of concern to someone who supposes that the mature Pyrrhonist's
beliefs need to have some special epistemological status. Anyone who
has absorbed the fundamental point that the Pyrrhonist professes
to act on the basis of beliefs that are psychologically unavoidable
will readily appreciate that the Pyrrhonist's possession of a con-
strained belief about a matter of objective fact is no more both-
ersome than his possession of a constrained belief about the way
things appear.

5. Practical Pyrrhonism

It is now time to pull together the various elements of our account

of Sextus' Pyrrhonism. In the preceding chapter we answered the
objection that the sceptic cannot provide philosophically significant
arguments for the position that no claim about any subject matter
is ever rationally justified. Moreover in the present chapter we have
 Pyrrhonism and Constrained Belief 2 85

explained how the mature Pyrrhonist can legitimately continue to

act on the basis of various residual beliefs even though he no longer
thinks of any of them as having any rational justification. However
we have not yet attempted to give a description of Pyrrhonism as an
exemplary way of life, and such a description is essential if we are
to do justice to the practical orientation manifested by Pyrrhonean
scepticism.
The motivation behind Pyrrhonism is, in fact, very different from
the motivation that underlies present-day philosophical systems.
Moreover the failure to recognize the existence of this difference
undoubtedly forms one of the chief obstacles to the attainment of a
proper understanding of the Pyrrhonean way. Unlike the present-
day philosopher, the Pyrrhonist's main concern is not the discovery
of truths. Instead, Pyrrhonism is a direct product of the human
quest for happiness. Consequently we are never in a position to
assume without further inquiry that the Pyrrhonist's discussions
serve the same purpose as similar discussions found in modern
epistemology.
The Pyrrhonist, of course, characteristically presents human
happiness as lying in aTapa~{a or peace of mind (see PH I. 28;
M. II. 110-11), and Sextus, at least, has no inhibitions about de-
scribing this aTapat{a as the ultimate goal of Pyrrhonism (see PH I.
25).8 Nevertheless the mature Pyrrhonist's rejection of dogmatism
means that he does not have the opinion that aTapa~{a is objectively
valuable. Indeed, the mature Pyrrhonist eschews even the belief
that a person's peace of mind constitutes a good for that particular
person. In what sense, then, is it possible for aTapat{a to constitute
the goal of Pyrrhonism?
Part of the answer lies in the fact that the claim that Pyrrhonism
leads to peace of mind has obvious presentational advantages over
the claim that the outcome of Pyrrhonism is ETroXTJ. No one other
than a Pyrrhonist or an Academic philosopher would ever be in-
clined to pursue €7TOXTJ for its own sake. However most people would
be quite prepared to accept that it is desirable to possess peace of
mind. Consequently the claim that Pyrrhonism eventually leads
to aTapat{a provides people who are not committed Pyrrhonists

8 An interesting discussion of the significance of Sextus' decision to present

IiTapatta rather than brox~ as the official end (-T'''O~) of Pyrrhonism can be found
in D. Sedley, 'The Motivation of Greek Scepticism', in M. Burnyeat (ed.), The
Skeptical Tradition (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983), 9-29 at 21-3.
 Chapter I I
with an incentive to work their way through the complexities of
Pyrrhonean dialectic.
Even more importantly, however, the attainment of aTapa({a pro-
vides a natural terminus for the Pyrrhonist's own inquiries. The
mature Pyrrhonist, as we have already noted, cannot hold that he
pursues a particular goal because that goal is genuinely of value.
Moreover he is not in a position to insist that nothing of genuine
value exists. Thus it is tempting to conclude that the Pyrrhonist's
mental state will be one of unceasing agitation and confusion. Even
if he achieves some goal that he has set himself, he will immediately
begin to ask himself if he ought to be pursuing some other goal
and he will have no means of assuring himself that this is not the
case. Fortunately, however, the supposition that the Pyrrhonist's
inquiries bring about a state of aTapa({a provides a solution to this
problem. The Pyrrhonist does not remain content with aTapa({a
because he has succeeded in convincing himself that no compet-
ing goal is of greater value. Instead, his quest comes to an end at
this point because he longer feels any impulse to alter the situ-
ation in which he happens to find himself. Basically peace of mind
can be defined as the absence of any desire to change one's pre-
sent situation, so there is no need to seek an explanation of why
the Pyrrhonist's strivings end when he achieves aTapa({a. All that
needs to be explained is the way in which he reaches that state; and
the Pyrrhonist, of course, explains this as the unforeseen outcome
of his E7TOX~ (see PH I. 8 and 28-9).
Thus we are now able to understand the process by which Pyr-
rhonism comes to be embraced as a way of living out one's life. Once
we have grasped the real function of the Pyrrhonist's nominal goal,
all the other pieces fall neatly into place.
The Pyrrhonist starts out as an ordinary person with an ordi-
nary person's hopes and aspirations. In particular, he wishes to be
happy, and he hopes that he can achieve that goal by acquiring true
beliefs about what is valuable and the ways in which such goods can
be obtained. Consequently he begins a series of philosophical and
scientific inquiries which are intended to uncover the truth about
these matters. Up to this point, then, the Pyrrhonist is follow-
ing the same path as any other philosopher. However the decisive
divergence occurs when the Pyrrhonist comes to realize that his
inquiries do not seem to be leading him to any conclusions that can
be rationally justified.
 Pyrrhonism and Constrained Belief
Instead of attempting to hide that dismal fact from himself, the
Pyrrhonist attempts to remedy the situation by undertaking a crit-
ical scrutiny of even his most basic epistemological principles. But
the outcome of that scrutiny is that he is driven to the conclusion
that those principles condemn themselves as wholly devoid of any
rational justification. On the other hand, he is unable to formulate
any alternative set of principles that possesses any greater plausi-
bility than his original set. Hence the Pyrrhonist cannot construe
any of his beliefs as rationally justified, and he is thereby compelled
to suspend judgement on virtually all topics. The only beliefs that
remain are those that are necessitated by the Pyrrhonist's psycho-
logical and biological constitution.
Furthermore the radical ETTOX~ forced upon the Pyrrhonist is
eventually followed by d'Tapa~{a or peace of mind. And the arrival
of this peace of mind means that the Pyrrhonist comes to rest in
a position of stable equilibrium. He stays content with his ETTOX~
because he has no impulse whatsoever to change his existing men-
tal condition. Yet the ETTOX~' in turn, protects the Pyrrhonist from
acquiring any new unconstrained beliefs to replace the ones he has
already discarded.
A single belief considered in isolation cannot be thought of as
rationally justified. A belief can be regarded as rationally justified
only when it has been located within a set of interlocking episte-
mological principles. Consequently the mature Pyrrhonist does not
have to maintain his ETTOX~ by examining and rejecting each fresh
claim made by dogmatic thinkers. Instead, the sheer extent of the
mature Pyrrhonist's ETTOX~ means that he has no epistemological
framework within which to place a dogmatic claim, and he is thus
insulated from any temptation to consider it as a potentially justified
claim. The Pyrrhonist's ETTOX~ can be shaken only by an encounter
with a new and radically innovative epistemological system; and al-
though he does not, of course, have any inclination to insist that it
is impossible for such systems to arise, the chances that any indivi-
dual Pyrrhonist will be confronted by revolutionary developments
in epistemology more than once or twice in his lifetime are clearly
fairly remote. And even if the Pyrrhonist were to find himself back
in the cut and thrust of philosophic controversy, he would soon find
that the basic presuppositions of inquiry that originally led him to
espouse ETTOX~ would begin to assert their influence again. Thus his
E7TOX~ would rapidly reassert itself.
288 Chapter II

It follows that the Pyrrhonist must be seen as making a philo-

sophical journey that culminates in his renunciation of philosophy.
He begins as a philosopher on a par with the Stoic or Epicurean,
but he finally arrives at a stance of suspending judgement on all
philosophical claims and most claims about matters of objective
fact. Hence the mature Pyrrhonist is not a philosopher: the vari-
ous arguments he proffers are not intended to be anything more
than instruments of psychological therapy. Nevertheless his jour-
ney towards his f.7TOXTJ is still a philosophically exemplary journey.
When the Pyrrhonist begins to diverge from conventional philo-
sophers, he diverges because he is not prepared to conceal from
himself that his investigations are not producing conclusions that
he can sincerely think of as rationally justified. And that intellec-
tual honesty must meet with the approval of any philosopher who is
striving to comport himself in a rational manner. Furthermore the
Pyrrhonist's subsequent f.7TOXTJ is forced upon him by his adherence
to epistemological principles that also command the allegiance of
all dogmatic thinkers. Consequently no dogmatic philosopher is in
any position to criticize the Pyrrhonist's f.7TOXTJ as irrational: every
move the Pyrrhonist makes is one that the dogmatic philosopher is
committed to treating as rationally justified.
In fact the Pyrrhonist, seen from the viewpoint of the dogmatic
philosopher, is someone whose actions and judgements all conform
to the most rigorous possible standards of rationality. I t is only from
the viewpoint of the mature Pyrrhonist himself that the Pyrrhonean
way emerges as possessing no more justification than any other
system of thought. By then, however, it is much too late for the
Pyrrhonist to retrace his steps. Once an inquirer has developed into
a mature Pyrrhonist, his f.7TOXTJ will prove both stable and enduring.
Thus it has become clear that the Pyrrhonism espoused by Sextus
is an example of an all-encompassing scepticism that has to be taken
seriously. The Pyrrhonist's critique of our beliefs does not restrict
itself to a destructive examination of our claims to know some things
for certain. Instead, the upshot of the Pyrrhonist's investigations
is that he finds that it appears to him that we never have a rational
justification for any of our beliefs. Moreover he offers arguments
for the conclusion that none of our beliefs is rationally justified that
depend for their force only on presuppositions embraced by his
dogmatic opponents. Consequently those opponents cannot reject
his arguments without acquiescing in the destruction of their own
 Pyrrhonism and Constrained Belief
conception of what it is to act and think in a rational manner.
Even more embarrassingly, however, the Pyrrhonist, as we have
seen in this chapter, has an account of the life lived by a mature
Pyrrhonist which apparently succeeds in presenting the Pyrrhonist
as the matchless embodiment of the rational standards advocated
by dogmatic thinkers. His rigorous application of those standards
is mitigated only by the actions and beliefs that are forced upon him
through psychological necessity. It follows that he cannot justly be
criticized for those actions and beliefs, and that his entire way of
life is accordingly immune to all charges of incoherence or wilful
irrationalism.
Ultimately, then, global scepticism about the availability of ra-
tionally justified beliefs can be refuted only by showing that the
sceptic's negative epistemological arguments can be rejected with-
out abandoning one's grasp on the notion of a rational justification.
No short cuts are feasible. If the Pyrrhonist's arguments do succeed
in turning our standards of rationality against themselves, then it
will be impossible for anyone who is attempting to live rationally
to avoid the conclusion that the sceptical thesis that there are no
rationally justified beliefs is correct. Thus the only way out for the
non-sceptic is to uncover the specific flaws in the sceptic's argu-
mentation. For if our discussion of Sextus' Pyrrhonism establishes
anything at all, it establishes that the reflex response that global
scepticism about rational justification is self-refuting and unlivable
is no longer convincing.
 Select Bibliography

A. TEXTS AND TRANSLATIONS

Sextus Empiricus
ANNAS, j., and BARNES, j., Outlines of Pyrrhonism (Cambridge, 1994).
BETT, R., Sextus Empiricus: Against the Ethicists (Oxford, 1996). English
translation with introduction and commentary.
BLANK, D. L., Sextus Empiricus: Against the Grammarians (Oxford, 1998).
English translation with introduction and commentary.
BURY, R. G., Sextus Empiricus (4 vols.; Loeb Classical Library; Cambridge,
Mass., 1933-49). Greek text and English translation.
HALLIE, P. P., Sextus Empiricus: Selections from the Major Writings on
Scepticism, Man, and God, trans. S. G. Etheridge, 2nd edn., rev. D. R.
Morrison (Indianapolis, 1985).
MATES, B., The Skeptic Way (Oxford, 1996). Contains an English transla-
tion of the Outlines of Pyrrhonism.
MUTSCHMANN, H., and MAU, j., Sexti Empirici Opera (3 vols.; Leipzig,
1912-54). Greek text. Vol. iii contains comprehensive word and name
indices prepared by K. Janacek.

Other ancient authors

CELSUS, De medicina, ed. W. Spencer (3 vols.; Loeb Classical Library;
Cambridge, Mass., 1935-8). Latin text and English translation.
CICERO, Academica, ed. H. Rackham (Loeb Classical Library; Cambridge,
Mass., 1933). Latin text and English translation.
- - De natura deorum, ed. H. Rackham (Loeb Classical Library; Cam-
bridge, Mass., 1933). Latin text and English translation.
OIOGENES LAERTJUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, ed. R. D. Hicks (2
vols.; Loeb Classical Library; Cambridge, Mass., 1925). Greek text and
English translation.
EUSEBJUS, Praeparatio Evangelica, ed. E. H. Gifford (4 vols.; Oxford, 1903).
Greek text in 2 vols. and separate English translation in 2 additional vols.
GALEN, On the Therapeutic Method, ed. R. Hankinson (Oxford, 1991).
English translation of books 1 and 2.
- - Opera Omnia, ed. C. G. Kiihn (20 vols. in 22; Leipzig, 1821-33).
Greek text.
- - Three Treatises on the Nature of Science, ed. M. Frede, trans. R.
29 2 Select Bibliography
Walzer and M. Frede (Indianapolis, 1985). Contains English translations
of On the Sects for Beginners, An Outline of Empiricism, and On Medical
Experience.
GELLlUS, The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius, ed. J. Rolfe (3 vols.; Loeb Clas-
sical Library; Cambridge, Mass., 1927). Latin text and English transla-
tion.
HIPPOLYTUS, Refutatio omnium haeresium, ed. Miroslav Marcovich (Berlin,
1986). Greek text.
LUCIAN, ed. A. Harmon, K. Kilburn, and M. Macleod (8 vols.; Loeb
Classical Library; Cambridge, Mass., 1913-67). Greek text and Eng-
lish translation. Vol. ii contains Philosophies for Sale; vol. vi contains
Hermotimus.
PHOTIUS, Bibliotheca, ed. 1. Bekker (Berlin, 1824). Greek text.
PLUTARCH, Adversus Colotem, in Plutarch, Moralia, vol. xiv, ed. B. Einarson
and P. de Lacy (Loeb Classical Library; Cambridge, Mass., 1967).

Selections and testimonia

DECLEVA CAIZZI, F., Pirrone: Testimonianze (Naples, 1981). Contains
Greek and Latin texts referring to Pyrrho, Italian translations of those
texts, and an extensive commentary.
DEICHGRABER, M., Die griechische Empirikerschule (Berlin, 1930). Contains
Greek and Latin texts relating to the Empiricist school of medicine.
INWOOD, B., and GERSON, L., Hellenistic Philosophy (Indianapolis, 1992).
English translations of selected texts.
LONG, A. A., and SEDLEY, D. N., The Hellenistic Philosophers (2 vols.; Cam-
bridge, 1987). Greek and Latin texts with English translations. Vol. i also
contains an extensive commentary that provides an excellent introduc-
tion to the principal Hellenistic schools of philosophy.
METTE, H., 'Zwei Akademiker heute: Krantor und Arkesilaos', Lustrum,
26 (1984),7-94. Contains Greek and Latin texts referring to Arcesilaus.
- - 'Weitere Akademiker heute: Von Lakydes bis zu Kleitomachos', Lus-
trum, 27 (1985), 39-148. Contains Greek and Latin texts referring to
Lacydes, Carneades, and Clitomachus.

B. MODERN WORKS

Introductions to Hellenistic philosophy

ANNAS, J., Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1992).
KRISTELLER, P., Greek Philosophers of the Hellenistic Age (New York, 1993).
LONG, A. A., Hellenistic Philosophy, 2nd edn. (London, 1986).
SHARPLES, R., Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics: An Introduction to Hellenistic
Philosophy (London, 1996).
 Select Bibliography 293
General works on ancient scepticism
BARNES, }., 'Ancient Skepticism and Causation', in M. Burnyeat (ed.), The
Skeptical Tradition (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983), 149-203.
BROCHARD, V., Les Sceptiques grecs, 2nd edn. (Paris, 1981).
DAL PRA, M., Lo scetticismo greco, 2nd edn. (Rome and Bari, 1975).
HANKINSON, R. }., The Sceptics (London, 1995).
GROARKE, L., Greek Scepticism: Anti-Realist Trends in Ancient Thought
(Montreal and Kingston, 1990).
ROBIN, L., Pyrrhon et le scepticisme grec (Paris, 1944).
SEDLEY, D., 'The Motivation of Greek Scepticism', in M. Burnyeat (ed.),
The Skeptical Tradition (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983), 9-29.
STOUGH, c. L., Greek Skepticism (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969).

Collections of papers
BURNYEAT, M. (ed.), The Skeptical Tradition (Berkeley and Los Angeles,
1983)·
GIANNANTONI, G. (ed.), Lo scetticismo antico (2 vols.; Naples, 1981).
SCHOFIELD, M., BURNYEAT, M., and BARNES,}. (eds.), Doubt and Dogma-
tism: Studies in Hellenistic Epistemology (Oxford, [980).

Pyrrho and Timon

BETT, R., Pyrrho, his Antecedents, and his Legacy, (Oxford, 2000).
FLINTOFF, E., 'Pyrrho and India', Ph ronesis , 25 ([980),88-[08.
LONG, A. A., 'Timon of Phlius: Pyrrhonist and Satirist', Proceedings of the
Cambridge Philological Society, 24 ([978), 68-gI.

The sceptical Academy

BEIT, R., 'Carneades' Pithanon: A Reappraisal of its Role and Status',
Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 7 (1989), 59--94.
COUISSIN, P., 'L' origine et I' evolution de I' e,roxf, Revue des etudes grecques,
42 ([9 2 9), 373--97·
- - 'The Stoicism of the New Academy', in M. Burnyeat (ed.), The Skep-
tical Tradition (Berkeley and Los Angeles, [983), 3 [-63.
FREDE, M., 'Stoics and Skeptics on Clear and Distinct Impressions', in id.,
Essays in Ancient Philosophy (Oxford, [987), [51-76.
GLUCKER, j., Antiochus and the Late Academy (Gottingen, 1978).
SEDLEY, D., 'The End of the Academy', PhTonesis, 26 ([98[), 153-69.
STRIKER, G., 'Sceptical Strategies', in M. Schofield, M. Burnyeat, and}.
Barnes (eds.), Doubt and Dogmatism: Studies in Hellenistic Epistemology
(Oxford, [980), 54-83.
TARRANT, H., Scepticism OT Platonism? (Cambridge, [985).
294 Select Bibliography
Aenesidemus
RIST, J., 'The Heracliteanism of Aenesidemus', Phoenix, Z4 (1970), 309-
19·
WOODRUFF, P., 'Aporetic Pyrrhonism', Oxford Studies in Ancient Philo-
sophy, 6 (1988), 139-68.

The medical schools

EDELSTEIN, L., Ancient Medicine (Baltimore, 1967).
FREDE, M., 'The Ancient Empiricists', in id., Essays in Ancient Philosophy
(Oxford, 1987), Z43-60.
- - 'The Method of the So-Called Methodical School of Medicine', in
id., Essays in Ancient Philosophy (Oxford, 1987), z61-78.
- - 'Philosophy and Medicine in Antiquity', in id., Essays in Ancient
Philosophy (Oxford, 1987), ZZ5-4Z.
MATTHEN, M., 'Empiricism and Ontology in Ancient Medicine', in R. J.
Hankinson (ed.), Method, Medicine, and Metaphysics (Edmonton, 1988).

Sextus Empiricus
CHISHOLM, R. M., 'Sextus Empiricus and Modern Empiricism', Philosophy
of Science, 8 (1941),371-84.
COHEN, A., 'Sextus Empiricus: Skepticism as a Therapy', Philosophical
Forum, 15 (1984), 405-z4.
HOUSE, D. K., 'The Life of Sextus Empiricus', Classical Quarterly, NS )0
(1980), ZZ7-)8.
LONG, A. A., 'Sextus Empiricus on the Criterion of Truth', Bulletin of the
Institute of Classical Studies, Z5 (1978), )5-59.
MATES, B., The Skeptic Way (Oxford, 1996).
PATRICK, M. M., Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism (Cambridge,
1899)·

Sextus' writings: philological studies

JANACEK, K., Prolegomena to Sextus Empiricus (Olomouc, 1948).
- - Sextus Empiricus' Sceptical Methods (Prague, 197z).

The ten tropes of Aenesidemus

ANNAS, J., and BARNES, J., The Modes of Scepticism (Cambridge, 1985).
STRIKER, G., 'The Ten Tropes of Aenesidemus', in M. Burnyeat (ed.), The
Skeptical Tradition (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 198),95-115.

The five tropes of Agrippa

BARNES, J.. The Toils of Scepticism (Cambridge, 1990).
 Select Bibliography 295
GOODMAN, L. E., 'Skepticism', Review of Metaphysics, 36 (1983),819-48.

Scepticism and self-refutation

BAILEY, A., 'Pyrrhonean Scepticism and the Self-Refutation Argument',
Philosophical Quarterly, 40 (1990), 27-44.
BURNYEAT, M., 'Protagoras and Self-Refutation in Later Greek Philo-
sophy', Philosophical Review, 85 (1976), 44-69.
MCPHERRAN, M., 'Sceptical Homeopathy and Self-Refutation', Phronesis,
32(1987),290-328.

The scope of the Pyrrhonist's suspension of belief

BARNES, J., 'The Beliefs of a Pyrrhonist', Proceedings of the Cambridge
Philological Society, 28 (1982), 1-29.
BURNYEAT, M., 'Can the Sceptic Live his Scepticism?', in M. Schofield,
M. Burnyeat, and J Barnes (eds.), Doubt and Dogmatism: Studies in
Hellenistic Epistemology (Oxford, 1980), 20-53.
- - 'The Sceptic in his Place and Time', in R. Rorty, J Schneewind, and
Q. Skinner (eds.), Philosophy in History (Cambridge, 1984), 225-54.
FREDE, M., 'The Skeptic's Beliefs', in id., Essays in Ancient Philosophy
(Oxford, 1987), 179-200.
- - 'The Skeptic's Two Kinds of Assent and the Question of the Possi-
bility of Knowledge', in id., Essays in Ancient Philosophy (Oxford, 1987),
201-22.
GLIDDEN, D., 'Skeptic Semiotics', Phronesis, 28 (1983),213-55.
STOUGH, C. L., 'Sextus Empiricus on Non-Assertion', Phronesis, 29 (1984),
136-64.

Sceptical arguments about value

ANNAS, J., 'Doing without Objective Values: Ancient and Modern Strate-
gies', in M. Schofield and G. Striker (eds.), The Norms of Nature (Cam-
bridge, 1986), 3-29.
MCPHERRAN, M., 'Pyrrhonism's Arguments against Value', Philosophical
Studies, 60 (1990), 127-42.
NUSSBAUM, M., The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic
Ethics (Princeton, 1994).

The rediscovery of ancient scepticism

BRUSH, C., Montaigne and Bayle: Variations on the Theme of Scepticism
(The Hague, 1966).
GROARKE, L., 'Descartes' First Meditation: Something Old, Something
New, Something Borrowed', Journal of the History of Philosophy, 22
(1984), 282-301.
 Select Bibliography
PENELHUM, T., God and Skepticism: A Study in Skepticism and Fideism
(Boston, 1983).
POPKIN, R. H., The High Road to Pyrrhonism (San Diego, Calif., 1980).
- - The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza (Berkeley and Los
Angeles, 1979).
SCHMITT, C. B., Cicero Scepticus: A Study of the ~cademica' in the Renais-
sance (The Hague, 1972).
- - 'The Rediscovery of Ancient Skepticism in Modern Times', in M.
Burnyeat (ed.), The Skeptical Tradition (Berkeley and Los Angeles,
1983), 225-5 I.

Ancient scepticism and modern epistemology

BAILEY, A., 'Rediscovering Scepticism', Eidos, 8 (1989), 153-76.
FOGELlN, R. J.. Pyrrhonian Reflections on Knowledge and Justification (Ox-
ford, 1994).
- - 'Wittgenstein and Classical Skepticism', International Philosophical
Quarterly, 21 (1981),3-15.
HILEY, D., Philosophy in Question: Essays on a Pyrrhonian Theme (Chicago,
1988).
HOOK WAY, C., Scepticism (London, 1990).
NAESS, A., Scepticism (London, 1968).
WATSON, R. A., 'Sextus and Wittgenstein', Southern Journal of Philosophy,
7 (19 6 9), 229-37·
 Index
Academy:
the Fourth 69
the Middle 54-5, 119-20
the New 58, 65-6
Plato's 38
action:
and beliefs about future impressions
216-17, 230-3
coerced 1:01 n.
and expectations 155
involuntary 12 n.
and reflex responses 155-7
voluntary :0115
ad hominem arguments:
exegetical implications 139-4:01
and the Pyrrhonist's impressions
:01:018-34
useful for therapy 138-9, 228
a8o~a(JTw~ 187-8, 190, 193
Aenesidemus 4 n. 6, 34, 100
and Arcesilaus 75-7
his criticisms of the Academy 72, 75
desirability of l1TOX~ 77-9
and Heraclitus of Tyre 87 n. 45
influence on Sextus 56-7
membership of the Academy 72
and the Pyrrhonist Discourses 72-5
his ten tropes 130-3, 137, 142, 165-
8, 185, 208-10, 222, 264-6,280-1
use of Pyrrho as a figurehead 57,
75-9
Agrippa 84
his five tropes 133-5, 136-7, 142,
222, 247-8, 249, 257, 264-6, 268-
9 Aristotle 9
a'\7J8~~:
applied to appearance-statements
159-60
applied to appearances 160-1
as a synonym of 'true' 157, 158
as a synonym of 'veridical' 160-1
Alexander the Great 22
Anaxagoras 129, 196-'7
Anaxarchus of Abdera:
and the criterion of truth 24-5
his equanimity 22
influence on Pyrrho 22-3
anomalies, linguistic, see impropriety,
linguistic
Antiochus of Ascalon 4 n. 6, 65
Antiochus of Laodicea 84
Antipater of Tarsus 67-8
Apellas 84
appearance-statements:
and avowals 170-3
and the Cyrenaics 159-65
entail truth-valued statements 167-8
four uses of 149
and inclinations towards beliefs
149-5 0
the non-epistemic sense 151
as premisses 165-7
Sextus' understanding of 157-65
Sextus' use of 165-7
as truth-valued 165-'73
appearances, see impressions
Arcesilaus 3, 58, 100, 196
his ad hominem arguments 44-6
and dialectic 40-2
election as scholarch 38
and the meaning of l1TOX~
and Pyrrho 77
the unlivability argument 46-7, 49-
54
Sextus on 43, 50-I, 54, 79-80, 194-
5
similarity to Sextus' position 54-5
Socratic inspiration 38-40
and suspension of judgement 40,
4 2-3,44
Aristocles of Messene 25-6
Asclepius 116
assent:
as involving belief 272-5
the Stoic's account of 47-9, 27:01-3
assertion 168-70
assumptions, arbitrary 135, 136
/hapa~{a, see tranquillity, mental
Aulus Gellius 81
Austin, J. L. 227
avowals 170-1
Barnes, Jonathan 86-7
 Index
the sense of lloYl'-a 123
Pyrrhonean appearance-statements
170 - 1• 283
Pyrrhonism and ordinary life 175.
189-90
Bayle. Pierre 19
belief:
and inclinations to believe 150
volitional control 40
and voluntary action 12
f3{o~. see ordinary life
body. phenomenal 216
Brunschwig. Jacques 34
Bumyeat. Myles 202. 222. 25 I. 269
appearance-statements 152-3
assent to appearances 147. 150. 152-
3 6
Greeks' concept of truth 147
modern view of truth 148--1}
the truth-valueless thesis 147-9.
153-4. 157-6 3. 173-4
use of d.\l1l1.)~ 157-8
Cameades 100. 196
and ad hominem arguments 62. 64-5
and Arcesilaus 58-60
attitude towards <TI'OX') 58-60
the criterion of truth 62-4
disputes with the Stoics 59. 62-4
and plausibility 60-2. 65-9
Cassius (doctor and Pyrrhonist) 85. 90
catachresis 143-5
Celsus (writer on medicine) 85. 86 n.
42.87
certainty 5-6
Charmadas 69
Charron. Pierre 19
Chisholm. Roderick 215
Cicero:
Academic fallibilism 274 n.
on Carneades 66
testimony concerning Pyrrho 32-5
circularity 135. ]36. 245
Clitomachus 58. 65-6. 69
common sense:
allegedly championed by the Pyr-
rhonist 176-7
arguments drawn from 200-8
criterion of truth. the 124-5. 184
Crousaz. Jean Pierre de 10-13
Cyrenaics. the:
their criterion of truth 197-9
distingu ished from sceptics 163
their end 163
and non-epistemic appearance-
statements ] 59-65
subjectivist epistemology ]61. 163
and the use of d.\l1l1.)~ 159-65
Democritus 22-4. 127. 159
critique of the senses 23
the intellect 24
and tranquillity 22-3
Descartes. Rene 18-]9. 148. 251-2
Diocles of Cnidos 43
Diocles the Magnesian 272-3
Diodorus Cronus 201-4
Diogenes Laertius 110 n. 79
list of Pyrrhonean philosophers 35-
Dionysius of Aegae:
his sceptical handbook on medicine
86
disturbance. freedom from 26; see also
tranquillity. mental
divine being. 188. 192-3
oOYl'-a:
and assent to the non-evident 122-3
in the broader sense 123
eschewed by the Pyrrhonist 177
Dogmatic doctors. see Rationalist doc-
tors
dogmatists. the:
equally plausible conflicting claims
126
objects of inquiry 123-5
doubt 9-10
Eleatic philosophers 203
Empiricism. medical 88
development of 90-1,93-4
inferences based on similarity 89-90
as non-normative 90-]
as normative 90
and observable regularities 89
relationship with Pyrrhonean scepti-
cism 94-7
unobservable entities 9]-2, 93
Epicurean philosophers 187
bTOX~:
in the Academy 40, 42-3, 44, 47-9,
119,58-60
and Aenesidemus' tropes 208-]0
and arguments drawn from common
sense 200-8
 Index
brings about tranquillity 121, 180,
189, 210-13, 227-8
insulates Pyrrhonist from everyday
worries 212-13
lies at the heart of Sextus' Pyrrhon-
ism 119-21
the mature Pyrrhonist's 122-6, 194-
21 3
not an act of will 121-2, 135-6
origins 120-1, 128-9,201
philosophico-scientific tenets 176-
81, 196-200
rationally justified beliefs 135-6
see also suspension of belief
Estienne, Henri 17
Eucleides of Megara 21-2
..iAOYOV, 'TO 49-51,53-4
Euphranor of Seleucia 36
Eusebius of Caesarea 25-6
Feyerabend, Paul:
charges of self-contradiction 262-4
and epistemological anarchism 262
scientific progress 262-3
fideism, Christian 18
Filelfo, Francesco 17
Fogelin, Robert 176
Frede, Michael 139n., 175,251
on impressions as initiating action
154-5, 15 6-7, 269
Frege, G. 252
Galen:
familiarity with Pyrrhonism 82
his life 109-10
the schools of medicine 3 I
treatment of dog bites 99
Gettier, Edmund 1-2, 6
Glaucias (early Empiricist) 93
Glucker, J. 8 I
Groarke, Leo 27-30
Hallie, Philip:
objections to his account of '7TOX~
194- 21 3
and philosophically induced anaes-
thesia 176
Pyrrhonean bTOX~ 176-8 I, 268
Pyrrhonism and common sense
176-7
Hecataeus of Abdera 34 n. 26
Heraclei tus 159
Heraclides 87
299
Heraclitus of Tyre 87 n. 45
Herodotus of Tarsus 84, 114
Hervet, Gentian 18
Hippobotus 36
Hippolytus 113-14
House, D. K. 112
Huet, Pierre-Daniel 14
Hume, David 3, 14, 212n., 261,
277 n .
his assessment of Pyrrhonism 19
trrroKEtl-'-EVa, 'Tel lKTOt;, see objects, exter-
nal underlying
impressions, epistemic:
and arguments 222-8
disguised 221-2, 280-2
and the Pyrrhonist's ad hominem
arguments 228-33
impressions, non-epistemic:
and explanations of action 215-17
rationally justified beliefs about 214,
234, 247
impressions, unpleasant 230-3
impropriety, linguistic 223-6, 229-30,
233
induction:
not defensible from Sextus' per-
spective 239-47
Hume's critique 239, 241-3
Sextus' explicit condemnation of
235-9
Janacek, K. 103, I I 3
Johnson, Oliver 215
knowledge, concept of 1-3, 6-'7
Lacydes 58
Lehrer, Keith 4-5
linguistic intuitions 7
Lucian of Samosata 82-4
and the five tropes 83-4
MacColl, Norman 214
Maupassant, Guy de 252
meaning and use 7-8
medicine 87-8
Melissus 201
Menodotus of Nicomedia (Empirical
doctor) 31-2, 36, 57,81, 84,89,
96, 100, 114
300
Methodism, medical:
affinity with Pyrrhonean scepticism
9 2-3, 97-9
methods of treatment 99
and non-evident matters 91, 97
origins 86
and psychological constraint 97-8
Metrodorus of Chios 25
Mnaseas (sceptic and Methodist doc-
tor) 86, 97, 99
Mobius strip 253
Monimus 196-7
Montaigne, Michel de 3
Moore, G. E. 202
motion, transient 200-4
non-evident matters:
absolutely 245
contrasted with evident matters 123,
181
naturally 124, 181-2, 245
occasionally 124, 181-2, 245
the three sub-classes 123-4
see also 56yf.LO.
'nouveaux Pyrrhoniens' 18
Numenius 34
his account of Arcesilaus 41-2
objects, external underlying 178, 209-
10
ordinary life:
the Pyrrhonist's alleged advocacy of
179
the Pyrrhonist's reservations about
187-93
Pappenheim, E. 87
Parmenides 201
Patrick, Mary Mills 215
peace of mind 34 n. 26; see also tran-
quillity, mental
r/>awoILETla, Td:
contrasted with external objects 178
identified by Sextus with impres-
sions 218, 271, 273
q,al.V0J.L£VOV, 'TO:
and impressions 218-19
and non-epistemic impressions 280-
2 beliefs about future impressions
pre-evident objects 2[9, 271
the Pyrrhonist's criterion of action
2[8-[9
phenomenalism 215
Index
phenomenological appearance-
statements, see appearance-state-
ments, non-epistemic sense of
Philo of Larissa 4 n. 6, 65
and assent 70-[
head of the Academy 70
Photius 72
and Aenesidemus' Pyrrhonist Dis-
courses 57, 72-3
7n8avov, Tt), see Cameades, and plausi-
bility
place, existence of 205-7
Plato 38, 39
Plutarch 5[-2
Popkin, Richard H. [8
pre-evident matters [23-5, 183-4
and self-evidence 248-50
Price, H. H. [49 n., 15[-2
probabilistic justification [36-7
probability, perceived 5-6
Ptolemy of Cyrene 3 [, 57, 87
Pyrrho 4, 100, [01, I I 3
and Aenesidemus 57, 76-9
Cicero's account of 32-5
and intellectual controversy 79
his philosophical views 26-30
praise for his way of life 78
Pyrrhonean scepticism:
as an ability 126
has .,TOX?) at its heart "9-21
and mental tranquillity [20-[
overcomes the self-refutation argu-
ment 256--66
its ultimate end 120-1
Pyrrhonism:
advocated by Aenesidemus 72, 75-
80
instruction in the arts 95-'7, [07-9
and medical Empiricism 94-7, 1[8
myth of its incremental evolution
3 0 --6
as a source of modern ideas about
scepticism [7-20
and the word aK'1rnK6~ [6-17, 81
Pyrrhonist, the:
and ad hominem arguments [38-9
his assessment of his own argu-
ments [27, [37-9,258, 264
276 - 8
conduct of his inquiries 120-1, 129-
30, 286-8
criterion of action 218-19
 Index
as a developing thinker 239-40.
265-6. 267-8. 286-8
and epistemic impressions 221-33.
280-2
extent of his ''TT0X~ 122-6. 194-213.
218-20
how he achieves peace of mind 120-
I sceptics 24-5
his negative arguments 1211--9
promotes ''TTOX~ in other people
I 27-8. 138-9. 266
psychologically inescapable beliefs
271-5. 276-8. 282-4
rationally justified belief 135-6.
208-10. 234-50. 254-5. 264-6.
26 7-9
on reaching philosophic maturity
239-40
source of his ''TTOX~ I 26. 136. 286-7
and unresolved disputes 126-<)
why he begins his inquiries 120
rational justification 136-7
Rationalism. medical 96; see also Ra-
tionalist doctors
Rationalist doctors 91. 94
real nature (of things) 178. 184-7
regress of justification 134
Rescher. Nicholas 215
Russell. Bertrand 252
Ryle. Gilbert 227
Saturninus (Sextus' pupil) 36. 86. 100
scepticism:
and doubt 10
global 11--9. 15-16
modern accounts of 3-9
and rational beliefs 8-9
as a serious challenge 8-9
Sedley. D. 285
self-evidence 248-54
self-refutation argument 9. 14-15.
256- 66
combined with the unlivability ar-
gument 15
Seneca 81
Serapion (founder of Empiricism) 88-
9 on Sextus' treatment of induction
Sextus Empiricus:
Against the Dogmatists 100-5
Against the Professors 100. 104-9
catachresis 143-5
his dates 109-14
301
lost writings 100-1
medical Empiricism 92-4
Outlines of Pyrrhonism 100. 102.
103. 105
his profession 116-18
on the Pyrrhonist's beliefs 282-4
reworking of material from earlier
as someone who practises ''TTOX~
127-<)
and the Stoics I I I
therapeutic role of Pyrrhonism 106-
7. 128. 232
his understanding of appearance-
statements 157-65
use of ad hominem arguments 139-
42.228-34
where he lived 114-16
his writings 100-<)
signs. commemorative:
and constrained beliefs 278-9
defended by Sextus 125. 178-9. 278
and induction 234-5. 246
and occasionally non-evident mat-
ters 125. 181-4
signs. indicative 178. 181-2. 234. z44.
24 6
<JK<'TTT'KOS. the use of the word 4 n. 6.
16-17. 55. 57. 81. 82-3. 85
Socrates 311--9
Sotion of Alexandria 36
Speusippus 38
Sphaerus. and the waxen pomegra-
nates 51
Stoics. the:
the actions of animals 53
and apprehension 272-3
matters of inquiry 245
the notion of assent 47-9. 272-3
sense-perception 48
Stough. Charlotte:
assigns the Pyrrhonist justified be-
liefs 215. 221. 268-9
beliefs about impressions 218-21
objections to her interpretation of
Pyrrhonism 221-55
235-7
suspension of belief:
on all matters I I
Sextus' construal of .'TTOX~ I 19-20
and the unlivability argument 10-14
3 02
Theodas of Laodicea 84. 87
Theodosius 84-5. 87. 100
Thessalus (founder of the Methodist
school) 88 n. 47
Thrasymachus 39
Timon of Phlius 21. 185
his account of Pyrrho's views 25-7
tranquillity. mental 120-1. 180-1. 189,
28 5-6
Pyrrho's personal example 77-9
tropes, Pyrrhonean 141-2
Aenesidemus' ten tropes 130-3,
137, 142, 165-8, 185, 208-10,
222, 264-6
Agrippa's five tropes 133-5, 136-
7, 142, 222, 247-8, 249, 257-62,
264-6, 268-9, 280-1
true judgements 199-200
Index
Unger, Peter 3-4
unlivability argument, the:
absurd given Hallie's interpretation
of Pyrrhonism 194-6
three versions of 9-13
two responses 270
Watson, Richard 176
Williams, Michael 7
witches, meaning of statements about
7-8
Wittgenstein, Ludwig 9, 170- 1, 173
worship, religious 192-3
Zeno of Citium 46, 48
Zeuxippus 84
Zeuxis 84
Alan Bailey offers a clear and vigorous exposition and defence of the philosophy
of Sextus Empiricus, one of the most influential of ancient thinkers, a found-
ing father of philosophical scepticism. The subsequent sceptical tradition in
philosophy has not done justice to Sextus: his views stand up today as remark-
ably insightful, offering a fruitful way to approach issues of knowledge,
understanding, belief, and rationality.
It is widely supposed that any form of scepticism that arrives at a global
denial of the availability of rationally justified beliefs is self-refuting and unliv-
able. Bailey shows that the former objection can be disarmed by distinguishing
between the mature Pyrrhonean sceptic's assessment of his negative epistemo-
logical arguments and the assessment forced upon his philosophical opponents
by their own rationalistic code. The latter objection overlooks the role Sextus
allocates to beliefs that are necessitated by the Pyrrhonist's psychological
and biological constitution.
Alan Bailey's refreshing presentation of Sextus to a modern philosophical
readership rescues scepticism from the sceptics.

ISBN 0-19-823852-5

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