Diego E. Machuca

Pyrrhonism can safely be said to be the most prominent and influential form of skepticism in the history of Western philosophy. It was an important philosophical movement in the Hellenistic and Imperial ages, made a tremendous impact on modern philosophy, and some of its arguments continue to be a central topic of discussion in the contemporary philosophical scene. This can be taken to be a strong indication of the intriguing and challenging character of the Pyrrhonian outlook. After presenting the collections entirely or primarily devoted to ancient Pyrrhonism and its presence in, or connection with, both modern and contemporary philosophy, this article deals consecutively with Pyrrhonian skepticism in the three historical periods. The reason for not including a part on Pyrrhonism in medieval philosophy is simply that knowledge of this type of skepticism was so limited in the Middle Ages that it exerted almost no influence whatsoever on medieval thinkers. Given that Pyrrhonian skepticism is essentially an ancient philosophy, the great majority of the citations concern ancient Pyrrhonism. This article focuses primarily on scholarship in English but also included are works in French, German, Italian, and Spanish.

This paper assesses both the practical and the epistemic value of Pyrrhonism as this stance is described in Sextus Empiricus’s extant writings. It first explores whether the Pyrrhonist’s suspension of judgment and undisturbedness make us behave in a moral or immoral way, and whether they allow us to attain those goals that would make it possible to live well. It then examines whether the Pyrrhonist’s suspension of judgment makes it possible to reach the epistemic goals of attaining truth and avoiding error. It finally considers whether the results of the previous analyses show that Pyrrhonism is of no philosophical interest to a contemporary audience.

Scholarship on ancient skepticism has undergone a remarkable renaissance in the last three decades. Specialists in ancient philosophy have explored the complex history of the Greco‐Roman skeptical traditions and discussed difficult philological and exegetical issues. But they have also assessed the philosophical significance of the various ancient skeptical outlooks. In this first paper, I provide a general presentation of this area of study, while in the two subsequent articles I will focus on some of the topics that have been the object of much attention in the recent literature on ancient skepticism.

It is generally thought that suspension of judgment about a proposition p is the doxastic attitude one is rationally compelled to adopt whenever the epistemic reasons for and against p are equipollent or equally credible, that is, whenever the total body of available evidence bearing on p epistemically justifies neither belief nor disbelief in p. However, in a recent contribution to this journal, Jan Wieland proposes “to broaden the conditions for suspension, and argue that it is rational to suspend belief on a certain issue even if one’s current evidence is not neutral (or even close to neutral)”. My aim in this paper is to point to a number of problems in Wieland’s position, some of which in connection with the account of Pyrrhonian skepticism found in the extant works of Sextus Empiricus.

This paper argues that Sextus Empiricus’s Pyrrhonism is a form of relativism markedly different from the positions typically referred to by this term. The scholars who have explored the relativistic elements found in Sextus’s texts have claimed that his outlook is not actually a form of relativism, or that those elements are inconsistent with his account of Pyrrhonism, or that he is confusing skepticism with relativism. The reason for these views is twofold: first, when employing the term ‘relativism’ one hardly has in mind the sort of relativist stance adopted by the Pyrrhonist; and second, those scholars have misinterpreted Sextus’s relativistic remarks. The purpose of this paper is to show that he adopts a ‘phenomenological’ kind of relativism that is compatible with his account of Pyrrhonism.

Scholarship on ancient Pyrrhonism has made tremendous advances over the past three decades, thanks especially to the careful reexamination of Sextus Empiricus’ extant corpus. Building on this momentum, the authors of the eight essays collected here examine some of the most vexed and intriguing exegetical and philosophical questions posed by Sextus’ presentation of this form of skepticism. The essays explore in a new light the skeptical interpretation of Plato, the differences between Pyrrhonism and Cyrenaicism, the Pyrrhonist’s stance on ordinary life, religion, language, and ethics, Sextus’ discussion of our access to our own mental states, and the relationship between Pyrrhonism and epistemic internalism and externalism. These new essays represent a substantial contribution to the advancement of scholarship on Pyrrhonian skepticism.

An objection that has been raised to the conciliatory stance on the epistemic significance of peer disagreement known as the Equal Weight View is that it is self-defeating, self-undermining, or self-refuting. The proponent of that view claims that equal weight should be given to all the parties to a peer dispute. Hence, if one of his epistemic peers defends the opposite view, he is required to give equal weight to the two rival views, thereby undermining his confidence in the correctness of the Equal Weight View. It seems that the same objection could be leveled against those who claim to suspend judgment in the face of pervasive unresolvable disagreements, as do the Pyrrhonian skeptics. In this paper, I explore the kind of response to the objection that could be offered from a neo-Pyrrhonian perspective, with the aim of better understanding the intriguing character of Pyrrhonian skepticism.

It is sometimes claimed that conciliatory views on disagreement ultimately lead to either global or widespread scepticism. This is deemed to be a serious problem for conciliationism either because scepticism of either kind is a patently untenable stance or because it poses a serious threat to our intellectual and social lives. In this paper, I first argue that the alleged untenability of both types of scepticism is far from being obvious and should therefore be established rather than taken for granted, and then that those who reject them because of the threat they pose surprisingly confuse pragmatic reasons with epistemic reasons.

This paper engages with Svavar Svavarsson’s recent essay, “Sextus Empiricus on Persuasiveness and Equipollence,” arguing against both (i) his interpretation of whether two rival arguments appear equipollent to the Pyrrhonist because he himself is equally persuaded by both of them, and (ii) his interpretation of the way in which the argument from possible disagreement is supposed to induce suspension of judgment in the Pyrrhonist. In so doing, I aim to dispel some serious misunderstandings regarding key aspects of the Pyrrhonist’s skeptical outlook and argumentative practice.