Sextus claims an active life for the skeptic, but not the life of a rational agent, as conceived by dogmatic philosophers Vogt Thirst, for example, necessitates assent, and that means, it moves the skeptic to drink. This kind of assent may be genuinely unrelated to belief-formation of any kind. Rather, forced assent generates the movement of action. But what about more complex kinds of activities, such as applying a medication, or attending a festival?
Sextus argues that the skeptic adheres to custom, convention, and tradition, and to what they have been trained to do. In explaining how adherence to appearances in these domains generates activity, Sextus does not mention assent. However, he might have to concede that, like drinking when thirsty, more complex actions also involve some kind of assent. In PH 2. Accordingly, non-doxastic and involuntary assent may figure in those domains of skeptical action that do not involve necessitation by bodily affections.
Non-doxastic assent is, from the point of view of the Stoics, a contradiction in terms, just like forced and involuntary assent. Assent is defined as in our power, and as that by which beliefs are formed. If Sextus intends skeptical assent to be genuinely non-doxastic and involuntary, then it does not have the core features of assent as defined by the dogmatists. In addition, they address the so-called disciplines, namely grammar, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astrology, and music-theory. Bett on signs.
This structure reflects central concerns of Hellenistic epistemology as well as of ancient skepticism. A decider could be something evident. Dogmatic philosophers associate the evident with the criterion of truth. For something to serve the role of criterion, it cannot be equally disputed as the matters it helps to decide. Or something non-evident could take on the role of decider. For that to be the case, the skeptics argue, it would have to be conclusively revealed by a sign or proof.
If there is no compelling theory of the criterion and no compelling account of sign and proof, then there is nothing that can decide between several conflicting views. Their main line of thought sketches a route into skepticism. Again, there are two central questions: whether there is anything good and bad by nature; and whether there is an art of life Bett and , as the Epicureans and Stoics claim there is.
If we could settle what is good and what is bad, some of the most disturbing anomalies would be resolved.
If there were an art of life, there would be a teachable body of knowledge about the good and the bad. In both cases, questions that can cause a great deal of puzzlement would be resolved. The books on physics discuss god, cause, matter, bodies, mixture, motion, increase and decrease, subtraction and addition, whole and part, change, becoming and perishing, rest, place, time, and number.
Notably, god is one of the topics explored in physics. This stands in stark contrast to medieval and early modern discussions, where the quest for knowledge of God often frames and motivates engagement with skepticism cf.
Annas on the difference between ancient and monotheistic conceptions of divinity and their repercussions for skepticism. The skeptics come to suspend judgment on all central conceptions of ancient physics Bett This means, they come to suspend judgment on whether, for example, there are causes, time, place, and bodies cf.
Bobzien and Warren Their suspension does not merely mean that they have not yet found a satisfying theory of, say, body. It means that they find themselves unable to say whether there is body Burnyeat On the cumulative force of these arguments, see section 5. The six books entitled Against those in the Disciplines M 1—6 have traditionally received less attention.
Only in the last few years have scholars begun to explore them with the kind of philosophical subtlety that has been brought to bear in the study of ancient skepticism in recent decades. M 1—6 skeptically examine six fields of study, namely grammar, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music-theory.
Sextus begins with an astonishing move. Contrary to his usual strategy of emphasizing the distance between skeptics and dogmatists, he admits that Pyrrhonians and Epicureans share much in viewing standard disciplines as useless M 1. After his remarks on how Pyrrhonians and Epicureans take issue with the presumed usefulness of the disciplines, Sextus lays out general arguments, suitable for skeptical examination of any field.
He argues that, for there to be a discipline, there must be the matter being taught, the teacher, the learner, and the means of learning. This is how Sextus proceeds. He argues, or seems to argue, for the non-existence of the disciplines M 1. Already in the very first sentence of M 1, Sextus describes his own approach as one of putting forward counterarguments, a strategy that he mentions repeatedly throughout M 1—6.
These moves give rise to the most contentious question regarding M 1—6. Are these books negatively dogmatic? Sextus lays out counterarguments based on the assumption that the arguments of the dogmatists have already been formulated. For there to be arguments of equal weight on both sides, only the anti-dogmatic arguments need to be adduced. The intended effect is that jointly, these opposing sets of arguments lead us to suspend judgment.
In addition, Bett notes that the remarkable emphasis on counterarguments, non-existence, and uselessness suggests that some of the material in M 1—6 goes back to an earlier phase of Pyrrhonism. For example, he distinguishes between the ordinary ability to read and write on the one hand and grammar as a technical discipline on the other, or the ability to play a musical instrument on the one hand and music theory on the other cf.
It is remarkable that, qua theoretical field, Sextus examines astrology rather than astronomy. Presumably, astronomy is concerned with predicting things like droughts, floods, earthquakes, and plagues based on appearances.
Astrology, on the other hand, is concerned with matters of great obscurity. Early modern engagement with skepticism is here seen as a turn to arguments found in Sextus Annas-Barnes , 5—7; Bailey , 1— However, early modern philosophers work within a theologically framed tradition that importantly begins with St. Augustine — cf. Menn and Lagerlund ; on the history of medieval skepticism cf. Lagerlund ed. Williams He was thus closely acquainted with Academic skepticism Cicero was one kind of Academic skeptic.
Augustine sees the force of ancient skeptical strategies. Even though he does not become a skeptic, he integrates distinctively skeptical moves into his thought. This has a long-standing effect on the history of theology and science.
For example, Galileo Galilei is able to cite Augustine when he defends himself against the charge that his physics is in opposition to the Bible Letter to the Grand Duchess , in Drake Augustine supplies arguments to the effect that we should keep an open mind. Both our physical theories and our interpretations of the Bible are likely to evolve. This idea figures importantly in Pyrrhonism.
Past experience tells us that, on every given issue, someone eventually came up with a new argument. Accordingly, even if the skeptics cannot find an objection to a given claim right now, they expect that in the future, a conflicting view will be formulated. However, such traces of skepticism are integrated into an ultimately non-skeptical philosophy.
In Contra academicos , Augustine recognizes a core feature of ancient skepticism, namely that it is a commitment to ongoing inquiry. The question that Augustine considers vital, then, is whether a life devoted to inquiry can be compelling, if seemingly there is no prospect for ever attaining truth cf.
Lagerlund It is as a philosophy of inquiry that skepticism makes a lasting contribution to ethics, continuing, as it were, a Socratic legacy Vogt Augustine creates the framework that will become characteristic of early modern discussions. First, in his work skeptical arguments are explored in order to be refuted. Second, the key issue is whether we have knowledge, not whether we should hold anything to be true. In Augustine, the background for caring so much about knowledge is the pressing question of whether we can know God: whether we can know that he exists and what his properties are.
This might also be the reason why knowledge of testimony gains importance De Trinitate , The Bible, or parts of it, might be considered testimony about God, and accordingly as one possible way of attaining knowledge of God.
Third, in the process of asking whether we can have knowledge of God it makes sense to distinguish between kinds of knowledge sensory, rational, by testimony, etc. If we know God, then we do so via one of the kinds of knowledge. This becomes a standard feature of discussions of skepticism.
Philosophers go through the different kinds of knowledge that are conceivable, and examine them in turn. Suppose we have no sensory knowledge, no rational knowledge, and no knowledge of testimony. We still know that we think, love, judge, live, and are De Trinitate In the City of God That is, Augustine suggests that we have knowledge of our mental acts. However, Augustine does not consider these pieces of knowledge foundational.
While he points to them when he discusses the challenges of Academic skepticism, he does not systematically build upon them in refuting skepticism about sense perception, rational knowledge, and knowledge of testimony. Rather, he refutes skepticism by stating that God created us and the things that are known to us; God wanted these things to be known to us De Trinitate Augustine is a transitional figure in the philosophy of mind, and thereby re-conceives skepticism.
But for Augustine it is part of the path to God: the mind turns into itself and from there it moves further, toward God e. Next to Augustine, Al-Ghazali plays a major role in re-conceiving the questions relevant to skepticism Menn , Kukkonen Like Augustine before and Descartes after him, Al-Ghazali moves through different cognitive faculties.
Do the senses or reason allow us to gain knowledge? These questions are framed by the quest for knowledge of God. However, once confidence in God is secured, trust in the more familiar ways of gaining knowledge—sense perception, rational reasoning, and so on—is restored for a detailed treatment of skepticism in Classical Islam, cf. Heck One key difference between ancient skepticism on the one hand, and medieval as well as Cartesian skepticism on the other, is that ancient skepticism is not framed by theological concerns.
Note that in Cartesian skepticism, God is not only invoked when it comes to refuting skepticism. More importantly, the skeptical problems arise in a way that depends on God as creator. Our cognitive faculties are seen as created faculties, and the world as a created world. These are important steps away from the non-theological ancient construal of skepticism. The theological premises of early modern skepticism are not only foreign to ancient debates; they would be seen as misguided.
From the Hellenistic point of view, theology is part of physics. Human beings and their cognitive faculties are natural parts of a natural world. They are organic and functional parts, interconnected with the other parts of the large whole which the universe is.
A mind-world-gap of the kind envisaged in the Cartesian tradition is inconceivable. Like a part of a complex organism, it would not exist were it not for the interrelations it has with the other parts.
A physiological account of the mind makes the stark divide between mind and world that figures in early modern skepticism unimaginable. Contemporary discussions inherit long-standing problems from early modern philosophy. Among them, external world skepticism, skepticism about other minds, and skepticism about induction are particularly prominent.
In assessing ancient skepticism, we might ask whether the ancients saw these problems. Among the skeptical problems of modern philosophy, skepticism about induction stands out. Its early formulation in Hume does not depend on the idea that our faculties are created by God, who also created the world. Hume takes himself to engage with Pyrrhonian skepticism Ainslie Induction proceeds from particular observations to a general conclusion. Skepticism about induction points out that, no matter how many particulars were observed, the general claim pronounces also on what has not been observed.
In this respect, the inference seems unwarranted and so we should suspend judgement on its effectiveness. Induction can concern the ascription of properties to some kind of entity as well as causal claims. In the latter, the skeptic observes that what regularly precedes a type of event may not be its cause. Perhaps we cannot infer anything from the fact that certain properties or events regularly occur together Vlasits forthcoming; for a related argument in Al-Ghazali, cf.
Kukkonen First, Sextus sides with anti-rationalist tendencies in medicine. According to these schools, a doctor remembers that, in earlier cases, symptom A was alleviated by medication B. They do not infer that medication B makes symptom A disappear, or that the illness C is the cause of symptom A. Second, the Five Modes do not exclusively target proof. They address everything that lends credibility to something else. They may thus also call into question signs that are taken as indicative of their causes.
For example, a scar is a commemorative sign of a wound. Both were co-observed in the past. A skeptic will think of a wound when seeing a scar. But they do not commit to causal or explanatory claims. Garrett forthcoming. He does not ascribe the kind of relevance to them that the Ten Modes and the Five Modes have.
Indeed, he thinks the Five Modes can do the work of Causal Modes that is, call into question causal and explanatory theses and theories.
However, the Causal Modes go into great detail on how the skeptic investigates any kind of causal thesis or theory. The distinction between subjectivity and objectivity is central to modern discussions of skepticism. It is not envisaged in ancient thought. However, this does not mean that ancient philosophers do not reflect on questions relevant to this distinction. Arguably, Pyrrhonism conceives of the affections of the mind in ways that anticipate later thought about subjectivity Fine a and b.
A skeptic can report these states in their utterances. Illustrating this point, Sextus uses expressions associated with the Cyrenaics, a Socratic school of thought.
With this proposal, Fine turns against two prominent positions in scholarly debate about skeptical belief see section 4. Feeney and Schellenberg forthcoming; on related contemporary debates about perception and belief, cf. Later philosophers focus on the particular kind of certainty attached to reflective knowledge. Reflective knowledge is sometimes seen as a stepping-stone towards greater confidence in our cognitive powers, and our ability to also attain other kinds of knowledge.
But it may not be obvious that reflective knowledge can take on this important role. In this respect, Augustine is still closer to ancient than to modern intuitions. But from his point of view, this kind of knowledge leads nowhere. When we ask whether we can have knowledge, we are interested in knowledge of the world and of God De Trinitate Modern philosophers also pay great attention to the privileged access cognizers have to their own cognitive activities.
Augustine introduces a distinction that paves the way for this idea. He argues that the mind cannot know what kind of stuff it is De Trinitate The mind does not know its substance, but it knows its activities. For Augustine, this means that the mind knows itself. The mind is precisely what it knows itself to be: in knowing that one thinks, judges, lives, and so on, one knows the mind Vogt a.
They also compare it to our access to what goes on in other minds. One of their core problems is skepticism about other minds. If our own minds are accessible to us in the way nothing else is, then we might not be able to ascribe mental states to others. For example, we might not know that someone who looks as if she is in pain really is in pain. The ancient skeptics envisage nothing of this kind Warren This suggests that, insofar as they draw a distinction between affections of the mind and the world, this distinction is construed differently than in modern skepticism.
In its early modern versions, external world skepticism involves the idea that there is a creator—someone who made the world and our faculties, and the fit or misfit between them. If this assumption is crucial to external world skepticism, then the ancients do not conceive of this skeptical problem. From the point of view of modern philosophy, ancient skepticism may appear limited by not addressing some of the most radical skeptical scenarios Burnyeat [] and ; Williams ; Fine a and b.
From the point of view of ancient skepticism, early modern skepticism and the long life that its problems enjoy, however, would seem to originate in a flawed theology. Contemporary philosophers sometimes discuss external world skepticism in terms of a paradox: one thinker finds herself torn between the strength of skeptical arguments and her ordinary convictions. For example, she thinks that this is her hand.
But she concedes that the skeptical hypothesis that a mad scientist might have set things up so that she has such perceptions and thoughts the so-called brain in a vat scenario is hard to refute. This way of framing discussions of skepticism is foreign to antiquity. In antiquity, skeptics and their opponents are different thinkers, each of them with one set of intuitions, arguing against each other. However, the ancient skeptics might conceive of their own kind of external world skepticism.
Throughout his work, Sextus employs the distinction between appearances and what really is the case. Consider some of the detail of how he characterizes the latter. Other phrases, meant to demarcate roughly the same contrast with appearances, are how things are in their nature phusei PH 1.
But what are the underlying or external objects, as Sextus conceives of them? For example, Sextus speaks of the underlying reality of whether honey really is sweet PH 1.
In such a case, it is assumed that there are ordinary objects. But we do not have access to the properties they really have Fine calls this Property Skepticism, b.
For example, an answer to the question of what kind of life really is good would count as a claim about external or underlying reality cf. Another approach to the question of whether Sextus envisages some kind of external world skepticism is to turn to his discussions of physics.
Ordinarily we take ourselves to live in a world in which there are bodies, movement, place, time, and so on. But as Sextus argues, we do not have compelling accounts of any of these core conceptions of physics. This leads to suspension of judgment on whether there are bodies, movement, place, time, and so on.
Arcesilaus Aristotle Carneades moral skepticism perception: epistemological problems of Plato Pyrrho skepticism skepticism: medieval Stoicism Timon of Phlius.
The Central Questions 2. Academic Skepticism 3. Pyrrhonian Skepticism 4. Ancient and Modern Skepticism: Transitions 5. The Central Questions The core concepts of ancient skepticism are belief, suspension of judgment, criterion of truth, appearances, and investigation. The most important piece of testimony is a passage reporting an account by Timon: It is necessary above all to consider our own knowledge; for if it is in our nature to know nothing, there is no need to inquire any further into other things.
He himself has left nothing in writing; his pupil Timon, however, says that the person who is to be happy must look to these three points: first, what are things like by nature? Timon says that the result for those who are so disposed will be first speechlessness aphasia , but then freedom from worry ataraxia ; and Aenesidemus says pleasure.
These, then, are the main points of what they say Aristocles in Eusebius PE Bett with changes In response to the first question, how things are in their nature, Pyrrho makes a metaphysical claim: they are indeterminate Bett , 14— The Ten Modes can generally be construed as engaging either with conflicts between appearances or with causal invariance: : Arguments based on the differences among human beings differences in body and in soul.
For the Pyrrhonist assents to nothing that is non-evident. Burnyeat [] with changes Following Frede, several scholars focus on PH 1. For if you dogmatize, then you posit as real the things that you are said to dogmatize about; but skeptics posit these formulae not as necessarily being real. And we say the same of the other skeptical formulae. Thus, if people who dogmatize posit as real the things they dogmatize about, while skeptics utter their own phrases in such a way that they are implicitly cancelled by themselves, then they cannot be said to dogmatize in uttering them.
Annas-Barnes with changes When explaining in PH 1. Bibliography Primary Sources Annas, J. Barnes ed. Bett, R. Bettenson, H. Blank, D. Brittain, C. Bury, R. Chadwick, H. Decleva Caizzi, F. Diels, H. Kranz eds. Drake, S. Hicks, R. Hume, D. Selby-Bigge ed. Nidditch, Oxford: Oxford University Press, Khalidi, M. Ameriks, and D. Clarke eds. Long, A. Sedley eds. Mates, B. Schoedinger, A. Vogt, K.
Wittgenstein, L. Ogden trans. Secondary Literature Ainslie, D. Miller and B. Inwood eds. Algra, K, J. Barnes, J. Mansfeld, and M. Schofield eds. Alesse, F. Allen, J. Zalta ed. Bett ed. Annas, J. Frede and G. Striker eds. Sihvola ed. Bailey, A. Academic Global Skepticism , therefore, seems to require that absolutely nothing can be known, except for the knowledge that nothing can be known.
Others try to maintain some philosophical rigor by claiming to be merely reasonably certain that Skepticism is true, while never asserting that Skepticism itself can be known to be true with absolute certainty.
Local Skepticism denies that people do or can have knowledge of a particular area or subject e. Skeptics oppose Foundationalism the idea that some basic beliefs that are self-justified or beyond justification in that they argue that the belief in something does not necessarily justify an assertion of knowledge of it. It has been said of the early Skeptics that they "asserted nothing, but only opined ". They pitted one dogmatic philosophy against the next in order to undermine belief in the whole philosophic enterprise, and to encourage an aversion towards what they considered arbitrary and inconsequential babble.
Philosophical Skepticism originated with the Skeptic school of ancient Greece. Pyrrho of Elis , who traveled and studied as far as India, propounded the adoption of what he called "practical skepticism". He became overwhelmed by his inability to determine rationally which of the various competing schools of thought of the time was correct. Upon admitting this to himself, he finally achieved the inner peace or ataraxia that he had been seeking and which became the ultimate goal of the early Skeptikoi.
However, even earlier than this, Gorgias claimed that nothing exists ; or, if something does exist, then it cannot be known ; or if something does exist and can be known, it cannot be communicated. Gorgias , however, is known primarily as a Sophist rather than as a philosophical skeptic. Socrates claimed that he knew one and only one thing: that he knew nothing.
Thus, rather than making assertions or opinions , he set about questioning people who claimed to have knowledge, ostensibly for the purpose of learning from them. Although he never claimed that knowledge is impossible , he never claimed to have discovered any piece of knowledge whatsoever, even at his death.
We begin by recalling the tri-partite distinction between belief, disbelief and suspension of judgment. If we identify disbelief in a proposition with belief in its negation, then we are left with two attitudes within the realm of coarse-grained epistemology: belief and suspension of judgment.
We assume also that the arguments to follow are addressed to someone who has an interest in, and has considered, the propositions in question. Otherwise, there is always the possibility of not taking any attitude whatsoever towards a proposition. Such lack of an attitude cannot itself be epistemically justified or not.
But if the subject is to take an attitude, then the argument for Pyrrhonian Skepticism has it that suspension of judgment is the only justified one. The Pyrrhonian skeptics sought suspension of judgment as a way of achieving calm ataraxia in the face of seemingly intractable disagreement. The three modes of Agrippa function together in the following way. The dogmatist will not be able to continue offering different propositions in response to the Pyrrhonian challenge forever—eventually, either no reason will be offered, or a proposition that has already made an appearance will be mentioned again.
The three Pyrrhonian modes, then, work in tandem in order to induce suspension of judgment with respect to any proposition whatsoever. It is at least somewhat misleading to present the Pyrrhonian position in terms of an argument, because when someone presents an argument they are usually committed to the truth of its premises and its conclusion, whereas Pyrrhonian skeptics would suspend judgment with respect to them.
If we do, then it seems that we ourselves should be Pyrrhonian skeptics and if we do become Pyrrhonian skeptics as a result of this argument, we can then start worrying about what to do with respect to the fact that an argument whose premises we believed—and perhaps still believe—to be true convinced us that we are not justified in believing anything.
If we do not think that the argument is sound, then we stand to learn something interesting about the structure of an epistemological theory—because each of the premises of the apparently valid argument looks plausible at first sight. A justified basic belief , by contrast, is a belief that is justified but not in virtue of its relations to other beliefs. Premise 1 is beyond reproach, given our previous definitions. Premise 2 is justified by the mode of hypothesis.
Step 3 of the argument follows from premises 1 and 2. Premise 4 is also beyond reproach—the only remaining possible structure for an inferential chain to have is to contain basic justified beliefs, but there are none of those according to premise 2.
Premise 5 is justified by appeal to the mode of infinite regression, and premise 6 is justified by appeal to the mode of circularity.
Premise 7 might seem to be a truism, but we will have to take a closer look at it. In fact, all of premises 2, 5, 6 and 7 have been rejected by different philosophers at one time or another. We examine those responses in what follows. Foundationalists claim that there are basic justified beliefs—beliefs that are justified but not in virtue of their relations to other beliefs. In fact, according to foundationalism, all justified beliefs are either basic beliefs or are justified at least in part in virtue of being inferentially related to a justified belief or to some justified beliefs.
This is where foundationalism gets its name: the edifice of justified beliefs has its foundation in basic beliefs. But how do foundationalists respond to the mode of hypothesis?
If basic beliefs are justified but not by other beliefs, then how are they justified? What else besides beliefs is there that can justify beliefs? To a rough first approximation that glosses over many important philosophical issues, experiences are mental states that, like beliefs, aim to represent the world as it is, and, like beliefs too, can fail in achieving that aim—that is, experiences can misrepresent. Nevertheless, experiences are not to be identified with beliefs, for it is possible to have an experience as of, e.
There are three important questions that any foundationalist has to answer. First, what kinds of beliefs do experiences justify?
Second, how must inferentially acquired beliefs be related to basic beliefs in order for them to be justified? Third, in virtue of what do experiences justify beliefs? With respect to the first question, we can distinguish between traditional foundationalism and moderate foundationalism. Traditional foundationalists think that basic beliefs are beliefs about experiences, whereas moderate foundationalists think that experience can justify beliefs about the external world. Take, for example, the experience that you typically have when looking at a tomato under good perceptual conditions—an experience that, remember, can be had even if no tomato is actually there.
The traditional foundationalist, on the other hand, would say that the experience justifies you only in believing that you have an experience as of a tomato in front of you. You may well be justified in believing that there is a tomato in front of you, but only inferentially. A traditional argument in favor of traditional foundationalism relies on the fact that whereas you can be mistaken regarding whether there is a tomato in front of you when you have an experience as of facing a tomato, you cannot, in the same situation, be mistaken regarding whether you are undergoing such an experience.
From the point of view of traditional foundationalism, this fact indicates that the moderate foundationalist is taking an unnecessary epistemic risk—the risk of having a foundation composed of false beliefs. The moderate foundationalist can reply that the traditional foundationalist must undertake a similar risk.
And if it were just as difficult to distinguish between the true and the false in the realm of beliefs about our own experiences as it is in the realm of beliefs about the external world, then we could be wrong about which of our own beliefs are basically justified and which are not. If this kind of meta-fallibilism is accepted, then why not accept the further kind according to which basic justified beliefs can be false?
Of course, the resolution of this dispute depends on whether, as the moderate believes, we can be mistaken about our own experiences. What about our second question: how must basic beliefs be related to inferentially justified beliefs? Here too there are two different kinds of foundationalism: deductivism and non-deductivism. According to the deductivist, the only way in which a possibly one-membered set of basic justified beliefs can justify another belief is by logically entailing that other belief.
In other words, there has to be a valid argument at least some of whose premises are basic justified beliefs [ 19 ] and whose conclusion is the inferentially justified belief in question. Given that the argument is valid, the truth of the premises guarantees the truth of the conclusion—it is impossible for all the premises to be true while the conclusion is false.
Non-deductivism allows relations other than logical entailment as possible justificatory relations. For instance, many foundationalists will claim that good inductive inferences from basic justified beliefs provide their conclusions with justification—even though inductive arguments are not valid, that is, even though it is possible for all the premises of a good inductive argument to be true while its conclusion is false.
Although these are independent distinctions, traditional foundationalists tend to be deductivists, whereas moderate foundationalists tend to be non-deductivists. Notice that for a traditional, deductivist foundationalist, there cannot be false justified beliefs. Many contemporary epistemologists would shy away from this strong form of infallibilism, and take that consequence to be an argument against the conjunction of traditional foundationalism and deductivism. The question that is most interesting from the point of view of Pyrrhonian Skepticism is our third one: what is it about the relation between an experience and a belief that, according to the foundationalist, allows the former to justify the latter?
Analogous questions apply to non-foundationalist positions too, and the discussion to follow is not restricted to the specific case of foundationalism. There are three different proposals about how to answer this question that are the most prominent. Our third question can then be stated as follows: what makes epistemic principles true? There is no more basic fact in virtue of which epistemic principles obtain.
They describe bedrock facts, not to be explained in terms of anything else, but are instead to be used to explain other facts.
The other two positions are non-primitivist. Internalist non-primitivism holds that epistemic principles are true in virtue of facts about ourselves—for instance, one prominent internalist view is that which epistemic principles are true for a given subject is determined by which epistemic principles that subject would accept under deep reflection see Foley Both externalists and internalists think that primitivists are overlooking real facts, whereas primitivists think that there are fewer things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in non-primitivist philosophy.
Within the non-primitivist camp, externalists think that internalists have too subjective a conception of epistemology—to some extent, thinking it so, or being disposed to think it so under conditions of deep reflection, makes it so for the internalist. This is due, at least in part, to the fact that infinitism has to deal with what might seem like formidable obstacles. For instance, it seems that no one actually has an infinite number of beliefs. To this objection, the infinitist is likely to reply that actually occurring beliefs are not needed, only implicit beliefs that are available to the subject in order to continue constructing his inferential chain if called upon to do so by others or by himself.
A second apparently formidable problem for infinitism has to do with the fact that the mere appeal to a new belief, regardless of its epistemic status, cannot provide justification to the belief we started out with. In other words, infinitism seems to run afoul of the following principle:. The infinitist might reply that he does not run afoul of that principle, because the beliefs adduced in support of the initial beliefs are themselves justified by beliefs further down the chain.
But what goes for the initial set of beliefs goes, it seems, for longer chains. If the appeal to a single unjustified belief cannot do any justificatory work of its own, why would appealing to a large number of unjustified beliefs do any better?
Even leaving that problem aside, the infinitist, like the coherentist, maintains that justification can arise merely in virtue of relations among beliefs. Infinitists will then have to respond to many of the same objections that are leveled against coherentism—in particular, they would have to respond to the isolation objection mentioned in the next section. The second feature is the idea that the unit of justification is the individual belief. Putting these two rejections together, the coherentist believes that justification is a symmetrical and holistic matter.
It is not individual beliefs that are justified in the primary sense of the word, but only complete systems of beliefs—individual beliefs are justified, when they are, in virtue of belonging to a justified system of beliefs. The central coherentist notion of justification is best taken to be a comparative one: a system of beliefs B1 is better justified than a system of beliefs B2 if and only if B1 has a greater degree of internal coherence than B2.
One crucial question that coherentists have to answer, of course, is what it takes for one system of beliefs to have a greater degree of coherence than another. The objection centers on the fact that, according to the coherentist, the justification of a system of beliefs is entirely a matter of relations among the beliefs constituting the system.
But this runs against the strong intuition that experience has a very important role to play in the justification of beliefs. Suppose now that we switch systems of beliefs—somehow, you come to have my set of beliefs and I come to have yours. Given that coherence is entirely a matter of relations among beliefs, your system will be as coherent in my mind as it was in yours, and vice-versa. And yet, our beliefs are now completely unjustified—there you are, reading, believing that you are swimming, and here I am, swimming, believing that I am reading.
In other words, certain transformations that preserve coherence in a system of beliefs do not seem to preserve justification. In reply, coherentists have argued that it is possible to give experience a role without sacrificing the idea that coherence is entirely a matter of relations among beliefs—one idea is to require that any minimally acceptable system of beliefs contain beliefs about the experiences that the subject is undergoing see BonJour and Lehrer It is fair to say that there is no agreement regarding whether this move can solve the problem.
But, whereas the foundationalist thinks that the starting points of inferential chains are beliefs that are justified by something other than beliefs, the positist thinks that the starting points of inferential chains are beliefs that are not justified by anything—they are posits that we have to believe without justification.
Despite this difference between the positist and the foundationalist, the positions are structurally similar enough that analogues of the questions posed to the foundationalist can be asked of the positist.
First, then, which beliefs are such that they are not justified and yet are the starting points of every inferential chain—in other words, how do we identify which are the posits? Thus, according to Wittgenstein, the proposition that no one has been to the moon was a posit for a certain long period of time—it was a proposition that no one felt the need to justify, and that was presupposed in many justificatory practices.
For obvious reasons, though, that proposition can no longer appropriately function as a posit. One prime candidate for playing this role is the first-person belief that I am not being deceived by an evil demon into thinking that I am a normally embodied and situated human being this is the view advocated by Wright that we already alluded to in section 3. The third question, applied to positism, is the question why certain beliefs are properly posited.
Relativistic positists answer that this is so because of a certain societal fact: because they are taken to be so by an appropriate sub-sector of a certain society at a certain time. Non-relativistic positists answer that a certain belief is properly taken as a posit just in case every justificatory act that we engage in presupposes that the belief in question is true.
Thus, for example, many contemporary epistemologists put forward theories that contain elements of both Foundationalism and Coherentism see, for instance, Haack It is a testament to the endurance of Pyrrhonian Skepticism that philosophers continue in this way to grapple with it. Fallibilism is a more moderate response to the lack of certainty. READ wikipedia on Skepticism. David Hume, the jovial skeptic. Philosophy Encyclopedia on Skepticism.
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