Some Notes On Pyrrhonism (Pyrrhonian Skepticism): Ancient Skepticism in Modern Times

This is the start of something good (hopefully). These are rough notes in the mind of a Masters student in philosophy, trying to no go mad. Please enjoy.

(Image not mine.)

We have, from the start of Western Philosophy, been obsessed in some way with the (knowledge of) nature of things. Plato for example stated that the “appearance/instance” of a horse is a mere imperfect copy of the “image” of the perfect form (of the horse). Pyrrho, who we attribute Pyrrhonian scepticism to, on the other hand claims that we can, in essence, never know the “perfect form” or the “nature” of the horse. We can only know the appearance of the horse. The famous example is that “honey appears sweet” (to us or me) but it cannot be sweet in itself. Pyrrho’s claim should not necessarily be seen against knowledge per se, or about the “nature of things”, but as an argument against schools (like the stoics) that made the claim that we can know with our senses something about the “nature of things”; i.e. we cannot grasp the “nature of things” purely on the basis that we can grasp the appearance of things.

Pyrrhonism on the other hand should be seen as a kind of “cure” for dogmatic philosophy (at the time, for e.g. stoicism) that makes claims that we can know the things in itself, but also that these dogmatic philosophies “asks” you to follow it, without questioning it. Pyrrhonism is thus also a “way of life” where you do not stop questioning, or enquire, because once you stop (and thus start “believing” in something) you stop the enquiry process. Once this enquiry process stops we stop the “search for the truth”. The truth, as we have seen with Pyrrho, is in essence unreachable, we can purely grasp the appearance of something, but this should not make us stop enquiring. It should motivate us to never settle (for dogmatically believing in something) and to keep on searching, having an open mind for something, listening to other opinions, always busy with (re)searching.

The case can then be made (naively) that a “healthy dose of scepticism” is needed today, especially in our “fragmented times”, and our insatiable need for something new and something new “now”. The need to clarify the term of “scepticism” is important. We have the modern sense of the word, strongly connected with Descartes’ doubting of everything to search for a firm base, but then there is the ancient sense of the word, which simply means to suspend judgement until further knowledge is gained (“or a mode of inquiry that emphasizes critical scrutiny, caution, and intellectual rigor” [Wikipedia]). It is thus more of an attitude or a way of life. Pyrrho/Sextus Empiricus made the claim that this “mode of life” should not be “methodized” but should be a way of life, an attitude. The question now can be raised, firstly, is this a productive way to live, and secondly, can this way of life lead to “a good life”? (Problematic at least, one needs to define what one means with both notions of “productive life” and “a good life”.)

Kenan Malik in his “Man, Beast and Zombie” sketches some of the problems about what science can tell us about human nature. He claims, for example, at the outset of the book that in ancient times humans were seen as type of “gods”, but today our notion of humans are that we are fundamentally evil (especially after the world wars in the last century). Another problem is that of reductionism. If we reduce “what it is to be human” we are left with, for example “the position that mental properties are reducible to, and hence ultimately turn out to be, physical properties. On this view, then, there are no nonphysical properties in the world; all properties are ultimately reducible to the properties countenanced in fundamental physics” [Jaegwon Kim, Philosophy of Mind]. This might be correct, but it takes away from what it is to be human, for example feeling things like love and experiencing the smell of rain, etc. Again we can make the claim that it just doesn’t feel like that it is the way it is. With the above we can claim that modern medicine sees the human (body and mind) in this physical sense, that if we want to cure x we need to do something physical here, like give a pill and everything will be cure. (This is obviously simplified and is only used to illustrate.) One claim why so many people today still “believe” in homeopathic medicine is because the “practitioner” sees the client as a fellow human, asking an array of questions, making the client feel like the “practitioner” cares about you. Modern medicine (due to a range of different reasons) feel less humane and more machinelike. The claim can be extended to mental “illnesses” as well. There are cases where the patient needs serious medical treatment, but there are less severe cases where something like philosophical practice can be used. (The claim that needs defence: modern psychology is not working and treats humans less than “fellow human beings/friends/family” and more like machines or a name on a “check list” with various symptoms.)

When we look at the history of philosophy and science, after the influence of thinkers like Kuhn and Popper, the notion that “everything will be fundamentally different in the next 10, 20 or 100 years” does not seem that wrong. Every week we hear about new scientific discoveries, disproving previously high held theories. When you look at history, you cannot but see the monumental difference between the pre-Socratic thoughts and beliefs and those of today. Today’s knowledge can turn out to be fallacious and untrue tomorrow, and in a way we have that insight. A hundred plus years ago that insight was not there. This can in a way invite the notion of being more sceptic about “fundamental theories” today. We can, in a sense, make the claim that we are in a similar situation today as that of Pyrrho: we have empirical based science making claims about “the nature of things”, or that science can have knowledge about things in themselves etc. (This claim must still be defended.) This does not mean that one cannot have beliefs or knowledge. The sceptical attitude is thus towards the notion of having knowledge of the thing itself and claiming that we have it. (The most obvious example is that of Newtonian vs. Einsteinian physics. We thought the world worked according to x laws when it was actually y, but then again how do we know it is really y?)