## 1. Life




Sextus Empiricus was a Pyrrhonian Skeptic living probably in the
second or third century CE, many of whose works survive, including the
*Outlines of Pyrrhonism*, which is the best and fullest account
we have of Pyrrhonian skepticism. (Book I of that work consists of
Sextus' codification of the nature of Pyrrhonian skepticism,
which he contrasts with the outlooks of other schools of philosophy.)
Fittingly, we *know* little or nothing about the life of Sextus
Empiricus, including when and where he lived. Best estimates put him
anywhere between 100 CE and the first half of the third century CE
(House 1980), but it has been suggested that he was already well known
by the end of the second century (Barnes 2000: xii). Sextus is called
'Empiricus' because he belonged to the Empirical School of
Medicine (Deichgraber 1965: 40-1). There were three main schools
of medicine, the Rationalists, the Empiricists, and the Methodists.
Confusingly, even though Sextus was an Empiricist, he actually states
in *Outlines of Pyrrhonism* I 236 that while Pyrrhonism is very
similar to the Empirical School of Medicine, Pyrrhonists 'might
rather adopt' Methodism. This is a standing puzzle for
interpreters of Sextus (see
 section 3.7 below).


## 2. Works


### 2.1 Surviving Works




The surviving works are grouped under two headings.


#### 2.1.1 *Outlines of Pyrrhonism* (*Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes*)


(This is usually referred to by the abbreviation *PH*.) Works
of Classical literature were normally divided into 'books'
(Plato's *Republic* is in ten books, Aristotle's
*Physics* is in eight, etc.); *PH* is in three
books. They are not given separate titles by scholars, and are just
referred to as *PH* I, II, and III. *PH* I is a complete
description of Pyrrhonian Skepticism, stating what it is that makes
one qualify as a Pyrrhonian skeptic (the possession of a certain
skill) and what the pay-off for being a Skeptic is (tranquillity),
detailing the various 'Modes' of argumentation that the
Skeptic deploys (mastery of which constitutes the skill which defines
the skeptic) and the various phrases the Skeptic uses to indicate his
characteristic state of mind, namely *epoche* or
'suspension of judgment', and differentiating Pyrrhonian
Skepticism from other philosophical schools with which it might seem
to have affinities. In *PH* II and III, Sextus lays out the
positions of Dogmatic philosophers on issues of logic (*PH*
II), and physics and ethics (*PH* III), complete with Skeptical
counterarguments to those positions: essentially, we see Sextus in
*PH* II and III exercising the Skeptical skill which he had
described in *PH* I. (With Sextus' description of Pyrrhonian Skepticism, compare that in DL (Diogenes Laertius) IX 61-116; for discussion of the differences, see the papers in Vogt 2015.) 


#### 2.1.2 *Against the Mathematicians* (*Adversus Mathematicos*)


(This is usually referred to by the abbreviation *M*.) The
work is in eleven books, referred to as *M* I, II, III,
etc. These books have separate titles:



> 
> 
> *M* I: *Against the Grammarians*
> *M* II: *Against the Rhetoricians*
> *M* III: *Against the Geometers*
> *M* IV: *Against the Arithmeticians*
> *M* V: *Against the Astrologers*
> *M* VI: *Against the Musicians*
> *M* VII & VIII: *Against the Logicians*
> *M* IX & X: *Against the Physicists*
> *M* XI: *Against the Ethicists*
> 
> 




The word in the title translated 'Mathematicians' more
literally means 'learned' (think of the suffix
'-math' in 'polymath'), so some people
translate the title 'Against the Professors'; Blank (1998:
xvi) suggests 'Against the Professors of the Liberal
Studies'; Cooper (2012: 429) suggests 'Against the
Theoreticians'; Bett 2018 translates the title 'Against Those
in the Disciplines'. (Mathematics in a stricter sense is the target of
*M* III and IV.) In fact, not all eleven books united under the
title *Against the Mathematicians* belong together: we are
dealing here with two works. As is clear from the way *M* I
opens and *M* VI closes, *M* I-VI constitute a complete
work--the work which strictly speaking bears the title
*Against the Mathematicians* (Blank 1998: xvi). The remaining
books, *M* VII-XI, also go together. Their contents shadow very
closely the contents of *PH* II (*M* VII & VIII)
and III (*M* IX-XI), expanding on them as appropriate
(*PH* is, after all, just an 'outline'). Janacek
1963 argues that *M* VII-XI form part of a larger work which was
a lengthy elaboration of all the parts of *PH*; if this is
right, then we have lost the book or books of that work which
correspond to book I of the *Outlines*. (The observation that
the larger work was an elaboration of *PH* is non-committal as
to the order of composition of the two works. Janacek thought
*M* was written after *PH*; against this, see Bett 1997:
appendix C, and Schofield 2007: 321 n. 57.) The loss of the part
corresponding to *PH* I is greatly to be regretted, since much
of the philosophical interest surrounding Pyrrhonian skepticism comes
out of Sextus' description of it in *PH* I (indeed, most
of this entry concerns *PH* I). Even though *M* VII-XI do
not belong to the same work as *M* I-VI, it is customary amongst
scholars to refer to all eleven books as *M* I-XI (Bett 2012:
x).




(When scholars cite passages from *PH* and *M*, they
usually include the book number and section number within that book, so
'*PH* I 13' means book one of *PH*, section
13.)


### 2.2 Lost Works




The ancients do not refer to their books using titles in the way we
do. Often, Sextus refers to the books we know as *PH* or
*M* using other descriptions. For instance, at *M* VI 52
he says: 



>  
> that sound is non-existent has been proved by us in our
> skeptical commentaries (*en tois skeptikois
> hypomnematois*), from the evidence of the Dogmatists,
> 
> 


 
which is pretty clearly a reference to *M* VIII 131, and at
*M* VI 61 he says:



>  
> that time is nothing we have already
> established in our Pyrrhonian writings (*en tois
> Pyrrhoneiois*)',
> 
> 


 
which is either a reference to
*PH* III 136-50 or *M* X 169-247 (Brochard 1887: 319-20).
Most of Sextus' references to his own works can be explained this
way. However, a couple of times Sextus refers to his writings in ways
which suggest that there are some treatises we no longer have (in
addition to the part of *M* corresponding to *PH* I):


1. *M* VII 202: 'medical commentaries'
(iatrika upomnemata); presumably
the same as *M* I 61: 'empiric commentaries'
(empeirika upomnemata);
2. *M* VI 55, 'the commentaries on the soul',
and X 284 'in the writings on the soul'.


## 3. The nature of Sextus' Pyrrhonism (*PH* I)


### 3.1 What do Skeptics do, and where do they get their name?




When you investigate whether *P*, there are three possibilities: (i)
you discover something (you find that the reasons for believing one of
*P* and not-*P* outweigh any reasons for believing the other), or (ii) you
deny that it is possible to discover whether *P*, or (iii) you find that
so far, the reasons for believing that P and the reasons for believing
that not-*P* balance each other out, and so you keep on investigating
(*PH* I 1). So-called 'Dogmatic' philosophers think
they make discoveries when they investigate; 'Academic'
skeptics assert that no discovery can be made; Pyrrhonists carry on
investigating and searching for the truth (I 3). (For the sincerity of
this last claim, see Palmer 2000 and Perin 2006.) This, continues
Sextus, is why Skeptics get their name (I 7): 'to
investigate' in Greek is *skeptesthai*, and so
*skeptikos* means something like 'one who is disposed to
investigate', 'investigator'.




If Pyrrhonian Skeptics are still investigating any matter you like,
there is no distinctive set of beliefs which mark them out as a school.
Amongst the things Platonists believe is the proposition that the only
truly real things are Forms (and their discovery of this is what their
investigation into the question 'what is there?' culminated
in), and amongst the things Aristotelians believe is the proposition
that the soul is the actuality of the living body as such (and their
discovery of this is what their investigation into the question
'what is the soul?' culminated in). Holding these beliefs
is partially constitutive of what it is to be an Aristotelian or a
Platonist. Skeptics have not yet found answers to those questions,
because they are still investigating them. It follows that to be a
Skeptic is not to subscribe to a set of beliefs in the way that members
of the other Philosophical Schools do. Yet there must be something
about them that makes them count as Skeptics. What, then, is
Skepticism? Sextus' answer is that it is an ability or skill (I
8), not a set of beliefs. 



>  
> Sextus presents scepticism as a kind
> of philosophy, distinguished from others not by the content of its
> doctrines (there are none), but apparently by its attitude to
> philosophical problems and theses. (Striker 2001: 114; cf.
> Morison 2011: 265-9)
> 
> 


### 3.2 What is the Skeptical ability or skill?



> 
> 
> Scepticism is an ability to set out oppositions among things
> which appear and are thought of in any way at all, an ability by which,
> because of the equipollence in the opposed objects and accounts, we
> come first to suspension of judgment and afterwards to
> tranquillity. (I 8)
> 
> 



Sextus tells us that the distinctively
Skeptical ability is the one which enables its possessor to set out
oppositions of such a sort that suspension of judgment ensues
(tranquillity, we learn later, will follow 
'fortuitously'--see 3.3 below).
 The sort of opposition which will achieve this
is one where 'none of the conflicting accounts takes precedence
over any other as being more convincing' (I 10) (this is the
elucidation of 'equipollent'). So, a Skeptic is someone who
has the ability to find, for any given argument in favour of a
proposition *P*, a conflicting argument (i.e., one whose conclusion is a
proposition which cannot be true together with *P*--call it *P*\*)
*which is equally convincing*.




This connects with investigation in the following way: when one
investigates whether *P*, one assembles arguments or
considerations in favour of *P*, and arguments or considerations
against (i.e., arguments whose conclusions conflict with
*P*). One assesses whether *P* or not-*P* on the basis
of weighing up these arguments, and seeing which side carries more
weight:




>  
> You pursue an inquiry insofar as you draw up
> possible solutions to the problem it addresses, consider what reasons
> might be adduced in favour of the different solutions, and attempt to
> assess the force of those reasons in order to pick out the correct
> solution. (Barnes 2000: xx)
> 
> 


 
Note then that '*x* suspends judgment as to whether
*P*' does not *merely* mean that *x* neither
believes *P* nor believes that not-*P*. For if *P* is a
proposition that *x* has never given any thought to, then it
might be true that *x* neither believes *P* nor believes
that not-*P*. President Obama neither believes that my mother's
name is 'Judith' nor believes that it isn't, but he is not
a skeptic about whether my mother's name is 'Judith'. To
count as suspending judgment (in the Skeptic's sense) whether
*P*, it is at least necessary to have given the question whether
*P* some thought. As Barnes 2000: xix, puts it: 



>  *x* is sceptical with regard to the proposition
> that *P* if and only if (i) *x* has considered whether or
> not *P*, and (ii) *x* does not believe that *P*, and
> (iii) *x* does not believe that not-*P*.
> 
> 
> 


 Note further that Sextus 



>  
> assembles arguments
> in favour of an affirmative answer, and arguments in favour of a
> negative answer. The two sets of arguments exactly balance one
> another. 
> Epokhe 
> [suspension of judgment] supervenes--epokhe 
> directed towards the
> proposition that *P*. (Barnes 1982: 59)
> 
> 


 
This means that
considering whether or not *P* requires that one consider *both sides
of the question whether *P**, i.e., that one considers arguments in
favour of *P* and arguments in favour of not-*P* (or, more generally, of
something incompatible with *P*; see *PH* I 10). It would
not be enough, for instance, to look at one argument in favour of *P* and
then reject that argument as invalid; while doing so would indeed leave
one neither believing *P* nor not-*P* (assuming one had no further evidence
either way), one would not have considered *both* sides of the
question, since one would not yet have considered any arguments in
favour of not-*P*. (This condition will be important later when we
consider the Modes of Skepticism--see below, 3.5.2.)


### 3.3 Tranquillity




How does it come about that someone acquires the skeptical skill?
Sextus offers an answer in *PH* I 12. People have become
Skeptics because they are seeking tranquillity. Certain people
('men of talent' in Annas and Barnes' translation;
'smart and energetic people' in Cooper's nice gloss
(2012: 282)) are 'troubled by the anomaly in things' (I 12)
and want to take away this 'trouble', i.e., become tranquil
(the word translated 'tranquillity' is etymologically
related to the word translated 'trouble', and more
literally means 'lack of trouble'). Presumably Sextus has
in mind that one might be troubled by the various discrepancies that
the world offers, such as this one (taken from *PH* III 202):
'among us, tattooing is thought to be shameful and a dishonour,
but many Egyptians and Sarmatians tattoo their babies'. By
considering these two facts, one has both the impression that tattooing
is bad and the impression that it is good: those who pay attention to
such anomalies will be 'puzzled as to which of them they should
rather assent to' (*PH* I 12 again). So begins the quest
for finding the answer and ridding oneself of the irksome
'trouble' that such questions induce. Sextus seems to be
explaining how it is that someone could come to be investigating
questions with the sort of single-mindedness the skeptic has, a
single-mindedness which results in the intense scrutiny of all sides of
a question. This will in turn explain how it is that anyone would
end up with the skeptical skill: this intense scrutiny will lead the
scrutiniser to develop skill at coming up with considerations speaking
to both sides of a question and evaluating them for convincingness.




(For a slightly different take on what Sextus is up to in *PH*
I 12, see Cooper 2012, who interprets Sextus as telling us about his
'original skeptic predecessors' (283) or
'proto-skeptics' (285), who came upon the skeptical skill
as a result of their reflections, 'as something then for later
worriers to avail themselves of' (282 n.76). In other words,
Sextus is primarily offering
'a narrative history of the
experiences of those who became the first to practice the skeptic
philosophy' (288), rather than an account of how anyone at any
time might find themselves becoming a skeptic.)




So if we are smart and energetic we seek intellectual tranquillity, or
freedom from the troubles which come from being assailed by the many
contradictions the world seems to offer. Sextus elaborates further in
*PH* I 25-30 that 'the aim of the Skeptic is
tranquillity in matters of opinion' (I 26). But whereas to begin
with, 'Skeptics were hoping to acquire tranquillity by deciding
the anomalies in what appears and is thought of' (I 29), they
found themselves unable to settle the questions they were
investigating and ended up suspending judgment (because of their
Skeptical skill). But rather than this making them even more troubled,
they discovered--to their surprise--that in fact
tranquillity followed after all! They did not find the answers they
had been looking for, because the Skeptical skill will preclude you
from finding such answers; nonetheless, tranquillity did ensue. Sextus
illustrates this fortuitousness with a story about Apelles the
painter: 



>  
> he was
> painting a horse and wanted to represent in his picture the lather on
> the horse's mouth; but he was so unsuccessful that he gave up,
> took the sponge on which he had been wiping off the colours from his
> brush, and flung it at the picture. And when it hit the picture, it
> produced a representation of the horse's lather.
> (*PH* I 28)
> 
> 


 
You search for tranquillity, and it will come, just
not in the way you were expecting. More succinctly, Sextus says that
tranquillity follows suspension of judgment 'as a shadow follows
a body' (I 29; for the same image, cf. DL IX 107). The idea behind the shadow image seems to
be that tranquillity will indeed follow suspension of judgment, but it
is not the thing you were expecting. So, burning with curiosity, you
engage in the investigation whether *P*, expecting to find tranquillity
when you discover whether *P*; you end up not discovering whether *P* but
rather suspending judgment whether *P*, and much to your surprise,
tranquillity still follows. Striker finds in Sextus' imagery the
message that 'Skeptical tranquillity can only be reached if one
does not try for it' (1990a: 193).




Will being a Pyrrhonian Skeptic bring you tranquillity, as Sextus
advertises? Two objections have been brought against it.




(1) Striker (1990a) argues that Sextus is guilty of an inconsistency.
Sextus obviously does not think there is such a thing as the goal of
life (no self-respecting Pyrrhonian Skeptic could have such a
theoretically loaded view). But then how can Sextus talk consistently
of the goal of the Skeptic being tranquillity?



> 
> Such is the
> penalty of arguing, on the one hand, that there is no such thing as a
> goal of life [...], and on the other, that Pyrrhonism is the only
> way to it. (Striker 1990a: 193)
> 
> 



Striker's charge might be
overstretched, since Sextus would characterise himself as
*suspending judgment* over the question whether there is a goal
of life (rather than as *rejecting* that there is such a thing),
but the tension she points to still remains. Additionally, Striker
argues against Sextus that there is a psychologically crucial
ingredient in tranquillity that is missing from the Pyrrhonist's
version, namely 'the thought that one has or can easily get all
the goods one might need' (ibid). That thought is missing because
of course the Skeptic does not have any beliefs about what is good or
bad, and indeed Sextus himself touts Pyrrhonism as having the advantage
over other philosophies, and over the belief systems of ordinary
people, that Pyrrhonists



> 
> shed the additional opinion that each
> of these things [sc. feelings such as hunger, thirst, etc. that we
> cannot avoid in virtue of being human] is bad in its nature.
> (*PH* I 30; cf. Frede 1979: 22)
> 
> 



 This prompted Striker to
conclude: 



>  
> The Pyrrhonists would have done better, I believe, to
> stay out of the competition for guides to the happy life, and limit
> themselves to the field of epistemology. (1990a: 193)
> 
> 


 
Perhaps,
though, the tranquillity that Sextus promises is only supposed to be
intellectual tranquillity, freedom from the trouble or anxiety that
having an unanswered question in your life brings. It can't
promise you freedom from your back pain or an irrational fear of
death.




(2) Myles Burnyeat raises a different objection to Sextus' claim that
the Skeptic will find tranquillity: 



> 
> *ataraxia* is hardly to be attained if he is not in some sense
> satisfied--so far--that no answers are forthcoming, that
> contrary claims are indeed equal. (1980: 56) 
> 
> 


 In other words, in order to settle back into intellectual
tranquillity, the Skeptic must have some belief along these lines: no
enquiry will ever produce an answer. He must become a global skeptic,
and not just a local one. However, in the opening sentences of
*PH* Sextus seems to preclude the possibility that Pyrrhonian
skeptics espouse such a global belief in the impossibility of
discovery when he *contrasts* the Pyrrhonian Skeptics, who
'are still investigating', with other, dogmatic, skeptics,
who hold that the truth 'cannot be apprehended'
(*PH* I 2). And quite apart from the apparent unavailability of
this particular belief to the Skeptic, there is also the general worry
that the Skeptic has no beliefs whatsoever (thus precluding him from
believing that no enquiry will ever produce an answer). It is to this
question that we shall turn next. But note that if it turns out that
the Skeptic *can* have beliefs, and that the belief that no
enquiry will ever produce an answer is one of the beliefs available to
the skeptic, then we might be able to answer Burnyeat's objection (for
more on this see below, 3.6).


### 3.4 Does the Skeptic have any beliefs?




Since Skeptics spend their time taking the dogmatists to task for
settling on their beliefs too quickly and not persevering in their
enquiries, it is a natural question to wonder whether the Skeptics
themselves have any beliefs--if so, they seem open to the very
charges they level at the dogmatists. There are two ways in which the
Skeptics might appear to have beliefs. First, they offer a wealth of
counterarguments to the positions of the dogmatists. Where the
dogmatists argue that *P*, the Skeptic argues that not-*P*. It can easily
appear that the Skeptic is in fact endorsing the conclusion, i.e., that
he holds that not-*P* on the basis of those arguments. But we should
distinguish between two cases of arguing something, say, *C*:
on the one hand, *offering an argument with conclusion *C* and endorsing *C**, and on the other,
*offering an argument with conclusion *C* and letting the argument
stand as a counter-argument to an argument with the opposite
conclusion*. Presumably, the Skeptic is doing the second. Still,
you can see how the misunderstanding might have arisen (for more on
this, see section 4.2 below). A second way the Skeptics might appear
to have beliefs is that they went about their everyday lives in the way
we all do, eating, drinking, sleeping, and avoiding oncoming wagons and
dangerous-looking dogs, etc.--surely to act in this way requires
having beliefs about the way the world is? This was a common charge
levelled against the Skeptics by their opponents in antiquity (see Vogt
1998: 2010).




Sextus turns to the question of whether the skeptic has any beliefs
in a very famous--and much debated--passage, *PH*
I 13 (in Annas and Barnes' translation):



> 
> 
> 
> When we say that Skeptics do not hold beliefs, we do not take
> 'belief' in the sense in which some say, quite generally,
> that belief is acquiescing in something; for Skeptics assent to the
> feelings forced upon them by appearances--for example, they
> would not say, when heated or chilled, 'I think I am not heated
> (or: chilled)'. Rather, we say that they do not hold beliefs in
> the sense in which some say that belief is assent to some unclear
> object of investigation in the sciences; for Pyrrhonists do not assent
> to anything unclear.
> 
> 
> 




The question of how to interpret this little paragraph, and thus
settle the question of whether the Skeptic has any beliefs, is the
question that much contemporary scholarship concerning Sextus has
focussed on (see for instance the papers collected in Burnyeat and
Frede 1997; with Fine 2000; Barnes 2007; Perin 2010b), yet there does
not seem to be a consensus.


#### 3.4.1 Yes, the Skeptic has beliefs




In 1979, Michael Frede argued that 




> 
> the sceptics thought that
> even if one suspended judgment on all matters, at least suspended
> judgment in the sense in which they recommend that one suspend
> judgment, one would still have many beliefs and views, quite enough, at
> any rate, to lead a worthwhile life. (Frede 1979: 3) 
> 
> 
> 



Frede
took himself to be arguing against what he terms the 'usual
interpretation of Pyrrhonian scepticism', namely that the Skeptic
'has no view or beliefs about anything' (1). Frede argues
that in *PH* I 13, 



>  
> Sextus distinguishes between a wider
> (*koinoteron*) and a narrower sense of 'belief'; and
> only beliefs in the narrower sense count as dogmatic. (8-9)
> 
> 


 
 So
confident is Frede of this analysis that he concludes: 



>  
> there can
> be no doubt whatsoever that, according to Sextus, a serious Pyrrhonean
> skeptic can have beliefs. (9)
> 
> 




The question for Frede is how to understand what Sextus says in I 13
when he characterizes the *first* kind of belief
(*dogma*) which he says the skeptics can have. Frede argues that
what is meant is that the Skeptic 



>  
> accepts the judgment of
> *phantasia*; at least, he raises no objection against its
> verdict; if it says things are thus or thus, he does not challenge
> this. (18)
> 
> 


 
(*Phantasia* here refers to the faculty of our
soul which produces in us impressions of how things are. In *PH*
I 13, Sextus says that Skeptics assent to 'the feelings forced
upon them by appearances'; one could also translate this as
follows: 'the feelings forced upon them by an exercise of
*phantasia*'.) In other words, the Skeptic, like everyone,
has impressions which represent the world as being a certain way, and
these are *forced upon* the Skeptic, so there is no avoiding
them, and these impressions in turn have a certain pull which inclines
the Skeptic to assent to them and which he does not counteract. Texts
such as I 13, I 22, and I 29-30 emphasize that the impressions are
forced on us. Other texts emphasize that impressions bring with them a
pull which is sufficient to cause assent, e.g., I 19: 



>  
> we do not
> overturn anything which leads us, *without our willing it*, to
> assent in accordance with a passive appearance,
> 
> 


 
 or I 193:



>  
> we do yield to things which passively move us and lead us
> *necessarily* to assent' (my emphases).
> 
> 




The second kind of belief referred to in I 13, the kind which the
Skeptic cannot have, is a belief which Frede characterizes as one which
'involve[s] an assumption or claim about one of the nonevident
objects of scientific inquiry ' (18).
 These beliefs are not forced
upon one, but arise through the rational weighing up of evidence on
either side of a question. Frede's (and Sextus')
characterization of these beliefs as being 'about one of the
nonevident objects of scientific enquiry' might make it seem as
though it is beliefs with a certain *content* that will not be
entertained by the skeptic, but in fact Frede has something different
in mind: 




>  
> As far as the second part of our passage is concerned,
> it says only that the sceptic may not have beliefs of a certain kind,
> viz., philosophical or scientific ones which depend on reasoned
> grounds. (19)
> 
> 


 
Thus, 



>  
> [a]ny belief, whatever its content
> may be, can be a dogmatic belief; conversely, every belief can be an
> undogmatic one. (ibid)
> 
> 


 
 Roughly speaking, Frede is proposing that
the difference between the kinds of belief a Skeptic can have and the
ones the Skeptic cannot have is a difference in the way the beliefs are
formed. If the belief that *p* has been formed 'on
reasoned grounds'--'as a result of marshalling
arguments or considerations in favour of *p*' (Morison
2011: 266), or perhaps as a result of simply thinking that there are
such grounds without having yet marshalled them--then this
belief counts as a belief of the sort the Skeptic cannot have, and if
the belief that *p* has been formed not on the basis of the
marshalling of arguments, but just because that is how things strike
the person who forms the belief, then this belief counts as a belief of
the sort the Skeptic can have. (See Perin 2010a and b for doubts about
whether this interpretation can be extracted from Sextus'
text.)
[See the supplementary document Interpreting Frede.]





Examples of the kind of belief the Skeptic could have, following
Frede's interpretation, are ones such as the following:


1. (a) The belief that it is day outside, *where this
belief is formed immediately from the perceptual appearance to you that
it is day outside*. Contrast: someone believing that it is day
outside on the basis of performing a calculation about the sun's
position at that precise time relative to their position on the earth
(Morison 2011: 267). Or again, contrast someone who believes that it is
day outside because they run through an argument such as this in their
heads: my senses are reliable; it appears right now to my senses that
it is day outside; therefore it must be day.  


(b) The belief that 1+1=2, *where this belief is formed as a
result of it just striking your intellect that 1+1=2*. Contrast:
believing that 1+1=2 as a result of running through the proof in
*Principia Mathematica*.
2. The belief that you should eat something right now,
*where this belief is formed immediately from the feeling you have
of being hungry*. Contrast: someone, an athlete perhaps, who weighs
up the pros and cons of having something to eat now, and decides that
they should, because on balance, the pros outweigh the cons.
3. The belief that the Stoic God exists, *where this
belief is formed simply from acculturation*; 'imagine someone
who has been raised by the Stoics and who thus has the Stoic concept of
God' (Frede 1979: 23). Contrast: a philosopher who believes that
the Stoic God exists, formed as a result of running through and
accepting the proofs the Stoics give of the existence of this sort of
God.
4. The belief that you should make the table in this way,
*where this belief is formed from your craft-experience*.
Imagine the apprentice carpenter who simply follows the example set by
his teacher, without actually holding that the way his teacher does
things is the correct one. Or perhaps you make the table this way just
because every time you have made a table this way it has stayed
upright. Contrast: the master-carpenter who has an account of why
pieces of wood stick together better this way than any other way, and
who believes on this basis that you should make the table this way
accordingly.




These examples are deliberately chosen in order to reflect the
fourfold sources of appearances guiding our actions that Sextus relates
in *PH* I 21-24, which Frede will take to be a fourfold source
of beliefs open to the Skeptic, providing him with the wherewithal to
lead an ordinary life: 



>  
> By nature's guidance we are
> naturally capable of perceiving and thinking. By the necessitation of
> feelings, hunger conducts us to food and thirst to drink. By the
> handing down of customs and laws, we accept, from an everyday point of
> view, that piety is good and impiety bad. By teaching of kinds of
> expertise we are not inactive in those expertises which we
> accept. (I 24)
> 
> 


 
 Frede's interpretation provides a neat way
to sidestep the traditional charge levelled against the Pyrrhonian
Skeptics, namely that they will not be able to lead a recognisably
human life, thanks to their suspension of judgment on all matters. The
trick is to see that the Skeptics can hold beliefs, but just in an
ordinary everyday way ('from an everyday point of view,' as he
says in the passage above), i.e., not as a result of marshalling
arguments and evidence in favour of those beliefs, as philosophers and
scientists do.




Many other texts in Sextus suggest that in fact, the Pyrrhonian
Skeptic does have beliefs. Here are some. 


* we
accept
(paralambanomen),
from an everyday point of view, that piety is good and impiety
bad (*PH* I 24).
* we accept
(akouomen)
that there
are such things as numbers (*PH* III 151).
* in line
with his [sc. the skeptic's] ancestral customs and laws, he says
(legon)
that there are gods and does
everything that tends to worship of and reverence towards
them (*M* IX 49).
* But in fact we ourselves judge
(egnomen) this way, assuming fire
from smoke, a previous wound from a scar, death from previous trauma to
the heart, and oil from a previous headband (*M* VIII 157).


#### 3.4.2 No, the Skeptic doesn't have beliefs




Frede's proposal was rejected by Jonathan Barnes and Myles
Burnyeat, who argued that Pyrrhonian Skepticism involves rejecting
*all* beliefs*.* Barnes followed Galen in using the term
'rustic' for the skeptic who rejects every belief, and
coined the term 'urbane' for the kind of skeptic Frede
describes, the one whose skepticism still allows him to have beliefs
(Barnes 1982: 61). One challenge for these interpreters who think
Sextus is a rustic skeptic is to explain how the type of *dogma*
that the skeptic does allow himself in I 13 won't count as a
belief. According to Burnyeat, what is going on when the Skeptic
assents in accordance with the appearances is that he is merely
'acknowledging that this is indeed how the thing appears to one
at the moment' (Burnyeat 1980: 43); but Skeptics and dogmatists
dispute 'whether any proposition or class of propositions can be
accepted as true of a real objective world as distinct from mere
appearance' (30). 'Statements which record how things
appear cannot be described as true or false' (31), since




>  
> the true, if there is such a thing, is what conforms with the
> real, an association traditional to the word *alethes* since the
> earliest period of Greek philosophy. (30)
> 
> 


 
Hence the
pronouncements of the Skeptic that things appear thus-and-so do not
represent the beliefs of the Skeptic as to how things are, but only
record how things appear to him.




Jonathan Barnes has a slightly different interpretation of the
pronouncements of the Skeptic: when the Skeptic sees the tower in the
distance and it appears round to him, he 



> 
> may utter the sentence
> "The tower seems round": he thereby *expresses* his
> pathos, but he does not *state that*
> he is experiencing a certain 
> pathos
> (he does not state anything at all). (1982: 66; his emphases)
> 
> 



What
is the Skeptic doing, then, if he is not stating anything? He is
*avowing* something: 



>  
> it is plain that avowals and
> confessions were supposed by the Pyrrhonists to be speech acts of a
> different kind from statements or affirmations. (65)
> 
> 


 
His avowals
'express 
pathe
and do not evince beliefs'
(66). His pronouncement is like saying 'ouch!': one
does not express one's *belief* that one is in pain in
saying 'ouch!', but rather one simply expresses one's
pain (ibid).




Barnes and Burnyeat have the same goal: to deny that any utterances
the Skeptic makes which have the form '*X* appears *F*' commit
the Skeptic to having any beliefs. In other words, they attempt to show
that assenting to the 'feelings forced upon them by
appearances' (I 13) need not involve having a belief in our sense
of the term (even though Sextus says that this is a way of having a
*dogma*). It is important to see that Barnes and Burnyeat do not
arrive at this position by interpreting I 13 alone; rather they have an
*argument* that the Skeptic can't have any beliefs, and
they interpret I 13 in the light of that. That argument is sketched
below (section 4.1), since it turns on the use they make of
Sextus' discussion of the criterion of truth (which occupies a
large part of *PH* II and all of *M* VII).




What do Barnes and Burnyeat say about the kind of life the Skeptic
leads? How can the Skeptic respond to the charge that he cannot lead a
recognisably human life unless he has beliefs? Barnes 1982: 79-89
attempts an interpretation of *PH* I 21-4 according to which the
fourfold observances of everyday life don't commit the Skeptic to
any beliefs whatsoever: hunger and thirst 'alone suffice to drive
the Skeptic--like any other man or animal--to food and
drink' (82); 




>  
> Teaching a man medicine... is like
> training him to ride: you are attempting to impart a *power* or
> skill to him; you are not trying to give him any
> *beliefs*; (83)
> 
> 


 
the Skeptic 'drives on the right
because that is the custom--not because he believes that it is
the custom' (84); etc.




Many texts in Sextus suggest that the Skeptic does not have any
beliefs. Here are some. 


* The chief constitutive
principle of Skepticism is the claim that to every account an equal
account is opposed; for it is from this, we think, that we come to hold
no beliefs (me dogmatizein) (*PH* I 12).
* in uttering these phrases [the Skeptical
phrases: see below 3.6] they say what is apparent to themselves and
report their own feelings without holding opinions
(adoxastos),
affirming nothing about external objects (*PH* I 15).
* we say all this [i.e., about the fourfold sources of appearances
governing actions, listed in *PH* I 21-4] without holding any
opinions
(adoxastos)
(*PH* I 24).


#### 3.4.3 Yes again.




Finally, it is worth noting another position that some scholars have
taken: when Skeptics acknowledge that things appear thus-and-so to
them, they quite simply do have beliefs, namely 'beliefs about
the ways things appear to him to be' (Perin 2010b: 161, following Fine
2000: 104). The skeptic does indeed have beliefs: Burnyeat was wrong to
say that acknowledging that things appear to you thus-and-so is not a
way of holding something to be true, and Barnes was wrong to try to
dodge the commitments the skeptic incurs when he utters sentences such
as 'honey seems sweet to me', by talking of avowals.
Rather, Perin and Fine argue, the skeptic has exactly the belief you
would expect, given that he says things like 'honey seems sweet
to me': the belief *that things appear thus-and-so to him*
(in this instance, the belief that *honey appears sweet to
him*). It is important to note that the beliefs such interpreters
attribute to the Skeptics are nothing like the beliefs that
Frede's interpretation allows to the Skeptic. Frede's
position allows the Skeptic to have ordinary beliefs such as 'it
is day outside', 'I am hungry', 'the library
closes at 6.00 p.m.', etc., whereas the interpreters under
discussion allow to the Skeptic only beliefs such as 'it
*seems* to be daytime outside', 'I *feel*
hungry', 'the library *appears* to close at 6.00
p.m.', etc.




Some texts in Sextus suggest the Fine/Perin view. Here is one.
*PH* I 19-20 (in the Annas and Barnes translation): 




>  When we investigate whether existing things are such
> as they appear, we grant
> (didomen)
> that they appear, and what we investigate is not what is apparent but
> what is said about what is apparent--and this is different from
> investigating what is apparent itself. For example, it appears to us
> that honey sweetens (we concede
> (sugkhoroumen)
> this inasmuch as we are sweetened in a perceptual
> way).
> 
> 


#### 3.4.4 An assessment




Here is *PH* I 13 again:



> 
> 
> When we say that Skeptics do not hold beliefs, we do not take
> 'belief' in the sense in which some say, quite generally,
> that belief is acquiescing in something; for Skeptics assent to the
> feelings forced upon them by appearances--for example, they
> would not say, when heated or chilled, 'I think I am not heated
> (or: chilled)'. Rather, we say that they do not hold beliefs in
> the sense in which some say that belief is assent to some unclear
> object of investigation in the sciences; for Pyrrhonists do not assent
> to anything unclear.
> 
> 
> 



[See the supplementary document The example from *PH* I 13.]





The way to make progress is to see how the three interpretations
sketched in (3.4.1)-(3.4.3) differ in the way they interpret the phrase
'Skeptics assent to the feelings forced upon them by
appearances' in *PH* I 13. The 'feelings' in
question are the states (*pathe*) that the faculty of
*phantasia* puts one in when it represents the world as being a
certain way (so when my faculty of *phantasia* represents the
world as being one in which *P*, I am thereby in the state of *being
appeared to that *P**). When *X* is in that state, *X* has the impression
or appearance that *P*. The question which concerns us is this: what does
it mean to assent to this feeling, i.e., this impression or appearance?
According to Frede, assenting to this feeling is a matter of
*believing the world to be as the state represents it as being*.
Or, more punchily, assenting to the feeling forced upon one by
appearances entails accepting the *content* of that state. For
Barnes and Burnyeat, to assent to the appearance that *P* is a matter of
acknowledging that one is in the state of being appeared to that *P*.
What gets acknowledged or accepted is that one is *in that mental
state*, not the *content* of the state. Both Barnes and
Burnyeat think that to make such an acknowledgment does not amount to
having a belief--it's just an acknowledgment that one is
in a certain internal state. Fine and Perin agree with Barnes and
Burnyeat that the Skeptics acknowledge that they are in a certain
mental state (rather than accepting the *content* of the state),
but Fine and Perin are prepared to say that the skeptic does thereby
believes something, namely that it appears to him that P, and that this
belief is the only kind of *dogma* the Skeptic has.




In deciding this debate, one has to keep two issues apart (see e.g.,
Fine 2000: 81). One is how to interpret Sextus' characterisation
of the kind of *dogma* which is acceptable to the skeptic (does
it involve accepting that one is in a certain mental state, or is it an
acceptance of the way the world is, etc.); the other is whether a
*dogma* of the acceptable kind deserves to be called a
*belief*, given what that English term connotes. The second of
these points is a matter of philosophical definition, but the first is
a properly interpretational dispute. Barnes and Burnyeat claim that the
acceptable kind of *dogma*, on their analysis, is not a belief
in any acceptable sense of the word 'belief': for me to
acknowledge that I am currently having a perceptual experience of a
tree outside my window (to acknowledge that it appears to me that there
is a tree outside) is no way of *believing* that there is a tree
outside. Striker points out that this is not so obvious, since
according to Barnes and Burnyeat, the Skeptic's actions are
governed by these acknowledgments, and there is 



> 
> a much weaker,
> dispositional sense [sc. of the word 'belief'], according
> to which it is sufficient for the ascription of a belief to an agent if
> she acts or behaves in a certain way. (Striker 2001: 119)
> 
> 



Hence she is
inclined to think 'it is a matter of terminological choice
whether we want to speak of belief here or not' (ibid). In other
words, *given the Barnes/Burnyeat interpretation of what a*
dogma *is*, she thinks it is a matter of terminological choice
whether we call it a 'belief'. But what we are interested
in here is the larger question of just what it means to have a
*dogma* of the acceptable kind.




So who is right about what the acceptable kind of *dogma* is?
Who is right about the interpretation of the phrase 'Skeptics
assent to the feelings forced upon them by appearances'?
Presumably Sextus intends us to understand the phrase in the light of
its philosophical background. Frede claims: 



> 
> "assenting to
> such impressions" cannot mean "assenting to the claim that
> one is affected in this way, that one has such
> impressions" (1979: 20),
> 
> 



 thereby flatly denying the
interpretation of Barnes and Burnyeat. Unfortunately, he doesn't
say why the phrase cannot mean this. But his reason is not hard to
find. Sextus is using Stoic terminology and is deliberately casting the
issue using Stoic terms. And for the Stoics, to assent to the
impression that *P* is a matter of judging that *P*:



>  
> To accept or
> give assent to a thought or impression is to have the belief that the
> proposition which forms the content of the impression is true. (Frede
> 1983: 153)
> 
> 


 
The issue is thoroughly uncontroversial in Stoic
scholarship; see, for instance, Sandbach 1975: 88: 




>  
> The man may
> say 'There appears to be an apple, and I assent: there is an
> apple'.
> 
> 


 
 (For the same diagnosis of Frede's train of
thought, see Fine 2000: 101.) The point is that no one reading Sextus' text in the
light of the philosophical usage of the terms he uses would think that
*assenting to the impression that *P** meant anything other than
*believing that *P**. Specifically, no one would think that it
meant acknowledging or judging *that one has the impression that
*P**. So purely as a matter of philosophical usage, to talk of
assenting to an impression that *P*, as Sextus does, requires us to
understand that assent as the having of a belief that *P*. (Note that
this is not a linguistic point about the Stoics' use of the word
*dogma*, since they don't use that word in these contexts,
but rather a philosophical point about what assenting to an impression
must amount to for the Stoics.) If this is right, then philosophical
philology alone rules out the reading that Burnyeat and Barnes and
Perin and Fine want. (For a different view on the origins of
Sextus' language in *PH* I 13, but one which arrives at
the same conclusion, see Barney 1992.)




In I 13, Sextus gives two senses of the verb translated 'to
have beliefs'
(dogmatizein),
and he does so by means of distinguishing two meanings of the word
'belief'
(dogma). One meaning is
broader (*koinoteron*) than the other. So the first meaning
should encompass the second. Sextus clearly intends this to be so: in
the first sense of *dogma*, a *dogma* is assent to
*anything*, and in the second sense it is assent to a certain
*subclass* of things ('some unclear object of
investigation in the sciences'). In arguing that the Skeptic has
*dogmata* in the first sense, Sextus simply needs to show that
the Skeptic does assent to *something*. And this he does by
telling us which things the Skeptic assents to: he assents to the
'feelings forced upon him by appearances'. When Sextus says
what it is that the Skeptics *don't* assent to, we are
told that it is the 'unclear objects of investigation in the
sciences'. If it's right that the talk of assenting to
impressions is Stoic, then it could sound as though here Sextus is
talking about assent to a different kind of thing here, something more
like a proposition. It could sound as if Sextus means to differentiate
between the *type* of thing that the Skeptic assents to
(appearances) and the type of thing he doesn't assent to (objects
of investigation, i.e., propositions). Indeed, it may be that this lies
behind the interpretations of Barnes, Burnyeat, Perin, and Fine: what
the Skeptic can assent to are his own impressions, but not to matters
of fact! But on closer inspection, Sextus does describe the object of
this second kind of assent in epistemological or psychological terms:
the forbidden kind of *dogma* involves assenting to
'*unclear* objects of investigation in the
sciences'. So it is not difficult to put this in terms of
impressions: Sextus is saying that the forbidden kind of *dogma*
involves assenting to impressions which are not clear. Why should the
impressions garnered during the course of an investigation in the
sciences be unclear? For a Pyrrhonist such as Sextus, the answer is
obvious: any impression that *P* which comes to him during his
investigation will be counterbalanced by an impression that not-*P* (or
some other conflicting impression). These impressions or appearances do
not carry with them any pull because they are always countermanded by
another equal and opposite impression. Thus, to assent to one of these
impressions is to go beyond appearances; it is no longer a matter of
responding, passively and without an act of the will, to the weight or
pull of the appearances, but rather a matter of going beyond how things
appear; in such cases, one's assent is instead dictated by certain theoretical
commitments one has (or, more broadly, by one's accepting something as a *reason* for assenting to the non-apparent thing). 




Verdict: the Skeptic does have beliefs. He assents to certain
appearances, namely those that aren't accompanied by equal and
opposing appearances. When he assents to those appearances, he is not
endorsing them as being the correct ones in the light of this or that
theory, or in the light of this or that reason for assenting, but merely passively responding to their pull. In I 13 Sextus
dresses this point up in Stoic garb, presumably in order to send the
message that the Stoics have to acknowledge the existence of the kinds
of belief the Skeptic has. And the examples of beliefs that the Skeptic
would end up with are indeed the ones that Frede gives, such as me
believing now that it is day, on the basis of having a (perceptual)
impression that it is light outside, an impression which is not
countermanded by any countervailing impressions and which exerts a pull
all of its own towards assent.
[See the supplementary document
 Revisiting the texts which appeared to support interpretations 3.4.2 and 3.4.3.]





Thus, the weight of evidence seems to favour the Frede
interpretation (although sometimes it can also seem as though the
rational thing to do is to suspend judgment in the face of these
equally strong competing interpretations).


### 3.5 Modes




By far the longest single discussion in *PH* I concerns the
modes of Skepticism (I 31-186) (see Annas and Barnes 1985; Barnes
1990a,b; Striker 1993; Hankinson 1995: chapters 9 and 10; Perin
2006: 354-8; Woodruff 2010; Morison 2011, 2018; Bullock 2016). These are announced as
being means by which the Skeptic comes to suspension of judgment (I
35). Recall that the Skeptic achieves his characteristic state of
suspension of judgment (*epoche*), with respect to some
proposition or other, by assembling arguments or considerations on both
sides (*PH* I 12). The Skeptic needs techniques or tools to
bring this suspension about. The modes divide into four groups, the Ten
Modes, the Five Modes, the Two Modes, and the Eight Modes. (Presumably
the Skeptic can employ methods other than the modes for bringing about
suspension of judgment. For extended analysis of one such method, that
of 'reversal', see Castagnoli 2010: ch. 14.)


#### 3.5.1 The Ten Modes (*PH* I 35-163)




This charming group of modes, attributed by Sextus in *PH* I
36 to unnamed 'older skeptics', but in *M* VII 345
to Aenesidemus (fl. first century BCE; see Schofield 2007; Hankinson
2010), gets the longest treatment of all the groups of modes:


1. The mode depending on the variations
among animals (I 40-78);
2. The mode depending on the differences
among humans (I 79-90);
3. The mode depending on the differing
constitutions of the sense-organs (I 91-99);
4. The mode depending on circumstance (I
100-117);
5. The mode depending on positions and
intervals and places (I 118-23);
6. The mode depending on admixtures (I
124-28);
7. The mode depending on the quantities and
preparations of existing things (I 129-34);
8. The mode deriving from relativity (I
135-40);
9. The mode depending on frequent or rare
encounters (I 141-44);
10. The mode depending on persuasions and customs and laws and
belief in myths and dogmatic suppositions (I 145-62).




The point of the Ten Modes is to provide us with propositions to use
against dogmatists who make their usual rash claims about the way the
world is. They exploit the relativity at the heart of appearances to
undermine these claims. There is a pattern underlying them, since they
each supply us with two propositions: *x* (a thing) appears
*F* in (situation) *S*, and *x* appears
*F*\* (i.e., something incompatible with *F*) in another
situation *S*\* (Annas and Barnes 1985: 24). Here are some
representative examples: 


* perfume appears very pleasant to humans but intolerable to
dung-beetles and bees (first mode, *PH* I 55);
* the same honey appears sweet to me, but bitter to people with
jaundice (fourth mode, *PH* I 101);
* the same tower appears from a distance round, but from close at
hand square (fifth mode, *PH* I 118);
* the poets represent the gods as committing adultery and indulging in homosexual
acts, while with us the law forbids these things (tenth mode, *PH* I 159).




What does the Skeptic *do* with the pair of propositions
generated by an application of the Ten Modes? Annas and Barnes suggest
the Skeptic propounds to himself instances of the following schema
(1985: 25):



> 
> There are oppositions:
> 
> 
> 
>  (1)
> 
> *x* appears *F* in *S*
>  (2)
> *x* appears *F*\* in *S*\*
> 
> but the appearances are equipollent, i.e.,
> 
> 
> 
> (3)
>  we cannot
> prefer *S* to *S*\* or *vice versa*;
> 
> Hence we arrive at suspension of judgment, i.e.,
> 
> 
> 
> (4)
>  we can
> neither affirm nor deny that *x* is really *F* or really
> *F*\*.
> 
> 




(For similar stories, see Hankinson 1995: 156; Striker 1993: 120.)
This is an unattractive interpretation as it stands. The Skeptic surely
cannot endorse premiss (3); this is a *dogma* of the forbidden
kind. Also, the Skeptic's suspension of judgment is not a
*conclusion* to any argument (in the logical sense of the term),
but something that happens to us when we are confronted by equal and
opposing arguments (see e.g., Barnes 1982: 59). So an alternative
interpretation would be to suppose that the Ten Modes are devices for
generating precisely such equal and opposing *arguments*, and
not merely a pair of propositions (Morison 2011: 287-93). What would
the two opposing arguments be? Schematically, they would be as
follows:



> 
> 
> 
> |  |  |
> | --- | --- |
> | *x* appears *F* in *S* | *x* appears *F*\* in *S*\* |
> | Therefore, *x* is *F* | Therefore, *x* is
>  *F*\* |
> 
> 
> 




In the case of the application of the fourth mode that we saw above,
it would generate these two arguments:



(1) Honey is perceived to be
sweet by healthy people
Therefore, honey is sweet
(2) Honey is perceived to be
bitter by jaundiced people
Therefore, honey is bitter



Arguments (1) and (2) are *opposing* arguments because their
conclusions conflict, and they are *equal* because (2) matches
(1) in argumentative strategy: 



> 
> The second argument makes exactly
> the same move as the first: where the first called upon a fact
> concerning how honey is perceived, so did the second. (Morison
> 2011: 292)
> 
> 



Suspension of judgment will follow for the Skeptic, since
he is confronted by two equal and opposing arguments (and because the
arguments are equal, he doesn't need to say to himself any
premiss such as premiss (3) of Annas and Barnes' argument given
above). Thus, the Ten Modes are devices for generating an equal and
opposing argument in response to a dogmatist's attempt to show
how things are based on how they are perceived in some situation or
other.


#### 3.5.2 The Five Modes (*PH* I 164-77)




Sextus' presentation of the Five Modes is brief and
elliptical, which is much to be regretted, since philosophically they
are the most interesting of all the modes. They are attributed here to
'the more recent Skeptics', but Diogenes Laertius
tells us that the modes were invented by Agrippa (DL IX 88), who
probably lived at the end of the first century BCE. Here is the
complete text of Sextus' presentation (*PH* I 164-9):



> 
> 
> 
> [164] The more recent Skeptics offer the following five modes of
> suspension of judgment: first, the mode deriving from dispute; second,
> the mode throwing one back *ad infinitum*; third, the mode
> deriving from relativity; fourth, the hypothetical mode; fifth, the
> reciprocal mode. [165] According to the mode deriving from dispute, we
> find that undecidable dissension about the matter proposed has come
> about both in ordinary life and among philosophers. Because of
> this we are not able either to choose or to rule out anything, and we
> end up with suspension of judgment. [166] In the mode deriving from
> infinite regress, we say that what is brought forward as a source of
> conviction for the matter proposed itself needs another such source,
> which itself needs another, and so *ad infinitum*, so that we
> have no point from which to begin to establish anything, and suspension
> of judgment follows. [167] In the mode deriving from relativity as we
> said above, the existing object appears to be such-and-such relative to
> the subject judging and to the things observed together with it, but we
> suspend judgment on what it is like in its nature. [168] We have the
> mode from hypothesis when the Dogmatists, being thrown back *ad
> infinitum*, begin from something which they do not establish but
> claim to assume simply and without proof in virtue of a concession.
> [169] The reciprocal mode occurs when what ought to be confirmatory of
> the object under investigation needs to be made convincing by the
> object under investigation; then, being unable to take either in order
> to establish the other, we suspend judgment about both.
> 
> 
> 




The reference in the discussion of the Mode of Relativity (I 167)
is a reference back to *PH* I 39 where Sextus tells us that all
Ten Modes of Aenesidemus can be put under the generic heading of
'relativity' (not to be confused with the eighth of the
Ten Modes, also known as the Mode of Relativity--although it
seems as though Sextus himself made precisely that confusion; Annas
and Barnes 1985: 142-3; for more on this difficult mode, see
Brennan and Lee 2014). So one of the Five Modes is an umbrella mode
for all of the Ten Modes, which, as we have seen, were best thought of
as devices for generating equal and opposing arguments to arguments
put forward by dogmatists which depend upon how things are perceived
in this or that situation.




The Mode of Dispute is also a device for generating equal and
opposing arguments, this time arguments which appeal to the authority
of either ordinary life or some philosopher. For an example of this
mode in operation, look at *PH* II 18: 



>  
> Of those who have
> discussed standards, some have asserted that there is one (e.g., the
> Stoics and certain others), some that there is not (among them,
> Xeniades of Corinth and Xenophanes of Colophon who says: 'but
> belief is found over all'); and we suspend judgment as to whether
> there is one or not.
> 
> 


 
 Sextus imagines someone arguing for the
philosophical position that there is a 'standard' (more on
that below) on the basis of the fact that the Stoics say there is one;
the Skeptic would counter that one could equally well argue that there
is no standard, since Xeniades and Xenophanes say there
*isn't* one. The mode of dispute codifies a tactic in the
Skeptic's ongoing fight with dogmatists: it is a weapon to be
deployed when the dogmatist employs an argument from authority. (For a
different view on what the mode of dispute is, see Barnes 1990a: ch.
1.)




It is the three remaining modes which are the most interesting. To see
how they work, consider the following fact. When the dogmatist
produces an argument for a claim, *P*, either he produces (or
gestures at) an argument which goes on forever--an infinite
regress--or not. To produce an infinite regress would mean that
in offering grounds for his claim *P*, he gives grounds,
*Q*, and then for that he offers grounds, *R*, and so on,
without ever repeating himself. If he *doesn't* produce an
infinite regress, he produces an argument which stops somewhere. In
other words, in offering grounds for his claim *P*, he gives
grounds, *Q*, and then for that he offers grounds, *R*,
etc. and this chain of grounds terminates somewhere. Now there are two
possibilities, either this chain terminates in the same claim with
which it started (*P*), or it doesn't. The first of those two
cases is a case of a circular argument--an argument for the
conclusion *P* which eventually appeals to *P* as its own
ground. The second case is a case of an argument which starts from
unsupported propositions (first principles, or axioms, perhaps), which
function as the 'anchor' for the proposition *P* we
are trying to prove. Thus, there are exactly three possibilities for
the form an argument propounded by a dogmatist might take: an infinite
regress, a reciprocal or circular argument, or one which terminates in
a hypothesis.




The usual interpretation of the modes of infinite regress,
reciprocality, and hypothesis, is that they codify Sextus'
*condemnation* of each of these three forms of argument. So, in
by far the best and fullest treatment of the Five Modes to date, Barnes
1990a, we are told that Sextus thinks that infinitely regressive
arguments are '*bad* arguments' (1990a: 43). To be
sure, 'Sextus usually leaves unspoken the thought that infinite
regressions are Bad Things' (44), but, says Barnes (ibid), Sextus
does offer us one reason for why they are bad: 'we have no point
from which to begin to establish anything' (*PH* I 166).
The interesting philosophical question here is this: why should
recognition of a bad argument for the conclusion that *P* encourage us to
*suspend judgment* on whether *P*? If I argue that the world will
end tomorrow on the grounds that Nostradamus says so, your recognition
that this is a terrible argument for its conclusion hardly makes you
*suspend judgment* on the question of whether the world will end
tomorrow! Barnes' answer is this: 



> 
> If the *only* consideration offered in support
> of a given claim leads to an unacceptable epistemological regression,
> then we must suspend judgment on the claim. (1990a: 42; Barnes'
> emphasis)
> 
> 


 
Barnes points out that Sextus often lays out an argument and then says
that the skeptic will suspend judgment *as far as that argument
goes* (oson
epi touto); the idea
is that Sextus uses that formula to capture the fact that *if
such-and-such an argument is all you had to go on*, you suspend
judgment. (See Frede 1979: 10-11; 1984: 133; and Brunschwig 1990
for more on this phrase.)




Thus Barnes thinks that the mode of Infinite Regress generates
suspension of judgment in the face of an infinitely regressive argument
by dint of the Skeptic's condemnation of that type of argument as
defective. Barnes extends this analysis to the cases of reciprocality
and hypothesis too, claiming that Sextus rejects reciprocal arguments
as '*bad* arguments' (1990a: 65; his emphasis) and
hypothetical arguments as 'valueless' (99). On this
interpretation, then, 



>  
> reciprocal arguments are bad arguments;
> and if the only reason we have for accepting or rejecting *P* is a bad
> argument, then we should neither accept nor reject *P* but suspend
> judgement; (65-6)
> 
> 
> 
> If the only thing that can be said for
> or against *P* is that some Dogmatist has hypothesized it, and if
> hypothesizing that *P* does not establish or warrant belief in *P*, then we
> should suspend judgement over *P*. (99)
> 
> 




Barnes' interpretation of what these three modes accomplish is
unsatisfactory for a couple of reasons. First, it seems very unlikely that
Sextus would allow himself to condemn these three types of
argumentation as bad or valueless: isn't this just the type of
*dogma* that everyone agrees the Skeptic can't have?
Second, condemning this or that argument that a Dogmatist gives for a
conclusion *P*, and suspending judgment accordingly on whether *P*, seems
to fall foul of the strictures that Barnes himself places on what
Sextan suspension of judgment consists in: after all, Sextus supposedly




>  assembles arguments in favour of an affirmative
> answer, and arguments in favour of a negative answer. The two sets of
> arguments exactly balance one another.
>  Epokhe [suspension of
> judgment] supervenes--epokhe directed towards
> the proposition that *P*. (Barnes 1982: 59)
> 
> 


 
 Condemning a dogmatist's
argument for *P* does not involve taking into account *any*
considerations for not-*P*. (Put it another way, Sextus seems to think
that Pyrrhonists suspend judgment in the face of an argument for *P* and
an *opposing* argument for not-*P*--not when they face an
argument for *P* and considerations which *undercut* that
argument--for this distinction in epistemology, see
entries on Defeasible Reasoning
and Evidence.) Third, Sextus never
comes out and says that reciprocal and hypothetical arguments are
actually bad arguments. In fact, strictly speaking, he doesn't
even say that infinitely regressive arguments are bad; he merely says
that in such an argument, 'we have no point from which to begin
to establish anything' (*PH* I 166), which could be taken
as a straightforward *description* of what an infinitely
regressive argument is, rather than philosophical *condemnation*
of it.




There are several responses possible to these objections. One could
claim that Sextus is simply confused; his employment of the Five Modes
is incompatible with his brand of Pyrrhonian Skepticism (no doubt
because they derived from Agrippa and weren't original to
Sextus). Or, in response to the first objection, one could deny that
Sextus is condemning these types of argument *in propria
persona*, and that he instead is taking the criticisms levelled by
certain dogmatists against these three types of arguments and using
them against those dogmatists who persist in propounding arguments in
those forms: Sextus' Five Modes are 



> 
> a way of showing his
> dogmatic opponents that *they* ought to suspend judgment, given
> their epistemological standards. (Striker 2004: 16)
> 
> 



Another
option would be to take the second objection seriously, and seek an
interpretation according to which these three modes function like the
other two members of the Five (and like the Ten Modes) as devices for
generating equal and opposing arguments (an approach suggested by
Morison 2011: 293-4, and worked out in detail in Morison 2018). This latter approach seems promising in the light
of those texts where Sextus explicitly envisages the Skeptic responding
to the Dogmatists' use of hypotheses by coming up with opposing
hypotheses which would in turn generate opposing conclusions
(*PH* I 173; *M* VIII 370; *M* III 8; *M*
VII 315; etc.; see Barnes 1990a: 100-109).




Sextus himself thought that the Five Modes had universal
application: 'That every object of investigation can be referred
to these modes we shall briefly show as follows' (*PH* I
169). Unfortunately, what follows (*PH* I 170-77) is far from
clear, and doesn't take the form one expects, namely the
observation that any argument whatsoever must have one of the three
forms of hypothesis, reciprocality, or infinite regression. That
stretch of text remains mysterious.


#### 3.5.3 The Two Modes (*PH* I 178-9)




The Two Modes probably also come from Agrippa (Barnes 1990b: 213),
and represent an attempt 'to have a neat sceptical system
compounded out of three of the Five [Modes]: dispute, reciprocity and
regression' (Barnes 1990b: 215). But Barnes finds the omission of
the Mode of Hypothesis philosophically troubling, given that it
'is a mode of the first importance to the Pyrrhonists'
(1990a: 119), and most discussions of the Five Modes mention the system
of the Two Modes only in passing, especially since Sextus never employs
them explicitly during his discussions of dogmatic philosophical
positions.


#### 3.5.4 The Eight Modes (*PH* I 180-86)




For these, see Hankinson 1995: 213-17.



> 
> They are modes in accordance
> with which we bring the Dogmatists to a halt by raising puzzles about
> their particular causal explanations--we do this because they
> pride themselves on these especially. (*PH* I 180)
> 
> 



These
modes suggest lines of attack that the Skeptic could adopt in response
to those arguments of the Dogmatists which attempt to discern causes.
For instance, 



> 
> according to the second [mode], some people often
> give an explanation in only one way, although there is a rich abundance
> enabling them to explain the object of investigation in a variety of
> ways. (*PH* I 181)
> 
> 



 The idea here is that the Skeptic can
apply pressure to the Dogmatist's attempted explanation by
pointing out that there is an equally good alternative explanation.
Sextus himself suggests that the Eight Modes are superseded by the Five
Modes (*PH* I 185), and like the Two Modes, Sextus does not
employ them explicitly during the course of his writings.


### 3.6 The Skeptical Phrases (*PH* I 187-209)




As a Skeptic, what do you say when suspension of judgment comes upon
you in the face of all the arguments and counterarguments you frame in
the course of your investigations? Sextus offers the following
options:


1. 'No more' (*PH* I 188-91), which is an
expression intended to capture the Skeptic's state of mind when
'I do not know which of these things I should assent to and which
not assent to' (191) (for extended discussion, see Castagnoli
2010: 256-77);
2. 'Perhaps', 'Maybe', and
'Possibly' (194-5), short for 'perhaps it is and
perhaps it isn't' (194);
3. 'I suspend judgment' (196), capturing the
Skeptic's state of mind when 'I cannot say which of the
things proposed I should find convincing and which I should not find
convincing' (ibid);
4. 'I determine nothing' (197), capturing the fact that
'I now feel in such a way as neither to posit dogmatically nor to
reject any of the things falling under this investigation'
(ibid);
5. 'Everything is undetermined' (198-9), short for
'Those of the matter investigated by the Dogmatists which I have
considered appear such to me that none of them seems to me to exceed in
convincingness or lack of convincingness what conflicts with it'
(199);
6. 'Everything is inapprehensible' (200), short for
'I suppose that up to now I have not apprehended any of these
things because of the equipollence of their opposites'
(ibid);
7. 'I have no apprehension' and 'I do not
apprehend' (201);
8. 'Opposed to every account there is an equal account'
(202-5), short for 'To every account I have scrutinized which
purports to establish something in dogmatic fashion, there appears to
me to be opposed another account, purporting to establish something in
dogmatic fashion, equal to it in convincingness or lack of
convincingness' (203).




Sextus makes clear that in uttering these phrases, the Skeptic is
engaging in a particular form of 'non-assertion'
(*PH* I 192-3; see Stough 1984). The phrases all represent how
things appear to the Skeptic, so, for instance, Sextus insists that
when the Skeptic says 'I suspend judgment', he reports only
how the arguments appear to him: 'we say what appears to us about
them, when they make an impression on us' (196). This might
appear to settle the question of the beliefs of the Skeptic, since it
does seem as though the Skeptic, in saying what appears to him, states
the *content* of these appearances, and not just that things
appear thus-and-so (see above, 3.4). However, Sextus also tells us
that the Skeptic 'takes 'is' in the sense of
'appears to me'' (I 198; cf. I 135), so the question
is not so easily settled after all. One thing is worth noting: if Frede
is right about the beliefs of the Skeptic, then one of the beliefs of
the Skeptic is that 'Everything is inapprehensible' (I
200). If this is the kind of belief that the Skeptic can have, then it
can't be a belief held as a matter of assembling reasons on
either side, but must instead be a belief that he has on the basis of
his multiple *experiences* of coming to suspension of judgment,
rather than on the basis of having a philosophical argument to that
effect (Frede 1984: 138-9). This opens up the possibility that the
Skeptic can in fact have the belief that Myles Burnyeat says is
necessary for the Skeptic to attain tranquillity
 (see above, 3.3).


### 3.7 Difference between Pyrrhonism and other schools (*PH* I 210-41)




Sextus differentiates Pyrrhonian Skepticism from the philosophy of
Heraclitus (210-12), Democritus (213-14), the Cyrenaics (215) (see
especially Fine 2000, 2003), and Protagoras (216-19), from Academic
Skepticism (220-35) (see Striker 1981, 2010; Ioppolo 2009), and Medical
Empiricism (see Allen 2010). As stated above, this last section is
particularly puzzling, since Sextus, who was part of the Empiricist
School of Medicine (hence his name), seems rather to align Pyrrhonian
Skepticism with the Methodist School of Medicine, since the form of
Empiricism associated with the Empirical school 'makes
affirmations about the inapprehensibility of unclear matters'
(*PH* I 236)--presumably the sorts of theory-laden
affirmations which the Skeptic would not allow himself
 (see 3.6 above)--whereas the Methodists adhere more to the fourfold observances
of everyday life that Sextus discussed in I 21-4
 (see 3.4 above). To
mitigate the tension, Allen suggests that 'Sextus' remarks
can be read as criticizing a certain tendency in Empiricism rather than
an unqualified repudiation of the school' (2010: 246), stressing
that Sextus' endorsement of Methodism is not as wholehearted as
it might seem: 




>  
> the medical persuasion of the Methodics has some
> affinity with Scepticism--not absolutely but more so than the
> other medical schools and in comparison with them. (*PH* I 241)
> 
> 
> 


## 4. *PH* II and III; *M* VII-XI



*PH* I is like a manifesto: it tells you what Pyrrhonism is
and why it is preferable to other philosophical persuasions. By
contrast, *PH* II and III show Sextus putting into practice the
skeptical skill: they are stuffed full of dogmatic arguments
accompanied by skeptical counterarguments (and sometimes just skeptical
counterarguments on their own--see below).




The contents of *PH* II and III closely shadow those of
*M* VII-XI. For a table comparing *M* VII and VIII with
*PH* II (and relevant passages in *M* I-VI), see Bett
2005: 193-5; for a similar table comparing *M* IX and X to
*PH* III (and relevant passages in *M* I-VI), see Bett
2012: 161-64; for discussion of the comparisons between *M* XI
to *PH* III (and relevant passages in *M* I-VI), see Bett
1997. To get an idea of the scope of *PH* II and III, and
thereby the corresponding parts of *M*, here is the list of
contents of *PH* II and III (based on Annas and Barnes 2000: 66
and 142):


* *PH* II 1-12: Can Skeptics investigate what the Dogmatists
talk about?
* *PH* II 13: Where should the investigation of Dogmatism
begin?
* *PH* II 14-17: Standards (or criteria)
* *PH* II 18-21: Is there a standard of truth?
* *PH* II 22-47: That by which
* *PH* II 48-69: That through which
* *PH* II 70-79: That in virtue of which
* *PH* II 80-84: Truths and Truth
* *PH* II 85-96: Is anything true by nature?
* *PH* II 97-103: Signs
* *PH* II 104-133: Are there any indicative signs?
* *PH* II 134-143: Proof
* *PH* II 144-192: Are there any proofs?
* *PH* II 193-203: Deductions
* *PH* II 204: Induction
* *PH* II 205-12: Definitions
* *PH* II 213: Division
* *PH* II 214: The division of a word into significations
* *PH* II 215-18: Whole and part
* *PH* II 219-27: Genera and species
* *PH* II 228: Common attributes
* *PH* II 229-59: Sophisms
* *PH* III 1: The part concerned with physics; Active
principles
* *PH* III 2-12: God
* *PH* III 13-16: Causes
* *PH* III 17-29: Is anything a cause of anything?
* *PH* III 30-37: Material Principles
* *PH* III 38-55: Are bodies apprehensible?
* *PH* III 56-62: Blending
* *PH* III 63: Motion
* *PH* III 64-81: Local motion
* *PH* III 82-4: Increase and decrease
* *PH* III 85-96: Subtraction and addition
* *PH* III 97: Transposition
* *PH* III 98-101: Whole and part
* *PH* III 102-108: Natural change
* *PH* III 109-114: Generation and destruction
* *PH* III 115-18: Rest
* *PH* III 119-35: Place
* *PH* III 136-50: Time
* *PH* III 151-67: Number
* *PH* III 168: The ethical part of philosophy
* *PH* III 169-78: Good, bad and indifferent things
* *PH* III 179-238: Is anything by nature good, bad or
indifferent?
* *PH* III 239-249: Is there an expertise in living?
* *PH* III 250-51: Is expertise in living found among
people?
* *PH* III 252: Can expertise in living be taught?
* *PH* III 253-58: Is anything taught?
* *PH* III 259-65: Are there any teachers and learners?
* *PH* III 265-73: Is there a way of learning?
* *PH* III 273-9: Does expertise in living benefit its
possessor?
* *PH* III 280-81: Why do Skeptics sometimes deliberately
propound arguments of feeble plausibility?




Notice the division of the discussions into the traditional Stoic
division of philosophy (Ierodiakonou 1993) into Logic (*PH* II),
Physics (*PH* III 1-167), and Ethics (*PH* III
168-279).


### 4.1 The criterion of truth




The most important part of *PH* II is the long discussion
of the 'criterion' (or 'standard', as Annas and
Barnes translate it) of truth (see especially Striker 1974: 1990b;
Brunschwig 1988). Not only is it philosophically extremely rich,
but it plays a crucial role in the dialectic of the contemporary scholarly debate as to
whether the Pyrrhonian skeptic can have beliefs. The notion of a
criterion of truth was central to the epistemologies of both the Stoics
and Epicureans:



>  
> The problem of the criterion of truth... is
> the problem of how we discover or ascertain the truth--the truth
> that we need to find in order to attain knowledge. (Striker
> 1990b: 151)
> 
> 


 
 The Epicureans and the Stoics had slightly different
candidates for what the criteria of truth would be.



>  
> Epicurus' criteria were taken to be primitive truths, that
> is, ones that had to be accepted without proof or further
> argument; (Striker 1990b: 152)
> 
> 


 
these are the truths delivered by
sense-impressions, preconceptions, and feelings (DL X 31), which would
then be used to work out the truth of non-primitive propositions. The
Stoics thought that the criteria of truth were special kinds of
impressions, so-called 'cognitive impressions', which were
of such a nature so as to guarantee their own truth (roughly speaking,
they 'come about from what is' (DL VII 46) and are clear
and distinct (see Frede 1983: 164)); they could also be used to work
out the truth of other, unclear, matters. These two conceptions of the
criterion, the Epicurean and the Stoic, were christened the
'adelic' and 'prodelic' conceptions by
Brunschwig (1988: 230-233). (The terms 'adelic' and
'prodelic' derive from the Greek words
*adelon* and *prodelon*, meaning
'unclear' and 'clear' respectively; thus, the
'adelic' conception of the criterion of truth is the one
which emphasizes the role of the criterion in the discovery of
*unclear* things, whereas the 'prodelic' conception
is the one which emphasizes that those truths delivered by the
criterion are *clearly* true.) Brunschwig shows in detail that
Sextus conflates the two in his arguments against the criterion,
although he acknowledges that this conflation does not dent the force
of the objections that Sextus brings.




Some of the flavour of Sextus' objections to the criterion can
be gleaned from the following passage (*PH* II 74-5):



> 
> 
> [74] Nor can we say that the soul apprehends external
> existing objects through its sensory feelings inasmuch as the feelings
> of the senses are similar to the external existing objects. For how
> will the intellect know whether the feelings of the senses are like the
> sense-objects, given that it does not itself come into contact with the
> external objects and that the senses make clear to it not the nature of
> these objects but their own feelings, as we deduced from the modes of
> suspension? [75] Just as someone who does not know Socrates but has
> looked at a picture of him does not know whether the picture is like
> Socrates, so the intellect, studying the feelings of the senses but not
> observing the external objects, will not know whether the feelings of
> the senses are like the external existing objects. Therefore it cannot
> rely on similarity to judge them.
> 
> 
> 




Roughly speaking, Sextus is pointing out to the Epicureans and the
Stoics, both of whom attach great weight to the deliverance of the
senses, that there is no way that one's intellect can distinguish
amongst impressions those ones which are faithful to the way the world
is: one only has access to one's impressions, and not the
external world, so one cannot discern which of one's impressions
are faithful to the external world, and assent to them alone. The
intellect is impotent when it comes to deciding whether perceptual
impressions are to be an adequate criterion. (Sextus might be
misunderstanding the Stoic position here; see Frede 1983.)




At the end of Sextus' discussion in *PH* II, he clearly
signals, as one would expect, that he suspends judgment on whether
there are criteria of truth:



> 
> You must realize that it is not our
> intention to assert that standards of truth are unreal (that would be
> dogmatic); rather, since the Dogmatists seem plausibly to have
> established that there is a standard of truth, we have set up
> plausible-seeming arguments in opposition to them, affirming neither
> that they are true nor that they are more plausible than those on the
> contrary side, but concluding to suspension of judgement because of the
> apparently equal plausibility of these arguments and those produced by
> the Dogmatists. (*PH* II 79; cf. *M* VII 444)
> 
> 




How does Sextus' treatment of the criterion contribute to the
debate between scholars over the question of whether the Skeptic has
any beliefs? The answer is that both Jonathan Barnes and Myles Burnyeat
have used Sextus' discussion of the criterion as a means of
securing the conclusion that the Skeptic has no beliefs at all. Recall
that in *PH* I 13, Sextus says there are two meanings of the
word *dogma*, according to the first of which the Skeptic
*does* have *dogmata*, and according to the second of
which, the Skeptic does *not* have *dogmata*. All
commentators are in agreement that the second kind of *dogma* is
roughly to be understood as a 'philosophico-scientific'
opinion or tenet (Barnes 1982: 67), even if the parties to the debate
have a slightly different understanding of what a
'philosophico-scientific tenet' is (Morison 2011: 265-7).
The question is what kind of belief (if any kind at all) the first kind
of *dogma* is. According to Barnes and Burnyeat, this first kind
of *dogma* is something like the Skeptic's acknowledgment
of his occurrent state of being appeared to in a certain way. Clearly,
according to Barnes and Burnyeat, this leaves a gap in Sextus'
presentation: 



>  what attitude does he take to ordinary beliefs? The
> sentences of breakfast-time, bath-time, and bed-time--'The
> butter's hard', 'The water's cold', 'The
> springs are protruding'--do not express scientific
>  dogmata, nor
> yet do they serve in avowals. If we are concerned to discover the
> scope of epokhe in
> *PH*, it is precisely such humdrum sentences which will most
> exercise us; yet of them Sextus says nothing. (Barnes 1982:
> 75-6)
> 
> 




Both Barnes and Burnyeat end up claiming that these ordinary
everyday beliefs actually end up being discarded along with the
*dogmata* in the second sense. They argue this by claiming that
Sextus does not have a criterion of truth: the Skeptic 



>  needs a criterion of truth, to determine which [of
> conflicting appearances] he should accept. But the sceptic then
> argues, often at some length, that there is no intellectually
> satisfying criterion we can trust and use--this is the real
> backbone of the discussion. (Burnyeat 1980: 29)
> 
> 



Barnes puts it as follows: 



> 
> we cannot *affirm*
> that the water is tepid unless we have a criterion of truth--a
> way of judging that the 
> pathos with which
> the water affects us corresponds to the actual state of the
> water; (1982: 77) 
> 
> 
> 
> But the thesis that there is a
> criterion of truth is itself a
> dogma--indeed, it is a perfect specimen of those philosophico-scientific
> tenets which the Greeks called
> dogmata; (78)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Ordinary beliefs are not
> dogmata... Nonetheless, in
> rejecting dogmata the Pyrrhonist
> must reject ordinary beliefs; for the possession of ordinary beliefs
> presupposes the possession of at least one
> dogma--the
> dogma that there is a criterion of
> truth. (ibid) (Cf. Burnyeat 1984: 115n. 36)
> 
> 




Barnes' argument, however, is fallacious (for more detailed
discussion, see Schwab 2013, whose main points are summarised here).
There are two fundamental flaws. First, the Hellenistic theory of the
criterion of truth was never supposed to be a theory about how
*beliefs* in general are formed, only beliefs which meet the
condition of being suitable for conferring knowledge. But second, and
more importantly, one needs to distinguish between *suspending
judgment on whether there is* a criterion of truth, and *failing
to have* a criterion of truth. Since the deliverances of the
natural capacity of perception are criteria of truth according to the
Epicureans, there is nothing one can do, short of putting one's
eyes out, to bring it about that one lacks this criterion of truth;
merely suspending judgment on whether there is such a thing as a
criterion of truth won't do the job. Similarly, since it is
cognitive impressions, according to the Stoics, which are criteria of
truth, there is nothing one can do to bring it about that one lacks
these criteria of truth, short of damaging one's capacity for
forming impressions (one's *phantasia*); merely suspending
judgment on whether there is a criterion of truth won't do the
job. Barnes actually acknowledges this flaw in his argument in a
footnote: 




> 
> The Pyrrhonian may *possess* a criterion even
> if he himself does not *believe* that he does; and in that case
> he *is* in a position to judge that *p* (1982: 78n. 76)
> 
> 




In short, Barnes' and Burnyeat's appeal to the
discussion of the criterion of truth is unconvincing as an attempt to
show that for the Pyrrhonian Skeptic, ordinary beliefs are off limits.
The urbane interpretation is still standing.


### 4.2 Negative dogmatism in *M* VII-XI?




Another pressing philosophical issue raised by *M* VII-IX
is the alleged difference in the skepticism evident in *M* XI
('Against the Ethicists') as compared to *PH*. 
There can be no doubt that in *M*, Sextus is much more willing
to give the counterargument to the Dogmatists' positions without
laying out the corresponding positive arguments that the Dogmatists
gives. This lends an air of negative dogmatism to *M*. However,
this is merely stylistic: there is also no doubt that Sextus frequently
emphasizes in *M* that we shouldn't take his arguments
dogmatically, e.g., at *M* VII 444; VIII 159, 476 (Frede 1973:
808), or that the upshot of his argumentation is that one should
suspend judgment e.g., *M* VII 443; VIII 298; IX 137: 191-2; X
168 (Bett 1997: xxix). But there are some passages in 'Against
the Ethicists' which are harder, at least at first sight, to
bring into line with the doctrine of suspension of judgment in
*PH*. Sextus stresses in the ethical section of *PH* III
that one should suspend judgment as to whether anything is good or bad
by nature (e.g., *PH* III 235), and so it is no surprise that
'*M* XI argues for the conclusion that *nothing* is
by nature good or bad' (Bett 1997: xiv)--so much one would
expect by way of counterarguments to the Dogmatists' positive
arguments. But Sextus gets perilously close to saying that the skeptic
should *embrace* the conclusions of these counterarguments (Bett
1997: xiv): 


* the freedom 'from the trouble associated with the opinion
that something bad or good is present' will 'come to him
from his *thinking* nothing good or bad by nature'
(*M* XI 118; my emphasis);
* 'when reason has *established* that none of these
things is by nature good or by nature bad, there will be a release
from disturbance and a peaceful life will await us' (*M*
XI 130; my emphasis);
* 'It will only be possible to avoid this [sc. trouble], then,
if we *show* to the person who is disturbed on account of his
avoidance of the bad or his pursuit of the good, that there is not
anything either good or bad by nature' (*M* XI 140; my
emphasis).



 The way to avoid saddling Sextus with an inconsistency is to
see that Sextus is not suggesting that the Skeptic must
*believe* that nothing is good or bad by nature, but rather that
the Skeptic *must have equally convincing arguments up his sleeve
that conclude* that nothing is by nature good or bad--once
we have managed that, 'there will be a release from disturbance
and a peaceful life will await us'. (For pushback against this, see Bett 2018: 13n. 24.)


## 5. *M* I-VI




The six books of *M* I-VI, taken together, constitute an
attack on the liberal arts. For their general aim, see Barnes 1988. The
most important feature of *M* I-VI, which can be misleading, is
that in them, there is often the appearance of negative dogmatism, i.e.,
of claims that this or that art doesn't exist. Take for example
*M* I 90: 'So let this stand to show the non-existence of
grammar, at least on the grammarians' conception of it'. Bett 2018: 11-15 urges us to view such moments as traces of a previous stage of Pyrrhonism. Alternatively,
rather than interpret this as occasional departures from Sextus'
over-arching plan to induce suspension of judgment (which is in any
case still present in texts such as *M* I 6), one could take
these apparent statements of negative dogmatism to be 'the
equipollent counterpoise to the technicians' arguments'
(Blank 1998: l, summarising Barnes 1988: 72-7). (See above 4.2 for a
similar story about *M* XI.)



I.
 *M* I 1-40 is a highly general introduction to all six
works, and then *Against the Grammarians* starts properly at I
41. For this work, see Blank 1998. *Against the Grammarians* is
much the longest of the six books, standing at 320 sections. There is
discussion of the question 'What is Grammar?' (57-89), an
attack on the 'expert' part of grammar, i.e., the part
concerned with letters, parts of speech, etc. (99-247), and an attack
on the part of grammar which concerns poets and prose-writers
(270-320), i.e., the part which deals with the interpretation of poetry,
and which Sextus argues is useless because it makes no contribution to
human flourishing.
II.
 *Against the Rhetoricians* is shorter, at only 113
sections. It considers various definitions of what rhetoric is, what
benefit rhetoric is to individuals or to cities, what the goal of
rhetoric is, and what the parts of rhetoric are, all with a view to
attacking its status as an art.
III.
 *Against the Geometers* stands at 116 sections. It takes
geometers to task for their employment of hypotheses in establishing
theorems, and then attacks the hypotheses themselves, such as the
definitions of body, point, line (particularly the definition of the
line as 'length without breadth'), and angle. For this
work, see Dye and Vitrac 2009.
IV.
 *Against the Arithmeticians* has a mere 34 sections. This
work outlines the extraordinary views of the Pythagoreans concerning
the power of numbers, and then seeks to undermine them by arguing that
Platonic notion of a monad or unit ('the One') is
'inconceivable' (17), adding as an aside that the notion of
a dyad doesn't fare much better (21-22), and by attacking the
principles of addition and subtraction (23-33). 'But if number is
conceived as subsisting through addition, as I said, and subtraction,
and we have shown that neither of these exists, one must declare that
number is nothing' (34). The work thus has a clear structure:
presentation of arguments in favour of the existence of numbers (from
the Pythagoreans), followed by presentation of arguments against the
existence of numbers.
V.
 *Against the Astrologers*, in 106 sections. Sextus attacks
not astronomy (1), which is one thing the term 'astrology'
referred to in classical times, but 'the casting of
nativities' (Bury's translation of the term
genethlialogia
in section 2) and horoscopes. The first half of the work involves
Sextus laying out the basics of the Chaldean theory of prognostication,
and the second half contains his counterarguments, including
fascinating observations about the difficulty of establishing when
someone is conceived, the difficulty of establishing when they are born
('is it when the child begins to emerge into the cold air, or
when it has emerged a little, or when it is deposited on the
ground?', *M* V 65), and the difficulty of using accurate
time-keeping devices to detect which astronomical phenomena are
occurring at what time.
VI.
 *Against the Musicians* is in 68 sections. For this work,
see Greaves 1986; Bett 2013. Sextus attacks the standing of music as a science, by
questioning whether it is useful for happiness (7-37) and by
questioning whether it is a science at all (38-68), just as he did in
the case of grammar (a comparison Sextus himself makes at section 4).
In the first part, Sextus assembles arguments in favour of music being
useful for happiness (7-18) and arguments against (19-37); the second
part consists wholly of the arguments against the existence of music as
a suitable subject for theoretical discourse, with Sextus leaving
unstated the arguments in favour.

## 6. References for the later history of Sextus' writings




For the fascinating story of the rediscovery of Sextus'
writings in the Renaissance, see Floridi 2002 and 2010.