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Scepticism without Theory

Review of Metaphysics 41 (3):547 - 588 (1988)

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  1. A Pyrrhonian Interpretation of Hume on Assent.Donald L. M. Baxter - 2018 - In Diego E. Machuca & Baron Reed (eds.), Skepticism: From Antiquity to the Present. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 380-394.
    How is it possible for David Hume to be both withering skeptic and constructive theorist? I recommend an answer like the Pyrrhonian answer to the question how it is possible to suspend all judgment yet engage in active daily life. Sextus Empiricus distinguishes two kinds of assent: one suspended across the board and one involved with daily living. The first is an act of will based on appreciation of reasons; the second is a causal effect of appearances. Hume makes the (...)
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  • (1 other version)Pyrrhonism and the Law of Non-Contradiction.Diego E. Machuca - 2011 - In Pyrrhonism in Ancient, Modern, and Contemporary Philosophy. Springer.
    The question of whether the Pyrrhonist adheres to certain logical principles, criteria of justification, and inference rules is of central importance for the study of Pyrrhonism. Its significance lies in that, whereas the Pyrrhonist describes his philosophical stance and argues against the Dogmatists by means of what may be considered a rational discourse, adherence to any such principles, criteria, and rules does not seem compatible with the radical character of his skepticism. Hence, if the Pyrrhonist does endorse them, one must (...)
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  • Pyrrhonian Skepticism Meets Speech-Act Theory.John Turri - 2012 - International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 2 (2):83-98.
    This paper applies speech-act theory to craft a new response to Pyrrhonian skepticism and diagnose its appeal. Carefully distinguishing between different levels of language-use and noting their interrelations can help us identify a subtle mistake in a key Pyrrhonian argument.
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  • The Pyrrhonian Argument from Possible Disagreement.Diego E. Machuca - 2011 - Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 93 (2):148-161.
    In his Pyrrhonian Outlines , Sextus Empiricus employs an argument based upon the possibility of disagreement in order to show that one should not assent to a Dogmatic claim to which at present one cannot oppose a rival claim. The use of this argument seems to be at variance with the Pyrrhonian stance, both because it does not seem to accord with the definition of Skepticism and because the argument appears to entail that the search for truth is doomed to (...)
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  • Diez estudios de filosofía helenística y romana. La escuela italiana contemporánea.Maso Stefano (ed.) - 2022 - Madrid: UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE EDUCACIÓN A DISTANCIA.
    En la obra que ahora presentamos al público hispanoparlante, reunimos diez trabajos previamente publicados en lengua italiana que abordan importantes cuestiones que ocupan en este momento a los estudiosos de la filosofía helenística y romana. Sus autores son diez de los más importantes especialistas italianos actuales en el estudio de este periodo histórico.
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  • The systematic use of the five modes for the suspension of judgement.Daniel Vázquez - 2019 - Manuscrito 42 (3):47-85.
    The five modes are a list of tools used by ancient sceptics to guide dogmatic people towards suspending their judgement. Attributed to Agrippa and used extensively by Sextus Empiricus, these modes are still widely discussed today by epistemologists and specialists in ancient philosophy. Scholars disagree, however, on how to understand the way the five modes are used together and what the logical form of the sceptical strategy behind their deployment is. This paper offers a reconstruction of the system of the (...)
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  • Skepticism and Disagreement.Markus Lammenranta - 2011 - In Diego E. Machuca (ed.), Pyrrhonism in Ancient, Modern, and Contemporary Philosophy. Springer. pp. 203-216.
    Though ancient Pyrrhonian skepticism is apparently based on disagreement, this aspect of skepticism has been widely neglected in contemporary discussion on skepticism. The paper provides a rational reconstruction of the skeptical argument from disagreement that can be found in the books of Sextus Empiricus. It is argued that this argument forms a genuine skeptical paradox that has no fully satisfactory resolution. All attempts to resolve it make knowledge or justified belief either intuitively too easy or impossible.
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  • Nāgārjuna’s Pañcakoṭi, Agrippa’s Trilemma, and the Uses of Skepticism.Ethan A. Mills - 2016 - Comparative Philosophy 7 (2):44-66.
    While the contemporary problem of the criterion raises similar epistemological issues as Agrippa’s Trilemma in ancient Pyrrhonian skepticism, the consideration of such epistemological questions has served two different purposes. On one hand, there is the purely practical purpose of Pyrrhonism, in which such questions are a means to reach suspension of judgment, and on the other hand, there is the theoretical purpose of contemporary epistemologists, in which these issues raise theoretical problems that drive the search for theoretical resolution. In classical (...)
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  • Agrippan Pyrrhonism and the Challenge of Disagreement.Diego E. Machuca - 2015 - Journal of Philosophical Research 40:23-39.
    This paper argues for the following three claims. First, the Agrippan mode from disagreement does not play a secondary role in inducing suspension of judgment. Second, the Pyrrhonist is not committed to the criteria of justification underlying the Five Modes of Agrippa, which nonetheless does not prevent him from non-doxastically assenting to them. And third, some recent objections to Agrippan Pyrrhonism raised by analytic epistemologists and experimental philosophers fail to appreciate the Pyrrhonist's ad hominem style of argumentation and the real (...)
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  • Ancient skepticism.Leo Groarke - forthcoming - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • Skepticism and internalism.Halvor Nordby - 2009 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 39 (1):pp. 35-54.
    The skeptical Dream argument appeals to the possibility of dreaming. The skeptic holds that states of being awake are subjectively indistinguishable from possible dream states and that this means that we do not know that we are awake. This, the skeptic then claims, means that we have to accept that we do not have external world knowledge.It is natural to assume that there must be a connection between the Dream argument and epistemic internalism, the view that a belief is justified (...)
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  • Hegel’s Criticism of Pyrrhonism.Joris Spigt - 2024 - International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 14 (1):1-27.
    This paper presents Hegel’s criticism of two central ideas of Pyrrhonism: the importance of stating only how things appear and Pyrrhonism as a way of life. After providing a sketch of the main features of Pyrrhonism, the paper lays out and critically evaluates Hegel’s largely unexamined argument against Pyrrhonism in his early 1802 essay on skepticism. Hegel claims that the Pyrrhonist’s appeal to appearance renders Pyrrhonism philosophically vacuous: insofar as Pyrrhonism merely describes the subjective contents of the Pyrrhonist’s mind, it (...)
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  • Cicero’s Aspirationalist Radical Skepticism in the Academica.Brian Ribeiro - 2022 - History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 25 (2):309-326.
    I defend the view that Cicero writes the Academica from the perspective of an aspirationalist radical skeptic. In section 2 I examine the textual evidence regarding the nature of Cicero’s skeptical stance in the Academica. In section 3 I consider the textual evidence from the Academica for attributing aspirationalism to Cicero. Finally, in section 4 I argue that while aspirationalist radical skepticism is open to a number of philosophical objections, none of those objections is decisive.
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  • The Elusive Third Way: The Pyrrhonian Illumination in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty.Roger E. Eichorn - 2020 - Elenchos: Rivista di Studi Sul Pensiero Antico 41 (2):329-362.
    I argue in this paper that, like the Pyrrhonism of Sextus Empiricus, Wittgenstein’s response to negative–dogmatic skepticism in On Certainty turns on the attempt to free us from the demands of traditional philosophy and is therefore not a philosophical position, strictly speaking. Rather, it is a therapeutic metaphilosophy designed to bring into view (i.e., to illumine) the relationship between our everyday epistemic practices and those of philosophy such that we simultaneously come to recognize (a) what I call the pragmatic–transcendental self–standingness (...)
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  • Is Justification Dialectical?Jan Willem Wieland - 2013 - International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 3 (3):182-201.
    Much of present-day epistemology is divided between internalists and externalists. Different as these views are, they have in common that they strip justification from its dialectical component in order to block the skeptic’s argument from disagreement. That is, they allow that one may have justified beliefs even if one is not able to defend it against challenges and resolve the disagreements about them. Lammenranta (2008, 2011a) recently argued that neither internalism nor externalism convinces if we consider the argument in its (...)
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  • Defense of Authentic Neo-Pyrrhonism. Smith, P. (2022). Sextus Empiricus’ Neo-Pyrrhonism: Skepticism as a Rationally Ordered Experience. Cham: Springer. [REVIEW]Oleksandr Lukovyna - 2022 - Sententiae 41 (2):124-143.
    Review of Smith, P. (2022). Sextus Empiricus’ Neo-Pyrrhonism: Skepticism as a Rationally Ordered Experience. Cham: Springer.
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  • Hegel's Critique of Ancient Skepticism.John Wood - unknown
    Recent work on the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel has emphasized his interest in skeptical concerns. These contemporary scholars argue that, despite common opinions to the contrary, Hegel actually had a very keen interest in skepticism, one that informed and motivated much of his overall project. While I welcome this recent literature, I argue here that contemporary scholars have overemphasized the importance of skepticism for Hegel. By looking closely at Hegel’s arguments against skepticism in the Phenomenology of Spirit, I argue that (...)
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  • On the Motivations of a Skeptic, and Her Practice.Bryan Maddox - 2016 - Peitho 7 (1):229-248.
    The aim of Pyrrhonism is deceptively simple: to achieve a state of ataraxia, of tranquility and relief from perturbation. But what is the extent of the ataraxia envisioned? Must the Skeptic admit a hard distinction between disturbances apparently related to belief and there­fore subject to suspension of judgement, and extra-doxastic disturbanc­es that are beyond the scope of the Skeptical method? In this paper I examine passages from Sextus’s Outlines of Pyrrhonism that indicate that such a distinction may not stand up (...)
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  • The logical structure of Michael Williams's response to skepticism.Roger E. Eichorn - 2023 - Metaphilosophy 54 (1):87-105.
    This paper aims to reconstruct the overarching logical structure of Michael Williams's response to philosophical skepticism. One goal is to forestall overhasty dismissals of his position based on failures to understand the logical relations among his various anti‐skeptical claims and arguments. In many places, Williams suggests that the strategy he calls “theoretical diagnosis” is sufficient to defuse the skeptical challenge and that, accordingly, his anti‐skeptical strategy consists solely in developing theoretical diagnoses. According to the account developed here, this claim is (...)
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