METAPHILOSOPHY Vol. 21, No. 3, July 1YYO 0026-1068 $2.00

THE ANCIENT SCEPTIC’S WAY OF LIFE

DONALD MORRISON

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Ancient scepticism can be described in various ways. The description I favor is more “existential” than some: As I see it, ancient scepticism is essentially a pervasive state of mind and character - namely, the suspension of judgment with regard to all matters, or epoche - which is induced by a certain fundamental formative experience - namely, being repeatedly persuaded by equally strong arguments first for and then against a series of propositions drawn from across the entire range of possible objects of judgment, or, in Greek, isostheneia. This fundamental formative experience, being subjected to equally persuasive arguments pro or con, leads to a pervasive change in one’s state of mind and character, global suspension of judgment. My purpose in this paper is to describe this state of character, this “way of life” epoche, and some of its ethical consequences.

However, ancient scepticism varied. The scepticism described in this paper is meant to correspond historically to the position of Carneades. This sceptical position is generalizable, and I believe that it is basically the position of the Pyrrhonian and Academic sceptics from Carneades’ time onward. However, apart from noting at one point in my discussion an important difference between Carneadean scepticism and the Pyrrhonism presented by Sextus Empiricus, I shall not be concerned with the historical development of scepticism here. Furthermore, I shall not here attempt to give any scholarly defense of the historical accuracy of my claims; this would require at least a paper in itself. What I offer instead is, to use the logical empiricists’ charming phrase, a “rational reconstruction” of Carneadean scepticism. My justification for this procedure is the hope that the ideas presented in this “reconstruction” have serious philosophical interest and appeal quite apart from their historical relevance.

In order to describe the state of character, the “way of life” epoche, I must first describe the remarkable experience which brings about this state of character. And for that, the best way to begin is to describe the powers, and character, of the person who is capable of bringing about and guiding that experience: namely, the Sceptic Teacher.

Consider two ideal types, both very important for the study of Greek philosophy. Consider the Universal Refuter: the person whose argu- mentative skills are so powerful that he or she can refute anyone, on any topic, anytime. Whoever stands up and dares to assert a proposition will

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be knocked down again by the Universal Refuter. My athletic imagery is intentional: the 5th century Greeks saw discussion and debate, of philosophical as well as non-philosophical kinds, as an agon, as a contest understood or described on analogy with the primary cultural example of a contest: the athletic. And the analogy is appropriate here in, among others, one important way: whether someone is defeated in a dialectical contest is just as observable, just as plain to public view, as being defeated in a wrestling contest. If a person is forced to admit the contradictory of something he has said earlier, then he has been refuted; if not, not. This is roughly as plain to public view as being thrown to the ground in a wrestling match.

My suggestion is that to the average Athenian of the 5th century, this is how Socrates appeared: as the Philosophical Muscle-Man, as the Universal Refuter, the guy whose mind is so tough that he can refute anybody, anytime. Intellectually, this is a frightening figure; and it could be frightening also to set one’s self up - as Socrates apparently did not - as this sort of figure. Imagine standing in the agora, beating one’s breast and offering to refute all comers. As in wrestling, this is a field on which vain pretensions will be shown up mighty quickly.

Perhaps the sense of “refutation” at work in this conception of the Universal Refuter is unfamiliar. One common way of understanding “refutation” is that a refutation is an argument which proves somebody wrong. In this sense, an argument is not really a refutation unless the interlocutor really is wrong and the argument really does prove he is wrong. This sense of “refutation” is far too strong for present purposes.

A weaker sense of “refutation” can be found in Aristotle. Aristotle distinguished, in the first chapter of On Sophistical Refutations, between real refutations and merely apparent refutations, which he called “sophistical” or “fallacious”. For Aristotle a real refutation does not prove that the interlocuter’s opinion is wrong, but rather merely that the interlocutor’s opinion is based on genuinely faulty reasoning. A skilled debater can sometimes make sound reasoning appearfaulty: “refutations” accomplished in this way are not real refutations, but rather “sophistical”, or “fallacious” refutations.

Aristotle’s notion of “real refutation” is also too strong for present purposes. The sense of “refutation” in which my Universal Refuter can refute anybody, anytime is a strictly ad horninem sense which includes both Aristotle’s real and his merely apparent refutations. Any means, fair or foul, are allowed. If a man tri s, he is beaten; if he can be gotten

Contrast the ideal type of the Universal Refuter with another ideal to contradict himself, he is refuted. P

1 In the S. E. Aristotle raises another issue of importance for our topic. What are the public signs of refutation, that is, of being beaten in an argument? I have so far just mentioned one, “being led into a contradiction”, and this is the Somatic sign par excellence. Aristotle says that this is the favorite goal of those who contend for victory in

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type, the Universal Persuader. The Universal Persuader claims to be able, by means of words, to persuade anybody of anything, anytime. By means of words: persuasion by means of drugs or torture or the slow educative process of reward and punishment is not in question here. But the powers of words that may be exploited in persuading are in principle unlimited: “argument” in the narrow sense, metaphors, images painted in words; diction, and control of voice; the pacing of a speech and the arrangement of topics - all of the materials discoverable by rhetoric may be employed by the Universal Persuader . The Universal Persuader’s goal is just as ambitious, just as universal, as the Universal Refuter’s - anything, anybody, anytime: but with a twist, since the aim of persuasion is to change a man’s soul - that is, alter his state of belief - and this is not nearly as evident and plain to view as the consequences of refutation.

The difference in “publicity” between persuasion and refutation is not absolute, but it is real. In the law-courts, for example, one’s success at persuasion is fairly well reflected in the vote. And the extent to which people are persuaded can sometimes be read from their faces. On the other hand, often it cannot. Moreover unlike refutation, persuasion raises the issue of durability: a person may be “persuaded” for a moment, but change his mind back again soon after. Refutation, once accomplished, cannot be undone - though of course there is always the possibility of a rematch. One problem for the “publicity” of persuasion is that people can feign being persuaded, and often do. On the other hand, one can also feign being refuted, as when a father pretends to be refuted by his son to gain some peace: but unlike feigned persuasion, cases of feigned refutation are (normally) refutations nonetheless, just as in wrestling a deliberate fall is still a fall.

I suggest that, with some allowance for drastically simplifying a complex phenomenon, the aim, and sometimes pretension, of certain

argument, hut that there are others: to show that the opponent is lying, to lead him into paradox, to make him commit a solecism, and, finally, to make him say the same thing over and over again (S.E. 1.3.). Now the fact is that what various cultures and social groups count as a sign of being defeated in argument may be historically and geographically quite vaned. For example, the intermittent custom in this century of appealing to “intuition” as a philosophical last resort seems to me to amount to an effort to deny that the fifth item on Aristotle’s list, “leading the opponent to say the same thing over and over again”, is a refutation. The Universal Refuter can be historically relativized by saying that he can defeat anyone of his time and place, on any topic, by criteria which the interlocutors of that time and place would accept. Different historical contexts may thus evoke somewhat different varieties of Universal Refuter. To transcend these contexts, one might even define a supra-historical Ideal Universal Refuter as one who is so good at arguing that he could refute anybody at any time or place, on any topic, by criteria which the opponent himself would accept.

But these ramifications must be left aside. In this paper I shall be concerned with the simplified case of the Universal Refuter who can defeat anyone using the basic Socratic criterion, also relied on by the Sceptics, of leading the opponent into contradictions.

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ancient Sophists - the clearest case is Gorgias - was to be a Universal Persuader.

Both of these ideal types, the Universal Persuader and the Universal Refuter, deserve detailed and careful study. Certain epistemological consequences are especially relevant here. Suppose that a Universal Refuter does exist. Remember, this is an empirically confirmable matter of fact, as confirmable as the existence of an unbeatable wrestling champion.‘ Suppose that a Universal Refuter exists; what consequences should the rest of us draw about the state of our knowledge? Should we conclude that none of us knows anything? That depends. A controlling assumption of the Socratic dialogue seems to be that refutation implies lack of knowledge. If we also make that assumption, then from the existence of a Universal Refuter we should conclude that none of us knows anything.

At this point one might feel inclined to protest: but we don’t make these assumptions. Regardless of what ancient Greeks may have thought; and in particular, regardless of what may have been implied by their episteme (the Greek term which most closely corresponds to our “knowledge”); we do not think that knowledge requires either the general ability to withstand refutation or the general ability to withstand persuasion; such abilities are not implied by what we ordinarily mean when we say that someone “knows” something. To give just one example, a professional watchmaker may know that his watches work by the operations of gears and springs, even ifa skilled dialectician - say, a professional philosopher - could refute him if he tried to defend what he knows; and even if a skilled orator - say, a preacher at a revival meeting - could persuade him otherwise, for example that the hands and gears turn instead through the direct intervention of God. The watchmaker’s knowledge still deserves the term “knowledge”, we think, even if it can sometimes be overridden by other forces.

This protest is justified. Current English-language “knowledge” is weaker than the Greek episteme in that, unlike episteme, it does not tend to require the abilities at issue. But this does not mean that episteme is irrelevant to epistemology. Far from it. What this difference between episteme and “knowledge” shows is that the cognitive relation to the world which the Greeks tended to think one should have (signified by episteme) is considerably stronger and more difficult to attain than the weaker cognitive relation (“knowledge”) that we are satisfied with. The proper subject of epistemology is this: what are the various cognitive relations one might have to the world, and what are their advantages and disadvantages? Rigorous episteme presents a

The existence of an unbeatable person is not verifiable, because it is impossible for the person to meet all possible contenders. But it is easily falsifiable, by a single loss; so it is confirmable.

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challenge to our relaxed and tolerant “knowledge”. Adjudicating this challenge is a substantive task for epistemology, one which must be left aside here. For the present it is enough to say that although a protest that we don’t make these assumptions is justified, nonetheless it remains true that ifa Universal Persuader or Refuter exists, then none of the rest of us epistutui anything. And this is an epistemologically significant fact. In order to side-step the complications introduced by the differences between knowledge and episteme, in the rest of this paper I shall use “knowledge” in the neutral sense (which I think it can also ordinarily bear) of “cognitive relation to the world which we ought to aim for”.

I next call your attention to the reflexive cases: Either the Universal Refuter can refute himself, or not. If he cannot refute himself, then perhaps the Universal Refuter should conclude that he has knowledge and the others don’t, that he is the Wise Man and they are Fools; for his opinions and his alone withstand refutation. If the Universal Refuter can also refute himself, then he ought to class himself with the others and conclude that no one knows anything.

The Second Case: either the Universal Persuader can persuade himself or not. If not, then he has beliefs strong enough to withstand his own persuasive powers: perhaps then they are candidates for knowledge. If the Universal Persuader can persuade himself of any arbitrary proposition, merely by rehearsing to himself the persuasive speech that he would address to others, then two possibilities arise. First, the Universal Persuader may simply have whatever beliefs his self- persuasions up until the present moment have left him with. But a second possibility is that, seeing himself persuaded by himself in this arbitrary manner, he might conclude that none of these persuasions are valid, and hence gain an immunity: though he will feel the force of each of the persuasions, he will not be taken in by any of them. (Note that a similar process could occur in a putative Universal Persuader’s audience: if they have the strength of mind to be able to notice the arbitrariness of what is happening to them, they may disown it and become immune.)

Further exploration of these two ideal types, the Universal Persuader and the Universal Refuter, would be worthwhile. They have types and subtypes: these two characters have as a important a role in epistemology as the Omniscient Observer or Ideal Reasoner. But enough has now been presented for me to characterize the Sceptic Teacher. The claim of the Sceptic Teacher is very strong. The Sceptic Teacher claims to be a Universal Refuter who, through his refutation, persuades people, first of p and then of not-p, for all possible p’s. The Sceptic Teacher, then, seems to claim to combine the roles of the Universal Refuter and Universal Persuader. To claim to combine the roles in the way the Sceptic Teacher does is stronger than to claim either role separately, because then the Universal Refuter must not only refute but also

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thereby persuade, and the Universal Persuader must accomplish his persuasion by using not the full panoply of rhetorical weapons, but only refutation.

But there is a problem with the universality of the Sceptic Teacher’s ability to persuade. Not everyone has the commitment to reason and reasoned argument that allows him or her to be persuaded by refutation. Think of Socrates’ interlocutors: many of them, when refuted by him, leave with their opinions unchanged. In fact, for the student to be persuaded, repeatedly, back and forth of p and non-p across the entire range of p’s, as the Sceptic Teacher attacks him with arguments, requires that the student have a remarkable personal commitment to reason and reasoned argument. As Socrates says, even the best and most gifted students are apt to fall victim to misologia - which is just that distrust in reason which leads one not to be persuaded by refutation. We philosophy teachers are familiar with this problem in our classrooms: we must often work hard to get students to have enough commitment to reason and argument to place their own beliefs hostage to philosophical refutation. Either the ancient sceptic thought that, given suitable classroom conditions, he would succeed in inducing and maintaining that high a commitment to reason on the part of all the students, or else the ancient sceptic saw his philosophical therapy as not for everyone, but only suited for those usually gifted and stubborn natures that can sustain the commitment to reason and argument. Unfortunately, textual evidence does not decide the issue. But my hunch about Sextus Empiricus, for example, is that his was a philosophical nature writing for philosophical natures, and that he realized that only philosophers, or those with strong philosophical natures, would be suitable candidates for this therapy. This is not to say that only philosophers need this therapy; as we will see, the ancient sceptic thinks that ordinary people, too, would profit from conversion to scepticism. But unfortunately, the sceptic’s methods are such that ordinary people have dim prospects for treatment. Thus conceived, the ancient Sceptic is a Universal Refuter, and he is one (like Socrates) to whom it is important that persuasion follows his refutation; but he is not a Universal Persuader, because not everyone will be persuaded by his refutations.

A different conception of the Sceptic Teacher avoids the problem of the universality of his persuasive ability. The characterization of the Sceptic Teacher I have just given corresponds to the text of Sextus, where the only persuasions attempted are refutations. When compared with even other philosophical texts of the period, Sextus’ texts are remarkably free of other sorts of rhetorical appeal. But suppose a Sceptic Teacher thought that all modes of persuasion can help in producing epoche. He might think that, by first giving a rhetorically powerful speech in praise of justice and then following in by an equally

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powerful and persuasive speech against justice, he can move his audience in the direction of epoche. By first appealing to the glorious nobility of patriotism, and then ridiculing it as parochial and narrow- minded, the Sceptic Teacher may do more to reduce the student’s attachment to either belief than by straightforward refutation.

Including these other means of persuasion in his repertoire restores the Sceptic Teacher to the status of a Universal Persuader. In fact, it makes it possible to view him as a very particular sort of ancient Sophist, namely that sort of Sophist whose practical aim it is to use his powers to produce suspension of belief. Although such a Sceptic Teacher will employ other means of persuasion, refutation may still play a special role. First, it may turn out that while other means of persuasion are useful only for this or that case, refutation is indispensable: to produce thoroughgoing epoche in a person, one must, as part of the process, refute his or her beliefs. Second, a highly developed skill at refutation will be necessary in order to persuade a small, influential, yet highly resistant group: namely the “philosophers”. These people are tough nuts for the Sceptic Teacher - or a Sophist of any sort - to crack. The philosophers have tried themselves to be resistant to ordinary means of persuasion, and to be influenced only by what they call “rational argument”. Furthermore, the philosophers have developed “rational argument” into an extremely subtle, elaborate, and technical skill. The Sceptic Teacher or Sophist who wishes to be able to persuade everyone must therefore master this art at its highest level: for only then will he have the skill he needs to persuade the best philosophers. The Sceptic Teacher who aims at persuasion will be a Universal Refuter because, given the presence of philosophers in his society, he must be one in order to be a Universal Persuader. To accomplish his goals, he must be a better philosopher than any philosopher living.

The historical question whether some, or many, ancient sceptics held to the second and stronger conception of Scepticism is not easy to answer. Timon’s Silloi or “Lampoons” and Carneades’ two speeches on justice at Rome suggest that the repertoire of ancient scepticism was wider than Sextus’ text would by itself suggest. But whether this wider repertoire was accompanied by a self-conscious policy of deploying all possible rhetorical weapons in the cause of sceptical persuasion, the evidence is too slim to say.

I1

Having described the Sceptic Teacher, I turn now to describe his teaching. For convenience, I will carry out the description in terms of the first sort of Sceptic Teacher, the one who uses only arguments in the narrow sense; but the same basic structure will apply to the second sort of Sceptic Teacher, who uses other means of persuasion as well.

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The Sceptic Teacher’s teaching proceeds like this. The student believes p. The Teacher persuades him of the opposite, not-p. The student now believes not-p. So the teacher persuades him of the opposite, p. With the equally persuasive arguments for both p and not-p vividly in mind, the student’s mind is not inclined in either direction, and so he suspends belief. The student undergoes a similar process for q and r and s and t . . . for the whole range of his other beliefs. Eventually the student’s mind is so battered by this hammering that he loses his disposition to believe anything. Whenever a candidate for belief appears before his mind. e.g., “this apple is red”, he finds himself immediately reminded that an equally persuasive argument can be given that “this apple is not red”, and this reminder is sufficient to eliminate any temptation to believe “this apple is red”.

Remember that what happens to people as a result of being “beaten about the head with opposing arguments” is an empirical question. One thing that might happen to people is that all alternatives strike them with precisely equal strength in such a way that they are not inclined toward anything in particular. Such people feel no inclination to eat or not eat, to walk here rather than there or not at all; they must be fed intravenously or die. The ancient sceptics’ enemies thought that the result of sceptic teaching must be like this. (The reason they thought this is that they held a rather intellectualist psychological view according to which belief is necessary for inclination.)

Another imaginable outcome of sceptical training is that, whatever one stops to ask oneself “are my attitudes really justified?” one recognizes that they are no more justified than not (and perhaps the attitudes are momentarily shaken by this realization), but that as soon as one begins to go about one’s daily business, the attitudes reassert themselves with normal force. This seems to be the dominant reaction of modern philosophers upon being convinced of sceptical arguments.

The experience reported by the ancient sceptic concerning the result of sceptial training as he conducted it was different. Perhaps the two metaphors to use for the result of ancient sceptical training are “purgation” and “purification”. Having been beaten about the head with contrary arguments, the sceptic student finds some of his beliefs purged - he no longer has any inclination for or against them at all - and the rest of his beliefs purified - namely of dogmatism: one or the other of p or not-p will still seem to him so, but he will no longer be inclined to claim or assert p or not-p as actually being the case.3 The sceptic student will lose some of his cognitive attitudes completely, while the rest will be preserved, but transformed and lightened. ’ Thus Myles Burnyeat is wrong to claim (“Can the Sceptic Live his Scepticism?”, The

ScepticaZ Tradition, p. 132) that the sceptic wants to feel about everything the way you normally feel about the statement that the number of stars is even. That would be topurge all beliefs, and leave no appearances.

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A debate has been raging in the scholarly journals over the last ten years over the status of these ‘transformed and lightened’ cognitive attitudes. The debate is cast in terms of whether the ancient sceptic has beliefs or not. Philosophically the word itself, “belief”, does not matter so much.4 I prefer to say that he has “simulacra of belief” or “quasi- beliefs”. What is important is to recognize, and to try to describe more precisely, the way in which the ancient sceptic is left with cognitive attitudes that allow him to act and speak in a way very much like his neighbors, yet subtly and crucially different; for his cognitive attitudes are held much more ‘lightly’ than theirs.

How can one describe these belief-like attitudes of the ancient sceptic more precisely? First and most obviously, although the ancient sceptic will make statements, when pressed or questioned he will not be inclined to argue for them - at least, not to argue seriously, since (as it seems to him) in the end, equally good arguments can be given for or against what he said.

Second, the ancient sceptic is not inclined to claim, or to regard himself as having, epistemic authority over other persons. Since the ancient sceptic does not know, or does not even know that he does not know, how can he demand that other people rely on his opinion? Various things appear to the ancient sceptic in various ways. On those appearances he will act, plan, and live his life. But he makes no presumption that these same things ought to appear to other people in the same or in similar ways.

Third, the ancient sceptic does not presume that what now appears to him to be so will continue to do so. It may seem to him now that apples are good to eat; but he does not know that they are; so for all he knows, tomorrow they may reveal themselves not to be. What he is holding in his hands may at the moment seem to the sceptic to be stone; but for all he knows, it may jump into the air, hover in front of his nose, and start speaking to him in French.

These last two features of ancient scepticism may be summed up by saying that the ancient sceptic does not presume or demand of the world any more coherence than it happens to present him with. Drawing upon the Kantian tradition, one may distinguish the coherence that the world may present one with into three kinds: (1) the coherence of the object, as the origin and locus of a series of orderly and rule-governed presentations, and (2) coherence of consciousness, either (a) the coherence between consciousnesses which is intersubjectivity, or (b) the coherence within a single consciousness over time that is its intra-subjective correlate. The ancient sceptic lives out a very radical stance: he does not presume any of these three kinds of coherence on the part of the world.

Though the philological question what the Greek term dogma meant as the sceptics used it is important for the history of philosophy.

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At this point, distinction is needed: although the ancient sceptic does not demand or presume coherence, he may expect it. The sceptic forms habits of expectation, like anyone else. When he walks into a room, he expects the furniture to be on the floor and not hanging from the ceiling. But such expectations do not, for the sceptic, have the backing of ‘rationality’ or ‘justification’, so that when the expectations fail to be satisfied, the ancient sceptic may be surprised, but he will not be shocked or indignant or fear that he is going mad. If he walks into a room in which the furniture is hanging from the ceiling, unattached, in defiance of gravity, the ancient sceptic will be surprised, but not disturbed.

The sceptical stance just described has its intrinsic appeal. Why should a person demand of the world more coherence than it chooses to give? It seems willful, petulant even, to insist that the world behave according to regular laws, discoverable by reason - and to be upset, or, as often happens, inclined to ignore the evidence, when it does not. Rational justification gives one a right to certain expectations about the future. But who guarantees this right? To whom can one complain if it’s violated? Why should one feel one needs this right? Surely it is a more balanced attitude, and a sign of a stronger character, to forego such guarantees and simply let the world be.

The ancient sceptic’s attitude toward other people is also appealing. Renouncing epistemic authority, and not demanding of the world any more intersubjective coherence than it happens to provide, the ancient sceptic has a degree of respect for other people’s points of view that is otherwise unobtainable. Consider the sceptic in the context of moral disagreement. The sceptic says “A seems to me the right thing to do.” The other person disagrees. The sceptic replies, “YOU may be right. But let’s try this: X, Y, and Z seem to be the considerations that move me to the view that A is the right thing to do. Do these considerations move you?” Perhaps these considerations move the other person; then the conversation stops. If not, perhaps the sceptic mentions other considerations, to see if they happen to move his interlocutor. Perhaps they do, perhaps not. If, in the end, all “sharing of appearances” fails to produce consensus, if the intersubjectivity of the moral realm breaks down at this time and place, the ancient sceptic will be perhaps sad, but not upset or disturbed. In particular, the ancient sceptic will neither be morally outraged, nor inclined to accuse the other of pig-headedness or irrationality. The ancient sceptic cannot either be morally outraged or accuse others of irrationality; such reactions are ruled out by his scepticism. To the extent that respect for other persons’ points of view is a value, this is an attractive feature of ancient scepticism.

Recent scholarship has stressed the ancient sceptic’s passivity. The Stoics’ metaphor is that knowledge grasps its object; the Sceptics speak of having an impression, of having things strike one in such and such a

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way; of how things appear to one, where “things” seem to be active and the “one”, the sceptic, a passive element in the process. Of course the sceptic takes no stand on whether his mental life is really passive or active. But it does seem right, from a point of view external to the sceptic, to describe his self-conception as thoroughgoingly passive. The sceptic’s passivity results from his having lost a certain kind of confidence in reasoning. A curious fact about us, reflected in the history of philosophy, is that we seem to think that reasoning gives us an independent check on external influences; a source of assistance in arriving at judgements with which we identify our “selves”, so that in arriving at and defending our judgements by reasoning we are “our- selves” taking an active hand in what judgements we come to. Why the use of reasoning, the self, and being “active” have been linked in this way is a fascinating question that must be left aside now. The sceptic, in overthrowing the validity of reasoning, overthrows the independent standpoint which reasoning appears to give and is left epistemically passive.’ But we’ve seen that, because some “belief’ and “opinions” survive the sceptical purgation, the sceptic employs reasoning and rational argument, not as what he knows, but as what seems to him. By doing this the sceptic employs reason and argument, not as reason and argument, that is, not as tools which can accomplish what reason and argument are normally thought to accomplish, but rather as impressions, as passively received seemings on a par with others. This feature of the sceptic’s character and way of life, that he can employ reason and argument while failing to give them their normal status, is an important part of the explanation of his pseudo-beliefs - of how he can appear so normal while actually being so weird.

(One caution: the sceptic’s use of reason and argument in this way - as seemings - must be kept carefully separate from his other use of reason and argument: as means of refuting the dogmatist. In refutation, the sceptic uses arguments regardless of whether or not they seem persuasive to him. Refutation is part of sceptical training. The use of arguments as what-seems-to-one is part of the sceptic’s daily life, and the sceptic will use in this way only arguments that do seem-to-him, arguments that, “purified”, have survived the “purgation” of his training.)

Is the thoroughgoing passivity of the sceptic’s attitude an attractive feature? To the extent that, by eliminating the special status of his own point of view, this passivity undergirds the sceptic’s respect for other people’s points of view talked about earlier, it is attractive. Recent discussions of the sceptic’s passivity tend to criticize this feature of

To draw once again on the Kantian tradition, one might say that the sceptic’s passivity results from his not viewing reason and reasoning as providing a source of sponraneity, in Kant’s sense, but rather as characterized by thoroughgoing receptivity.

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scepticism. The criticism given, however, is that this passivity is a strange and queer attitude towards oneself, an attitude extraordinarily different from the one we are used to taking to ourselves.6 So it is, but I fail to see how the description “strange and very different from what we are accustomed to” should immediately qualify as a criticism. If this attitude is the enlightened attitude, and if those persons who acquire that attitude find themselves satisfied and comfortable with it, then I do not see the basis of complaint. Perhaps what is motivating the critics is that they not only find themselves uncomfortable at the thought of having a purely passive self-conception; rather, they go further and find the thought of a purely passive self-conception so uncomfortable that they doubt that anyone could be comfortable having adopted it. Now this is an empirical psychological question, and to settle it one can only find some thoroughgoing sceptics and discover how they feel. Unfortu- nately, there are not many thoroughgoing sceptics around nowadays; but the evidence of the ancient texts shows that the sceptics themselves found this passive self-conception not at all disturbing. In fact, Sextus Empiricus claims that they found it liberating.

The passivity of the sceptic’s attitude toward his own attitudes has led some scholars to talk of, and to criticize, the sceptic’s “radical inner detachment” from his own attitudes. Their thought is that in viewing his values and attitudes as things that “come upon him” or “strike him”, the sceptic fails to identify himself with the values and attitudes involved, hence he sees them as something external to himself, and thus is radically detached from his own values and attitudes. Finally, this radical detachment is felt to be disturbing and bizarre.

What is correct about this line of thought is that the sceptic is always able, is indeed readily disposed, to step back from his attitudes and explicity doubt or disown them. What is very wrong about this reasoning is that it assumes the sceptic has a coherent inner self which is then capable of standing over against his attitudes and being detached from them. But this is false. The sceptic’s self conception is otherwise, he sees his entire mental life as a mere play of appearances, and such a picture has no place for a detached self. Moreover, to speak from an external viewpoint, it seems that the sceptic is not deceived in this. His scepticism is accomplished not by a central self forcibly holding its beliefs, so to speak, at arms length, but by the transformed tone and texture of his entire mental life. Furthermore, this transformation makes a detached inner self as a psychological structure, if not impossible, then at least much less likely. Therefore, the common scholarly opinion nowadays

Myles Burnyeat, “Can the Sceptic Live His Scepticism?”, The Sceptical Tradition, p. 133. Julia Annas, “Doing without objective value: ancient and modern strategies”, The Norms of Nature, Cambridge University Press, 1986 p. 24.

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that the sceptic suffers from radical inner detachment seems to me straightforwardly false.’

Perhaps it would help if I explain how this opinion seems to have arisen. I think that those scholars who have criticized the sceptics for detachment did so because they imagined what it would be like for themselves suddenly to have the sceptic’s passive attitude. But since only this attitude was imaginatively altered, the result was a passive self- conception grafted onto the critics’ view of their selves. The result is a sense of an active, controlling self that is forced to be passive and hence blocked from its proper function. No wonder this line of thought has seemed disturbing. But to imagine the ancient sceptic one must imagine oneself to have undergone the sceptical training; and that training would destroy the self, qua central, actively controlling ego, simultaneously with the sense of active control. Unlike the hippogriff of the critics’ imagination, the ancient sceptic’s state of mind is a consistent and - “loosely” - harmonious whole.8

So far I have said nothing about that feature of his mental life which the ancient sceptic prized the most: his ataraxia, or relief from anxiety. The ancient sceptic’s training - the “Sceptical E.S.T. weekend”, I like to call it - was supposed to relie\ = him of tension (suntonia) and anxiety (tarache). The training would not eliminate tension and anxiety, since hunger, thirst and anger are natural and inevitable, but it would moderate them greatly.

The source of anxiety that the ancient sceptical training did hope to eliminate can best be seen in the case of values. Suppose you believe that lying is evil. Then the memory of having lied or the prospect of lying will cause you great anxiety. Suppose you are trying to decide whether or not to have your aged mother committed to an old-folks home, and that the relevant factors are many and the decision very difficult. If you believe that there is an objective fact of the matter as to whether committing her or not committing her is the right thing to do and if you think that it is within your power to discover the right thing to do, then you will work very hard in trying to reason out what you ought to do, and this process will cause you great anxiety. For after all the fate of your mother hangs in the balance. On the other hand, if you do not have any confidence that there is an objective fact of the matter about

’ In The Modes of Scepticism (Cambridge 1985) p. 167, Annas and Barnes attribute to the sceptic a different sort of detachment as well: “Ethical scepticism thus produces . . . a calm acceptance of, the detachment from, whatever happens”. Their claim is too strong. Ancient scepticism claims to reduce intensity, and hence to produce calmer acceptance and less attachment.

Annas refers in a footnote (“Doing without value”, no. 24) to a suggestion made to her by Terry Irwin that the sceptic might come to lack the sense of self she takes for granted. Annas responds that “(and) his, of course, is an equally unsettling prospect.” Perhaps she finds it so. But that, by itself, is no criticism of scepticism.

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what is best or what is right to do, and/or if you are not inclined to think that researching and reasoning and thinking hard about the matter will enable you to determine the objective right or good, then you will be more relaxed. The decision about your mother may still be stressful, and the various attractive and unattractive features of each alternative may still pull at you, so that you may have a divided mind, but you will be spared the additional gnawing anxiety of wondering, “Am I doing the right thing?” As for the other example, lying, the memory or prospect of lying may still be distasteful to you, but the additional sharp pang which accompanies the thought of doing a known evil will be gone.

This relief from tension and anxiety that the ancient sceptics experienced as resulting from their sceptical training, was real and important and is an advantage that would be gained by anyone who became a thoroughgoing sceptic today. But this attractive feature of scepticism was more important to them than it would be to most of us. For the degree to which scepticism will liberate one from tension and anxiety depends on the degree to which one is committed to the value and possibility of getting things right. As usual when thinking about Greek philosophy, it is helpful to recall Socrates posing questions in the agora. His questions - for example directed at Euthyphro on his way to prosecute his father - gain their sense of urgency from the double conviction that knowing the right thing to do, so that one can do it, is the most important goal that one could have, and secondly, that this goal is within one’s reach -that if one sat there with Socrates for an hour or two hours or three days or a month, one could discover which logos really is the stronger. At which point one could stop philosophizing and go out into the world to help actualize the Good.

Earlier I said that the more intense and philosophically committed the person’s nature, the more suitable he or she is for the process of sceptical training. Now I say that the more intense and philosophically committed the person’s nature, the more he or she stands in need of the sceptical training. No one can avoid action, not even the student of philosophy. Imagine the plight of the student of Socrates going about the inevitable business of life, never certain whether what he is doing is right, always convinced that nothing is more important than to do what is right, always continually wondering whether, if only he deliberated another hour, or two, or three days, or a month, he might not be in a position to act better. The desperate anxiety of this way of life seems to me matched only by that of those Christians who try to determine, through probing self-examination, the purity of their motives and their consequent prospects for salvation.

Though such matters can never be proved, I think that the ancient sceptics, as a group, were people who were caught in the predicament of the student of Socrates. By contrast, people today - even professional philosophers today - are much less likely to care whether what they do is

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right, or whether one thing is really better than another, and much more likely to be cynical about the prospects for making progress on such questions by rational means. Therefore people today, including philo- sophers today, are much less spiritually in need of the relief from anxiety that scepticism affords than the ancient sceptics were. (I leave aside the question where the general population in Hellenistic times were in this respect like the sceptics or like us.) The ancient sceptic’s reaction to us would be, in part, to claim us as his own: to say that in our carelessness and cynicism we are, if not actually sceptical, at least very close to scepticism. But the ancient sceptic would also wish to distinguish his attitudes from our carelessness, and feel happier, about his “cynicism”, supported as it is by the experience of sceptical training, than our cynicism, which does not have that support. For contrary to the impression some scholars will give the ancient sceptic remains a follower of the Socratic ideal. What it means to say that he is skeptikos is that the highest goal for him remains possession of the truth, full knowledge securely supported by arguments. That is the most desirable condition. The second most desirable condition is sceptical epoche: in ignorance, but absolved from the responsibility of striving for knowledge by the thoroughgoing blockage of inquiry provided by sceptical training. The third and worst state of all is that of the philosophy student making some kind of progress, with truth always the most important thing to have, and always just beyond one’s grasp.”

One criticism of ancient scepticism sometimes heard is that the ancient sceptic will have no moral attitudes, and that this is extemely disturbing. If the notion “moral attitude” is taken strictly enough, then perhaps the ancient sceptic will not have any. Things will seem right or wrong to the sceptic, good or bad, and this justifies the claim that in some sense, the sceptic does have moral attitudes. But “moral” is a stringent word, and it is not unreasonable to think that an attitude is not really a moral attitude unless (for example) it is one of really condemning, or really feeling guilty, or producing action because one really thinks it is right. I do not wish to endorse restricting the term “moral” to such attitudes, but those who do restrict it in this way do draw on potentialities genuinely present in normal usage, and so one

Most notably D. Sedley in “The Motivation of Greek Scepticism”, The Sceptical Tradition, ed. Burnyeat, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1983, pp. 9-30. Of course, the sceptic is a follower of the Socratic ideal without being committed to it in a strong sense. The sceptic is not convinced that there is such a thing as the truth, or that it can be possessed, or that possessing it would be good. But he would not be skeptikos if it did not seem to him that knowledge of the truth would be a worthwhile thing to have, if one could sim 1 reach out and grab it.

Stoics were inclined to place him in the first group, as a Wise Man; some Sceptics were inclined to place him in the second group, as one of them. I myself would argue that he belongs in the third group.

L?y Where in this trichotomy Socrates himself belongs is a disputed question. Some

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should allow them their point. And clearly it does follow from restricting the term “moral” in this way that the ancient sceptic will not have any moral attitudes.

Less clear is whether, or why, the sceptic’s lack of moral attitudes in this sense should be disturbing. One reason might be this: part of our normal moral attitude is that having the right moral attitudes is part of virtue. One must not only do what’s right, one must do it because its right. Merely avoiding wrongdoing is not enough; one must condemn wrongdoing when one sees it done. Having done wrong, one must feel guilty. And so on.

The substantive view of morality that connects moral attitudes and virtue in this way could, of course, be questioned. But for the moment I wish to grant it. From this view of morality it follows that the sceptic lacks virtue. But he does not lack it entirely, as he will still do what seems to him right on the grounds that it seems to him right, and he will condemn wrongdoing, not as a known wrong, but as a seeming wrong. More importantly, if the sceptic is right about his state of ignorance about morality, then from the point of view of ordinary morality itself it would be wrong for him to have moral attitudes. For it is no part of ordinary morality that one ought to condemn people for actions whose merits one is incompetent to judge, or that one ought to feel guilty for something one has no reason to believe is wrong. Further, since it seems to the sceptic that due to the equal strength of opposing arguments the path to knowledge is blocked, which makes his ignorance inevitable, if he is right about this aspect of his ignorance, he cannot even be faulted for negligence. In sum, if the sceptic is right about his ignorance and the reasons for it, then having moral attitudes for him would be a vice and not a virtue.

The Moral status of the sceptic’s lack of “moral” attitudes depends on the truth or falsity of the sceptic’s general view about his own moral ignorance. If the sceptic is right, then his lack of moral attitudes is a virtue; if he is wrong, it is a vice. On the other hand, if the sceptic’s critic thinks he has moral knowledge but does not, then he is in as much trouble, morally speaking, as the sceptic would have been. The ancient sceptic’s term for this vice of his critic was “rashness”, to which we might add “arrogance”. The “moral” here is the simple but important point that whether or not we have moral knowledge is itself a substantive moral question.

People who are bothered by the sceptic’s lack of moral attitudes sometimes have a different criticism in mind. These people worr that, lacking moral convictions, the sceptic will not be reliable. lr This criticism is partly justified and partly not. The sceptic can be very reliable: because the habits and sentiments that undergrid his quasi-

” This criticism is an ancient one: see Aristotle’s apud Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospels 761d.

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beliefs in what is good and valuable may be extremely strong and not at all easily dislodged. The sceptic’s sentiments may make him a much more reliable partner than say, an emotionally unstable dogmatist. But the criticism is justified insofar as conviction in the objective truth of something does add an additional causal “force” in support of it. Take the sceptic, however reliable he happens to be, and add genuine belief; normally he will then be more reliable. Of course, whether the natural reliability of the sceptic is sufficent or whether one wants more depends on the person and the situation.

I11 In this paper I have sketched, in broad outline, a certain view of the ancient sceptic’s way of life. The portrayal has had four parts: the Sceptic Teacher; the experience of undergoing sceptical training; the sceptical state of mind and character; and the moral consequences of that state of mind and character. The justification for treating these topics in this order is that each is a prerequisite for those that follow. The moral consequences of ancient scepticism are the ones which follow from the ancient sceptic’s having such-and-such a state of mind and character. The state of mind and character of the ancient sceptic is whatever follows - causally - upon being subjected to the sceptical training. The transition from the Sceptic Teacher to the experience of training is more complicated. Necessarily, the very first full-fledged sceptic will need to have worked his way into scepticism without the aid of a full-fledged Sceptic Teacher. And even a person lacking the full powers of the Sceptic Teacher might succeed in giving sceptical training to inexperienced or dim-witted pupils. But ancient scepticism had the status of a school and a movement, and this requires the ability to give reliable training of all sorts of students. Only a person with the full and universal powers of the Sceptic Teacher can reliably carry out sceptical training on all sorts of students.

It is important to emphasize one aspect of this portrayal on which I have not committed myself. Earlier I listed three different putative results of “being beaten about the head with opposing arguments”: the destruction of all inclination; a momentary twinge in the study, but no other consequences; and the “purification and purgation” of beliefs claimed by the ancient sceptic. In listing these three outcomes, and going on to describe the outcome claimed by the ancient sceptic, I was very careful not to endorse any one of them. The question what the outcome or outcomes of sceptical training might be is an empirical psychological question. Since the ancient sceptic’s claim about the outcome is an empirical psychological claim, testing it would require controlled experiments, clinical trials, and all the rest. One may doubt - I doubt - that the situation is as simple as the sceptics portrayed it. For

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example, even if the experience of being beaten about the head with opposing arguments can have the effect that the sceptic claims, a reasonable conjecture would be that this effect will be due not only to the arguments used, but also to how they are presented and to the setting. The charisma of the teacher; the pacing of the training; the interpretation of the student’s experiences furnished him by the teacher; the mutual influence of the students; all these factors and more are likely to have contributed to making ancient scepticism what it was.

The Hellenistic schools of philosophy promised happiness. One way of stating the significance of this is to say that the Hellenistic philosophers claimed for philosophy the role and function which contemporary culture gives to clinical psychology. (In fact, this is largely true of all ancient philosophy, from Protagoras and Socrates through to Plotinus and Iamblichus). The implications of this difference between their intellectual map and ours are many, but one important implication is that, unless we find ourselves moved to abandon our current intellectual standards, we will want to evaluate certain claims made by the Hellenistic philosophers (and by Greek philosophy generally), not by armchair philosophy, but rather by the canons and methods of clinical psychology. The ancient sceptic’s claims about the nature the aetiology of his state of mind and character are of this sort.

The experiments required to test the claims of ancient scepticism may be difficult to carry out, since, unfortunately, there seem to be no Sceptic Teachers around nowadays. So far as I am aware, the last person who plausibly had the dialectical powers and intellectual dominance over his age requried to be a Sceptic Teacher was Peter Abaelard in the 12th century A.D. The lack of any Sceptic Teacher during the modern period explains much of the difference between ancient and modern scepticism. Modern scepticism works on the principle of a single, fully general Master Argument: Hume’s indictment of causality; Descartes’ evil demon; the contemporary brain in a vat. A philosopher can be in a position to wield such a Master Argument without having anything like the comprehensive and local powers of the Sceptic Teacher, who is able to argue persuasively both for and against every particular opinion. It stands to reason that the psychological effects of being subjected to the Sceptic Teacher’s battering are likely to be very different from the psychological effects of being subjected to the lightning punch of a Master Argument. A lightning-punch will either immobilize its victim, or be shrugged off; the effects of a thorough battering will set in more slowly, be more widespread, and be perhaps in the end more severe.

What ancient and modern scepticism have in common is the aim of leading us to see the groundlessness of our beliefs, that is, that we have no reason to believe any one thing rather than another. Wittgenstein’s On Certainty has great philosophical depth in part because it aims at what ancient and modern scepticism have in common. If Wittgenstein

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could succeed in getting us to recognize, and really to assimilate the recognition, that the groundlessness of our beliefs does not matter, then he would render both ancient and modern scepticism ineffective. (Not necessarily mistaken, but ineffective.) But that is another story.

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