Profiles in skepticism: Pyrrho

What do we know, really, about the originator of ancient Skepticism?

Pyrrho of Elis, Wikimedia.

I have always been fascinated by the notion of skepticism, in all its forms. From the scientific skepticism movement that valiantly counters pseudoscientific claims to the classic “what if an evil demon were to try to deceive me?” skepticism of René Descartes.

I must admit, though, that one kind of skepticism that leaves me very perplexed is—ironically—the original one: Pyrrhonism. Recently I’ve read a provocative essay by Casey Perin (published in chapter 2 of Skepticism: From Antiquity to the Present) which, if anything, has only strengthened my, ahem, skepticism of Pyrrhonism.

We know very little of Pyrrho of Elis’s life, though he lived from approximately 365 BCE to circa 275 BCE. He apparently was a failed painter, and various sources tell us that he followed Alexander the Great during his expedition in India, where he met a strange group of wise men known as gymnosophists, possibly early Buddhists.

Pyrrho did not write anything down, in the style of Socrates and, later on, the Stoic Epictetus. However, his philosophy was passed on in written form by his student, Timon of Phlius (325-235 BCE). Trouble is, Timon’s works are also lost and known only through a commentary by the late first century BCE Aristotelian Aristocles. The latter in turn is known only via fragments preserved by Eusebius (260-340 CE). The bottom line is, if anyone claims they actually know what Pyrrho thought they are greatly exaggerating and comically overstepping the available historical evidence.

To give you a more concrete idea of the problem, here is—in toto—what Aristocles writes about Pyrrho, according to Eusebius (Praeparatio evangelica, 14.18.1-5):

(i) It is necessary above all to consider our own knowledge; for if it is our nature to know nothing, there is no need to inquire any further into things. There were some among the ancients, too, who made this statement, whom Aristotle has argued against. Pyrrho of Elis was also a powerful advocate of such a position.

(ii) He himself has left nothing in writing; his pupil Timon, however, says that the person who is to be happy must look to these three points: first, what are things like by nature? Second, in what way ought we to be disposed toward them? And, finally, what will be the result for those who are so disposed?

(iii) He [Timon] says that he [Pyrrho] reveals that things are equally indistinguishable/indifferent and unmeasurable/unstable and indeterminable/indeterminate;

(iv) For this reason neither our sensations nor our opinions tell the truth or lie.

(v) For this reason, then, we should not trust them, but should be without opinions and without inclinations and without wavering, saying about each single thing that it no more is than is not or both is and is not or neither is nor is not.

(vi) Timon says that the result for those who are so disposed will be first an inability to say anything, but then tranquility; and Aenesidemus says pleasure. These, then, are the main points of what they say.

Let’s discuss. The very first sentence of (i) makes for an excellent beginning. I would agree with Pyrrho / Timon that it’s crucial to inquire into the epistemic limits to human knowledge. If I claim to know X, you are perfectly within your rights to ask me how I know X. And if I don’t give you a reasonable answer you better run away, I may be a sophist.

The trouble begins with the second sentence of (i), where the author sketches the extreme skeptical position and its logical consequence: we know nothing, therefore it ain’t worth bothering to continue to inquire into things. Naturally, Aristotle was upset and objected vehemently. We are told that Pyrrho held such stance, which if true does not represent a good starting point for Pyrrhonism.

Point (ii) also contains much that is reasonable. It tells us that in order to be “happy” (i.e., eudaimon, using the pretty much untranslatable Greek word) we need to answer three questions: what is the world like? How should we act in the world? What will be the consequences for those who answer the first two questions correctly?

This may all sound rather strange, but it’s not very different from the Stoic position that in order to be eudaimon (their answer to the third question) one needs to know how the world works (first question) and act accordingly (second question). Live according to nature, as they say.

The real difficulties, according to Perin, begin with point (iii). Scholars have proposed two readings of what Pyrrho says there. On the one hand (the epistemic reading), Pyrrho may be stating that things are indeterminable: we just can’t tell what they are really like. On the other hand (the metaphysical reading) he may be claiming that things are unknowable by their very nature.

Either way, Pyrrho is in a dire predicament. On the epistemological reading, as Perin puts it: “if Pyrrho asserts [that things by nature are such that we can’t know what they are like] as something he knows, Pyrrho’s assertion of self-refuting. If this is something Pyrrho knows, it is false; if is true, it is not something Pyrrho knows.” (p. 89) On the metaphysical reading, by contrast, he would be making the even stronger statement that things in themselves do not have a definite nature of any sort, which makes for a rather odd type of metaphysics, to say the least.

Is there a way to rescue the epistemic reading? It’s not easy, but people have tried. The text we have from Aristocles, once we add (iv), implies that Pyrrho (or Timon) is inferring that human sensations and beliefs are unreliable from the fact that we cannot know what things are like.

But that doesn’t make much sense. If anything, it’s the other way around: we may conclude that we cannot know what things are like from the fact that our sensations and beliefs are not reliable.

Defenders of Pyrrho, according to Perin, have opted therefore for the only venue available to them: to (arbitrarily) amend the text from Aristocles in order to reverse the direction of the inference, a solution originally suggested by the 19th century German scholar Eduard Zeller. But—to put it plainly—that is simply not what the original text says.

What about the metaphysical reading? Can that be salvaged? Partisans of this interpretation, like Richard Bett, bite the bullet and agree that Pyrrho did claim that things in themselves are of an indeterminate nature. This, again coupled with what we read in (iv) above, leads to the conclusion that our sensations and beliefs are neither true nor false.

Perin goes on arguing in detail why Bett’s interpretation is untenable, but I’m happy to stop at the observation that we have no reason at all to claim that things are intrinsically without nature (bye bye fundamental physics!) and that indeed it’s hard to imagine what sense one could possibly make of the claim.

When we get to (v) we run into another recurring problem with Pyrrhonism: since our beliefs and sensations are unreliable, we are told that we should suspend judgment. If so, however, on what basis are we going to make decisions about how to act in life? Later Pyrrhonists claim that suspension of judgment only applies to so-called “non evident matters,” while for everyday matters we can make use of social customs, our own inclinations (e.g., I’m hungry, therefore I eat), and the teachings of skilled individuals (e.g., when learning a trade).

But there are a number of problems with this response. First off, the distinction between evident and non-evident matters is rather nebulous. Are all metaphysical claims non-evident? What about epistemological ones? How about ethics? Simple science? Basic math?

Second, none of the elements of this response appear in the available texts that supposedly report what Pyrrho said. Rather, they are found in the much later writings of Sextus Empiricus (early 3rd century CE), who lived a whopping five centuries after Pyrrho. We could be excused for being a little skeptical here.

Even if we accept such eminently reasonable advice as that we should follow customs, inclinations, and instruction from skilled people, we are not told what principled philosophical bases there are for doing so. Those sources of conduct for evident matter seem to come out of nowhere to rescue the Pyrrhonist who realizes that he does, in fact, have to arrive at opinions about certain things, on penalty of not being able to have a life.

Moreover, such advice would of course result in a very conservative society, incapable of innovating in matters of ethics, science, or much else, because any such innovation would presumably depend at least in part on opinions about non-evident matters.

Finally, we get to (vi), where Pyrrho / Timon tells us that adopting the right disposition toward the nature of things—i.e., suspending judgments—will lead to tranquillity, which is implied to be synonymous with, or at least a great part of, happiness. But the latter statement is clearly “non-evident” and thus indefensible on Pyrrhonist grounds.

As for whether suspending judgment leads to serenity, that’s obviously an empirical assertion, which is probably true about certain matters and for certain people and just as likely not true for other matters and other people. It may lead me to tranquillity, for instance, to suspend judgment about whether string theory is true or not. I’m not a physicist after all, so why get worked up? However, I’m not going to sleep well if I decide to suspend judgment on whether covid vaccines are a miracle of modern science or the result of a conspiracy by Big Pharma and Bill Gates. After all, I need to make a decision about whether to get or not to get the vaccine, and my health and very life may depend on it!

After all of this, Perin’s analysis concludes that either Pyrrho was not the sort of skeptic that Sextus Empiricus makes him out to be (epistemic reading of [iii]), or was not a skeptic at all (metaphysical reading of [iii]) but rather a dogmatist with definite (and very weird) views on the nature (or lack thereof) of reality. And that’s a whole new way, for me, to look at the mysterious Pyrrho of Elis.

[Next in this series: Arcesilaus, founder of the Skeptic Academy. Previous installments: The Cyrenaics.]