Philosophy-RAG-demo/transcriptions/HoP 069 - Beyond Belief - Pyrrho and Skepticism.txt

 Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of King's College London and the Leverhulme Trust, online at www.historyoffilosophy.net. Today's episode, Beyond Belief, Pyro and Skepticism. There are a few philosophical issues that are so deep, so troubling, that they make movies about them. I don't mean intellectual European films, I mean proper movies, with special effects budgets. Hollywood has made blockbusters about free will and future truth, for instance. I have in mind the Tom Cruise vehicle Minority Report, whose theme comes straight from the deterministic argument in Aristotle's On Interpretation. The nature of time itself is another obvious case. I need only mention Back to the Future, to say nothing of Back to the Future Part 2 and Back to the Future Part 3. But maybe the most cinema-friendly topic in philosophy is skepticism. The skeptic asks how we can be sure that we know what we think we know. Perhaps we are prey to systematic falsehood in our beliefs, because we are, say, being used as living batteries in an energy farm built by intelligent machines, while our brains are, for reasons that remain poorly explained, entertained with a virtual reality called the Matrix. It's gotten to the point where it is obligatory, when discussing skepticism in philosophy classes, to mention this movie, The Matrix, though not so much Matrix Parts 2 and 3, because they were rubbish. It's a real time saver, actually. If you're trying to give an argument for skepticism, you just have to point out that Keanu Reeves didn't know he was in the Matrix, and if he couldn't figure it out, what chance do the rest of us have? Really, though, any movie that features a dream sequence in which the characters or audience believe that the dream is real is touching on the theme of skepticism. This is one of the oldest tricks in the movie-making book. It goes back at least as far as Buster Keaton's wonderful silent movie, Sherlock Jr., in which a film projectionist falls asleep and dreams of himself as a character in a movie. Keaton already realized that the question of what is real, and how we can know what is real, relates naturally to cinema, because cinema is itself an alternate version of reality. In this episode, though, I want to discuss not so much an alternate version of reality as an alternate version of skepticism. The skepticism of the ancient world influenced modern skepticism, and continues to fascinate philosophers who work in this area, but it is not the same thing as modern skepticism. The father of modern skepticism was Descartes, who proposed radical doubt as a stepping stone towards reaching conclusions that could not be doubted. In his Meditations, Descartes subjects all of his beliefs to skeptical attack. In fact, he raises the question of how he knows he isn't dreaming, and also proposes a scenario not unlike The Matrix, in which a malicious demon is filling him with false beliefs. The reason Descartes does this is that he wants to see which beliefs, if any, are immune to doubt. He decides that there are some, as we'll see when we get to Descartes, in, oh, five years or something. After Descartes, skepticism has usually taken roughly this form. We consider beliefs of various kinds, and ask whether they can be doubted, and if so, what that means about the status of those beliefs. For instance, you may be listening to this while cooking dinner or jogging, and you may think you know you're cooking dinner or jogging. But in fact, you cannot know such things, since just maybe you are in The Matrix, waiting to be freed from the confusion by Laurence Fishburne. The ancient skeptics had a very different approach. We can see this already by considering the name, skeptics. As you won't be surprised to learn, this word comes from ancient Greek. Skeptikos means someone who is inquiring or searching. The ancient skeptic, then, is not testing his beliefs against some kind of radical, or inducing scenario, like The Matrix or Descartes' evil demon. He is, rather, someone who is sharing in a process of philosophical inquiry. He's not raising radical or systematic doubt as a general issue, but rather inquiring into the success of other believers, especially other philosophers, like the Stoics. The skeptic is struck by the objections that face each attempt to determine the truth of things. He finds that incompatible theories seem to have more or less equally good arguments on their side. He also finds that the theories of other philosophers fall short of the standards of proof suggested by those very same philosophers. In short, he always finds room for doubt. Nonetheless, he remains, in theory at least, committed to the positive enterprise of seeking truth. Upon finding that various proposals about the nature of things are doubtful, he does not give up the search. But given that the search has so far failed to turn up a victorious candidate for truth, he does suspend judgment. This idea of suspending judgment is at the core of ancient skepticism, whereas it plays no role in Cartesian skepticism. The Greek word for the suspension of judgment, epoche, became something of a standard around which the skeptical tradition could rally. Which is not to say that only the skeptics were interested in suspension of judgment. As we saw when looking at the Stoic theory of knowledge back in episode 60, early Stoics like Zeno and Chrysippus thought that the perfect wise man, or sage, would suspend judgment rather than assenting to impressions which were in any way doubtful. But the skeptics pointed out that the Stoics' own standards for knowledge were set so high that they made knowledge unattainable. All impressions leave room for doubt. Thus, the wise man would always suspend judgment. Here we have another striking difference between ancient and modern skepticism. Since we now usually think of skepticism as a challenge to be overcome, if at all possible, we do not think about skepticism as a stable philosophical posture, a way of living one's life. But, in common with the other Hellenistic schools, the skeptics put forth a picture of the ideal sage and of a life that would be free of disturbance. This is perhaps the most surprising feature of ancient skepticism. It was presented as a recipe for happiness. To some extent, this is symptomatic of the competition between the skeptics and other philosophical groups. Since rival schools like the Stoics and the Epicureans had an account of the sage and of the happy life, the skeptics needed to say something on these same topics too. But it was not merely a dialectical afterthought, as we can see by turning to the man who is usually recognized as the first skeptic, Pyro of Elis. Pyro was born in the 360s BC and died in the 270s, making him roughly a generation younger than Aristotle and a generation older than Epicurus. He was an admired figure in his home of Elis, the northwest corner of the southern part of mainland Greece. Like Socrates and Diogenes the Cynic, he wrote nothing. Our understanding of him as a personality relies on the reports of his followers and other ancient recorders of the history of philosophy. Diogenes Laertius' Lives of the Philosophers, an important source for so many Hellenistic thinkers, preserves a report on Pyro. Apart from that, the most important information derives ultimately from Pyro's student Taimon, who was a great supporter of Pyro and his skeptical approach to philosophy. That skepticism found an irreverent embodiment in a work of Taimon's called the Silloi or Paradis. It was other philosophers who were the butt of the jokes. It's not entirely clear how much of the philosophical stance we associate with Pyro was in fact Pyro's, and how much was invented by Taimon. But it was Pyro, not Taimon, who in due course was honored as the founder of a skeptical tradition. As we'll be seeing, beginning in the first century BC and carrying on into the period of the Roman Empire, there were skeptics who proudly styled themselves as Pyronists. Although Pyro is thus credited with beginning something new, his skeptical attitude did not come from nowhere. One hypothesis about his inspiration already excited ancient authors who wrote about Pyro. In the 320s BC, Pyro participated in the military campaign of Alexander the Great, which meant traveling as far away as India. There, we are told, Pyro encountered Indian wise men who may have been a source for skeptical ideas. This idea is not without merit, given that skepticism did play a role in classical Indian philosophy. On the other hand, there were antecedents for Pyro's views in Greek philosophy. Pyro himself seems to have acknowledged Democritus as an important predecessor. As we've seen, after setting forth his atomic theory, Democritus drew skeptical conclusions from it, declaring that perceptible qualities like sweetness and color are merely conventions, since in reality there is nothing but atoms and void. In general, Pyro, or at least his faithful follower Taimon, treated other philosophers with scorn, but Democritus was respected for his anticipation of skepticism. Another Presocratic who received a degree of admiration was Xenophanes, perhaps because of his irreverence concerning traditional Greek ideas about the gods. It must also be said that, possible influence from India notwithstanding, Pyro's image and way of life fits comfortably into the age of Diogenes the Cynic, Epicurus, and Zeno, the founder of Stoicism. Like them, and like Socrates, Pyro cultivated the persona of an imperturbable sage. He did not shrink from fearful situations like storms at sea, and was happy to stoop to performing menial tasks like washing pigs. Nor did physical pain bother him. A typical legend has him undergoing the horrors of ancient surgery without so much as flinching. Supposedly, in describing his own way of life, he used that most central technical term of Hellenistic ethics, ataraxia, or lack of disturbance. Thus, Pyro claimed to have achieved the Holy Grail pursued by almost all the philosophers of his day. Like Diogenes the Cynic, he managed this without taking the trouble to devise a complex philosophical theory, such as Epicurus and Zeno offered. Far from it. Pyro's indifference to danger and pain was the supposed consequence of his lack of beliefs and commitments. Now, I know what you're thinking. Why would a life without belief be a life of calm, a life free of trouble? One might just as easily suppose it would be a life consumed with worry. If I don't have firm beliefs about the world around me, won't I face each new situation in a state of ignorance and confusion? Aren't the Stoics right to think that it is knowledge and understanding that yield confidence and serenity? Well, I tend to agree with you, but it isn't obvious that Pyro is wrong about this. Let's consider again those tales of Pyro's indifference to circumstances. For instance, his ability to undergo excruciating pain without registering any dismay would, perhaps, be explained by the fact that he does not believe pain is a bad thing. His cheerfulness about performing menial tasks would derive from the absence of beliefs about which activities are unworthy. Pyro's life is, in fact, very like that of the Stoic sage. The happiness of the Stoic sage, too, is immune to pain and conventional feelings of shame, because his positive commitments lie elsewhere. He believes that only virtue is worth having, and has a solid theory about the nature of virtue. Pyro doesn't have those positive beliefs, of course, but he doesn't need them. All he needs to do is avoid having beliefs that would give rise to disturbance. And, of course, he has no such beliefs, since he has no beliefs at all. Of course, if Pyro is to be anything other than one more example of an indomitable Hellenistic wise man, he needs to give us some kind of philosophical rationale for the skeptical attitude that yields autoraxia. For this, we have to rely principally on a single piece of evidence, which reaches us through a philological version of the children's game of telephone, or Chinese whispers. The report is found in the 4th century AD Christian theologian Eusebius, hardly a promising place to find details about the ideas of a 4th century BC skeptic, but beggars can't be choosers. Eusebius is relating an account about Pyro, preserved by an earlier Aristotelian philosopher, who in turn was taking his information from Pyro's follower Taimon. And don't forget that what we can read would be manuscripts that are only copies, or copies of copies, of the text Eusebius himself wrote. Do you suppose that scholars just might have proposed amending the Greek text in such a way as fundamentally to change the logic of the whole passage? Why, of course they have. Such are the delights of trying to reconstruct early Hellenistic philosophy. Still, we have some reason to think that the passage tells us something fairly reliable about Pyro, or at least about Taimon's understanding of Pyro, which is about as much as we can hope for. Plus, it's really interesting. So let's see what it says. The report tells us that things in themselves are neither one way nor another. They are indifferent, impossible to measure or to judge. Our perceptions and beliefs render neither truth nor falsehood. Thus, we should remain without belief, inclining neither this way nor that, as a result of which we will avoid making any assertions and, finally, achieve ataraxia, freedom from disturbance. Since Pyro himself attained this freedom, he is presumably a reliable guide to the method, and this at least claims to be his own description of the method. The passage is, in short, exactly what we were looking for. Unfortunately, it's not easy to understand. We can start with the basic observation that Pyro is telling us to avoid opinion, or belief. The word he uses, doxa, is the same word that Plato and Aristotle use to describe the state of mind in which one takes something to be true while lacking knowledge in the proper sense. In Plato's classic formulation, belief lies between ignorance and knowledge. Of course, Plato and Aristotle urge us to shun ignorance and not to be satisfied with true belief. Rather, we should push on until we achieve knowledge and understanding of the way things are. But this, Pyro claims, is impossible. Things in themselves are neither one way nor another. Unfortunately, the passage contains no defense of this alarming statement, but we've seen the sentiment before. Think, for instance, of Protagoras in Plato's Theaetetus, saying that if the wind feels cold for you and warm for me, then there is no truth of the matter about whether the wind is warm or cold in itself. All truth is relative to an observer. Or, think of Democritus again, saying that the perceptible features of things are only a matter of custom, because in reality they are atoms and void. Pyro's reference to perception, in addition to belief, suggests that he also had in mind examples like this. The moral of the skeptical story is that Plato and Aristotle were wrong. Belief is not inadequate because it falls short of knowledge. Rather, it goes too far. To have a belief presupposes that we are able to determine the nature of things, but this is impossible. Thus we should, to put the point in Plato's terms, content ourselves with ignorance rather than striving for true belief, never mind full-scale knowledge. It's obvious that the skeptic must be ignorant in a sense, given that ignorant just means lacking knowledge, and the skeptic is someone who accepts that knowledge has not been attained, either by himself or by anyone else, as far as he can tell. Yet, it's equally obvious that the skeptic's ignorance is special. It will not involve having false beliefs, of course, since he will have no beliefs at all. Rather, it is a mature, self-conscious, and blissful form of ignorance, in which he suspends all belief, and in this way achieves peace of mind. There are several difficulties that remain, though. I'll mention two of them. The first is that Pyro seems in our passage to be laying down a bold philosophical thesis, namely that the natures of things cannot be determined. Now, Pyro isn't doubting the existence of the things around us. He apparently didn't raise Descartes-style worries about whether there is a wind. He only suggested that there is no fact of the matter about whether the wind is warm or cold. But that's not the problem. In fact, it's just another difference between ancient and modern skepticism. Ancient skeptics in general did not raise worries about whether external things are really out there. They only raised problems for attempts to determine the natures of those things. The problem is rather that, at least on the interpretation I've just given, Pyro asserted confidently that the natures of things are unknowable. That sounds very like a belief, or even a proposed bit of knowledge. He seems to be completely convinced that things cannot be determined, which is why we should refrain from belief. But this conviction is itself a belief. Later skeptics, as we'll see, are more careful here, and say only that they suspend judgment about whether the natures of things might be knowable. Some modern scholars, by the way, interpret the Eusebius passage in such a way that Pyro too avoids committing himself to the intrinsic unknowability of things. For our purposes, perhaps we should just suspend judgment about his real view. The second problem I want to mention is also one that confronted the later skeptics. We've understood Pyro to be saying that he can do without any beliefs at all. In fact, to be saying that his freedom from disturbance is achieved by giving up on the whole enterprise of forming beliefs. This, he has discovered, is the happy life. But not only does this life sound less than happy, it doesn't even sound possible. To give just one example, how am I supposed to avoid starving to death if I suspend judgment about which items in my environment are edible? This sort of worry infected the biographical reports about Pyro, so that we are told fanciful legends about his students following him around, stopping him at the last minute from walking out in front of oncoming wagons, or stepping off cliffs. The idea that Pyro actually behaved like the cartoon character Mr. Magoo, blinded by his lack of beliefs rather than by real blindness, is clearly silly. But a serious point underlies the stories, namely that life without belief seems downright impossible, at least for humans. Perhaps Pyro agreed. In one anecdote, he is frightened by a dog, and reacts, betraying his belief that the dog is dangerous. After regaining his composure, he remarks that it is difficult to divest oneself of one's humanity. But the evidence at our disposal concerning Pyro does not really allow us to say with confidence how he would have solved these problems, or indeed whether he tried to solve them. Fortunately, the skeptical tradition is only just starting. Soon enough, there will come a new group of thinkers who avoid commitment, belief, and assertion, and who respond to the two problems I've just raised. First, that skepticism is itself a kind of commitment, and second, that one cannot live without belief. These new skeptics arise within Plato's Academy, of all places. One can easily imagine Plato, to say nothing of his immediate successors, Bucepus and Xenocrates, spinning in their graves at the thought of their Academy being run by skeptics. But the skeptics could claim Platonic legitimacy. They looked not to Democritus nor to Pyro. Rather, like so many other Hellenistic thinkers, their idol was Socrates. After all, Socrates did claim to know only that he knew nothing. The skeptics of the new Academy are going to wonder if they know even that much. I'm in no doubt that you'll want to join me to hear all about them, next time on The History of Philosophy, without any gaps.