Pyrrhonean Scepticism and the Self-Refutation ArgumentAuthor(s): Alan BaileyReviewed work(s):Source: The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 158 (Jan., 1990), pp. 27-44Published by: Blackwell Publishing for The Philosophical QuarterlyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2219965 .Accessed: 10/04/2012 12:46

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The Philosophical Quarterly Vol. 40 No. 158 ISSN 0031-8094 $2.00

PYRRHONEAN SCEPTICISM AND THE SELF-REFUTATION ARGUMENT

BY ALAN BAILEY

I The self-refutation argument takes the form of a dilemma. The global sceptic about rational justification is engaged in attacking our customary view that some beliefs and actions can be rationally justified. Let us suppose, then, that this attack is launched by way of overtly non-rational considerations. These would rightly be dismissed by everyone concerned to live a rational life. But the attempt to offer reasons would appear to be completely self-defeating. If these putative reasons are indeed good reasons, then they will merely provide an illustration of the thesis that some beliefs can be justified rationally. Whereas if they are not good reasons, then they will be dismissed in the same way as the overtly non-rational considerations already discussed. Thus it seems to follow that the argumentation employed by the global sceptic must be wholly incapable of providing any genuine support for his scepticism.

This argument undoubtedly constitutes a formidable criticism of global scepticism about rational justification. Indeed its elegance and simplicity have long made it a favourite weapon of philosophers opposed to scepticism. Sextus Empiricus discusses the self-refutation argument on several occasions (see PH2 130-3, PH3 19; MVII 440-4, MVIII 278-9, MIX 204-6) ; so it is obvious that the argument figured prominently in the anti-sceptical polemics of his period. Similarly the revival of Pyrrhonean and Academic scepticism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries led to a revival of interest in the self-refutation argument. Hume offers some observations on the argument in Book One of A Treatise of Human Nature;2 and Pierre-

All references to the writings of Sextus Empiricus refer to R.G. Bury's edition of the Greek text (Sextus Empiricus, ed. R.G. Bury, 4 vols., Loeb Classical Library 1933-49). The abbreviation 'PH' refers to the 'Outlines of Pyrrhonism'; and the abbreviation 'Af refers to 'Adversus Mathematicos', with this being construed as embracing both 'Against The Professors' and 'Against The Dogmatists'. The number immediately following these abbreviations is the book number, and the second number identifies the relevant passage. All translations are taken from the facing English translation provided by Bury.

Word and name indices to Sextus Empiricus are available in the Teubner edition of Sextus' works. See Sexti Empirici Opera: Vol. III: Adversus Mathematicos, ed. J. Mau (Indices, K. Janacek) (Teubner, 1954).

2 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book One, ed. D.G.C. Macnabb (Fontana, 1962), pp. 237-8.

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Daniel Huet's extraordinary Pyrrhonean handbook Of The Weakness of Human Understanding places the argument on a list of seven misguided objections to scepticism.3 Moreover the self-refutation argument is still immensely popular today:4 no other argument against global scepticism seems to have the same air of brutal finality.

Nevertheless I wish to argue in this paper that the Pyrrhonean scepticism expounded by Sextus Empiricus is one form of global scepticism about rational justification that does have the internal resources to disarm the self- refutation argument. Thus the next two sections will endeavour to show that Sextus' use of the five tropes conventionally ascribed to Agrippa does commit Sextus to the conclusion that no claim is ever rationally preferable to its contradictory. And the remaining portion of the paper is devoted to explaining why it is nevertheless impossible for Sextus' dogmatic opponents to dismiss the tropes as self-refuting.

II

Curiously Sextus himself is prepared to say no more than that the five tropes were handed down by 'the later sceptics'. However, it becomes clear from Diogenes Laertius' account of Pyrrhonism that these sceptics were Agrippa and his immediate successors.5 Sextus outlines the tropes as follows:

the first based on discrepancy, the second on regress ad infinitum, the third on relativity, the fourth on hypothesis, the fifth on circular reasoning. (PHI 164)

Tropes one and three are intended to set up the problem. Trope one is the one that 'leads us to find that with regard to the object presented there has arisen both amongst ordinary people and amongst the philosophers an interminable conflict' (PHI 165). This confronts us with the problem of settling which of the competing opinions is correct. Trope three, the one based on relativity, is that 'whereby the object has such or such an appearance in relation to the subject judging and to the concomitant percepts' (PHI 167). Here we are faced with the problem of determining which of these appear- ances represents the true nature of the object in question. It is the task of tropes two, four and five to show that there is no way of solving these problems.

3 Pierre-Daniel Huet, Of The Weakness ofHuman Understanding (London, 1725), pp. 184-5. 4 See, for example, Anthony Quinton, The Nature of Things (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973) pp. 150-3); John Passmore, Philosophical Reasoning, 2nd edn (Duckworth, 1970) pp. 72-4; Hugo Meynell, 'Scepticism Reconsidered', Philosophy, 59 (1984), pp. 431-42 ;John F. Crosby, 'Refutation of Skepticism And General Relativism', in Dietrich von Hildebrand (ed.) Rehabilitierung Der Philosophie Josef Habel, 1974), pp. 103-23. 5 Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, ed. R.D. Hicks, 2 vols. (Loeb Classical Library, 1925), Book IX, sects 88-9.

PYRRHONEAN SCEPTICISM AND SELF-REFUTATION 29

Trope two is that 'whereby we assert that the thing adduced as a proof of the matter proposed needs a further proof, and this again another, and so on ad infinitum, so that the consequence is suspension, as we possess no starting- point for our argument' (PHI 166). The idea here is that a purported justification of some proposition carries no weight until it has been shown that it has true premisses and a valid inferential form. And tropes four and five are intended to rule out the possibility of any escape from the threatened regress. The trope based on hypothesis is invoked when 'the Dogmatists, being forced to recede ad infinitum, take as their starting-point something which they do not establish by argument but claim to assume as granted simply and without demonstration' (PHI 168). The decisive objection to any such manoeuvre is that if the dogmatist is to be considered worthy of credence when he makes an assumption, then the sceptic will be equally worthy of credence if he makes the opposite assumption. Finally the trope of circular reasoning is relevant to those cases 'when the proof itself which ought to establish the matter of inquiry requires confirmation derived from that matter; in this case, being unable to assume either in order to establish the other, we suspend judgement about both' (PHI 169). This is really just a more complicated case of the trope based on hypothesis for, in a circular argument, the argument intended to establish the truth of the dogmatist's claim depends for its effect on the assumption that the claim in question can already be taken as true.

These tropes are especially noteworthy in that it is immediately apparent that they are not restricted in their application to judgements about any particular subject-matter: they are completely general in their scope. Moreover it is also clear that the five tropes set out by Sextus call into question our claims to rationally justified belief as well as our claims to knowledge. If a person merely hypothesizes thatp, then that assumption does not give us any reason whatsoever to believe that it is true that p. Thus Agrippa's fourth trope cannot be circumvented by retreating to the position that p is probable rather than certain. However Agrippa's fifth trope is, as we have already pointed out, nothing more than a complicated case of the trope based on hypothesis. It follows, therefore, that if mere assumption cannot give us any reason to believe that p, then neither can any circular argument. Consequently the only way left to justify the claim that p necessitates the provision of a series of non-circular arguments that does not terminate in a set of arbitrary assumptions. Yet the second trope implies that this would force us into an infinite regress of justification, and no one would wish to argue that a non-terminating regress of justification suffers merely from the limitation of not providing us with an absolutely conclusive justification of the claim purportedly being justified. An unfinished regress of justification does not provide even the slightest justification for accepting its conclusion as

30 ALAN BAILEY

true. It is tempting to conclude, therefore, that anyone who endorses Agrippa's five tropes is unequivocally committed to the radical sceptical thesis that no claim in any area of discourse ever possesses any rational justification whatsoever.

Such a conclusion would, however, be premature as it overlooks the possibility that someone might take the view that some claims are self- evidently true. A self-evidently true claim could be rationally justified even in the absence of any external support as its justification would not depend on any other claim being justified. On the other hand, they would not be mere arbitrary assertions as their self-evidence would itself provide all the justification that is necessary. Consequently such claims would not only be immune to the regressive difficulties exploited by Agrippa's tropes, but they would also be capable of grounding the justificatory chains that would be essential in the case of less favoured claims.

It appears, then, that Agrippa's tropes do not themselves suffice to deliver the conclusion that no claim is ever rationally justified: all they show is that any claim that is rationally justified must be either self-evidently true or derivable from self-evidently true premisses by means of inferential steps that are self-evidently valid. Nevertheless it is also clear that the former and much stronger conclusion would be forthcoming if Agrippa's tropes could be supplemented by an argument that established that there are no self-evident truths; and arguments against the existence of self-evident truths will be presented in the next section of this paper. The rest of this section, however, will attempt to show that Sextus himself is not in a position to countenance the suggestion that self-evident truths exist. Irrespective of the force of the arguments that will be brought forward in section III, Sextus is committed to the view that Agrippa's tropes yield the conclusion that no claim is ever rationally justified. And Sextus is committed to that view because any attempt on his part to evade the force of the tropes by appealing to the supposed existence of self-evident truths would be inconsistent with his attitude towards the epistemological categories employed by the Stoics.

Sextus repeatedly asserts that the Pyrrhonean sceptic is someone who does not assent to anything non-evident (see PHI 13, PH1 201, and PH1 225). Furthermore Sextus frequently describes the Pyrrhonist as eschewing all 56y,uaaa. As Sextus is at pains to stress that a person holds a Soylua only when he assents to something non-evident (see PHI 13, PHI 16, and PHI 197), that description is straightforwardly equivalent to the claim that the Pyrrhonean sceptic does not assent to anything non-evident. However although it is clear that the appeal to the evident/non-evident distinction plays a vital role in Sextus' attempt to characterize the Pyrrhonist's special philosophic stance, Sextus explains that distinction only in terms of the classificatory schema devised by the Stoics. It follows, therefore, that we are

PYRRHONEAN SCEPTICISM AND SELF-REFUTATION 31

forced to conclude that the principles underlying the Stoic schema are ones that also command Sextus' confidence.

In the Stoic schema all possible matters of inquiry are classified as falling into one of the four mutually exclusive categories of the pre-evident, the occasionally non-evident, the naturally non-evident, and the altogether non- evident. But it is plain that a claim that is self-evidently true cannot be a claim about a non-evident matter of inquiry. For the truth about matters that are altogether non-evident is not apprehended at all, and the truth about matters that are occasionally or naturally non-evident can be apprehended only with assistance from some form of sign.

Now the pre-evident objects, they [the Stoics] say, do not require a sign ... And neither do the altogether non-evident, since of course they are not even apprehended at all. But such objects as are occasionally or naturally non-evident are apprehended by means of signs - not of course by the same signs, but by "suggestive" signs in the case of the occasionally non-evident and by "indicative" signs in the case of the naturally non-evident. (PH2 99)

Thus it follows that if Sextus does think of some claims as being self- evidently true, then he must hold that these claims are claims about matters that are pre-evident. Yet Sextus does not draw any distinctions within the category of pre-evident matters of inquiry: he never suggests that some pre- evident matters are more securely apprehended than other pre-evident matters. Consequently we are forced to the conclusion that Sextus can be in a position to regard claims as self-evidently true only if he supposes that the truth or falsity of any claim about pre-evident matters of inquiry is self- evident. And it seems obvious that Sextus cannot legitimately suppose any such thing.

The problem here stems from Sextus' willingness to attack the claims made by the dogmatists even when the dogmatists themselves are convinced that they are merely stating the truth about pre-evident matters of inquiry. At PH2 95, for example, Sextus brings a lengthy discussion of the criterion of truth to a close with this comment:

And since the criterion of truth has appeared to be unattainable, it is no longer possible to make positive assertions either about those things which (if we may depend on the statements of the Dogmatists) seem to be evident or about those which are non- evident; for since the Dogmatists suppose they apprehend the latter from the things evident, if we are forced to suspend judgement about the evident, how shall we dare to make pronouncements about the non-evident?

32 ALAN BAILEY

Furthermore the Stoics' favourite example of a claim about a pre-evident matter of inquiry is the claim 'It is day' when this is asserted by someone who is located outdoors and has the full use of his eyes (see PH2 97, MVIII 144 and MVIII 317). That claim, however, is a claim about a matter of objective fact; and Aenesidemus' ten tropes, which feature prominently alongside Agrippa's five tropes in Sextus' account of Pyrrhonism, are definitely intended to call into question even the most banal of our ordinary beliefs about the objective world. At PHI 99 we find the assertion 'But if the senses do not apprehend external objects (ra EKTr6s), neither can the mind apprehend them.' Thus the suggestion that there may be some non- perceptual, purely a priori justification of claims about the objective properties of real objects is explicitly rejected. Moreover the overall thrust of Aenesidemus' tropes is that sense-perception cannot be used to justify claims about matters of objective fact because sense-impressions conflict and we have no criterion capable of determining which impressions are veridical (see, for example, PHI 59-61, and PHI 112-17). But if we cannot justify claims about matters of objective fact by appealing to sense-perception or purely a priori reasoning, then we cannot justify such claims at all. Consequently anyone who endorses Aenesidemus' tropes would have to conclude that the claim 'It is day' is never rationally justified despite its status as a paradigm of the type of claim which the Stoics wish to treat as pre- evident.

We arrive, therefore, at the following situation. If we are to accommodate the notion of self-evident truth within the evident/non-evident classificatory system, then we have to suppose that all true claims about pre-evident matters of inquiry are self-evidently true and all false claims about pre- evident matters of inquiry are self-evidently false. However we are now aware that Sextus holds that many of the claims the dogmatists make about matters that strike them as pre-evident lack any rational justification. Thus a desire to make room for the notion of self-evident truth would drive us to conclude that Sextus is, in fact, committed to the view that claims that are totally devoid of any rational justification nevertheless strike some dogmatists as self-evidently true. But it would be absurd to allege that a claim that is genuinely self-evidently true can lack any rational justification. Hence it follows that we have to assume that Sextus holds that the dogmatists are mistaken in their belief that the claims in question are self-evidently true.

However, the supposition that a person can take a claim to be self- evidently true even when it is not self-evidently true obviously threatens to make the appeal to self-evident truth utterly useless as a way of providing a regress of justification with a satisfactory terminus. For we are now being asked to accept that a person can have the concept of self-evident truth and yet be unable to distinguish between genuine self-evidence and mere

PYRRHONEAN SCEPTICISM AND SELF-REFUTATION 33

speciosity. But once we accept that this is a possibility, we are faced by the problem of finding some way of grounding a decision about which property is actually present. Thus no progress has been made: the original problem, that of distinguishing between the truth and the apparent truth, has simply reappeared at a different point in our reasoning. And this time round we can hardly appeal to self-evidence as a means of determining whether something is genuinely self-evident or merely appears self-evident.

We are compelled to accept, therefore, that Sextus does take up a stance that prevents him from legitimately taking the view that the putative self- evidence of a claim can justify that claim. Consequently it is clear that Sextus at least cannot avoid seeing Agrippa's tropes as leading to the conclusion that no claim about any subject-matter is ever rationally justified.

III

In the preceding section we argued that Sextus' endorsement of the Stoics' schema for classifying possible matters of inquiry and his attitude towards claims about matters that are allegedly pre-evident make it impossible for Sextus to accept that any claim can genuinely have the property of being self- evidently true. It is now time, however, to ask whether someone who does not share those particular assumptions would be entitled to maintain that self- evident truths exist. Moreover, the answer to this question is of great importance to anyone who wishes to reject radical scepticism. If self-evident truths do not exist, then no claim could be justified unless we are wrong in thinking that mere hypothesis, circular reasoning and unfinished regresses of justification cannot provide a rational justification for a claim. Yet the view that such supposed sources of rational justification are wholly unacceptable is not one that many people would be willing to abandon. For most people, then, an appeal to the existence of self-evident truths is the only means of nullifying Agrippa' s tropes that possesses even prima facie plausibility.

The first obstacle to the claim that self-evident truths exist is undoubtedly the fact that it is not necessary to identify self-evident truths with true claims about pre-evident matters of inquiry in order to be persuaded that people cannot be viewed as infallible judges of what is and what is not self-evidently true. Thus we find, for example, that a spectacular instance of someone making a mistake about the supposed self-evidence of a particular claim occurs in Descartes' 'Meditations On First Philosophy'. In 'Meditation III' Descartes calmly states, 'it is perfectly evident that there must be at least as much reality in the cause as in the effect'.6 However, when we unpack this

6 Rene Descartes, 'Meditations On First Philosophy', in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, Vol. 1, ed. and trans. ES. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross, (Cambridge University Press, 1911), p. 169.

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opaque pronouncement, we discover that Descartes is claiming, amongst other things, that it is self-evident that the cause of an idea must have the same perfections as the object of that idea.7 And that claim is unlikely to strike any of us as self-evidently true: indeed we are far more likely to regard it as obviously false. In his story 'The Horla', Maupassant described an invisible creature whose constitution was more perfect than that of any human being.8 Consequently we would naturally say that Maupassant had formed an idea of a being more perfect than any human being. Yet we would rightly resist the conclusion that Maupassant himself had superhuman powers.

Furthermore, another notorious instance of this phenomenon occurred in the course of Frege's attempt to derive the axioms of arithmetic from purely logical laws. Frege initially took the view that it is self-evident that there is, for every predicate expressible by means of quantification over sets of objects, a set containing just those objects that satisfy the predicate concerned. Unfortunately this so-called axiom of comprehension embroils us in an alarming paradox when we come to consider the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. If we hypothesize that this set is not a member of itself, then it does have the qualifying property to be a member of itself. But if we switch to the assumption that it is a member of itself, then it fails to qualify as a member of itself because only sets that are not members of themselves qualify. And when Russell brought this paradox to Frege's attention, Frege suddenly recalled that he had always been in some doubt about the self- evidence of the axiom responsible.9

Thus it seems clear that even highly able thinkers, concentrating intently on a particular matter of inquiry, can mistakenly take a claim to be self- evidently true when it is not. Consequently a person can cleave to the view that apparent self-evidence provides him with an epistemological guarantee only if he is prepared to take the heroic line that his intellectual powers do not suffer from the limitations which afflict the lesser intellects of the philosophers named above.

Moreover, it is plausible to suppose that any person reflecting on his own intellectual history will recall that there are some claims which he now regards as false despite his former confidence in their self-evident truth. And one particularly fruitful source of such renunciations is the realm of geometrical reasoning. When we first encounter the suggestion that two

7 See Bernard Williams, Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry, (Pelican Books, 1978), pp. 135-41.

8 Guy de Maupassant, Selected Short Stories, trans. Roger Colet, (Penguin Books, 1971), pp. 313-45.

9 See M. Black and P.T. Geach (eds), Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege (Blackwell, 1952), p. 234.

PYRRHONEAN SCEPTICISM AND SELF-REFUTATION 35

straight lines may be parallel for part of their length and yet subsequently converge without ceasing to be straight lines, we take the falsity of this suggestion to be self-evident. Nor does this sense of self-evident falsity differ from the sense of self-evident falsity that accompanies the claim that 7+ 5 = 11 and the claim that black is a lighter colour than white. Nevertheless the General Theory of Relativity claims that if we wish to continue to think of a straight line as the shortest distance between two points, then we have to accept that the situation described above is not only a possible state of affairs but also a frequently occurring state of affairs.10

Similarly our intuitive grasp of the properties of the Mobius strip is usually extremely poor. A Mobius strip can readily be formed by giving a strip of paper a half twist and sticking the ends together. For our present purposes, however, the nature of its physical embodiment is irrelevant: we need only concern ourselves with its purely geometric properties. Suppose the strip were to be divided along its centre line. What geometrical figure or figures would result from that operation ? Almost anyone who attempts to reason his way to an answer will conclude that it is self-evident that the result is two circular, twisted strips. The analogy with an untwisted strip seems absolutely decisive. However, those of us who have experimented on actual strips of paper would insist that this apparently self-evident conclusion is false. The experimental evidence convincingly indicates that the result of dividing a Mobius strip in the way specified is a single strip with a full twist.

It follows, accordingly, that difficulties in distinguishing genuine self- evidence from apparent self-evidence cannot be dismissed as confined to other people. Anyone who searches hard enough will inevitably uncover examples of occasions when he himself has failed to arrive at a satisfactory decision. Yet if these problematic cases can be discerned only in retrospect, then it seems obvious that an appeal to the supposed self-evidence of a particular claim can do nothing to establish that the claim in question is true.

However, the last of the present objections to the attempt to use self- evidence as a way of bringing justificatory regresses to an end goes even deeper than the criticisms outlined above. It is difficult to deny that it is logically possible for any psychological operation to go wrong without the agent involved having any realization that it has gone wrong. Anyone inclined to dispute this need only consider the consequences of Alzheimer's disease or traumatic brain damage. Moreover, a claim's self-evidence cannot justify that claim unless someone is justified in thinking that he recognizes the claim as self-evidently true. But this process of recognition is a psychological operation. Consequently, it is logically possible for someone to

10 See Hilary Putnam, 'The Logic of Quantum Mechanics', in his Philosophical Papers: Volume One, 2nd edn (Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 174-7.

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think that he has recognized a particular claim to be self-evident, even when the claim is not genuinely self-evident. How, then, can anyone ever hope to establish that this logically possible situation is not his actual situation ? Yet if it is impossible for a person to show that he is justified in thinking that he can reliably recognize self-evidently true claims, then the existence of such 'self- evidently true' claims would not enable him to justify even one claim.

Thus we are seemingly forced to conclude that the potential fallibility of all psychological operations means that 'self-evidently true' claims cannot provide anyone with a reason to believe anything. However, that conclusion is plainly absurd: a genuinely self-evident claim must be capable of furnishing someone with good reason to believe that it is a true claim. Thus the conclusion that should really be drawn from the above reasoning is that self-evident truths cannot exist. And if self-evident truths cannot exist, then it is obvious that they cannot provide us with a solution to the epistemological problem generated by Agrippa's tropes.

IV

At this stage in the discussion we seem to have established that Sextus views Agrippa's tropes as yielding the radical conclusion that no claim is ever rationally justified. Moreover, we have also argued that Sextus is right to reject the supposition that an appeal to the existence of allegedly self-evident truths would enable us to justify some claims even if it is true that hypothesis, circular reasoning, and unfinished regresses of justification are not sources of genuine justification. However, the self-refutation argument maintains that it is self-defeating to attempt to argue that no claim is ever rationally justified. What, then, is the status of Sextus' sceptical arguments, and is his global scepticism about rational justification even notionally coherent?

When we are attempting to arrive at a correct assessment of the force of the self-refutation argument, it is essential to distinguish between the mature Pyrrhonist's characterization of his arguments and the characterization offered by his dogmatic opponent. Until we appreciate the significance of the interaction between these two very different viewpoints, it is impossible to understand how the mature Pyrrhonist can genuinely argue with the dogmatist without bringing forward anything that constitutes a good reason for accepting the Pyrrhonist's sceptical conclusions as true. But if we do avoid conflating the viewpoint of the mature Pyrrhonist with the viewpoint of the unregenerate dogmatist, then it is surprisingly easy to see how the mature Pyrrhonist's arguments can be of great philosophical significance even though they are not rationally compelling arguments.

Our discussion of the nature of Agrippa's five tropes led us to the conclusion that two of these tropes are intended to serve as reminders of our

PYRRHONEAN SCEPTICISM AND SELF-REFUTATION 37

frequent need to choose between conflicting claims while the other three tropes are intended to show that it is impossible to make a choice that has any rational justification. For our present purposes, however, the important point to note is that the three tropes that are supposed to establish that no claim is ever rationally preferable to its contradictory rely on principles of reasoning that are all extremely plausible. Almost no one would wish to maintain that unfinished regresses of justification, circular arguments or mere hypothesis can provide a person with good reason to believe that some particular claim is true. Furthermore, it became clear in the preceding section that there are also compelling grounds for conceding Sextus' unargued but far-reaching supposition that appeals to a claim's alleged self-evidence cannot provide us with a rational justification for assenting to that claim. It seems plain, therefore, that the individual components of Agrippa's tropes would strike most people as relatively uncontroversial constraints on the notion of rational justification.

But how would the mature Pyrrhonist choose to describe this attack on the dogmatist's view that there are some claims that can be rationally justified? Given the Pyrrhonist's implicit commitment to a global scepticism about rational justification, he will almost certainly not regard himself as offering good reasons for rejecting the dogmatist's position. And we find, in fact, that Sextus prefaces his presentation of Aenesidemus' and Agrippa's tropes with an explicit warning that he is not prepared to make any positive assertion regarding the number or validity of these tropes: 'for it is possible that they may be unsound or there may be more of them than I shall enumerate' (PHI 35). Instead the Pyrrhonist would presumably wish to describe himself as simply seeking to persuade the dogmatist to abandon his belief that there are such things as good reasons for accepting some claims and rejecting others.

Now this self-characterization obviously has the virtue of consistency. The Pyrrhonist is no longer engaged in the self-defeating task of bringing forward reasons to show that no claim is ever rationally justified. Nor is he incoherently trying to show that the belief that no belief whatsoever can be rationally justified, is in some sense itself rationally superior to the rival position that some claims can be rationally justified. No philosophical objections can be brought to bear against the suggestion that it is perfectly conceivable that someone should succeed in persuading someone else that all our beliefs are ultimately based on animal faith, and that none of them can be rationally justified.

What does initially remain unclear, however, is why philosophers should interest themselves in the mechanics of such persuasion. If the Pyrrhonist has no arguments but only rhetorical tricks and an ability to manipulate human psychology, how can his scepticism pose a philosophical challenge? Such scepticism would seem to be of concern only to those interested in the

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empirical efficiency of the propaganda techniques that happen to be employed. To answer this powerful objection we need to consider both the particular nature of the persuasion offered by the mature Pyrrhonist and the type of response the dogmatist is compelled to make to such persuasion.

The form of persuasion utilized by the mature Pyrrhonist is quite distinctive in character. He does not endeavour to intimidate the dogmatist through the use of forbidding scholastic jargon and endorsements from the leading intellectual figures of the day. Similarly, intoxicating style and rhetorical subtlety are conspicuously absent. In short, the resources of illicit opinion-manipulation are deliberately eschewed. What the Pyrrhonist does offer, however, are unadorned chains of thought that look very much like rational arguments.

Indeed not only do these chains of thought look like good arguments, but the dogmatist is also committed to treating them as though they are good arguments. Agrippa's second trope claims, in effect, that it is not rational to believe that p on the basis of a purported proof, unless it is also rational to believe that the proof has true premisses and a valid inferential form. Now the mature Pyrrhonist offers this oracular pronouncement as a means of persuasion. However, when the pronouncement is interpreted in accordance with the dogmatist's rationalistic code, its status is dramatically transformed. The dogmatist has no option, if he is not to act insincerely, other than to accept that it is irrational to take an unfinished regress of proofs as affording any rational justification for a disputed claim. One factor responsible for this lack of freedom is that the dogmatist himself rejects attempts to found claims on the basis of a non-terminating regress. For someone who partakes of the dogmatist's enthusiasm for consistency, this provides a considerable incentive for taking the second trope as a proper constraint on any belief that purports to be objectively justified. And the second factor that leads the dogmatist to give his assent to the trope in question is that if he rejects that particular trope, then his desire to be consistent in his decisions will force him to abandon the use of that trope in disputes with other people. But such an abandonment would mean that the other party in such a dispute would be able to establish, by means of a method that the dogmatist is no longer prepared to criticize, any claim whatsoever as worthy of rational acceptance. Hence the dogmatist is powerfully motivated to accept the validity of the second trope. Any attempt to circumvent it would be viewed as self-betrayal: 'If it is not rational to accept the validity of the second trope, then I no longer have any grasp on what it means to be rational in my beliefs and actions.'

Very similar considerations are applicable to the other two critical tropes. It is clear that the dogmatist would not allow his opponent in a debate to settle the issue simply by hypothesizing the point in dispute, or by means of a circular argument. How, then, can he sincerely object to an identical refusal

PYRRHONEAN SCEPTICISM AND SELF-REFUTATION 39

on the part of the Pyrrhonist ? Not that it would improve matters even if the dogmatist did decide to accept the mere hypothesis that p, or the provision of a circular argument, as a good reason for taking it to be true that p. For this would mean that he would be committed to supposing that all beliefs, no matter what their content, are rationally justified. Only by holding that the belief that p was rationally justified on one basis (namely, hypothesis or circular reasoning) while precisely the same basis was inadequate for the rational justification of the competing belief, the belief that it was not the case that p, would the dogmatist be in any sort of position to evaluate a belief as more or less rational than another - surely the whole point of the practice! And such a manoeuvre would inevitably present itself to the dogmatist as completely arbitrary and paradigmatically irrational.

Thus the dogmatist is quite unable to avoid accepting the proffered tropes as constraints on rational justification. But once the tropes have been accepted, the dogmatist will rapidly discover that these tropes, taken in conjunction with the problems associated with any appeal to supposedly self- evident truths, prevent him from satisfactorily justifying any belief. Indeed the tropes even prevent him from justifying the tropes themselves. Consequently the dogmatist is strongly tempted to abandon the tropes. However, he cannot formulate any alternative constraints that possess any greater credibility. Hence he is equally firmly committed to holding on to the tropes.

Now it is plausible to suggest that such unresolved tension is psychologically unendurable. One solution is to turn one's attention away from the chain of speculative thought that leads to this conflict. This can readily be achieved by immersing oneself in the practical activities of daily life. As Hume reports in the Treatise:

I dine, I play a game of back-gammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours' amusement, I wou'd return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strain'd, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther. 1

Unfortunately this solution succeeds only if one is prepared to eschew completely all reflection of a distinctively philosophical character. Otherwise questions concerning justification are bound to force themselves on one's attention; and the attempt to settle them will lead to a fresh and calamitous engagement with the objections of the sceptic. Consequently anyone who finds philosophical speculation at all attractive is likely to be pushed towards

1 Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book One, p. 318.

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the other solution - the acceptance of the sceptical claim that none of our beliefs can ever be justified. This immediately absolves one of the responsibility for selecting criteria of rationality. Hence one's inability to find any satisfactory candidates is no longer a source of concern.

How, though, would the dogmatist describe the situation before his dramatic conversion to global scepticism? Within the dogmatist's rationalis- tic code the Pyrrhonist's chains of reasoning have to be treated as good arguments. If they are dismissed as mere emotive persuasion, then the dogmatist will effectively have abandoned what little grasp he ever had on the notion of rational justification. The Pyrrhonist's arguments do not just mimic the arguments customarily employed by the dogmatist in his less reflective moments (though the fact that they do mimic these arguments is itself very significant); they also represent the patterns of argument the dogmatist finds least impugnable. If those patterns have to be abandoned, then the dogmatist literally has no idea of what might replace them. No rival principles have even the same degree of plausibility, let alone greater plausibility. As far as the dogmatist is concerned, therefore, the sceptical arguments are to be taken as good arguments. But their conclusion is that there is no such thing as a good argument. If the dogmatist had any plausible alternative principles of rationality, such a reductio would be occasion to adopt these alternatives. In their absence, however, the rationalism of the dogmatist leaves the dogmatist in the untenable position of wanting to say both that he has good reasons to suppose that there are no such things as good reasons, and, as this conclusion is clearly inconsistent, that he cannot have good reasons for supposing that there are no such things as good reasons. Consequently the dogmatist's rationalistic practice no longer represents a workable language-game; and the dogmatist abandons his rationalism for scepticism.

An illustration drawn from the writings of Paul Feyerabend may help, at this point, to bring matters into sharper focus. Indeed Feyerabend, despite claiming to be an epistemological anarchist rather than a sceptic, is perhaps the twentieth-century philosopher who most closely conforms to the role and strategy of Sextus' Pyrrhonist. In his book Against Method, Feyerabend apparently seeks to discredit Popperian philosophy of science by showing that its proposed methodology would actually have hindered scientific progress.12 At other points in the book, however, Feyerabend specifically denies that he knows what constitutes 'real' progress. But if he is unable to distinguish between progress and mere change, then how can he be in a position to argue that Popper's proposed methodology would have retarded scientific progress? For it is natural to assume that such a claim cannot be well-founded unless Feyerabend is able to establish that there has been some

12 Paul Feyerabend, Against Method (Verso, 1978).

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progress. Otherwise there would be nothing for Popper's methodology to have hindered or prevented. Yet Feyerabend glories in the admission that he lacks any reason to suppose that there has been any scientific progress since the days of the Pre-Socratics. It has seemed to many people, therefore, that we can safely conclude that Feyerabend's position is hopelessly self- contradictory. His argument against Popperian philosophy of science can be a good argument only if his claim to lack criteria, for distinguishing between progress and change, is false.

Feyerabend's response to this allegation is to point out that his critics have misunderstood the function of his argument.13 The argument is not intended to provide any arbitrary person with a good reason for rejecting Popperian philosophy of science. Rather it is intended to reduce the typical adherent of such philosophy to concluding that he has a good reason for abandoning his allegiance. In this sort of context it does not follow, from the fact that an argument uses a certain premiss, that the wielder of the argument accepts the premiss, claims to have good reasons for it, or regards it as plausible. He may deny the premiss but still use it because his opponent accepts it and, accepting it, can be driven into making a desired concession. Thus Feyerabend reaffirms that he does not claim to possess special knowledge as to what constitutes progress, and explains that he simply takes his cue from his opponents. 'THEY prefer Galileo to Aristotle. THEY say that the transition Aristotle -. Galileo is a step in the right direction. I only add that this step not only was not achieved, but could not have been achieved with the methods favoured by them.'14 Feyerabend's argument therefore generates difficulties for the Popperian philosopher of science: it does not provide objective reasons for taking its conclusion as true. However, this apparent deficiency is actually of no significance. The only people antecedently likely to take its conclusion to be false are the Popperians; and they are compelled, by their own rationalistic practice and firmly-held beliefs, to hold that the argument is coercive. Hence, if they are to act sincerely, they will have to abandon their suggested scientific methodology. And this, of course, is just the result that Feyerabend intended.

Now I take it that most impartial observers would agree that Feyerabend has defended himself successfully against the mooted charge of self- contradiction. But if Feyerabend's position here is acceptable, then so is the position of the Pyrrhonist who seeks to undermine the authority of reason. For Feyerabend and the Pyrrhonist argue in the same way. Neither believes that the arguments he happens to put forward are rationally compelling. Indeed the mature Pyrrhonist holds that no arguments give us any rational

13 Paul Feyerabend, 'Conversations with Illiterates' in his Science in a Free Society (New Left Books, 1978), pp. 125-217.

14 Paul Feyerabend, Science in a Free Society (New Left Books, 1978), p. 142.

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justification whatsoever for taking their conclusions to be true. However, just as Feyerabend offers arguments that the sincere Popperian is in no position to reject as irrational persuasion, so the Pyrrhonist offers arguments that the sincere dogmatist is forced to regard as good arguments. The sole difference is that Feyerabend's arguments leave the Popperian with the possibility of subsequently sincerely characterizing his change of mind as the result of rational argument. The Pyrrhonist, on the other hand, renders the dogmatist's practice so unworkable that he is subsequently prepared to talk only in terms of persuasion rather than reasons. At no point is the dogmatist given the option of retaining his belief that some claims can be rationally justified and yet sincerely characterizing the Pyrrhonist's arguments as irrational.

V

In the previous section we argued that the mature Pyrrhonist thinks of his epistemological arguments as having a purely therapeutic function. He does not hold that his arguments have any rational force: instead he regards them as instruments for bringing about suspension of judgement in other people. However, it is important to be aware of the fact that the Pyrrhonist's view of his own arguments changes dramatically in the course of his philosophical development. When the Pyrrhonist begins his intellectual journey towards a global scepticism about rational justification, he is firmly committed to the objective validity of the principles of reasoning that underlie the tropes devised by Agrippa and Aenesidemus. Indeed, it is only the future Pyrrhonist's initial confidence in the validity of these principles that enables us to explain his subsequent suspension of judgement on all nonevident matters of inquiry.

At the start of his investigations the Pyrrhonist has a great many beliefs about non-evident matters of inquiry. However, the mature Pyrrhonist professes to have no beliefs about such matters even though he does admit to having beliefs about evident matters of inquiry:

It must also be borne in mind that what, as we say, we neither posit nor deny, is some one of the dogmatic statements made about what is non- evident (r- r8qA,ov); for we yield to those things which move us emotionally and drive us compulsorily to assent (UvyKaardOatv). (PHI 193)

Moreover the Pyrrhonist assures us that this transformation is the result of his having been exposed to various arguments that have undermined his trust in the rationality of his former beliefs (see PHI 31-5). Thus he is claiming

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that these arguments have persuaded him to alter his beliefs. But it is obvious that a person who has no inclination to believe that a given argument has true premisses and a valid inferential structure will not be persuaded of anything by that argument. Consequently the fact that the Pyrrhonist's beliefs alter as a result of his exposure to arguments like those devised by Agrippa and Aenesidemus can be explained only if we are willing to suppose that the Pyrrhonist was, at some point, inclined to accept such arguments as rationally compelling.

Once the Pyrrhonist has suspended judgement on all non-evident matters of inquiry, however, there is no need to suppose that this suspension of judgement is sustained by a continuing inclination to accept that Agrippa's arguments or Aenesidemus' arguments are good arguments. The elimination of existing beliefs depends on the Pyrrhonist being persuaded that the claims in question are less justified than he formerly supposed. In contrast, the acquisition of new beliefs by a Pyrrhonist who has already suspended judge- ment on all non-evident matters of inquiry would depend on his being per- suaded that some particular claims are better justified than he formerly supposed. Consequently the Pyrrhonist's renunciation of the epistemological principles that underpin his sceptical arguments does not have any effect on the stability of his suspension of judgement. Although the Pyrrhonist is now free to adopt a new set of standards, he cannot think of any epistemological principles that possess any more plausibility than those he has just discarded. Thus he is quite unable to come to even a provisional conclusion about the merits of putative justifications. And this, of course, rules out the possibility of the Pyrrhonist eventually arriving at the positive conclusion that he does have good reason to believe that a specific claim is true. Yet suspension of judgement on a given topic is supposed to be a product of one's inability to discern any good reason for accepting or rejecting any claim about the topic in question. It seems clear, therefore, that the Pyrrhonist's suspension of judgement will remain stable even when the Pyrrhonist extends his suspension of judgement to cover the very principles that originally drove him towards a widespread suspension of judgement.

Thus it is now possible to see that the same argument can have entirely different functions at different stages in the Pyrrhonist's philosophic career. The Pyrrhonist starts out as a dogmatist who is implicitly committed to the epistemological principles used in the arguments put forward by Agrippa and Aenesidemus. Nevertheless, he has not yet realized the full implications of those principles; so he does not give his explicit assent to the sceptical arguments just mentioned. In the course of his subsequent investigations, however, he becomes increasingly aware of the fact that Agrippa's tropes and Aenesidemus' tropes are merely drawing out the consequences of principles of reasoning that already enjoy his support. Moreover, he cannot think of any

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alternative principles he could sincerely endorse. Hence he embraces the sceptical conclusions of the tropes, and finds himself forced to suspend judge- ment on an ever-widening range of topics. At this stage, then, the Pyrrhonist views Agrippa's tropes and Aenesidemus' tropes as rationally compelling arguments that have enabled him to discover the limits of human reason.

Eventually, however, it occurs to the Pyrrhonist to subject his basic epistemological principles to the same tests he has been imposing on all other claims that purport to be rationally justified. And when he does this, he is forced to the conclusion that these principles fail to meet the standards that they themselves lay down. Thus the Pyrrhonist suspends judgement on the objective cogency of those principles, and he ceases to regard the tropes as good arguments. At MVIII 481, for example, we find the following comments about the use of Agrippean arguments:

And again, just as it is not impossible for the man who has ascended to a high place by a ladder to overturn the ladder with his foot after his ascent, so also it is not unlikely that the Sceptic after he has arrived at the demonstration of his thesis by means of the argument proving the non-existence of proof, as it were by a step-ladder, should then abolish this very argument.

As we have already noted, however, this reassessment of the standard sceptical arguments does not disturb the Pyrrhonist's suspension of judgement. Nor, indeed, does the Pyrrhonist stop using the five tropes of Agrippa and the ten tropes of Aenesidemus. Although he no longer thinks of them as providing him with good reasons for his scepticism, he is of the opinion that these tropes are an effective means of persuading other people to suspend judgement. Hence the tropes continue to occupy a central place in the Pyrrhonist's exposition of his scepticism.

It follows, therefore, that we have to regard the Pyrrhonist as successively embracing the two views described in section IV of this paper. And just as it is vital to avoid conflating the mature Pyrrhonist's assessment of the standard sceptical arguments with the assessment made by the dogmatist, so too it is vital to avoid conflating the mature Pyrrhonist's assessment with the one forced upon the developing Pyrrhonist. The mature Pyrrhonist genuinely sees his negative epistemological arguments as nothing more than a form of psychological therapy. However, the developing Pyrrhonist is in the same situation as anyone else who has not yet arrived at a global scepticism about rational justification: he is wholly unable to avoid seeing those very same arguments as rationally compelling arguments.

Guelph University, Canada