24) Pyrrhonic Skepticism

hey everybody how's it going welcome back from Thanksgiving break just in time for us to have what two more scheduled meetings as it turns out we're really only gonna have that this is this is it this is the last time that it's the last time we're ever gonna see each other no that's not true our next scheduled meeting for the class is Thursday but I'm not going to address any new content in that that'll just be a workshop for folks who want a little bit of extra help with their final papers so Thursday is just paper workshop nothing else if you're feeling comfortable with your paper by all means stay home sleep in I don't know if you get like can you sleep in past 11:00 are you capable of this or you know go get brunch with somebody here or you know go the library and work on your paper yeah whatever study for your other classes I'm sure you've got plenty to do at that time if you decide that the best use of your time is to come in and talk to me about like how to go about this final paper then by all means do that December 5th is when this is due so that's actually a week from today week from today no week from yesterday week from yesterday ASL our last day of classes so December 5th is when those final papers are due which also leaves a third and final exam which will be held on the date of our that the date that the final exam is scheduled to be held what is that the 13th good guess though the 13th of December this exam and this is not mentioned on the syllabus in fact it's not mentioned anywhere yet I'm mentioning it for the first time now I hereby declare that that third exam is optional if you feel like it will help your grade then go for it if you feel like I'm happy with the grade where it is and I'm not sticking around here until December 13th I want to go home for Christmas or whatever holiday you celebrate then like go ahead and do that too and I know immediately some folks are thinking like what if I take the exam but I do worse and it brings my grade down tough no no if you do worse maybe worse than it brings your grade down I just I just won't count it but it is I will say this it's on it's entirely possible that in the rush to file grades which inevitably happens at the end of the semester for me I'm trying I'm getting better at it in the rush to file those grades I might accidentally leave your exam score in it'll be on canvas it's on you if you take the exam but you don't want it counted it's on you to make sure that I don't count it I'm telling you that I'm I intend to not count it if it brings your grade down but it is on you to police me on this I don't anticipate any big problems with this but I don't I don't want to invite any controversy does that sound reasonable is everybody pretty clear with what's going on from here out and this might be some people might be like I'm happen with my grade right now so like screw skepticism I'm out of here that would be a little bit rude I'd say stick around just to hear about skepticism if for no other reason then I'll give you an opposing view that will seem equally compelling yes question nobody that's not true not nobody I don't know if anybody in this class some folks in the the online section have a great for exam - my intent is to get those grades finished by the 5th which is when I'll be posting that third exam mm should I post the third exam on the fifth the sixth I'll be posting that exam at at the very latest a week before it's due that'll be the 13th so subtract 7 from 13 whatever that is that's the sixth button it so yeah the sixth at the latest is when I'll post that exam you'll have till the 13th to work on it and finish it and hopefully by the time that not just hopefully I'll go ahead and declare my intentions by the time that exam is posted you'll have grades for exam two if you have questions about those exams at any point you'll notice since it's all handled online they were passed back exams sometimes I'll make comments on your exam on canvas if you have any questions about your exam grade by all means do come come see me and I'll be happy to talk with you yes the third exam will focus on the Hellenistic philosophers after Aristotle but it will reach back it will be trying to put those philosophers into conversation with the earlier stuff so cumulative but focusing on the Hellenistic and Roman philosophers that we've read after Aristotle no well you can you can come to my office hours with the exam in hand and you can even ask me about the exam questions I will not answer those questions but I'm happy to talk with you about other stuff I've got I've got peanuts almonds I've got tea I've got tea I don't have any candy I don't want to be a bad influence on you guys I have I have dried pears that's nature's candy I have I have all the things that would make my office a nice place to be because sometimes I have to be there so yeah by all means please drop in be friendly and not just you know now at the end of this semester any time if this is the last day that we see each other let me say this like feel free to stop by my office anytime maybe I'll be there maybe I'll have time for you okay good brakes all around anybody strike up conversations about the nature of the platonic soul with their families this is this is what families talk about over Thanksgiving about stoicism anybody like you guys ever like get asked by your family and friends like clone ancient philosophy what's that all about it you try to explain it to them and they're like wow that sounds awesome or they're like wow that sounds terrible Andrew my friends who also interesting yeah all right there you go yeah that it's it's just the activity of the living body it's a tough idea it's a tough idea for sure yeah they they what do you could you tell which position they were coming from were they like there is no such thing as solar were they like the soul is a soul as a ghost yeah okay all right yeah however many grams that's supposed to be when the body dies I don't think that's ever been verified yeah what age is that nine at 90s he started asking about what happens when you died that seems about the right age what do you guys think how do you answer that right or do you answer that ask your parents here's a question yeah what do you think of how would a philosopher respond to a nine-year-old that asks what happens to us when we die depends on the philosopher they might give different answers how do you think Socrates would respond to that question what happens to us when we die Oh Socrates tell me what happens to us when we die in soccer yeah we're sorry Socrates you start out by like I don't know you tell me what you think right we we've seen this already with like one of our philosophers well and that perhaps this is the right way to respond to a nine-year-old especially one who's not our own child who comes up to us and asked what happens to us when we die we could say go ask your parents but I like not even knowing the kid's parents and not to like slander your relatives on YouTube no less maybe I don't want to send somebody to their parents I know lots of people some of them or even in my family where if like a young person asked me is a very difficult question like that what happens to us when we die or what is justice I probably would not say go ask your parents what would I say would I do this socrates thing maybe like I don't know what do you think maybe it's a good starting place right get out of them what they think and then keep asking questions cross-examine them then with that negative a link Asst we've seen this strategy before we've even seen this idea that the greatest wisdom is knowing what you don't know or I know only one thing and that's that I know nothing at all perhaps except that one thing we saw this from Socrates right this is like an attitude and a method that he is employing we're giving it again in a slightly refined form from the parents from the skeptics the early skeptics sometimes perónism some let's call it skepticism outcome the notebooks you get everybody for psycho we're just gonna chat today that's great oh yeah he's talking alright then how come the notebooks the first figure that's probably worth mentioning here is Pierrot himself and Pierrot was a Pierrot was around he was a Greek and he was around in the the late I'm working in the late 300 specie so around the time like this is after the death of Socrates this is around the time in fact I did you guys catch this in in Barrett that Pierrot went with Alexander to India so Aristotle was the tutor of Alexander Alexander went to like all over Asia Minor and conquered it in the name of the Hellenistic Empire the cook it quickly collapsed and then the Romans come to to ascension but on that trip which was like a really big deal perilous on that trip and he meant he met all of these these Indian mystics and wise men came back to Greece and adopted a school of thought came to be known as paradism not really all that much is known about Pierrot except for those those few details he didn't write anything down or if he did write anything down we don't have anything surviving so we have this later figure this is squarely in Roman times but still in Greece and writing in Greek we have sex disappear ACCA's so sex this is what we're talking like early 200 CE II also Greek and here again very little is known about sexist we know that he was called sexist and para kiss that wasn't his like empirica sweat his given name that was he was sexist of the empiricists so the word empiricism doesn't come from sexist sex doesn't pair kiss it's the other way around and the reason why sex disappearance is called sex just and pure kiss is because he was a doctor and there were at the time there were three different schools of medical practice there were the rationalist there were the empiricists with the group that sexless belonged to and there was another group called the Methodists if this was about like history of ancient history of science or ancient history of medicine or something like that we would dive into like these three different methods and talk about how they were different and whether or not sex that's empiric is on the basis of his skepticism his heroic skepticism does he seem like he would have been an empiricist because I think there is some debate about this on the basis of what sex this has to say about skepticism seems like maybe he would have been a a Methodist instead of an empiricist but all of that's like neither here nor there these are details for another debate the guy's name is exodus of the empiricists we get one document or one major document from sexist and that's outlines of perónism and he's this kind of like later de roman era still Greek though thinker who's representing the ancient Peronists skepticism who's kind of saying like this is this is what this approach is all about there are all kinds of skepticism if you if you mention the word skepticism to a philosopher they'll be like well wait what kind of skepticism are you talking about all different kinds perónism is the first kind it's frequently kind of identified as like this is the first philosophically rigorous version of skepticism that we have we have something kind of like this in Socrates but it does need a little bit of refining we'll see there are all kinds of other forms of skepticism later on in fact this is maybe like the biggest battle in epistemology which is like a subset of philosophy that we I think we've mentioned a couple of times this has to do with questions concerning what knowledge is and how its acquired and if there's one big question in epistemology or one constant question that's kind of run throughout the entire history of epistemological philosophy it's this battle between the skeptics and everybody who's not a skeptic skeptics are always saying in some way shape or form some domain of knowledge just can't be or something to that effect right that some claim about knowledge is not a legitimate claim to knowledge and some folks are skeptics about just one particular thing some folks are skeptics about everything some folks are skeptics like for really real they like believe this in like their everyday life some folks are skeptics in a methodological way in fact if you continue on in the history of philosophy courses that we offer here to the modern philosophy class the first person that we're gonna read is Descartes and the first thing that he does in the first meditation of Descartes meditations is to adopt a methodological skepticism not a serious full-blown perónist skepticism but just a to say like for the sake of argument as a tool for our thinking let's adopt a skeptical attitude so this is this is basically what skip we have some and this this is square with with what our intuitions about what skepticism means in everyday sort of conversation my sense is that you this is a term that you've heard before right if I said plait nest you'd be maybe at the beginning of class would be like what is a plait inist and now you may might kind of think yourself like I think I get a sense of what a plait mist is an Aristotelian a stoic and epicurean all of these somewhat technical terms scepticism is a word that gets thrown around pretty casually in our everyday life and it means roughly the same sort of thing that philosophers mean when they say it skeptic as somebody who's suspicious somebody who's not convinced yet from the Greek word skeptic oz which means investigator or somebody who's doubtful sexist empirica tells us a perfectly reasonable alternative term for this style of philosophy would be called the site etic philosophy which is from the Greek word for inquiry and we're to understand skepticism first and foremost according to sexist empirica as different from two other styles of doing philosophy two other philosophical schools one would be well what were they he immediately identifies these three schools one of them scepticism what are the other two yeah it's been ages since you read this right it was like before you ate turkey and everything dog yeah the dogmatists you have the dogmatist the academics and then I want to make sure I'm doing it the same way every time sometimes it's with a k' sometimes with a c' as far as I know there's nothing really serious on the line as to whether you spell skepticism with a seer okay the dogmatist what's it what are the dogmatists what's there what's their deal yeah Gretchen I think they know the dogmatist think they know insects disgust is an example of a dogmatist he says like Aristotle that guy over there who thinks he knows this the dogmatist think they haven't answer to some particular question what about the academics and by academics we don't just mean like like you and me we made like the academics are very specific kind of academic yep the academics had the academics are saying no one yeah it's not just they can't you know but no one can know knowledge is in principle outside of anybody's reach and when we're referring to the academics here this is the these are the people of the Academy there and there is this is not like one big kind of sense of like scholars right at various universities all over the world the way that we talk about the Academy today the Academy is Plato's Academy so these are all of the all of the descendants all of the inheritors of the Platonic line of thought and what it's turned into by the time we get to around 2 and rid so we got like 300 BCE and then a big jump to 200s in the Common Era for sexist empirica the Academy is still around and there are people representing that platonic tradition but it's morphed into this idea we can argue over like whether or not this was Plato's intent right off the bat but this idea that nobody can know the things that can be known if that makes any sense that but actually doesn't make any sense the way I said these things that we think are candidates for knowledge nobody can actually know them and we do get whispers of this in the Platonic corpus through figures like Socrates who say I know only one thing and that's that I know nothing else or the greatest wisdom isn't knowing what you don't know or we even get things like that that bomb that's dropped not at the end because there's quite a bit more to Parmenides than what we read but that that bomb that's dropped towards the tail end of the beginning of Plato's Parmenides where Parmenides says you I haven't even addressed the address the greatest problem yet after like all these other problems that the theory of the form has and that's that the forms can't be known by any mortal they can only be known by gods and the gods wouldn't understand the relationship between the forms to all the particulars because the particulars are outside of the gods knowledge right so this this big idea that Plato seems to be pushing through the theory of forms that the forms give us some kind of way to relate between concrete particulars and abstract universal type things in Parmenides we find out according to Parmenides at least who's this mouthpiece for for Plato himself that it seems like one it seems like these things can't be known by other mortals or gods so we could see where like the later day academics would get this idea where they might can commit to an idea that we might be tempted to call skepticism in fact it's really incredibly useful that sexist empirica outlines these two as things that are distinct from skepticism for starters because it seems on first blush that that is skepticism this idea that nobody can know anything why is this not skepticism or why is it at least not Peron xscape toises and why is sexist empirica say like that ain't what I'm talking about let's go with the stand because they have the idea and people no one can know the answer and they just kind of there's no investigation so we get this idea that according according to these academics it would seem that like there's maybe there's no point in pursuing if no one can know yeah I'm gonna go ahead and put a question mark on that does that seem like a fair criticism at this academic position if nobody can know now what's the point of trying to know right you're never gonna get any answer there's no point in inquiry there's no point in the pursuit does that seem like it's a fair criticism or a fair - like saddle the academics with this idea anybody yeah this is a big this is a big thing that sex disappear kiss does I think just a like totally impressive I'm talking like matrix bullet time he's like dodging the counter-arguments this is like the one big bullet that gets fired at sketches at some sort of form of radical skepticism we say something like this nobody can know anything and then somebody comes right back at us and says like oh yeah do you know that you know you know for sure that nobody can know anything because that's self-defeating right that's self contradictory it trips over itself this is one of the big problems with skepticism is there a coherent formulation of skepticism that says nobody can know anything or nobody get even like if we if we cheat a little bit and we say nobody can know this domain of things we might be able to like pull a slick one and say knowing that there's no knowledge in this domain that's knowledge in a different domain so I can know that there's no knowledge over here and I don't get into that problem but if I say across the board that there's no knowledge now it comes right back at me how do you know that there's no knowledge why should anybody believe you that there's no knowledge this is the big problem that sucks that says that the academics are running into they seem so sure that no one can know but then again isn't the whole point here that you can't be sure can't be sure of anything can't even be sure that you can't be sure which would make it seem almost as if skepticism is this inherently self-defeating so why on earth would anybody believe it well for starters maybe skepticism as sexist as an in mine as pure Oh had it in mind is actually something a little bit different and what makes it different you guys read this even answered some quiz questions what makes skepticism different than just this claim that no one can know because apparently that won't fly right do we all understand why this like all by itself is a really really big problem so what's sex this is suggestion like how does the the parodist get around this problem yeah Gretchen oh is this another one baird edited between my addition and your addition y'all gotta send me emails when that happens man like you were just are you guys just thinking like a I guess you just googled it where does it stop off like what chapter in outlines at 13 ah lovely yeah cuz 14 15 is where the answer to that to those questions is yes sorry sorry about that this is this is it this is the last semester for this book I've had it my apologies for that I'm sorry what were you saying the question was about like what is it what is it that the skeptics seem to be doing that's not this that's not just this blanket statement nobody can know anything that doesn't run into this self-contradiction problem yes oh yeah that well the skeptic is just saying that you should not because this is a belief right and the skeptic is saying you should suspend belief yeah you should suspend belief yeah let's uh the Greek word here is it f okay you could seek out this this state of mind of epic a a suspension of belief about all beliefs but are we in the same are we in the same territory as we were before though now share because we say like the the skeptic says we should suspend our beliefs do they believe that we should suspend our beliefs because if they do they're not suspending their belief on that right or we as good skeptics when the skeptic comes to us and says we should all adopt an attitude that involves a suspension of belief we should say like I'm gonna go ahead I'm gonna suspend my belief about whether or not I should suspend my but can you do that can you suspend your belief about whether or not you should suspend your belief I bet you could I'm asking you right now like should use to spend your belayer what if I just made it simple should you suspend belief and maybe you're like you don't make up your mind and by the time class is over you just like walk off and you forget about the question there you've suspended your belief you haven't come down on one side or another is this what the skeptic is after what's going on here yes you hold on yeah you want to hold on to the question right yeah you want to leave that question open though right so there's something about leaving the question open leaving the inquiry open right this is another way of saying leaving the question open leaving our inquiry open why are we seeking out fok in the first place somebody mentioned it we're trying to achieve that like we want to get to this state so that we can get to some other state and that other state is unperturbed Mnet's it's ataraxia right good all that Alexia our friend I'm / come business or you know tranquility if we don't want to have words with like all kinds of prefixes and suffixes this is what we're after and this is this is what drives all inquiry right when you're curious when you want to know something Aristotle says it's all all men all humans by nature desire to know it's like it's a is it is it tranquil to be curious is it unperturbed when do you ask it or do you specifically ask questions when you are perturbed yeah you'd say yeah the curiosity it's like an itch right it's like a it's like a psychic itch then not knowing is what kind of like it unsettles you and you're like all right that's what makes you want to go out and find out right that's what makes you raise your hand and ask the question in class because it's a little uncomfortable to raise your hand and ask a question in class you'd only do it to alleviate some greater discomfort the discomfort of not knowing right perhaps is everybody just kind of blankly stares back we're going to achieve an F okay we're doing it for the sake of achieving ataraxia to like make that curiosity go away to satisfy the question right this is what all inquiry is all about usually the dogmatist think that they're going to find that by finding the answer right I have a question is it like this or is it like this the document test says we're gonna find an answer then we're gonna feel better and we'll be all calm and tranquil this is the whole point of inquiry a little bit of disquietude a little bit of a psychical itch you find the answer you find some satisfaction for that edge the skeptic says no no no no no that's not how you're gonna find it you're gonna find it here by suspending judgment and accepting that it's undecidable undecidable no not accepting that it's completely undecidable accepting that you cannot decide it yet perhaps to leave the question open I still don't get how this doesn't fall prey to the same problem though right why should I do it the skeptics way are they taking some sort of position on this seems like they're taking a position and telling me that like you ought to be a skeptic rather than a dogmatist but wouldn't a proper skeptic say like well we should be skeptical about that has he really gotten out of the problem I expect I'm there I'd like I'm tempted to try to answer the my own question for you guys here I don't think that would help and you can totally answer this this is all over the reading in fact it's it's it's almost distracting the lengths that sexless and perkins goes to to not fall into this trap of the academics to not fall into some version of skepticism being a form of dogmatism in fact there's all section in there that says like wait a minute is the skeptic of dogmatist and he says no the skeptic is not a dogmatist and here's why yeah go ahead look it up and it's not just one thing you know it's like a style of responding as he like every time he addresses something he's careful to not put it in language that's going to fall prey to this self contradiction that the academics seem to be trapped in is that objectivity looking at both sides if there are both sides or that yeah the darkness would say there may be there are multiple sides to this question but they're not all going to be correct we've got the correct one and the skeptic says what does the skeptic say there are multiple sides and what next are we sure we don't know which one's the right one are we back here again no one can know yeah he seems to be saying I'm not making any judgments but like oh but it sure seems like he's talking about making judgments he's making judgments about yeah oh is suspending judgment right yeah so the trick in this Francesca do you have something as well no all right you guys gave it a shot let me see if I can connect the dots here for you the trick of this is that sex this is always talking about this as an ability the skeptic has a certain ability or the skeptic adopts a certain sort of habit the skeptic has a certain kind of lifestyle the skeptic is skilled in reaching fok they have no position whatsoever on whether or not fok should be pursued right so it should not we're not actually getting this you should suspend belief the skeptic is quite skilled at being able to suspend belief the skeptic is an expert at seeing the other side of any particular issue maybe maybe we might say we might be tempted in some circles to refer to the skeptic as like an excellent devil's advocate whatever position there is and by doing this by talking in terms of like skepticism as an ability to do something rather than a collection of beliefs it seems like sexless is kind of wriggling out of this potential contradiction that the academics are stuck in never saying that like knowledge is unattainable never saying that even that you ought to this state of suspended belief or that it's the best way to get to tranquility he's merely pointing out that the skeptics are very skilled in this and that a skeptical way of life and in fact a philosophical way of life the most properly Phyllis Lewin here we're starting to flirt with like maybe taking a position making a judgement but we might say something like it seems if and that's the other thing that that the skeptic adds they're always talking about appearances they would say something like it seems as if the skeptic approach is the most properly philosophical approach to the dogmatist or the academic who seems to just be another species of dogmatist that they're dogmatic on this idea that nobody can know but the skeptic manages to avoid all of it by saying that you can suspend your belief and skeptics are experts in being able to do this they have the particular skill or ability at reaching the state of Fok and it appears at least it seems to them that this is the most philosophical way and in fact the skeptic will say this about like anything that appears to be a judgment as soon as it looks like the skeptic is slipping out of skepticism in some form of dogmatism the skeptic says I'm just talking about how things seem to me I'm perfectly content to admit that there's probably another way to see this right that there's another side to it I'm not sure 100% whether or not sex this is just kind of messing with us here whether or not like that he's pulled a fast one let's start there with this question what what do you think is going on here did did he just cheat or is he like exactly right on this that like if we can say oh this is how things appear to me and never go beyond that never make some kind of like official judgment that the appearances represent accurately the way that things are or the way they are like matches what is seemingly so as long as we never make that jump as long as we only talk about how things seemed to us and we acknowledge that there's a skill to be had in being able to suspend belief and the way that we get to that skill by the way is like like there this is the state that's being pursued or that the skeptic is really really good at arriving at it's for the sake of tranquility how how do you get to this what's the method of like getting to suspend a belief if the skeptic is skilled in this do they have some kind of it is sex distress telling us hey there people are really good about this the end or does he want you to be good at it too is there a method yes yeah so it's just kind of um it seems like it has to do with like identifying opposing beliefs right and not just opposing beliefs because I think even the dogmatist would say like we can identify opposing beliefs with the besten we just say like that one's crazy and that one's correct right it's identifying opposing beliefs and finding ways to see them as equally compelling I believe that the word that gets used a lot in translation it's a Latin word not a Greek word is equi Polland and all it really means is equally compelling but this is the method towards suspending one's belief towards like finding this state of fok this doxological state of suspending one's belief all right we're all aware of this right that this is like it's tempting to fall into this this trap where we think that there are two options for any given proposition right that you could believe that it's true or you could disbelieve that it's right I could think that it's true or I could think that it's false but in fact there is this third option which is to say don't know I'm suspending all belief I have no idea whether it's true or false my official position on whether this is true or false is I have no official position now we can do this through identifying opposing beliefs and finding ways to see them as equally compelling does it work have we avoided the track will we would identify that it seems this way or then again from a different perspective it seems the complete opposite way therefore we have to opposed seeming 'he's right or to opposed appearances and if you asked me to make a judgement about how things really are i suspend it how am i able to suspend it because i can see both sides as equally compelling and when i arrive at this i'm tranquil and calm the itch of curiosity subsides i realize like oh I can see it for both sides now I don't feel so bad anyway have you like have you experienced this before like suddenly you see both sides to the issue and now you're like ah now I'm now I'm calm now I'm right now I'm not curious anymore or wait I don't actually now I'm confused a little bit should I be curious am i leading the question open if I'm leaving the question open am i calm am i tranquil am I still curious how are these two supposed to match one another but opposing yeah it doesn't seems like like it would if the itch is a problem that we're looking to solve and find tranquility I don't know if it's clear that this gets me there what's your experience like we we've been doing this all semester long my sense is that you probably have done it in some of your other classes too you get like one argument for one position and then the professor will turn right back around the next week and like run it the other way and be like then again maybe everything we said last week is wrong does that happen in your other classes has that happened in this class at least that like I'll spend a little bit of time talking about like these guys think that everything's won this guy over here thinks that like everything is inherently many this group of folks think that there's no change this guy over here thinks that everything is in a constant state of flux when you can see it from both sides do you feel calm and tranquil does the the h of curiosity subside or are you even more perturbed it's overwhelming give me a sense of like what is for those of you who taken many philosophy classes for those of you for whom this is your first philosophy class is this the sort of activity that satisfies one's curiosity to see things from both sides or are you left even more befuddled than before yeah so we've so we've run back to yeah we've run back to like almost like riddle of inquiry type stuff right and that seems like the dog when tips the dogmatist has a belief first and goes out looking for proof second whereas like the real philosopher approaches it from a neutral and open-minded sort of position let's find out what's going on but I will notice as long as we're talking about like Socratic practice right and things like riddle of inquiry we'll notice that like almost all of Socrates has interlocutors they don't like when Socrates shows them like well you can look at it that way but then again like doesn't that shouldn't we look at it the other way as well when Socrates shows a contradictory opposing view to all of his interlocutors they don't seem like they've been calmed down they get angry they get perturbed right they think he's harmed them do they just have the wrong frame of mind maybe this is the solution maybe this is like the sort of thing that the skeptics are after it's like we have a tendency to think of these two things as opposed to one another but maybe the trick to like a philosophical attitude not a collection of beliefs mind you because that wouldn't be skepticism right if skepticism is a collection of beliefs then it undermines itself but a skepticism is a sort of attitude it's an ability or a skill to see both sides of an issue as equally compelling you see multiple sides of an issue is equally compelling to suspend one's belief leave the question open and find some tranquility in that does that seem like the sort of thing that a philosopher would be happy to find would it put their mind at ease with that countess wisdom because after Allen and the Philosopher's after wisdom they're in love with wisdom they love it they feel a in Sofia is that wisdom Socrates suggested as much right that the wisdom of knowing what you don't know us the greatest human wisdom there is and as the skeptic just pointing out that like not being anxious about this this is the trick to wisdom yes oh this certainly seems to be the case right yeah if they're like particularly we should be keenly aware of it given that we've just gotten through an election season right and it seems like we're getting less and less rest time between these these periods in our country where there's just there's really just bitter opposition between groups of folks and seemingly no ability for each to see the other side and on top of that we have this kind of like ideological attachment to the to the beliefs right that somehow like my identity is tangled up in holding these beliefs if I don't believe that then I don't know who I am anymore that's really really uncomfortable so I won't change my mind I'll have some sort of belief bias anchoring bias this is certainly true of most people is it the sort of thing that we can just kind of like add to attitudinally get ourselves out of find a way to love the uncertainty and is there a difference by the way in just being like you know if somebody comes up to me and asks me like hey what do you think of it like what do you think the Platonic soul is all about or what do you think what do you think happens to us when I die and I go I don't know is that really any different than me saying like well some people say this and some people say this are there are there different versions of suspending one's belief are there distinctions that need to be made between like the way that one arrives at a suspended belief through identifying opposing beliefs does it matter how I get there can't I just start out there just be like I don't know it seems a certain apathy right yeah it's that it doesn't really maybe it leaves the question open it certainly doesn't keep the inquiry going this is a puzzle because it seems like what's being described by the skeptic I'm not sure if it's the only route to this tranquility that they're after I'm not even sure how to understand what they're describing as a route at all to the sort of tranquility that they're after but if there is some kind of like little trick to understanding understanding skepticism it seems like that's a really big piece of the puzzle trying to figure out how it is that suspending one's belief leaving the question open just the same as pure ignorance and that we can find a certain sort of satisfaction in it georgio yeah we get the feeling that like you should pick a side right to not pick a side and leave the question open that seems a little bit unsatisfying you got to take a side right yeah that great scene in Pulp Fiction right before Marvin gets shot in the face if you haven't seen it Marvin gets shot in the face it's a surprise when it happens and yeah right right before that John Travolta's character comes around he's like there he and he and Samuel are arguing over whether or not a miracle happened in the room when some guy comes out and like shoots me multiple times with a big huge gun at point-blank range at Travolta and Samuel L and nobody gets it samuel l is like this is a miracle John Travolta it's like get out of here there's no such thing as miracles they continued to argue about it in the car Travolta turns around to Marvin in the back and says like me what's your opinion on this and Marvin is like I don't even have an opinion and Travolta says we got to have an opinion man do you is it lazy to just suspend judgment like no you stick with this and you feel like the Splinter should be in your mind until you get an answer that's honest inquiry you don't give up until like you find the answer you remain unsatisfied until you find the answer there's certainly a version of just kind of given up and being like I don't know that does seem lazy but I'm not sure when I read sexist I'm not sure if my first thought is like you seem like a lazy guy cuz like whatever appearance pops up sex this is like alright assume that's like you have like you find yourself leaning towards some belief now you've got work to do which is to like alright give us the opposing belief and figure out a way that that seems equally compelling that actually seems like a lot of hard work to go around your everyday life like anytime you're just kind of like God turkey sandwich alright or it seems like a turkey sandwich perhaps it's not a turkey sandwich what's the compelling argument for it's not being a turkey sandwich you have to do this with everything right that would be exhausting and the way that the skeptic gets around this right and or the way that sexist at least kind of identifies it like we're not talking about this we're not saying that like a good philosophical mind should like just be frozen in the middle of the street kind of being like should I get out of traffic should I stay in traffic I guess like I can see both sides of it so I'll suspension and then they die this is not what he's talking about there's got to be a way to just kind of get by in the world but identify that like this I'm just I'm just making choices I'm acting in ways that are according to appearances he falls back on this idea of like this is just how things appear to me I'm not 100% committed to this I'm committed in a softer way this is how I'm going to act but if you push me on this and ask me to make up an official judgement about what the reality of things is actually like I'll say I'm not really sure and this seems valuable as well right because a lot of the questions that get asked in philosophical contexts a lot of the questions we've been addressing in this class a lot of questions that are getting gonna get addressed in any philosophy class are really hard questions to answer and we answered any questions in this class yet we've asked a lot have we answered any of them historical question look what did Socrates say even that what did Plato say what does Aristotle's attitude did Socrates in fact died now we've answered maybe some factual questions or it seems like we have but what is justice I could I could hazard a guess if somebody was like you got to say something about justice today right now what would you say I might say something like yeah justice is beneficial to everybody is that its essence maybe it seems seems like a good answer maybe that's as far as I'll go how is she should I be not being 100% sure and when I go out into the world and like there's like what seems to be what appears to be an injustice in front of me what's the proper response to it is it for me to be like not really sure what's dress from what's I'm just so I'll do nothing or is it to say I'm not really sure but it appears this way so I'm going to go ahead and act how do I know this seems like a really big distinction to make right there's a difference between suspending belief but I might use the word committing in some kind of softer way to appearances for action and suspending belief and committing to no course of action right those seemed like two very different circumstances and it might be a problem that at least in the selections that I have certainly the selections that you have because apparently there's fewer of them than mine sexist never really gives us a way to distinguish between these two cases he shows us how this isn't necessarily opposed to skepticism that you could say like I still have no official stance on this I'm just talking about how things appear not how they actually are and keep in mind this is not just about like normal epistemic issues right this is not about whether or not the cat is on the mat this is not about whether or not the earth goes around the Sun or the Sun goes around the earth whether the earth is round or flat this is also about like what's good what's desirable what's valuable what's beautiful and I can certainly see how suspending one's judgment about what's good or evil could be the sort of thing that I could find some kind of tranquility in I'm not going to get too exercised about whether or not the world is very very different than the way that I think it should be if I'm not particularly attached to any one particular version of how the world should be if I can see it from multiple sides and find some kind of unperturbed miss in this but again we've got that same problem that we encountered with the Stoics as well this idea of like this seems maybe too quiet too tranquil maybe it's a problem with the Epicureans too maybe it's in general it's a problem with aiming towards ataraxia as like a goal for some kind of style of life some style of philosophical engagement not sure that I would say that the goal is to become completely unperturbed maybe we would say like Aristotle that like should be perturbed about the right things in the right amounts in the right way there's a certain sort of virtue and utility in being perturbed it's what gets you to act am i doing so far am I being a good skeptic I don't want to just swallow with the skeptic say right got to try to see this from both sides on the one hand skepticism on the other hand skepticism where does this leave me do you feel calmer now or do you feel more confused than ever some may have checked out in the lazy way that Giorgio is talking about they're just like I've lost track of what he's talking about so Facebook yeah perhaps this is the difference between the lazy person just gives up right away we ask a difficult question they go I don't know that seems hard sometimes they might even go farther and say like there is no answer this is a step beyond even the academic version of kind of like radical skepticism we're not saying that nobody can know we're saying there's just no truth there'll be some kind of epistemic nihilism but that seems lazy and it's very very different than saying like I've seen multiple sides of the issue can't even be satisfied that I've seen all the sides of the issue right I can just know I've seen more than one I've set up opposing ones and this is enough to get me from committing dogmatically to the side that I think is correct can I do this with everything what if it's something like this is a marker and not a marker can I see can I see that compare like markers or markers there's a proposition do you believe it well a good skeptic will say like well let's see how compelling could the opposite position be right on the one hand we've got markers or markers on the other hand we've got markers aren't markers I see how they're both equally compelling wait a minute that's easier said than done I have no idea how I'm gonna see markers are not markers as equally compelling as markers are markers markers are at markers makes no sense and my dogmatist now am I just not as skilled the skeptic as I could be a real skeptic would find a way to get markers are not markers to be believable maybe I'm just not as good at scepticism as I could be maybe now I'm skeptical about like whether or not being really good at skepticism is a good idea at all I'm confusing you know what I don't feel tranquil about it maybe I'm just not done yet though right maybe that's the problem Rachel you had your hand up really be like real genuine like opposing sides I think there has to be I go questioning and like you can't just be like oh is this a pencil he has her notes that's right yeah yeah markers are markers I didn't I didn't come to that with any genuine curiosity right maybe that's part of the problem just stuff yeah like find a genuine question why do they call it a marker then I feel like you could have two opposing sides because it marks yeah because some guy named mark invented it I think it's the first one I'm not the second one only appears that way to me though I'm not committing one way or another there I just did the good skeptic thing certainly at some point we've got to say that like the appearance becomes compelling enough for me to go ahead and say like I'm gonna go ahead and act but like eyes I still feel like there's this this spectrum of commitment there right that the good philosopher is not just aware that of what they don't know is not just prepared to suspend belief but is able to navigate these situations where they're like I'm not 100% confident but I'm confident enough to take a public stand markers are totally markers these are the important political issues of the day or something equally compelling right Japanese internment camps should not be precedent setting like models that we look back at and say like yeah so this is a good justification for us you know having a database that tracks all Muslims after all we did it back with Japanese in World War two yeah I'll go ahead and take a stand and say like yeah that's not no you shouldn't have done that am i 100% sure sure yeah skeptic I see you both ways but come on one of the ways is superior the other one is that a problem is that dogmatic is the skeptic so unbelievably open-minded that they just have no positions whatsoever they're completely ineffective so open-minded that the brains fall right out of their heads no beliefs but this whole I thought the whole point of inquiry was to try to figure out which beliefs to take not to take no beliefs at all well if they were to say that there is no truth then they would be taking a position right I would say like it's my believe that there is no truth and we're like ah that's not that's not proper skepticism now it's a different form of dogmatism so then they wouldn't be able to say that like I think they would they would say something like we have a habit we have a practice that seems or appears to be relatively productive and leads to a like a philosophical style of life and conduct that involves whenever somebody like makes it clean we say we've got to find a way like I'm not going to just accept that that's the truth we got to find a way to see the other side as equally compelling and that this is good on the one hand and you should be feeling confused right about this point I mean I've been strategically trying to confuse you all class now all semester really but I think at this point it's because there are two competing and I think equally compelling intuitions at work here one that requires us to be open-minded and another that requires us to stand up for our beliefs which is it and what kind of third path can I find that honors both of those intuitions Benjamin a different opinion about what oh so the skeptic is a liar yeah I don't know maybe or maybe it's just that there's a there I think I think what's going on here is that the skeptic isn't saying publicly I have no opinion but privately I do I think it's more that they recognize that like I'm gonna act and I'm gonna act according to how things seem to me but when pressed and there's there is this meta attitude that you can take right that we can say something along the lines of I I found this when I was when I was in graduate school I was I was writing a dissertation that was on philosophy science so I talked to a lot of scientists about like what do you do when you're in the lab and they would talk about like well this is what I do this and this and this and then the electrons are bouncing off of them I'm like wait a minute are bouncing off something like what do you like do you think that electrons are like real things that you're kind of like firing like you can't see them like what's going on and when pushed really hard I could get a lot of a lot of scientists to say like these are just models and theories for what's going on I don't actually really commit myself to the idea that like it really is the way that my theory describes it this is just kind of like the best that I have in order to muddle through the experimental practice and my sense was they meant it when I push them on it I was like what do you really think about like how real are the things that you talk about when you do and you do cutting-edge physics they would say like I don't think that they're 100% real they're just models but when they're at the bench I don't think their thinking was like just a model just a model just a model no they're kind of like are committed to this idea that like seems real at the time but when pressed hard I think maybe that's what's going on with the skeptic right is that near everyday life you act as if you believe certain things but whether or not you actually believe it whether or not you're prepared to make a judgement and not just committed to certain sorts of patterns of action has to do with kind of taking a step back and saying like alright what do I really think and when press the skeptic says I suspend judgment and I'm able to suspend judgment honestly by finding a way to like see it from both sides yeah I see it from both sides Cotton's not gonna pick itself Yeah right like and yeah there was the gas when I said like Cotton's like that seems like one of the most compelling counter arguments right on the one hand we're like slavery is clearly a violation of human rights and and like one of like the most astonishing evils that humanity has been able to tolerate for almost its entire existence right only until very very recently have we all seem to collectively come together and say at least as an official stance like humans are opposed to slavery a couple of humans didn't get the memo but for the most part like all of our governments are like yet a slavery's and no no but even that is like astonishingly recent right so what what possible counter-argument could there be Aristotle offers this one in which he says that slaves are just not prepared to take care of themselves they're like children and so like they've got like we owe it to them to like tell them what to do yeah he says the same thing about women more or less as well can you see it from that like and everybody rolls their eyes right you dogmatists can't see it from the other side should you see it from the other side and to what extent are we going to make distinctions between saying that like I'm not 100% sure that slavery is always wrong but it sure seems that way and so this is how I'm gonna act is that good enough no not good enough not good enough you want you want somebody somebody with a little more backbone than the skeptic yeah maybe oh I mean like yes if you say so then I dressed that you do maybe this is what we really want I'm definitely like it seems it seems the way that you're saying it I really want to agree but at the same time I'm trying my best here to like follow the skeptics instructions see it a different way this would be a pretty big test for the skeptic right yes an attitude to either eat it or not eat it yeah yeah but if I'm not just gonna like stand there in front of the turkey sandwich in kind of like like burdens ass and like some kind of in terminal interminable indecision I've got to commit somehow right but that's not necessarily at least sexless empirica since trying to convince us that like that's not necessarily not skepticism it's not necessarily dogmatism as long as we're aware that it's just a commitment to appearances and nothing more yeah I could see that we are definitely looking for some kind of middle ground my question is whether or not the skeptic has offered it to us oh man there were those five modes that I wanted to go through but it wasn't in your book anyway so like maybe I don't miss look him up if you've got the time and inclination it's fascinating it's basically like a nice little like five little arguments almost like a little map if you're ever finding yourself like incapable of seeing the other side of the issue go through these five arguments and they'll kind of like help you see that oh of course there could very well be another side to this there's four minutes left because I got some closing remarks so class is about like what the beginning of philosophy was all about and as we mentioned like on day one this drops are really big question in our lap which is like what is philosophy what is it what does it mean to do philosophy I'm one of the first things that I said in this class I believe so I'll have to go back and check the tape and see if I said this tell me if you remember me saying something like this philosophy is not something that you have it's something that you do right it's a discipline a lot of people talk about like philosophy as a cluster of beliefs philosophy as a as a a worldview perhaps folks will be talked about like well my philosophy is blabbity blah blah blah blah blah and if I'm not mistaken because everybody was nodding so like I did talk about this right and I might have even said something like yeah good luck going into your chemistry class and saying my chemistry says that hydrogen is heavier than helium like no like there's no your chemistry in my chemistry and everybody's different chemistry there's chemistry it's a style of inquiry it's a discipline so it's philosophy it's something that you do not something you have and we're getting like a nice kind of depiction of this through sex just as well well speed is not the cluster of beliefs that you have it's a style of inquiry it's a discipline and it's possible here that the skeptics are kind of sketching out like what it looks like to actually pursue wisdom as an activity as something that you do believe on the first day I also talked about like the importance of or the seeming importance right people give a whole lot of lip service about how important it is to think for yourself and that this is like the big deal if we were going to kind of identify like when did philosophies start it's this rejection of the tradition of mythos it's this saying like I'm not just gonna believe what the what the people before me said I'm gonna try to figure it out for myself we've gotten some demonstrations of what this looks like I have plenty of invitations for you to try to figure some things out for yourself as well here we're ending in a kind of peculiar place with no answers just skepticism just the instruction that like I you should you should suspend belief I'm not so sure if like that was the goal all along I'm not so sure if that's what I want people to walk away from this class with to say that like oh my god what did you learn from your from your philosophy class I learned nothing or I learned one thing that I learned nothing else what does it mean to become educated in this fashion I think like a big part of it is is that you get practice in this practice of thinking for yourself about really really difficult questions difficult but seemingly important questions some of them you might have thought to yourself like I don't care about that question others you might have thought to yourself like that's a really important question in this pursuit of wisdom such that you're thinking for yourself I think we need to like be really really careful to not mistake this for thinking by yourself thinking for yourself and thinking by yourself are not the same thing and one of the things that the skeptics kind of highlight for us is like how different these two things might be because to try to see multiple sides of an issue is a difficult thing to do by yourself it's a certain it's certainly something that you can do for yourself the skeptics are instructing us to do it for ourselves but it's hard to do by yourself one of the easiest ways to get these different perspectives is to talk to people right talk to people that you disagree with seek out people that you disagree with who see things differently than you and try to understand where it is that they're coming from should you believe them should you end that conversation with suspended judgment I don't know about that I'll also spend judgment on that question maybe you have a conversation with somebody who represents a very different perspective on the world than you have and you walk away thinking to yourself like yeah they're totally nuts and I'm even more confident about my position now maybe that's how you come away from it but I think it is important to actually like make honest outreach to these folks and one of the ways of approaching this to talk about like what it is that philosophy is and what it is that philosophy does is to suggest that maybe the questions are more important than the answers maybe the activity of pursuing the answers is more important than it actually achieving the answers maybe the answers are so difficult to achieve that like nobody ever really does get them for thinking about like what wisdom is what like capital s Sophia is nobody ever gets it but it's notable that like every human is capable of pursuing it and in fact it might be the very thing that marks us as unique it might be the sort of thing that like makes humans human the fact that we're capable of thinking for ourselves the fact that we're capable of pursuing wisdom if you can do this by having a conversation with a bunch of slaveholding misogynist from ancient Greece if you can find a way to understand like where Zeno of Elea is coming from and where Pierrot is coming from where Aristotle is coming from where Plato is coming from if you can get a sense of like what that looks like what you're getting a sense of is kind of like it's it's a map of the territory of like possible positions right you're mapping out like where it is that thought can go on a particular issue and that's not to say that that's all you do right it's not just that you map out the territory maybe you map out the territory because then you want to navigate it you want to figure out like where you want to live where you want to like build your house what are the positions that are really worth taking you can only be certain about this if you've surveyed as much of the possible landscape as you can and if you can do this with the ancient Greeks surely you can do this with your neighbor right you can do this with anybody see people shaking their heads not my neighbor I think one of the most outstanding lessons to be learned from any kind of history of philosophy class is just how similar humans are throughout history and I think there's something hopeful about that means we can have conversations with one another on three minutes over thanks for sticking around like I said Thursday's meeting is a workshop if I don't see you again have a good holiday good luck with your exams

Channel: Adam Rosenfeld

Views: 4,495

Rating: 4.9157896 out of 5

Keywords: Ancient Philosophy, Pyrrho, Sextus Empiricus, Scepticism, Knowledge, Epoche

Id: jaFcOp_bPME

Length: 75min 33sec (4533 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 29 2016