Overview of Pyrrhonism

In the now-lost book, On the Schools of Thought, the ancient Greek philosopher Clitomachus is thought to have identified all of the possible philosophical positions that could be taken on the issues of concern in ancient Greek philosophy. But, despite the large number of possible positions, just a few possible combinations ever managed to turn into viable schools of thought. One of these schools of thought, Stoicism, has been enjoying a popular modern revival, with a large number of articles, self-help, and scholarly books being currently published. Other ancient Greek schools of thought are also seeing revival movements. Most notably Aristotelianism and Epicureanism, both of which have been promoted in recent books as modern self-help programs - Aristotle's Way, and How to Be an Epicurean - in much the same way Stoicism has been promoted. Less well-known than these schools of thought, another ancient Greek philosophy of life has also been attracting modern advocates: Pyrrhonism.

Two major factors would appear to be driving this interest in Pyrrhonism. One is that an interest in any of the Hellenistic philosophies of life tends to create an interest in them all, as each school frequently contrasted itself with the other schools. To know any of them well entails knowing a bit about the others. But perhaps the biggest reason people have become interested in Pyrrhonism is the 2015 publication of Christopher Beckwith's philological research in Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia demonstrating that Pyrrho, the founder of Pyrrhonism, based his philosophy in part on the Buddhist Three Marks of Existence.

In the Three Marks, the Buddha proclaimed that all conditioned things were dukkha, anicca, and anatta. "Dukkha" is typically translated as "suffering," but no one English word conveys the term's full meaning, which also includes the concepts of stress and unsatisfactoriness. "Anicca" is typically translated as "impermanence." "Anatta" is perhaps the most difficult to translate. It is usually rendered as "not self" or "no self," which cause many people to think that it is a claim that selves do not exist, but it is better understood as a claim that all things lack essence. The classic analogy for this is the analogy of the chariot used by the Buddhist philosopher Nagasena to explain the concept to the Greek king Milinda. In the analogy all parts of the chariot are considered and Milinda is led to the conclusion that there is no essence to a chariot, and by analogy, no essence to the self.

Pyrrho encountered similar difficulties in translating the Three Marks into Greek. On top of that, Pyrrho likely had an agenda - a reason to reposition and repurpose the Three Marks. We have no indications that Pyrrho made any effort to transplant Buddhism to Greece. He took Buddhist ideas and used them for his own purposes. We know that Pyrrho was a Democritean philosopher, and that Democritus was held in high esteem by Pyrrho's early followers. As such he likely had concerns about the attacks against Democritean philosophy that been made in the prior two generations, first by Plato and then by Aristotle. Plato so despised Democritus that he wanted no one to know what he said. He not only wanted all of Democritus' books burned, but throughout all of his works, Plato steadfastly ignored Democritus. Plato eventually got his wish, as we now have only fragments of what Democritus wrote.

Democritus is well-known as a proponent of the theory of atoms, one of the small proportion of scientific speculations of the ancient Greeks that turned out to be pretty accurate. What we know of his epistemological views is that they were largely skeptical and that his thoughts on ethics were contrary to virtue ethics and instead aimed towards achieving a positive state of mind. Contrary to Democritus, Plato and Aristotle thought truth was attainable and that knowledge led to virtue and virtue lead to happiness.

Although it is possible that the Buddhist understanding of the Three Marks has evolved over the past 2,300 years, it would seem that Pyrrho approached the Three Marks with this conflict in mind, causing him to emphasize the epistemological aspects of the Three Marks in rendering them into Greek and to point out that our state of mind is a function of our epistemological view. Pyrrho said that what prevents our eudaimonia is that we mistakenly think that the things which perturb us are stable, measurable, judgeable, and clearly definable. Because of this mistaken thinking, we suffer from delusion, and this delusion is the cause of our suffering.

Like the Buddha, Pyrrho focused his philosophy on dispelling delusion. That in itself is not novel among the Hellenistic philosophies. They all were marketed as methods for getting rid of delusion. But the others did so by replacing ideas they claimed were deluded with ideas they claimed were correct - with the claims among the philosophies often being in contradiction to each other.

Pyrrhonism does not take this approach to addressing delusion. Instead it identifies a category of thoughts as delusional, and it provides practices for disempowering those delusional thoughts. The Pyrrhonist term for this category of thoughts is "dogma." In English "dogma" is usually used in a pejorative sense to refer to enforced decisions, such as those of aggressive religious or political authorities, or to some strong belief which its adherents are unwilling to rationally discuss. In Pyrrhonism the term is used in a broader sense to refer to assent to a "non-evident" proposition.

Perhaps the most difficult part of Pyrrhonism to understand in the Pyrrhonist distinction between "evident" and "non-evident." The evident, which can also be translated as "immediate," refers to experience. The non-evident refers to theories, hypotheses, and beliefs. People use both the evident and the non-evident to figure out reality, but reality does not appear to be within our grasp. This is not to say that we don't know things. We do. But there is uncertainty about how what we know matches reality.

As for the evident things we know, they force themselves upon us. For example, for almost all of us, honey tastes sweet. We cannot choose for it to taste different. Non-evident things do not force themselves upon us in this way. While they can appear in our minds in ways that are not under our control, whether to believe those non-evident things is under our control.

It is belief in non-evident propositions that causes so much of our anxiety and stress. While we can rule out some non-evident propositions on the basis of logical contradictions, or glaring failure to correspond with what is evident, we have no criterion for determining whether any of the multiplicity of non-evident propositions that pass this coarse screen are true. For example, the Stoics declare that virtue is the only good and vice the only evil, but the Aristotelians say that other things are good too, such as health and wealth. The Epicureans say that pleasure is good and pain is bad. One can go on and on with different views on the matter. Many of these arguments are over two thousand years old and we're no closer to resolving them than we were in antiquity, yet today the adherents of the various dogmas hold to them passionately. As the views are mutually contradictory, that means at minimum most of these people are holding on to a delusion and perhaps they all are.

Of course, there are far more issues than this one to be dogmatic about. As there are so many other issues that people can also hold dogmas about, and for each issue so many possible dogmas, it is mathematically nearly certain that most, if not all of the dogmas one hold are delusions. Hence, accepting any non-evident proposition as true is a nearly assured path towards delusion.

The solution? Eschew all belief in non-evident propositions. Live life without beliefs.

The classic reaction to that advice is: that's impossible! You have to have beliefs in order to make decisions! Without beliefs, you'd be a vegetable!

Of course, if one has come to rely on having beliefs for decision making, their absence will at first put one at a loss, but upon reflection one can see that having beliefs is not necessary. Certainly other animals, such as dogs, horses, birds, and monkeys find it possible to take action, seemingly without beliefs. One doesn't have to think something is true in order to make decisions and take actions. The ancient Pyrrhonists identified four criteria which could be used effectively for decisions:

• Our feelings
• The guidance of nature
• Laws and customs
• Teaching of forms and expertise

If you feel cold, put a jacket on. If you feel, hungry, eat.

The guidance of nature is the acceptance of the human condition. We have instincts. Certain things seem natural to us. These are useful for informing our decisions.

Laws and customs carry the collective experience of past generations. They are a guide to what has and hasn't worked in the past, and they form a basis collectively used to evaluate social behavior. Like with the concept of stare decisis in jurisprudence, which establishes the norm of deferring to past judgments unless a clear and compelling reasons can be found for not doing so, we too should defer to laws and customs in our decision making. Similarly, there is the teaching of forms and expertise of the various disciplines one might become active in. These too have been built up from collective past experience and can also be followed for making decisions.

None of these require any belief in anything non-evident.

Getting rid of beliefs, however, is harder than making decisions without beliefs. Indeed, the structure of our minds and the structure of grammar push us to assuming we have firm knowledge of things. Like a slight of hand our minds jump from the relative surety and tangibleness of knowing evident things like where to find food to being similarly certain about all sorts of speculative, intangible things that get called "knowledge." This is much to the detriment of our peace of mind.

The ancient Pyrrhonists developed three approaches for eschewing beliefs. All three approaches aim for an immediate objective known as "epoché." When "epoché" appears in a Pyrrhonist text it is usually translated into English as "suspension of judgment." However, the term also appears in some Greek Stoic texts, where it is usually translated as "withhold assent." The three Pyrrhonist practices for achieving epoché are called "aporetic," "ephectic," and "zetetic."

The aporetic approach is what Pyrrhonism is best known for and it is the most fundamental of the practices. It involves piling up counter-arguments to whatever dogma one believes to the point where that belief is broken, resulting in suspension of judgment. This can be done by investigating the arguments for competing dogmas, or using stock arguments from the Pyrrhonists' toolkits of stock arguments. One keeps pursuing these arguments this until one becomes unsure of what is correct, resulting in suspension of judgment. For example, using the method of competing dogmas, if one has succumbed to the dogma that virtue is the only good, one should consider the arguments for competing dogmas, such as what Epicurus and Aristotle say is good, and their arguments against Stoic dogma.

The other method is to employ the stock Pyrrhonist arguments. There are two sets of them. One is known as the Ten Modes of Aenesidemus and the other as the Five Modes of Agrippa.

Aenesidemus was a great revivalist of Pyrrhonism. He flourished around 1 CE. With regard to the ten modes, he appears to have systematized and expanded upon the earlier work of Pyrrho and his student Timon. The Modes are in outline:

1. Different animals manifest different modes of perception
2. Similar differences are seen among individual people
3. For the same person, information perceived with the senses is self-contradictory
4. Furthermore, it varies from time to time with physical changes
5. In addition, this data differs according to local relations
6. Objects are known only indirectly through the medium of air, moisture, etc.
7. These objects are in a condition of perpetual change in color, temperature, size and motion
8. All perceptions are relative and interact one upon another
9. Our impressions become less critical through repetition and custom
10. Everyone is brought up with different beliefs, under different laws and social conditions

Agrippa developed an alternative set of modes, which are in outline:

1. Dissent - The uncertainty demonstrated by the differences of opinions among philosophers and people in general.
2. Progress ad infinitum - All proof rests on matters themselves in need of proof, and so on to infinity.
3. Relation - All things are changed as their relations become changed, or, as we look upon them from different points of view.
4. Assumption - The truth asserted is based on an unsupported assumption.
5. Circularity - The truth asserted involves a circularity of proofs.

Dealing again with the example of the dogma of virtue being the only good, among the Ten Modes, Mode 8 is useful as it points to differences in what is perceived of as virtue. Mode 10 is useful as it highlights the different beliefs about what virtue is and how what may be considered virtuous in one culture may be vicious in another.

Similarly among the Five Modes, the Dissent Mode points to how there is disagreement, not only about competing dogmas regarding what is good, but also competing views of what is virtue. For example, Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism, thought that the women of a polis should be held in common by the men. Few modern people think such a thing would be virtuous.

The Ad Infinitum Mode points to the need for there to be a proof for virtue being the only good and how the various proofs offered are in themselves in need of proof.

The Relation Mode points to differences of perspective about what virtue is. For example, in war it may be virtuous to fight for your country, but if that is true then it is also virtuous for the enemy to fight for their country. Isn't this a contradiction about what is good?

The Assumption Mode questions assumptions being made. For example, the very word "virtue" means good. Isn't this dogma just an assumption that virtue is good without really addressing what is good? Similarly the Circularity Mode points how the definitions of what is good depend on what is defined as virtue and vice versa.

Thus, in considering the question of whether virtue is the only good, we are left in a state of aporia - an impasse - as we cannot determine whether the proposition is correct or incorrect. Hence, we suspend judgment.

The ephectic approach aims at directly inducing epoché through reminding oneself that one should not assent to a non-evident proposition. For this purpose Pyrrhonists have developed a variety of maxims to call to mind. Perhaps the most famous of these maxims was the one created by the Pyrrhonist philosopher Montaigne: "what do I know?" Montaigne had this maxim inscribed on the ceiling of his office, combined with the traditional symbol of Pyrrhonism: an empty, equally balanced scale. The scale symbolizes arguments equally balanced such that one cannot discern which carries more weight.

The zetetic approach uses continued inquiry into matters, noting that one does not have enough information to draw a conclusion and that one should continue searching for more information. Suspension of judgment is achieved by avoiding getting into the positon to judge.

Through these practices the Pyrrhonist removes delusions from their minds, replacing those delusions with epoché. They retain awareness of the dogmas, but become free of them. The dogmas no longer compel one what to do, and no longer form the basis for one's identity. This growing epoché induces a state of ataraxia - a state of no longer being perturbed by things.

While the methodology is different, Pyrrhonist practice produces the same results as meditation does: a letting go of attachments, the generation of equanimity, and a reduction in egoism. It would seem that Pyrrho would have had an opportunity to learn meditation during the year and a half he studied in India, and the subsequent year spent in the company of the Indian philosopher Kalanos who accompanied Alexander's court back to Greece, but who became ill in Persia and chose to commit suicide by self-immolation, showing no signs of pain or distress during the process, much as several Buddhist monks have died of self-immolation in the modern era. For reasons we can only speculate, Pyrrho decided not to introduce Buddhist meditation into Greece, but instead he taught how to achieve epoché. Perhaps he thought it was more effective. We've now had millions of people in the West try meditation. Few stick with it. This suggests Pyrrho may have been on to something about Westerners. Now what we need is to see millions try epoché.