IS THE PYRRHONIST AN INTERNALIST?* Otávio Bueno . Introduction The Pyrrhonist is a well-known troublemaker, who systematically chal- lenges those who claim to have knowledge, or justified belief, by rais- ing doubts as to whether, according to their own standards, they do in fact know what they claim to know, or are justified in believing what they claim to be justified in believing. Not surprisingly, Pyrrhonism has also been criticized. And the typical form of criticism charges the view with incoherence: in order to effectively criticize philosophical propos- als, the Pyrrhonist needs to make assumptions, and by making the latter, the Pyrrhonian stance is ultimately undermined. After all, the Pyrrhonist advertises his/her stance as one that does not involve making claims (in particular about the ultimate nature of things). If2011 such claims are implic- itly or explicitly invoked in the critical evaluation of philosophical views, thePyrrhonistbringsthroughthebackdoorwhathe/shewasallegedly trying to avoid in the first place. A form of this criticism is implied in Jonathan Barnes’ quite insightful treatment of Pyrrhonism (see Barnes ), in which it is stated that the Pyrrhonist may end up assuming an internalist conception of knowledge as part of his challenge to dogmatic philosophy. If Barnes’ interpretationBrill were correct, it would constitute a strong criticism of Pyrrhonism—even if Barnes himself does not present his interpretation as a criticism of the latter. In this paper, I resist this assessment of Pyrrhonism, at least as pre- sented in Sextus© Empiricus’ extant works, in particular in his Outlines of Pyrrhonism (Annas & Barnes ). I argue that, as a philosophi- cal doctrine about the nature of knowledge, or justification, internal- ism is precisely the sort of view about which the Pyrrhonist suspends * My thanks go to John Collins, Gavin Enck, Richard Greene, and Eric Thompson for helpful discussions of the issues addressed in this paper. Special thanks are due to Diego Machuca, who wrote detailed and insightful comments on an earlier version of this work. His comments also led to substantial improvements. otávio bueno judgment. Moreover, properly articulated, Pyrrhonism offers a critical way of addressing the internalism/externalism debate which, being less committed, is also in some respects more illuminating. An Internalist Pyrrhonism? Pyrrhonism is a particular attitude of investigation: the ability to oppose appearances and objects of thought in every possible way, in order to try to determine which things (if any) the skeptic, or the Pyrrhonist,1 should assent to. However, as Sextus Empiricus notes, since “to every account an equal account is opposed” (Outlines of Pyrrhonism (PH) I ; see also PH I –), and since these opposed accounts are equally persuasive to the skeptic, he is unable to decide between them, and suspends judgment. As a result, the Pyrrhonist ends up holding no beliefs about the underlying features—or the true nature—of the phenomena. In Sextus’ own words: Scepticism is an ability to set out oppositions among things which appear and are thought of in any way at all, an ability by which, because of the equipollence in the opposed objects and accounts, we come first to suspension of judgment and afterwards 2011to tranquility. (PH I) Central to the Pyrrhonian strategy of investigation is the exploration of Agrippa’s modes—disagreement, relativity, hypothesis, circularity, and infinite regress (PH I –).2 With these modes the Pyrrhonist has a strategy to make explicit that, according to the standards embraced by dogmatic philosophers, the latter seem to be unable to assent to their own doctrines. In outline, the (well-known) strategy is this: To begin with, the PyrrhonistBrill points out that there is disagreement regarding the true nature of a given object. In order to try to settle the disagreement, the dogmatic philosopher cannot simply assert without argument his or her view about the issue; otherwise, someone could just as easily assert, also© without argument, the negation of the dogmatist’s claim. None of these maneuvers would be persuasive (hypothesis). Moreover, in order to support his or her view, the dogmatic philosopher cannot offer a reason that presupposes the truth of that view, given that such 1 I will use these terms interchangeably. 2 For the purposes of the present paper, relativity won’t play any role. So, I’ll ignore it here. is the pyrrhonist an internalist? a reasoning would be blatantly circular (circularity). This means that the dogmatic philosopher needs to offer reasons that are independent of the view he or she is trying to defend. But these reasons cannot in turn just be asserted without justification—otherwise, one could simply assert the negation of these reasons (hypothesis, again). In other words, the reasons in question also need to be justified by other reasons. The new reasons, in turn, similarly need to be supported, and this yields an infinite regress of reasons (infinite regress). Jonathan Barnes has examined very carefully the use made by the Pyrrhonist of Agrippa’s modes (Barnes ). He suggests that the Pyr- rhonist is ultimately committed to a form of internalism in order to be able to respond to the foundationalist externalism of various dog- matic philosophies (see Barnes , –). Central to his case is the interpretation of certain passages of Sextus. Consider, in particular, the following (see Barnes , –; I use here Barnes’ own transla- tion): Let us imagine that some people are looking for gold in a dark room full of treasures. It will happen that each will grasp one of the things lying in the room and think he has got hold of the gold. But none of them will be persuaded that he has hit upon the gold even if2011 he has in fact hit upon it. In the same way, the crowd of philosophers has come into the world, as into a vast house, in search of truth. But it is reasonable that the man who grasps the truth should doubt whether he has been successful. (AM VII ) Here Sextus offers a simile suggesting an analogy between knowing whether one has found gold in a dark room and whether one has found the truth. In both cases, it is reasonable to doubt whether someone who may have found gold or the truth has in fact been successful. As Barnes points out, commentingBrill on the passage above (which he calls the ‘Sextan similes’): Wemight well suppose that Sextus is here tacitly assuming that if you know that P, you must know that you know that P; that if you are justified in believing© that P,then you must be justified in believing that you are justified in believing that P. The [. .] Sextan similes might seem to amount to this: an externalist is not entitled to hold that he knows that P; therefore he is not entitled to hold that P. For the argument implicit in the similes might appear to run as follows: since the Dogmatist does not know that P is in [that is, the set of foundational beliefs used by the Dogmatist to obtain knowledge], he does not know that he knows that P. And since he does not know that he knows that P, he does not know that P. The second step of this argument relies on the thesis that if x knows that P, then x knows that x knows that P. (Barnes , ) otávio bueno On this reading, the Pyrrhonist seems to be ultimately committed to internalism. But is this a position a Pyrrhonist could coherently adopt? Barnes continues the dialectic between the (allegedly internalist) Pyr- rhonist and the externalist, and he notes that the characterizing feature of internalism, the KK-thesis—i.e. the claim that in order to know that P one needs to know that one knows that P—is clearly false (, ). After all, there doesn’t seem to be anything incoherent if I claimed that I didn’t realize that I knew something. And to the extent that the Pyrrhonist relies on the KK-thesis as part of his critique of the externalist, the latter has an easy way out—by simply rejecting the thesis. However, Barnes insists, not every argument invoked by the Pyrrhon- ist relies on that thesis. In particular, the Pyrrhonist need not be raising the issue as to whether the externalist knows that he knows that P.Rather, the Pyrrhonist is concerned with whether the externalist will claim that P (Barnes , ). Presumably, one can grant that the externalist knows that P; the issue is whether he is in a position to claim that P. If the exter- nalist makes such a claim, on the grounds that P is a foundational belief, it is likely that he will then be justified in claiming that P. But the whole point of an externalist account is to deny that this move is in fact needed. One can know that P without having thereby2011 to invoke the fact that P is a foundational belief (or the fact that P follows from other founda- tional beliefs). This additional bit of justification is ultimately dispens- able. This puts the externalist in the awkward position of not being able to claim that P when he is justified in believing P—given the fact that P isa foundational belief. (As just noted, this sort of justification is internalist, after all.) The upshot, according to Barnes, is that it is unclear whether the externalist is inBrill a position to continue to maintain that P. If he does continue to maintain that P, then he is maintaining something whichhedoesnotbelieveheisjustifiedinmaintaining.Itisnotthat he confesses, under pressure from the Pyrrhonist, that he is not justified in believing© P. It is simply that he does not believe that he is justified in believing P.