The System afthe Sceptical Modes in Sextus Empiricus

Nathan Powers

The Pyrrhonian sceptic-ill-training learned the so-called 'modes', sche­ matized argument patterns on which sceptics relied in their suspen­ sions of judgment. Our richest source of information about these modes is Book One of Sextus Empiricus' Outlines of Flrvrnnnl Hupotup6seis: henceforth PH),! In recent decades, the several of mode that Sextus describes have been studied closely," There has, how­ ever, been little investigation of how Sextus himself, as a representa­ tive of the later Pyrrhonian tradition, takes the various sorts of modes he describes to be related to one another, In this paper I shall argue that, whatever the original purpose of each of mode may have been, Sextus does not simply catalogue them for posterity, he presents them as a loose system within which each sort of rnode has a specific function to fulfill in advancing the aims of scepticism.

1 Scepticism is defined at PH I 8 as 'an ability to set out oppositions among things which appear and are thought of in any way at all'; this ability 2'.1- abIes one to attain suspension of judgment, and suspension of leads to tranquility (ataraxia), The 'ability to set out oppositions' for Sextus con­ sists, at least in large part, in a command of the modes: PH I 350 All references to PH I are henceforth by section number only. I follow Mutschmarm-Mau's Teubner text (1958). Translations of Sextus are based on A'.1° nas & Barnes (2000), modified for accuracy where necessary. 2 For analysis of the ten modes of Aenesidemus, see Striker, Annas & Barnes (1985), and Hankinson Ch, 9. On the five modes of Agrippa, see Barnes (1990a) and Hankinson Ch, 10, On the eight 'refutational' modes of Aenesidemus, see Barnes (1990b) 2656-68 and Hankinson 213-17.

APEIRON a journal for ancient philosophy and science 003-6390/2010/4304157-172003-6390/2010/4304 157-172 16.00 ©AGlOeJmlC© Academic Prj,cting and Publishing 158 Nathan PozversPowers

I

Sextus groups the sceptical modes into two categories: those 'through which suspension of judgment is brought about' (35), the presentation of which occupies the bulk of PH I (36-179); and those which 'refute and assert to be unsound every causal explanation' advanced by dog­ matists (180), a brief presentation of which immediately follows the others (180-6). For convenience, I'll call these two groups the sive' and the 'refutational' modes, respectively The suspensive modes themselves come in two kinds:3 the famous ten modes of Aenesidemus (36-163), and the five modes of Agrippa (164-77).4 I shall first consider how in Sextus' view the Agrippan and Aenesideman suspensive modes are related to one another, before turning to the relationship between the suspensive and refutational modes. It will be helpful to begin with a brief characterization of the modes of Agrippa. According to the first Agrippan mode Cfrom dispute [di­ aphonia],), the existence of a dispute that is undecided" warrants sus­ pension of judgment about the matter under dispute. exactly it should do so is a crux that I hope to shed some light on below.) The second Agrippan mode ('from regression') says that if some reason p is

3 This is a slight simplification of the situation as it stands in Sextus, because he offers a way of grouping the ten Aenesideman modes into three superordinate modes (38), or alternatively into just one overarching mode (39); it is clear that these alternative groupings would not significantly affect the content or function of the modes, and they may well have originated as mnemonic aids. More prob­ lematically, Sextus also presents an odd group of two modes immediately after his description of the Agrippan modes; but it seems fairly clear that these are intended as some sort of condensation of the Agrippan modes (Annas & Barnes [1985] 22, Barnes [1990a] 116-17). At any rate, the chief focus in my discussion of the suspen­ sive modes will be on the relationship between the Aenesideman and the Agrip­ pan modes. 4 Diogenes Laertius attributes the ten modes to Aenesidemus (9. 78; d. Sextus M 7. 345 and Eusebius, PE 14. 18. 11), and the five modes to the otherwise unknown 'Agrippa' (9. 88). In PH I, however, Sextus ascribes the former simply to 'the older sceptics' (36), and the latter simply to 'the more recent sceptics' (164). Our extant sources, it is worth noting, report the ten Aenesideman modes with considerable variation 1.'1 both order and content (see Annas & Barnes [1985J 29-30 for some remarks on differences in order, and their commentary passim for differences in content). This paper is focused on Pyrrhonian argumentation as Sextus presents it in PH.

5 anepikritos; the precise meaningm£:l'':\r\llr\CT of this term is considered below. The System of the Scepticallvlodes in Sextus Empiricus 159 brought forward in favor of a claim, p will fail to convince unless some other reason r is brought forward in support of it, and so on ad tum, The third mode ('from relativity') states that appearing to be the case appears so only relative to the observer and to the circum­ stances of observation, thus warranting no decisive statement about how observed objects (really) are. The fourth ('from that any reason p brought forth in favor of a claim will be if it is itself an unproved assertion, Lastly, the fifth ('from rules out considering a reason p to count in favor of a claim if p cannot convince without making appeal to the very claim which it is to support. Sextus explicitly conceives of the Agrippan modes as together with one another;6 collectively they frustrate any reasoned ap­ peal that a dogmatist might make to decide a dispute. Barnes has named this collective function of the Agrippan modes 'the net.,7 Briefly put, the Pyrrhonist keeps pushing for of ex­ planatory principles put forward by the dogmatist to settle matters of dispute. Since the sceptic won't at any point accept appeal to first primitive or self-evident) principles (fourth Agrippan mode) or allow explanantia and explananda to justify each other the dogmatist is forced into an infinite regress which is unacceptable. With no means available to settle the dispute, the dogma­ tist is forced to suspend judgment (first mode). Sextus says very little about how he takes the Agrippan modes to be related to the Aenesideman modes, His explicit comment is the following (177): 'They [the "more recent" sceptics] put five Agrip­ pan modes] forward not as rejecting the ten [Aenesideman] modes but in order to refute the rashness of the dogmatists in a more varied [or deeper?] manner (poiki16teron) and using both sets together (kai dia tauton sun '

6 Or, to be exact, Sextus conceives of the first, second, fourth, and fifth modes as so functioning. The third mode ('from relativity') is not included in this scheme, and indeed its presence among the other Agrippan modes is somewhat anomalous (d. Barnes [1990a] 113; Hankinson 185). However, as Hankinson POh""lts out, the mode from relativity itself seems to be (at least in Sexhls' view) closely connected with the mode from dispute: if appearances were not relative to the per­ sons who have them, disputes would not arise about appearances {d. PH I 7 Sextus takes pains to elaborateela!bor'ate the sceptic's net at 170-7; see Barnes (1990a) Ch. 5. 160 Nathan Powers

Considered on its own this statement can be interpreted in a weak way, as saying that the Aenesideman modes are one group of arguments that can be used to produce suspension of judgment, and the Agrippan modes are simply arguments of a different sort useful for producing the same end.8 But it can also be understood as stating a stronger connec­ tion between the two kinds of mode, namely that they work together in concert - dia tout8n sun ekeinois - to produce suspension of judgment. Turning to the Aenesideman modes, I think it can be shown that the stronger connection is indeed what Sextus has in mind.

II

Each of the Aenesideman modes is essentially an application of one under~g pattern of argument, which I shall call the 'Standard Argu­ ment.' We begin with a report of an appearance:

(1) x appears to be F (in circumstance C1).

Now, for every such report we shall be able to produce a conflicting report:

(2) x appears to be G (in circumstance C2),

where x, as it appears, cannot be both F and G. Broadly speaking, each of the Aenesideman modes is a resource for discovering new conflict­ ing reports. Now,

(3) We cannot prefer appearances in C1 to those in C2, or vice-versa.

So,

(4) We cannot say whether x is (really) F or G.

8 It might be thought that poikiloteron points towards this weak interpretation, if one translates it as 'more varied'; taking it as 'more subtle' or 'deeper' implies a stron­ ger connection. Cf. Sextus PH II 21, where the context seems to require that poiki/os be translated 'deeply' or 'in detail', not 'in a varied way'. 9 I here report the consensus view: e.g., Striker; Annas & Barnes (1985) Ch. 3; Han­ kinson Ch. 9. The System of the Sceptical Modes in Sextus 161

And &is leads to our being rationally required to suspend as to the nature of x (with respect to F and G).lO The difficult step here is (3), because usually or a report of how x appears to us, and we shall always assumes) have a tendency to give special weight to reports of how things pear to ourselves. We ought not to do this, according to the Argument, because in every such case we are ourselves parties to the dispute/disagreement (diaph6nia) between reports of appearances and thus not qualified to arbitrate between themll The Standard Argument is appealed to ubiquitously by Sexhls in his account of the Aenesideman modes,12 and h'1deed it is the only argu­ ment appealed to in his treatment of most of the individual modes. But is it sound? I think we should say that it is, so long as there is further to be said on behalf of Cl or C2. That is, so long as we ex hypothesi that (1) and (2) both do report appearances of Xl and we are asked to judge between them on nothing other than their bare as appearances of XI we really have no basis for making the call. Appear­ ances do not possess the requisite authority all by themselves. The Stan­ dard Argument is powerful but has a very narrow scope. In any instance, one or both of the parties involved may well believe that is something further to be said in favor of appearances in Cl or and so long as they believe this the argument will not should con­ vince them. The Pyrrhonist needs a strategy to deal with such cases.

10 It should be noted that on the thesis advanced by Woodruff (' Aporetic Pyrrhonism') and Bett (190-207), Aenesidemus himself did not employ the Standard Argument; rather, his suspensions of judgment relied on a form of relativism. From the facts (discoverable through the ten modes) that x appears F in Cl and appears G in C2, the conclusion Aenesidemus would draw (according to both Woodruff and Bett) is that irs not in the nature of x to be either F or C, leading to suspension ment as to the nature of x. This thesis, which attributes metaphysical commitments about natures to the early Pyrrhomsts, has been challenged by Scho­ field (284-303); but in any case, it has little bearing on my h'"1terpretation of Se;,tus. I am interested in elucidati..ng the connection between the Standard Argument and the arguments of the other modes. If Woodruff and Bett are right, what follows is that the Standard Argument (and so its connection to the ether modes) is a fe8ture only of later Pyrrhomsm as we find it represented in Sextus.

11 A party to a dispute (diaphBnia) is not qualified to arbitrate the dispute: 39; c£. 90, 98, and 112. 12 Standard Argument in the first mode: 59 (the fullest statement), 78; second: 90; third: 98; fourth: 112; fifth: 121; seventh; 132; ninth: 144; tenth; 163. 162 Nathan Powers

My proposal in nuce is that the Agrippan modes are intended to fur­ nish the sceptic with precisely such a strategy: the sort of 'dispute' to which the first Agrippan mode refers is nothing other than a dispute arising from conflicting appearances of the sort envisioned in the Stan­ dard Argument of the Aenesideman modes. The Agrippan modes, taken collectively (as the 'sceptic's net') prescribe a sceptical response to any attempt to resolve a conflict among appearances by appeal to a deciding reason or principle. They are, collectively, intended to pre­ clude any such appeal, forcing the conflict back to the level of appear­ ances. In other words, the Agrippan modes are designed to back up the Aenesideman modes; together the two sets form a system intended to produce suspension of judgment concerning any question whatsoever.

HI

If this proposal is correct, the connection between the Aenesideman and the Agrippan modes is an important, indeed a central, feature of Pyr­ rhonist methodology. But in this case, why does Sextus not take more care to highlight this connection for his readers? I thh'1k irl fact, Sextus does draw the connection in what he intends to be an explicit (if unemphatic) manner. This is how Sextus describes the first Agrippan mode:

According to the mode deriving from dispute, we find that undecided dissension (anepikriton about the matter proposed has come about both in ordinary life and among philosophers. Because of this we are not able either to choose or to rule out anything, and we end up with suspension of judgment. (165)

Now, this passage has usually been taken to state a stand-alone argu­ ment that concludes to suspension of judgment: whenever it is the case that concerning some matter under investigation there is an anepikritos disagreement, we must suspend judgment on that matter. I shall focus on Barnes' discussion of this mode, as the fullest attempt to give an ac­ count of it along these lines. Barnes' first move in interpreting the mode is to claim that anepikritos should be translated 'undecided' and not 'undecidable,.13 (I shall sug-

13 This claim is based in part on a useful dlSCUE;SlClndiscussion of Greek verbal adjectivesadll~ctlves ending in-tos (Barnes [1990a] 17-18). The System oj the Sceptical Modes in Sextus Empiricus 163

gest below that the word here actually means something different from either 'undecidable' or 'undecided'.) In order to make the sound, Barnes next infers that Sextus is making appeal to a of Disagreement':

If someone is aware that there is an undecided dispute about question] ?Q, t.1ten he ought not to accept or reject any proposed an­ swerto ?Q14

On this pru,ciple, it is just the fact that there is an undecided about a question - the fact that the parties to the dispute have not sat­ isfactorily settled their disagreements - which leads the sceptic to sus­ pension of judgment on that question. And this principle is true, Barnes argues, because its being false would render incoherent our of what it is for a dispute to be undecided. If we take our views to be based in a rational way on evidence, then to concede that a disputed is undecided straightforwardly entails not accepting or rejecting any proposeur! answer t a It. . 15 Barnes makes some further moves to show how it is that this 'Prin­ ciple of Disagreement' might come to be applied to any whatsoever/ including questions which do not strike us as 'undecided', thereby generating the radical scepticism that (he Sextus takes it to generate.16 I do not wish to cominent on the bility of L'tese further moves, nor indeed on the plausibility of Barnes' 'Principle of Disagreemenf itself, other than to say that if we are to take Sextus' argument as relying upon conceptual we are entitled to press against him a point analogous to one that has sometimes been pressed against modern sceptics: to concede that a dis­ puted question is undecided may well entail not accepting or proposed answers to it, but it also seems to require that there be para­ digmatic cases of decided questions to which we may make ill defense of our concept of rationality. Otherwise, the premiss that that our views are based in a rational way on evidence would never off the ground in the first place. But I set this objection aside; for, in fact, consideration of vvhat Sextus means by the in other

14 Barnes(1990a)21(1990a) 15 Barnes (1990a) 22 16 Barnes (1990a) 24-9 164 Nathan Powers contexts strongly suggests that Sextus does not in fact have anything like Barnes' 'Principle of Disagreernenf in mind here. The first Aenesideman mode treats appearances among different species of animals. Since organs of perception vary widely from species to species, we may presume that things appear quite differently to ani­ mals of different species. After elaborating how this presumption will serve the sceptic as a resource for discovering conflicting appearances, Sextus introduces his Standard Argument for the first time:

But if the same objects appear dissimilar depending on the variation among animals, then we shall be able to say what the objects are like as observed by us, but as to what they are like in their nature we shall suspend judgment. For we shall not be able ourselves to arbitrate (oude gar epikrinein autoi dunesometha) between our own appearances and those of other animals, being ourselves a part of the dispute and for that reason more in need of someone to arbitrate than ourselves able to judge (kai dia touto tou epikrinountos deesomenoi mallon e autoi krinein dunamenoi). (59)

Being/party to a dispute disqualifies one from arbitrating that dispute, and leaves one in need of an arbitrator - an epikrinon, as Sextus puts it here. Compare the formulation of the same argument in his exposition of the third Aenesideman mode. Here tile topic is varying appearances among different human senses; e.g., a thing may look one way but feel another way to the touch. Such appearances can lead to dispute by di­ rectly confliding with one another, and they also give rise to a more general sort of question: are we justified in believing that the properties possessed by objects are entirely commensurate with our senses? might appear that the right thlng to think is that objects really possess either more, or fewer, properties than are disclosed to us in perception.) Sextus imagines an objector making an appeal to nature in order to set­ tle this question. He responds:

(a.) What nature, given that there is so much dispute without an arbi­ trator (diaphOnias tosautes anepikritou ... auses) among the Dogmatists about whether such a thing as nature exists? (b) For if someone arbi­ trates (ho..ggr epikrinon) this question ... (c) then if he is a layman he will not be convincing according to them, while if he is a philosopher he will be part of the dispute and under judgment himself rather than a judge (kai krinomenos autos all' ou krites). (98) The System of the Sceptical Modes in Sextus Empiricus 165

What is important to notice here is the way in which Sextus talks about disputes that arise from differing appearances. When appearances con­ flict, one is tempted to prefer one's own appearances; but (c) whoever feels this temptation is 'part of the dispute', which implies (or perhaps is glossed as) that he is 'under judgment himself rather than a judge'. So we must deny the premiss (b) that there is a legitimate arbitrator (epi­ krinon) in such a case. But this elaboration of the Standard Argument is presented as an explanation (this is the force of the gar underlined in (b») of what Sextus means when he calls such a dispute anepikritos (a). He means precisely that there is no arbitrator to decide it. In other words, Sextus uses diaphOnia anepikritos as a shorthand waf. for refer­ ring to the Standard Argument of the Aenesideman modes. 1 It refers to the fact that if in a given dispute it is the case that every candidate for the role of arbitrator is already a party to the dispute, and therefore to be disqualified, then that dispute has no arbitrator. As stated above, Barnes urges that anepikritos be. translated 'unde­ cided' rather than 'undecidable'. But we are now in position to see that the precise sense of the word is different from either of these two op­ tions. To call a question anepikritos is to make a weaker claim than to call it 'undecidable'. The latter suggests that the reality at issue is by its very nature inaccessible to conclusive inquiry, and so tends to commit the maker of the claim to negative dogmatism; while the former carries no such implication or tendency. Yet to call a question anepikritos is more informative than to call it 'undecided', for it tells us that the question is undecided precisely in that there is no one qualified to decide it, no ar­ bitrator set over it. The word as Sextus uses it is not suitable for making a claim about what must be true in order for the concept of a question's being undecided to be coherent, as Barnes' 'Principle of Disagreement' does. It is, rather, suitable for making a claim about a particular dis­ puted question, namely that the question has no arbitrator. And Sextus, of course, wants to make this claim about questions that are disputed because of conflicting appearances.

17 Cf. Sextus' usage of ane:pikritos in his exposition of the fourth Aenesideman mode (which treats appearances varying with differing bodily or mental conditions of the perceiver). We cannot say how things really are in any given such case (112), 'since the anomaly is without an arbitrator (ane:pikritos). For the arbitrator of it (ho gar epikrinon) is either (a) in some of these conditions or (b) in no condition whatsoever;' but (b) is ridiculous and (a), Sextus argues by appeal to the Standard Argument (112-13), is impossible. 166 Nathan Powers

The reason Sextus feels entitled, in the first Agrippan mode, to con­ clude directly from a question's being anepikritos to suspension of judg­ ment on that question is quite straightforward: the first Agrippan mode is simply a summary restatement of the Standard Argument of the Ae­ nesideman modes. It summarizes the sceptical response to the various sorts of cases of conflicting appearances treated under the Aeneside­ man modes: these are in every instance the basis of disputes without arbitrators, and therefore judgment on them is in every instance to be suspended. Of course, Sextus does not expect that a dogmatist will ac­ cept this move As emphasized above, the Standard Argument is sound only it is conceded that there is nothing furt.lter to be said on behalf of any of the set of conflicti.'1g appearances in question other than that are (indeed) appearances - that they are what seems to be the case. A dogmatist will typically maintai.., that there is in fact quite a lot to be said on behalf of certain appearances - and this is pre­ cisely why the Agrippan modes are needed to supplement the Aene­ sideman modes. The Agrippan modes repulse dogmatists' attempts to prefer certain appearances, forcing them back to a position where they have nothing more to say on behalf of these appearances.

IV

So farl we have examined Sextus' treatment of the 'suspensive' modes, paying particular attention to those features of his presentation that sug­ gest he conceives of these sets of modes as together formi..'g a system nr(,rll1rT'V'" of suspension of judgment. I shall now turn to the second category of modes that Sextus posits, the 'refutational' modes. Under this heading Sextus gives a brief account (181-4) of the eight modes that Aenesidemus offered against causation, 'in accordance with which,' says Sextus (180), '[Aenesidemusl thinks he can refute and assert to be unsound every dogmatic causal explanation (kath'ous oietai pasan dog­ matiken aitiologian hOs mokhtheran elenkhOn apophenasthai).1 Commentators have tended to take the refutational modes to be unrelated to the suspensive modes. Barnes remarks, ITheyare not in­ tegrated into Sextus' overall strategy' (199Gb, 2652). Hankinson more optimistically says of them (213): 'Attacks on aetiology are central to the Sceptical enterprise ... Sextus saw that attacking the notion of cause jeopardized many other central Dogmatic concepts, such as those of body, motion, and alteration.' This is certainly true so far as it goes - but there is more to be said about why the eight modes are presented to The System of the Sceptical Modes in Sextus Empiricu5 167 us immediately alongside the other sets of modes. I shall suggest that if we make several suppositions in the light of my examination of the suspensive modes above, it will be seen that Sextus indeed includes the refutational modes as of the general program PH I; that these modes too have a role to play in of judgment. The first supposition is that the modes targeting aetiologies, or caus­ al accounts; are of interest to Sextus in PH I because when dogmatists defend their own particular positions against sceptics, INill tend to give pride of to aetiology. Of course, these modes are whenever a particular causal account is given, and also the cases of at least some of these modes) whenever the notion of causality L'l. gen­ eral is under discussion. Sextus chooses to include them here, because dogmatists will often a causal story when to defend they accept appearances that are controversial. Indeed this is a paradigmatic response of the dogmatist to the sceptic: 'It's not a matter of thhlgs appearing differently to you and to me in this case. Your appearances, according to my worthy causal principles, are devi- ant; they are not to be trusted or seriously because come about in such a way as to distort, and not to the nature of things.' , The second supposition is that so far as Sextus is the fundamental (and, perhaps, the only ultimately conclusive) argument in the sceptic's arsenal is the Standard Argument. If my above of the Agrippan modes is then in PH I Sextus concludes to suspension of judgment from the Standard and never suggests that some other argument will do the job, Other sceptical arguments subserve the Standard Argument insofar as cut off dogmatic appeals to resources that might serve to decide among conflicting appearances; but so far as we can tell from the pen- ultimate step in any chain of reasoning that results in of judgment is routinely (perhaps always) the Standard Argument These two suppositions, if accepted, warrant an interpretation of the purpose of the eight modes against causation the Unes. In a given case of conflicting appearances, the sceptic may ately to produce suspension of judgment by the Standard This will be convincing only if there is nothing further to be said to de­ cide behveen the appearances in question. A dogmatist may \A(ell prefer one of the appearances in question, and hold that there is indeed more to be said against the appearance that he rejects; and very often, 'I'vhat he believes there is to be said is an appeal to causal principles. Let's call 168 Nathan Powers this causal story p. the sceptic can try to undermL'l.e p by demand­ ing fresh justification for the principles to which it appeals. Down that road lies the sceptic's net (the Agrippan modes). But the sceptic can also simply refute p outright, by showing ttlat it does not in fact constitute a convincing explanation of how the appearance in question came about; and here the eight modes will have their proper role. Either way, Lire dogmatist's appeal to p is cut off, and so the Standard Argument may be invoked again. This interpretation takes the eight modes to have a function paral­ lel to that of the Agrippan modes, in that they provide an alternative strategy for 'backing the Aenesideman modes and bringing the Standard Argument into playlS Now, it might be thought that there is something suspect about allowing the Pyrrhonist to counter dogmatic explanations with refutations. One worry here is that, while the Agrip­ pan strategy successfully guards the sceptic against the taint of making assertions himself, as soon as he embarks upon the business of making refutations he will not be able to avoid committing himself to propo­ sitions that endanger his scepticism. I do not think this is actually a problem for Sextus. Consider a dogmatist who, in attempting to reject some appearance F reported by a sceptic, produces a causal story p to discredit F. In order to challenge p, a sceptic could argue for not-p, or for some r that is incompatible with p; but he needn't do eiL'1er. All he need do is rule out appeal to p by showing that p is no more satisfac- as an explanation of how appearance F comes about than some (LTlcompatible) r is - and as a matter of fact, this seems to be the sort of 'refutation' generally envisioned in the eight modes. Another .vorry remail1.S. Granted that it is appropriate for Sextus to propose this kind of refutation as a sceptical strategy, it still seems odd that he should propose both the strategy of refutation and the strategy of the Agrippan modes indiscriminately, without so much as hinting at the conditions under which one or the other approach would be prefer-

18 Sextus himself indicates a similarity in function between the two kinds of modes. Immediately after his description of the eight modes, he says (185), 'Perhaps the five modes of suspension of judgment will also suffice against causal explana­ tions.' He goes on (185-6) to give a sketch of how the Agrippan modes might be de­ ployed against aetiologies: if a dogmatist gives an explanation that conflicts with an alternative explanation offered by some other dogmatist, then he will have to give an explanation of his explanation, and so forth. This passage, while not direct­ ly confirming the interpretation of the eight modes that I have offered, is certainly consistent with it. The System of the Sceptical Modes in Sextus Empiricus 169

able. After all, the two strategies lead to fundamentally different ways of countering dogmatic explanations. The Agrippan modes leave dog­ matic explanations intact, so to speak, so long as further justification can be provided for them; they insist, in effect, that the dogmatist produce a further claim standing in the same sort of explanatory relationship to his original claim as that in which the original claim stood relative to the phenomenon it was introduced in order to explain. The eight modes by contrast contest the explanatory status of dogmatic claims. The sceptic, it seems, can have it one way or the other, but not both. It appears insouciant of Sextus not to register this issue at all. Sextus' insouciance about the deployment of the sceptical modes, however, is a deliberate and systematic feature of his scepticism. It re­ sults, indeed, from one of his basic methodological principles, which I introduce as the third supposition needed to make sense of the eight modes: that the sceptic's overall goal in making arguments is to induce suspension of judgment (which leads to tranquility). Combine this sup­ position with the previous one, that the only (or the primary) route to suspension of judgment leads through the Standard Argument, and it becomes easy to see why Sextus doesn't worry about being charged with argumentative inconsistency. Any means that a sceptic uses to bring the Standard Argument to bear on a question under discussion is .ipso facto methodologically sound. This view of argumentation is alien to most ancient and modern phil­ osophical sensibilities. Yet it has considerable merit as an interpretation of Sextus' view, for it corresponds to the portrait Sextus himself paints of the Pyrrhonist at the very end of PH (ill 280-1). There the sceptical philosopher is characterized as a 'philanthropist' on the grounds that, like a doctor, he desires to cure (iasthai) the rashness of dogmatists by whatever means necessary: 'This is why [the sceptic] does not hesitate to propound arguments which are sometimes weighty in their persua­ siveness, and sometimes apparently rather weak. He does this delib­ erately, since often a weaker argument is sufficient. for hinl to achieve his purpose' (ill 281). The good sceptic, when faced with a choice be­ tween mutually inconsistent lines of argument which he could press against a dogmatist, will make the choice based on an assessment of that dogmatist's current frame of mind, including his or her beliefs and amenability to persuasion.19

19 This passage is sometimes taken to imply that in Sextus' view the good Pyrrhonist will sometimes propound arguments that he knows to be 'weak' in the sense of 170 Nat/zan Powers

The sceptic's love of humanity requires that dogmatists be healed, shaken free from the grasp of their beliefs. There exists, to be sure, a systematic to healing dogmatists - the modes - but the true measure of a sceptic's ability lies in how skillfully he or she can gauge a particular patient's condition and bring relief closely tailored to the ailment. This helps, I think, to explain both why Sextus presents the sceptical modes as a system in PH I and he is reticent about their systematic character.

Department of Philosophy SUNY Albany Albany, NY 12222 USA npowers@albanyedu

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Annas, Julia, and Jonathan Barnes, Sextus Empiricus: Outlines of Scepticism, 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press 2000.

Barnes, Jonathan.r.....-'1·e>T ..... r'r> [1990a],[1990al, The Toils of ;::,ce'VtlIClsrn.Scepticism. New York: Lamt>ricLgeCambridge University Press 1990.

Barnes, Jonathan [1990b],'Pyrrhonism, Belief and Causation. Observations on the Scepti­ cism of Sextus Empiricus', in Wolfgang Haase, ed., Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt II 36. 4 (New York: Walter de Cruyter 1990) 2608-95.

beil,g invalid. I am not sure whether this is correct; in any case, what I am suggest­ ing is rather that the sceptic will take care to tailor his argumentative strategy to his interlocutor's convictions, picking the strategy most likely to succeed in pro­ ducing suspension of judgment. In particular cases some dogmatists, for example, may quickly see that their justifying principles cannot themselves be sufficiently justified; others may require the refutati0I1 of a favored causal story before feeling the equal pull of conflicting appearances, In this respect my view is similar to that of Barnes (Annas 1St Barnes [2000], xxvii-ix), who emphasizes that the Pyrrhornst will be careful to begin his arguments fronl premises that his dogmatic interlocu­ tor will accept; the resulting arguments will be 'weightier' or 'weaker' depending on how widely applicable they are among different dogmatists. The of the Sceptical Modes in Se:ct!ls

Bett, Richard, his Antecedents and his Legacyo New York: Oxford Press 20000

Hankinson, R. L The Scepticso New York: Routledge 19950 Schofield, Malcolm, 'Aenesidemus: Pyrrhonist and "Heraclitean"', in Anna-Nbri" 10 and David Sedley, edso, Pyrrhonists, Patricians, Platonizers: Hellenistic PHlnsop"y in the Period 155-86 Be (Naples: Bibliopolis 2007) 269-338. Striker, Gisela, 'The Ten Tropes of Aenesidemus', in Burnyeat, cd., The Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press 1983) 95-115.

Woodruff, Paul, 'Aporetic Pyrrhonism', Oxford Studies in Ancient Fil1J1J"nni1'1J 6 (1988) 139- 68.