Post
by FBM » Mon Dec 14, 2009 4:12 pm
Sorry, but I haven't (and ain't gonna) read everything in this thread up to this point, but I'd like to say something about skepticism.
The skepticism that developed in the Middle Academy (Academic sketpticism) is negative sketpticsm. It's as dogmatic as the philosophies it opposed. As a result, it offered not much particular relief. The skepticism of Pyrrho seems to me to be a much more commonsense, balanced and realistic approach to addressing the unknown. That is, it classifies the unknown simply as 'the unknown', without taking the dogmatic leap to saying it's unknowable.
Sextus Empiricus classified phenomena into 4 classes. (I'm working from memory, can't be arsed to get up and find the book right now.) There is the apparent, which is undeniable. That's the moment-to-moment direct sensory experience we all live by. There is the temporarily nonevident, which includes the knowldge of the existence of Athens when you're not in the city proper. Then there's the absolutely nonevident, such as the number of grains of sand in this or that desert, or whether the number of stars is odd or even. Then there's the naturally nonevident. The naturally nonevident includes what the nature of things are that aren't perceptible by the human senses (including the technologies that extend the ranges of human senses), such as the soul, the existence of universes outside our own, and whether or not there is an afterlife.
If, while crossing a desert, I perceive a shimmering on the horizon, there's nothing 'wrong' with that perception. The eyes are receiving light properly according to their structure and function. The error only arises when I decide that the shimmering is an oasis (which is not directly perceived). Eventually, I have no choice but to conclude that it was a mirage. That's a new (mental) perception, and it doesn't invalidate the shimmering, only the unfounded conclusion that the shimmering = an oasis.
The belief in a divine creator is analogous to the unfounded decision to consider the shimmering to be an oasis. Pyrrhonian skepticism says that we should not take any step beyond witnessing the shimmering as a shimmering. Not denying the experience, not claiming it to be either accurate or a mirage, but simply a shimmering. As new experiences supplement the old, understanding becomes clearer. But humans seem to have a tendency to jump the gun and rush to preferred, comfortable conclusions that the direct experience doesn't actually imply. That's been a problem, historically, with theism, atheism, science, economics and pretty much every other human endeavor that involves abstracting from the evident.
Pyrrho's contribution was to stand against the negative skeptics of the Middle Academy who dogmatically asserted that the senses can't be trusted and, therefore, nothing is knowable. Instead, he said that direct, commonplace perception is the knowable. The problem comes when we make abstractions from direct perception and dogmatically assert them to be absolutely true, whether positive or negative. A consequence of abstaining from asserting abstractions as truths, he said, is a state of ataraxia, something like tranquility. IOW, when you accept that at least some things aren't known and may very well be unknowable, you can relax your feverish pursuit of absolute knowledge and certainty, and be happy with the way things are, viz., as yet undetermined. Keep your eyes open, yes, but don't stake your happiness on knowing anything beyond what is directly observed and commonsense inferences from that (smoke probably means fire, stepping out in front of a train probably means your shit splattered, etc.).
"A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it." ~ H. L. Mencken
"We ain't a sharp species. We kill each other over arguments about what happens when you die, then fail to see the fucking irony in that."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism while the wolf remains of a different opinion."