Agrippan Pyrrhonism and the Problem of Disagreement

DIEGO E. MACHUCA

Baltimore

Conferencia; Department of Philosophy Colloquium; 2011

Johns Hopkins University

The subject of this talk is the set of arguments known as the Five Modes of Agrippa, which are the most powerful weapons of the Pyrrhonian argumentative arsenal found in Sextus Empiricus’ extant works. My purpose is to offer an interpretation of both certain aspects of the challenge posed by these modes and the Pyrrhonist’s attitude towards them. More precisely, I propose to show: (i) that the existence of disagreements does not play an entirely secondary role in inducing suspension of judgment; (ii) that the Pyrrhonist is not committed to the criteria of justification underlying the Agrippan modes, which nonetheless does not prevent him from assenting to them in a weak, non-epistemic way; and (iii) that present-day epistemologists generally fail to understand the Pyrrhonist’s ad hominem style of argumentation and the real challenge posed by the mode from disagreement. As will become clear, these three points are intimately related.