It would seem that taken to its logical conclusion it would lead to solipsism, and suffers from the same drawbacks. It provides nothing useful in terms of understanding the nature of ourselves and our environment, or in suggesting positive courses of action.
Or in other words, OK so nothing is real, now what?
I am not (previously) familiar with pyrronism, but judging from the description in the OP, I ascribe to that approach myself.
• It is impossible to know anything with certainty.
• That doesn’t prevent one from acting on the premise that something is true (or good or whatever), as one’s best judgment based on what’s available to judge from and one’s limited ability to make judgments without them being unduly influenced by one’s own social-situational location
• One should, however, continue to entertain the possibility of being wrong even while moving forward acting on such a premise.
Is there any element within that that’s either a misinterpretation of the descrip in the OP or a departure from this pyrronism thingie?
Are you sure of that?
Pyrrhonism, at least as I understand it, misses the compliment of being skeptical: accepting a reasonable claim. Reasonable/rational skepticism calls skeptics to only be skeptical where it is warranted. When we have satisfied the reasons for our skepticism (ie. small sample size, strong bias, lack of repetition, etc.), then we should cease to be skeptical of that particular claim. We simply accept that most claims will never be known with 100% certainty and move on.
There’s no virtue in being unthinkingly skeptical.
giggle No, but I’m proceeding under the assumption that such is the case.
Well, you can safely know for certain that you don’t know everything for certain, i.e. you know that you are not all-knowing.
It’s true that a lot of people are probably too skeptical, but that’s probably for the same reason that a lot of people aren’t skeptical enough: they have already made up their minds and no evidence will be compelling enough to them.
The rigorous application of the scientific method has led us to be able to accomplish things that were absolutely inconceivable only a few hundred years ago. While it is true that our senses can fool us, that’s only true in a more metaphorical and consciousness-directed sense. What we are able to read off our scientific instruments is as close to the truth as we will ever be able to get.
. . . assuming we accept without evidence the axioms upon which the scientific method depends, of course.
Didn’t Descartes try this? Concluded with, “I think, therefore I am”?
I always hated that argument. “I” appears in both the premise and the conclusion. If one is attempting to demonstrate the existence of something, one shouldn’t present it as such a given.
Reading the wiki link I gave shows a better picture of things. But I think it comes out as that our sense are fallible and easily tricked (not sure about easily) and that reason is influenced by desire. Therefor with such imperfect ways to learn and know, the best thing is to suspend all judgment because anything we use to find knowledge is flawed. Sort of like throwing the baby out with the bath water. Also they hold that the world’s problems are the results of belief and opinion so the solution is to have neither (which I think is impossible, well maybe if you’re dead.)
That’s how axioms work, though. You ultimately have to accept something without evidence or certitude in order to do the physical or mental work to gain evidence or certitude. You may be able to gain evidence or certitude of a sort after the fact, but not before acting on axioms. You simply go with them if you think they’re reasonable. There’s no possible evidence we could gather that tells us there are facts about the universe that are knowable (how would we ever know we know them?), that our senses are reliable enough for us to test these claims (how could our senses tells us that our senses are reliable?), etc. in an indisputable way. Science is ultimately pragmatic, and since it’s worked out pretty well for us so far, that is “evidence” enough that the axioms that science rests on are worth accepting.
I find arguments such as “the axioms of evidence-based reasoning don’t have evidence for them” or “‘there is no absolute truth’ is an absolute claim” silly word games.
Would you prefer the Latin version: Cogito, ergo sum?
Or just reword it as “Whatever thinks must exist”?
[QUOTE=Rene Descartes]
While we thus reject all of which we can entertain the smallest doubt, and even imagine that it is false, we easily indeed suppose that there is neither God, nor sky, nor bodies, and that we ourselves even have neither hands nor feet, nor, finally, a body; but we cannot in the same way suppose that we are not while we doubt of the truth of these things; for there is a repugnance in conceiving that what thinks does not exist at the very time when it thinks. Accordingly, the knowledge, I think, therefore I am, is the first and most certain that occurs to one who philosophizes orderly.
[/QUOTE]
The Latin doesn’t really help- the conjugation still implies “I” in the premise.
I think the correct answer is: “I can’t be sure I exist.”
If you doubt you exist, who/what is doing the doubting?
You think the statement is trying to demonstrate the existence of “I”. It isn’t. You’re having a grammar problem, essentially. The statement doesn’t parse as well in English as “think, therefore am”, but that’s what it really says.
My experience of my conscousness cannot be an illusion. In order to be an illusion it would have to be an illusion to a conscousness and then we’re back at square one: I’m conscious of something (never mind what) therefore there exists an “I” (never mind who or what that may be) who is conscious.
Just for shiggles:
“Lord, who feels?”
“Not a valid question,” the Blessed One said. “I don’t say ‘feels.’ If I were to say ‘feels,’ then ‘Who feels?’ would be a valid question. But I don’t say that. When I don’t say that, the valid question is ‘From what as a requisite condition comes feeling?’ And the valid answer is, ‘From contact as a requisite condition comes feeling. From feeling as a requisite condition comes craving.’”
-Phagguna Sutta: To Phagguna
OK, I missed that you’d already quarreled with the notion that you’re having a grammar problem.
You don’t think. Or you’re not sure that you think. (Sorry, but I don’t see why you get to have it both ways 
)
But seriously, I already went toe to toe on this with someone else trying to make the same argument that you’re making, over here on the sisterboard. (And spent way too much time looking for the damn thread over here, btw).
I can’t (necessarily) dislodge you from your perspective but I can tell you that saying “The statement ‘I think therefore I am’ contains the premise in the conclusion” doesn’t make it so, and however obvious it may be to you, it’s incorrectness is equally obvious to me.
Buddhism came up in the OP. The Buddhist formulation would be: “There is thinking.” The non-dualist formulation (which overlaps Buddhism somewhat) boils down to, “There is no thinking, there is only the Self,” the Self being the unary, sole truly existing thing, not to be confused with the small “s” individual self. The thinking is a sort of illusion in this view, along with one’s sense of individual identity.
The idea is that identity is something we take for granted, but upon rigorous examination it turns out to be so problematic as to be impossible to take seriously. To say that “you” do not exist is probably the correct position, but that can be nigh impossible to accept, as well as kind of fucking with one of the cornerstones of Western thinking.
Identity is certainly problematic; the self that people tend to believe in is not necessarily who they are. That’s certainly true for people whose sense of self is explicitly singular, the individual self.
Problematic ≠ nonexistent.
Why are you so certain?