I have been struggling lately with Pyrrhonism. Mostly because some of the claims that it makes are kind of rooted in truth. Strong beliefs and opinions clashing in the world are a problem and arguably the source of many ills. We also derive some kind of pain from judging things to be good or bad. We seek to avoid the bad and crave the good. Our senses are fallible. I’m not entirely certain about this one but they say that reason is motivated by desire, which I guess is true in some sense. I mean the source of any inquiry is the desire to know. So they try to advocate a policy of continual suspension of judgment in order to find peace, probably because of the above I have mentioned.
From what I have read, I cannot really argue against it. There is some truth to the things that they say, but I wonder if it is even possible to reach what they are talking about. They certainly think continuously suspending judgment leads to peace, but so far I have not seen anyone to which can prove that claim. So far “suspending judgment” for me has caused nothing but confusion and mental stress.
Yet I find it hard to seek knowledge and pursue truth because of their claims. Opinions clashing with each other causes pain, believe and judging things good and bad does too. So if that’s all true, then WHAT IS LEFT?! It seems to me that following this is no different than being dead, but I don’t know what to do about their claims. Should I pursue things even though I am fallible and so is my reasoning? I can’t have opinions on things or beliefs? I feel so lost and confused. I’m just trying to do the right thing here.
Just suspending judgement is absurd. While you might be tempted by their arguments to suspend judgement about the world, you should also suspend judgement about their arguments. And then where are you?
Instead of suspending judgement, why not try conditional belief. In that, you don’t know for sure that there are other minds and a reality outside yours, but you can act as if there is and looking for evidence for or against this hypothesis. As the evidence piles up for, and as evidence against is absent, you can be more and more sure about the correctness of the hypothesis.
Science is a way of finding out things about the world, and this is how science works - so using it here is perfectly reasonable.
But how can I be sure evidence points to this or that? They argue that our senses don’t lie to us but they don’t tell the truth. Things only appear to be a certain way based on or senses, but that’s not what they are. How can truth and information come from that?
They say that by suspending judgment on all non evident matters you achieve tranquility. They view this state and some kind of achievement.
Learn to be okay with not knowing and admitting you don’t know. Life is not a test. You don’t have to have all the answers and the answers you do have don’t always turn out to be correct.
But more than that, you appear to have an acute problem with obsessive behaviour/thinking. Are you being treated by a qualified professional? If not, start there. If you are, call him/her for additional help to get through your more acute episodes.
While the limitations of our senses and our brains might distort information, that doesn’t mean that we can’t convince ourselves of basic information by viewing it in different ways. Does the sun shine? We can see the light, we can feel the warmth, we can take a picture of the sun, we can measure the sun through various instruments. We might underestimate or overestimate the amount of light we see, but we have enough data to convince ourselves. The only exception is if some entity is misleading us - which proves there is something outside ourselves also.
Our eyes may deceive us, but our light meter won’t.
That’s not it at all. You didn’t read the link or the post. It’s about how they say that all the methods to reach truth we have are flawed so the only way to live is to continuously suspend judgment on all matters to reach tranquillity. That makes it feel like every way I have lived up to now was wrong and a lie. But to follow what they suggest would be to give up everything.
As for the senses, they go by appearances. Like how they say honey “appears” sweet, without laying claim to any truth about it. The same thing goes with the sun, light, and the measurements of instruments.
Yep! Our instruments have extended the range of our perception. They’ve helped us build up a larger “consensus universe.”
The other thing that helps is the actual consensus. Ask a bunch of other people. “Do you see the two faces in the picture of the chalice?” About half will say, yes. Cool. It isn’t just you, alone, having hallucinations. It’s real.
Accumulate evidence when it is available. Meanwhile, shrug off those questions that cannot be answered. Solipsism can never be disproven. It just isn’t profitable. It tells you nothing, and offers no avenue for further knowledge.
Mark reality with an asterisk in your playbook. “* – not proven.” Then go about your normal business, accepting reality with that provision.
Dr. Johnson was close to the right answer: when you kick the rock, it hurts your foot.
I suspect they behave exactly as if honey were sweet, the sun was shining, etc. Sock them in the jaw, and see if they say that it “appears” they are in pain. Then you’ll see if they live up to their philosophical ideals.
And run. Since they won’t.
To me truth would be consistency. Honey is sweet to me and light is bright.
But they say that we only know the world as we perceive it through our senses and not as it really is. So in saying that, they argue no truth can be made and no claims made as to the nature of things around us or the truth of reality. And the mere though that I’m living some kind of illusion and that the facts as I know them are provisional is terrifying. It’s like there is nothing solid to hold.
I don’t want to live life according to “appearances”. Like that appears to be a rainbow, or this appears to be sweet, my brain does that sometimes since reading about this and it’s damn exhausting.
Can you construct a descriptive model by which we could know “reality” “as it really is” without any sensory intermediary?
How would you know if it was accurate?
FWIW, you might benefit from studying mathematics. It’s a field where you can actually prove that what you’re talking about is true, and where there are solid, rigid, not-to-be-disputed definitions. You might find comfort there.
Machineforce, you don’t know anything. Only probabilities. If you hit your thumb with a hammer, maybe the world isn’t real and maybe you don’t have a thumb and maybe the hammer doesn’t cause the pain, maybe your thumb hurting was just a coincidence.
But if you start with the assumption of “I don’t know if there is any connection between pain and my thumb hurting”, and you hit your thumb, your probability of a connection should skyrocket. From 0 to maybe 0.9. Do it again and it should maybe jump to 0.96 or so. And so on. You never have a 1.0, nothing is certain.
But if you’re making decisions, you should take into account the most certain probability. If that probability is less than about 0.99, you should simultaneously take into account lesser possibilities. By “should” I simply mean “if you want the best chance of a good outcome”.
But no, there is no certainty about anything, just observations, some of which have aligned with the most probable model so many times in a row that it would be idiotic to not use that model. Rocks fall. The observations of the effects of gravity have been made so many trillions of times, and with such a perfect set of correlation between the theory of gravity and measurement, that the probability that rocks don’t fall is so tiny it can be taken as 1/<almost infinity>, or essentially 0.
Billions of people across time and generation, have tasted honey and seen light. The overwhelming majority would agree that honey is sweet and light illuminates darkness. None bemoaned the pleasure of either because they did not posses the ability to taste or see the full spectrum of either. Honey is no less sweet nor light less illuminating because our senses have limitations. Accepting that which you cannot change is an import part of healthy coping with the human condition and our reality. What’s more, for those who seek to see beyond the limits of human senses, we have developed sciences and technology to help us see and understand that which we cannot with the naked tongue and eye.
But what’s more important is that you continue to avoid the crux of the problem. It isn’t that you lack the ability to fully appreciate the full spectrum of taste and light. It’s that despite knowing this limitation, you obsess over it as if it’s something you lost, rather than something you never had and never will have. You need treatment for this kind of unhealthy obsessive thinking. I hope you are getting it or will realize you must seek it out.
The issue is that Pyrrhonism claims that we cannot know things as they really are and only as they appear to us. That couples with how many different viewpoints exist in the world it makes me wonder what I can call truth anymore and whether they are right in their assumption that the only sensible thing is to suspend all judgment on things. Even labeling things good and bad cause suffering, because we seek to avoid bad and crave good.
You are mistaken in saying this is obsession. It’s dealing with a branch that has some basis in truth for its presides and that promises to take away what you have built a life on in the name of achieving some kind of tranquility.
Unless you are going to address the philosophy I don’t think you are going to help very much.
The next time you’d enjoy something sweet, you may well apparently reach out for what seems to be some honey – and, when you think you’ve tasted it, I’m guessing that you’ll perceive sweetness. Which is what you wanted, right?
I’m guessing you believe that, if you instead reached out for what you perceive as a handful of fire, and believed you then touched it to your tongue, you’d instead find yourself experiencing pain. Which is why you don’t do that, right?
I wouldn’t think it’d matter to you whether the honey – or the fire – is ‘really’ there; I’d just think it’d matter that you could avoid the feeling of pain regardless, and that you could taste the sweet sensation of honey regardless.
Why should we address this particular philosophy rather than the thousands of other philosophies that have been concocted over the millennia? This is a serious question. You constantly cherrypick the myriad examples of philosophical discourse and hold some up as truths that we must acknowledge. What if they are not truths, but merely sophist arguments that yield no good understanding of or relationship to everyday reality?
As noted, if you “suspend judgement” on things, you cause yourself suffering, by putting fire, not honey, to your tongue. The wiser course is to study the world’s seeming, to learn what lessons you may.
You cannot know “the truth” without the intermediary of your senses. You might just as well be complaining about mortality, fallibility, or the fact that you can’t fly. Well, yeah. You can’t fly. Too damn bad, because Superman makes it look like a lot of fun.
Exactly wrong! Labelling things reduces suffering! We make up lists of things not to do – don’t go into the Poison Ivy; don’t drink Drano; don’t put your hand on the stove-top – and, by following these instructions, we endure much less in the way of suffering than we would without making up lists and labelling experiences.
Both in terms of abstract philosophy and in concrete pragmatic reality, your ideas are extremely bad!
No one is disputing that our senses sometimes mislead us. But not often, and not enough to cast doubt on reality. How can we tell? Because we can devise independent ways of recording reality. These can show us where our senses go wrong, but also show us where they go right.
What mechanism do they propose for explaining the apparent agreement of our senses and our instruments? Do they have one? If not, perhaps they are asking you to suspend judgment for no good reason. If they do, does it seem more plausible than the hypothesis that reality exists?
No, it is an idea that many of us have considered and rejected.
I don’t consider that continually saying “you can’t be sure” to be much of a philosophy, no more than repeatedly saying “no it isn’t” in the Argument office in the Monty Python sketch is a branch of forensics.
