Research

My research focuses on ancient Pyrrhonian skepticism and skeptical inquiry. Sextus Empiricus begins his Outlines of Pyrrhonism (PH) with the claim that skeptics are perpetual inquirers. They are not satisfied with the answers that have been offered, nor do they claim – as modern skeptics do – that no answers can be given; instead, they keep looking (PH I 1-3). But Sextus also says that the skeptic suspends judgment, especially in matters philosophical and theoretical (PH I 8, 13). How can genuine inquiry continue when a skeptic withholds assent from all philosophical claims? And how can the skeptic honestly say that all opposing positions seem equally strong?

I am currently working on a monograph that seeks to answer these questions by expanding on my forthcoming article, recently published online in Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie entitled “Skeptical Suspension in the Face of Disagreement”. In that paper, I argue that becoming a skeptic involves developing a disposition to follow a skeptical norm of disagreement, a norm that demands one suspend judgment in the face of a disagreement until one has good reason to assent to one side or the other. This insight goes some way toward answering the question about the coherence of skeptical philosophy because Sextus says that only those who do not believe they have found the answer can engage in genuine inquiry (PH II 11).

The monograph is structured around Sextus’ definition of skepticism found at PH I 8. There, he says “the skeptical ability [dunamis] is one that opposes [antithetikē] appearances and thoughts in anyway at all, from which, because of the equal strength [isostheneia] among the opposing matters and accounts, we come first off to the suspension of judgment [epochē] and after this to tranquility [ataraxia].” Given that the skeptical ability must produce equal strength among the oppositions and given that equal strength explains the skeptic’s suspensive response, I develop an account of isostheneia on the basis of three distinct metaphors Sextus uses for this equality. Most scholars have favored the image of balanced scales, which Sextus invites with the language of suspension and arrhepsia or “equilibrium”. But others have noted that Sextus also talks about the way in which skeptical practices undermine reason, using the medicinal analogy of a diarrhetic; skeptical arguments purge themselves along with the dogmatic rashness that ails us. I point out that scholars tend to ignore the judicial language of indecision that Sextus uses to describe equal strength. This helps to clarify the skeptical norm of disagreement because it is precisely the fact that skeptics find they cannot adjudicate between the parties to a disagreement that drives them to suspend judgment.

The skeptical Modes are the codification of an ability to undermine decisive reasons for one side of a disagreement or another. These Modes, and especially the five Modes of Agrippa, represent a guide for prospective skeptics who are honing their powers. Here, I draw upon the interpretation of the five Modes that I first published in my 2016 Apeiron article “The Challenges of the Modes of Agrippa”. The Modes of Agrippa have traditionally been interpreted as argument forms or objections that allow skeptics to block dogmatic support, but such an interpretation suffers not only from textual problems (it cannot make sense of all that Sextus says), but also philosophical issues, since it seems to make skeptics into dogmatists about logical support. In contrast to this, I argue that the Modes are dialectical moves that allow skeptics to put off decision on a particular question indefinitely, which allows the skeptic to perpetuate a situation of equal-strength understood as undecidability. Thus, the Modes are an expression of the skeptical ability used to explain the suspension of judgment.

The picture of skepticism I reveal is dispositional. Sextus, on my view, encourages prospective skeptics to develop the kind of character trait familiar to many and associated with ancient ethical works like Aristotle’s. By adhering to the skeptical norm in the face of disagreement and by practicing the moves outlined in the Modes, skeptical apprentices develop a tendency to suspend judgment about any unclear matter they face. When Sextus clarifies the ethical goal of skepticism, he – rather surprisingly – claims that the skeptics do not only pursue ataraxia through the suspension of judgment, but also seek moderation of suffering [metriopatheia] in those things that are forced upon them, which suggests that “tranquility in matters of opinion” should be understood as intentional (PH I 25, 26). At the same time, Sextus will often point out that skeptics simply subscribe to what is apparent and go along with the way things seem. The analogy with Aristotelian character virtues is helpful here: Aristotle suggests that we can develop the virtues intentionally, but once those character traits take hold, they partially determine how things appear to us. The generous person finds helping others pleasant, in part because it is pleasant, but also because of her generous disposition. Similarly, Sextus might say that the skeptics find a debate undecidable because in a sense it is undecidable, or at least it seems so due to the skeptical disposition.

In this way, my interpretation of skepticism solves the long standing debate about whether skeptics suspend judgment on the basis of a psychological, causal response or whether they suspend judgment on the basis of rational norms. Moreover, it helps us to see why this debate has arisen in the first place: The initial suspension of judgment is a kind of psychological reflex on my view, but it is not one that occurs artificially in response to the precarious balance of argumentative forces. Rather, it is the result of the fact that a philosophical disagreement demands epochē in order to investigate and adjudicate the dispute fairly. In other words, normative considerations underlie the initial suspension of judgment, and the skeptical disposition sustains it.

Sextus claims that skeptics find that peace of mind follows “fortuitously” upon epochē (PH I 29), and it is difficult to argue with him on this point. If the skeptical ability is essentially a kind of character virtue, then as Aristotle says, it must involve feelings and actions. According to Sextus, the feeling is one of tranquility and the activity is inquiry into the question at hand. Pyrrhonian skepticism, then, represents a philosophical way of seeing the world that engages in inquiry to seek answers while simultaneously utilizing dialectical practices that tend to put off or undermine attempts to determine those answers.

In addition to the book, I am working on a number of papers. I currently have a draft paper called “Erudite Skeptics and Invasive Dogmatists” that draws on some of the themes from my dissertation, which focused on Sextus’ treatise Adversus Mathematicos [=M] I-VI (Against the Professors). This little studied text criticizes the putative experts of six technical disciplines: grammar, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astrology, and music theory. It is a puzzling treatise for a number of reasons. For one thing, many scholars have claimed that it represents a different form of skepticism compared to Sextus’ Outlines. Other scholars have even claimed that the work is hopelessly befuddled and incoherent. In this paper, I argue for a coherent reading of Against the Professors, which I claim sheds shed light on the nature of Pyrrhonian skepticism in general. What other interpretations of Sextus have ignored is the intellectual curiosity and drive of the Pyrrhonian skeptic. It is true that Sextus emphasizes the skeptics’ ability to suspend judgment in his other works, particularly the Outlines of Pyrrhonism. But we cannot ignore the skeptics’ interest in philosophy and these other disciplines, an interest that must be explained in relation to the suspensive goal, and not in opposition to it. To that end, I begin by taking seriously Sextus’ claim that the skeptics are well educated (M I 5), and explain how that conflicts with typical interpretations of Pyrrhonism. I suggest that this conflict requires that we re-evaluate Sextus’ characterization of dogmatism: Sextus is primarily concerned to defend himself against what I call the invasive dogmatist. Once we understand his target, we can more clearly see why Sextus thinks skeptical education is useful and ultimately leads to tranquility.

In addition to my research into Pyrrhonism, I work on other figures in the history of skepticism as well as on the development of ancient scientific theories. One paper looks at the Epicurean doctrine of the swerve, that notorious assertion that atoms randomly change their trajectory slightly as they move. I examine an argument that Lucretius offers for the swerve. He claims that the swerve is needed to explain why any macroscopic objects exist. If there were no swerve, there would be no collisions because all of the atoms would fall like raindrops (De Rerum Natura II 217-225). While this argument is typically dismissed by scholars, I claim that without the swerve, the "atomic rain" was indeed implied by Epicurean physics, which means that Epicurus needed some principle like to swerve to explain the existence of our kosmos.

Finally, looking forward, I would like to explore the way that ancient thinkers understood failures in explanation: Are all failures of explanation simply mistakes, or are some aspects of reality inexplicable? We are all familiar with Thrasymachus' radical claim in the first Book of the Republic, that the true expert never errs. Plato suggests in several places that a genuine science or technē is able to explain and predict every phenomenon within a given domain. Aristotle seems to have been drawn to this view insofar as he begins the Posterior Analytics saying that scientific understanding is of explanations that are necessarily true. But later, in the same treatise, Aristotle admits that we can also understand things that happen “for the most part,” suggesting that scientific understanding of the sublunary world may have explanatory “gaps.” That is, some phenomena, although generally predictable, do not happen always in the same way, and we, as scientists, can understand and explain these occurrences, even though any particular occurrence may admit of exception.

I plan to continue exploring the ancient response to such “gaps” in explanation. The accommodation of error and uncertainty in ancient science eventually leads to the development of the idea of a 'conjectural art' (stochastikē technē) during the Roman period as evidenced by disputes among doctors and philosophers like Galen and Alexander of Aphrodisias. But we can see already in the early Hippocratic writers the struggle to define and delineate what counts as expertise in the area of medicine in light of failures on the part of doctors. Aristotle clearly wants to retain the high standard of knowledge in the sciences that Plato advocates, yet the Stagirite recognizes that there are irregularities or exceptions science cannot explain. Following Aristotle, the notion of a conjectural art becomes an important part of the response to critiques of expertise and science, first developed by the skeptical Academy to attack Stoic epistemology, and later expanded by the Pyrrhonists.