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A neo-Pyrrhonian response to the disagreeing about disagreement argument

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Abstract

An objection that has been raised to the conciliatory stance on the epistemic significance of peer disagreement known as the Equal Weight View is that it is self-defeating, self-undermining, or self-refuting. The proponent of that view claims that equal weight should be given to all the parties to a peer dispute. Hence, if one of his epistemic peers defends the opposite view, he is required to give equal weight to the two rival views, thereby undermining his confidence in the correctness of the Equal Weight View. It seems that the same objection could be leveled against those who claim to suspend judgment in the face of pervasive unresolvable disagreements, as do the Pyrrhonian skeptics. In this paper, I explore the kind of response to the objection that could be offered from a neo-Pyrrhonian perspective, with the aim of better understanding the intriguing character of Pyrrhonian skepticism.

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Notes

  1. An exception is Lammenranta (2008, 2011). Cf. Machuca (2015).

  2. All translations of Sextus’s texts are mine.

  3. In line with his open-minded and cautious attitude, Sextus constantly employs temporal phrases such as “so far,” “up till now,” or “up to the present” to make it clear that the Pyrrhonist restricts himself to reporting on what has hitherto happened to him.

  4. For the view that suspending judgment in the face of equipollent disagreement is a requirement of rationality, see Pentzopoulou-Valalas (1994) and Perin (2006, pp. 358–359 with n. 32; 2010, Chap. 2). For the contrary view, see e.g. McPherran (1987, pp. 318–320), Barnes (1990, pp. 2610–2611), and Machuca (2011, pp. 71–72; 2013b, Sect. 4).

  5. Among specialists in Sextan Pyrrhonism, there is a long-running debate about the scope of suspension of judgment, some claiming that it applies across the board, others that it is restricted to theoretical beliefs, leaving untouched ordinary or commonsense beliefs. Engaging in this debate is beyond the purpose of this paper. For a bibliographical overview of the topic, see the relevant sections in Machuca (2013c).

  6. I here use the term ‘Dogmatist’ in the same sense in which Sextus uses the Greek , namely, to designate anyone who, on the basis of what he takes to be objective evidence and sound arguments, makes assertions about the nature of things or about non-evident matters.

  7. See Machuca (2011, pp. 74-75). For a fuller discussion of the Pyrrhonist’s extensive but non-normative use of reason, see Machuca (2009, pp. 116-123; 2011, sects. 4 and 5; 2013b, Sect. 4; 2015, sect. III; and forthcoming, sect. 5)

  8. It is worth noting that, by significantly lowering his confidence in the truth of EWV, the proponent of this view is no longer rationally required to give so much weight to the disagreement of those who endorse steadfastness, a view he does not find plausible on the basis of the first-order evidence. His confidence in the truth of EWV would then increase, but this means that he will again be rationally required to pay more attention to the disagreement of those who endorse steadfastness.

  9. DDA, first advanced by Plantinga (2000a, pp. 178–179; 2000b, pp. 446–453) against religious pluralism, has recently been developed at length against EWV by van Inwagen (2013). The objection that EWV is self-defeating is also endorsed by Bergmann (2009, p. 348 with n. 21), Enoch (2010, p. 962 n. 19), Sosa (2010, p. 279), and Thune (2010a, p. 371; cf. 2010b, p. 714).

  10. That the item in question is unbelievable or unassertable is of course to be understood in the sense that it cannot be consistently or justifiably believed or asserted.

  11. The reason it is important to analyze this taxonomy is that the articles that discuss DDA do not take it into account and do not offer a detailed examination of what kind of self-refutation, if any, is at issue in that argument.

  12. This kind of self-refutation argument is ad hominem in the sense that the person who puts it forward makes use of his opponent’s own views (cf. the Pyrrhonist’s ad hominem argumentative practice described in Sect. 2).

  13. These cases of ad hominem self-refutation must be distinguished from those in which one asserts “It can be proved that nothing can be proved” and “There is reliable sensory evidence that no sensory evidence is reliable” both because in these cases the content of the propositions is falsified and because it is falsified by the very same content.

  14. The notion of assertion will be crucial when examining, in Sect. 5, the neo-Pyrrhonist’s response to DDA.

  15. Cf. Burnyeat (1976, p. 59) and Castagnoli (2010, pp. 99–100).

  16. On Christensen’s and Feldman’s views on disagreement, see Christensen (2007, 2009, 2010, 2011) and Feldman (2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009).

  17. In reply to a referee’s comment, I should note that what I say here in no way implies that the proponent of DDA is committed to EWV. I do not claim that the proponent of DDA is epistemically required to suspend judgment in the face of the second-order dispute about the epistemic significance of disagreement, for he denies that the situation of epistemic symmetry obtains in most disagreements, including the one between conciliationists and non-conciliationists.

  18. For the steadfast views of these authors, see Kelly (2005, 2010), Sosa (2010), and Inwagen (1996); van Inwagen 2010).

  19. A reviewer has suggested that at this point my response to the fourth objection is similar to the response that Ribeiro (2011, p. 23) offers to an argument analogous to DDA that could be leveled against his disagreement-based skepticism about the rationality of philosophical discourse. There is, however, at least one crucial difference: whereas Ribeiro believes that his disagreement-based skeptical argument is sound, Sextus is not committed to the soundness of the arguments he advances, which is precisely what motivates the fourth objection.

  20. In the rest of this paragraph, I draw on Machuca (2015, p. 34).

  21. In Machuca (2013a), I examine several issues in the epistemology of disagreement from a neo-Pyrrhonian perspective.

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Acknowledgments

This paper began life as part of a talk I gave at Northwestern University in September 2011. An abridged version was presented at the Center for Hellenic Studies in April 2012. A fuller version was given at a conference on ancient and contemporary Pyrrhonism held at the Universidade Federal do Paraná in May 2013. I am grateful to the participants at that conference—in particular, Richard Bett and Stéphane Marchand—for their critical remarks. I would also like to thank three referees for Synthese for their comments and questions, which allowed me to clarify the aim of this paper and the nature of the neo-Pyrrhonian response to DDA.

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    Diego E. Machuca

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Machuca, D.E. A neo-Pyrrhonian response to the disagreeing about disagreement argument. Synthese 194, 1663–1680 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-1012-x

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