Filosofia

The Signicance of Philosophical Scepticism

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The Signicance of Philosophical Scepticism

Barry Stroud

CLARENDON PRESS · OXFORD

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishingworldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ©Barry Stroud 1984 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 1984 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under termsagreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data availableLibrary of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available ISBN 0–19–824761–3

For Martha

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Preface
Philosophical scepticism goes back to antiquity, and in writing of it as I do in this book I am not doing justice to that tradition. For the followers of Pyrrho of Elis, for example, a life of contentment or tranquillity was to be the reward for givingoneself up to ‘appearances’ and adopting no beliefs at all as to how things are. Suspending judgement was a way of freeing oneself from the anxieties and disturbances inevitably involved in seeking the truth and then encountering conflict among the things one feels forced to believe. Scepticism as a way of life is not my subject here. But some of the steps by which suspension of judgement was tohave been achieved, and the difficulty of achieving it on all questions as to how things are, lie closer to my theme. The contrast implicit in sceptical practice between ‘appearances’ and ‘the way things are’ is also perhaps one version of an elusive distinction I examine from several different angles in what follows. My concerns are to that extent continuous with those of ancient scepticism, but Ido not discuss such historical questions here. That is a subject I wish I knew more about. In modern, and especially recent, times scepticism in philosophy has come to be understood as the view that we know nothing, or that nothing is certain, or that everything is open to doubt. That is a thesis or doctrine about the human condition, not itself a way of life. It is thought to rest on many of thesame considerations ancient sceptics might have invoked in freeing themselves from their opinions or opposing the doctrines of others, but as a philosophical thesis it does not obviously lead to any one way of life rather than another, let alone to tranquillity or human happiness. One issue I raise in this book is just what relation philosophical scepticism does bear to the familiar concerns ofeveryday life. As an account of human knowledge, scepticism in this modern form need not apply to everything we believe.

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PREFACE

Knowledge or reliable belief might be possible about some things or in some areas and not others. Thus we could perhaps endorse scepticism about the claims of morality or religion without for the same reasons having to abandon mathematics or medicine or the...