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By Root 736 0

seems to give philosophy a bad name, as it looks like we’ve been talking about ancient philosophers such as Plato for over two thousand years and still don’t understand them. The problem, however, isn’t that philosophers are too dim-witted to get what Plato’s saying or pulling a fast one on the academic establishment just to stay in business. Rather, it’s that the problems of philosophy addressed by the great philosophers are hard. Really, really hard. We shouldn’t despair, however, because even difficult philosophical ideas can benefit from the “Colbert bump” and become intelligible enough for purposes of pondering.

Skeptics and their philosophical ideas are notoriously difficult to figure out. It would be impossible to say anything about skepticism without invoking some kind of scholarly controversy, so I’ll employ a bit of truthiness myself and put forward my interpretations “from the gut” (but readers should feel free to inspect the guts of other philosophers as well).

Skepticism isn’t just one thing, but rather an “umbrella term.”95 I want to offer brief sketches of four kinds of skepticism that might fall under this umbrella: Pyrrhonian skepticism, Modern skepticism, Indian skepticism, and a fourth kind of skepticism prevalent among Americans today, which I call political skepticism.

Pyrrhonian Skepticism: Belief Is Undesirable

Pyrrhonism is a form of skepticism developed by ancient Greek and Roman philosophers such as Pyrrho (around 360-270 B.C.E.) and Sextus Empiricus (around 200 C.E.). According to Sextus, skeptics are those who continue their investigations of things, which makes sense since the Greek word for skeptic (skeptikos) means “inquirer” or “investigator.” Skeptics are opposed to “dogmatists,” which is their word for people who end their investigation by committing to a belief.

Like most Greeks and Romans, Pyrrhonists thought that happiness is the goal of philosophy. This may sound strange to anyone who’s taken a philosophy class, since doing so can make you very unhappy. To see what the Pyrrhonists are talking about, think of a certain kind of unhappiness: mental disturbance. Suppose Jon Stewart of The Daily Show has just told you that President Bush is the worst President and immediately after Jon checks in with his good friend Stephen Colbert at The Colbert Report, Stephen tells you that President Bush is the Greatest President. Who should you believe—Jon or Stephen?

You might keep thinking about it so much you’re too distracted to enjoy the latest installment of the 435-part series, Better Know a District. It might even keep you up at night. Even if you choose one side or the other, your mind will be in turmoil while figuring out how to defend your belief against people who disagree with you. Philosophers seem like a mild-mannered bunch, but philosophy itself tends to induce mental disturbance and turmoil by asking such questions as “Do we know anything?”, “Do we have free will?”, “Is Stephen Colbert really the ‘Socrates of Shred’ in the Rock and Awe Countdown to Guitarmageddon?”96

Pyrrhonism’s answer to mental disturbance is to create a situation in which the two sides of any question balance equally, leading a person to suspend judgment on the question altogether. For Sextus this amounts to saying, “I can’t say which of the things proposed I should find convincing and which I should not find convincing.” From suspension of judgment mental tranquility is alleged to follow “as a shadow follows a body.”97

Going back to Jon versus Stephen on the status of President Bush, a good Pyrrhonist would weigh-up the two sides so that the pros and cons of each side are in perfect balance. Of course, non-skeptics will insist that either Jon or Stephen must “really” have the better argument and thus one of them must be right and the other wrong. Sextus admits that some Pyrrhonist arguments may not be all that convincing, but for Pyrrhonists an argument just has to be good enough to balance with its opposing argument.98 If you find one of the opposing arguments less convincing than the