Sextus Empiricus

Sextus and his Pyrrhonian Skeptic colleagues were not skeptics as that term is now understood; they did not deny that we have knowledge. They neither asserted nor denied any statement about how things are, but assented only to statements about how things appeared to them to be, not least because it appeared to them that appearances sufficed as a guide to life. The author in this chapter defends Pyrrhonism against multiple charges of incoherence, both ancient and modern. He shows that there is a striking affinity between Sextus and Quine. He also notes two features of Sextus’s arguments that are closely related to some contemporary ones.