The fictional memoir

Obama admits to writing fiction… how long will it be before he admits to NOT writing it?

One of the more mysterious characters from President Obama’s 1995 autobiography Dreams From My Father is the so-called ‘New York girlfriend.’ Obama never referred to her by name, or even by psuedonym, but he describes her appearance, her voice, and her mannerisms in specific detail. But Obama has now told biographer David Maraniss that the ‘New York girlfriend’ was actually a composite character, based off of multiple girlfriends he had both in New York City and in Chicago.

The only real question here is if, by “multiple”, he meant “imaginary”, or if by “girlfriends”, he actually meant “boyfriends”.

The long night of nationalism is over

How can the Greeks be blamed for turning to hard-core anti-immigrant parties? They have not been given any other choice besides national suicide:

Reeling from a vicious financial crisis that has cost them pensions and jobs, Greeks have been turning away in droves from the mainstream politicians they feel have let them down. Another political force is trying to tap the void, with blunt promises to “clean up” the country….

Black-clad Golden Dawn members have been storming across the campaign trail across Greece, stopping to chat at cafes and shops, handing out fliers promising security in crime-ridden neighborhoods – and vowing to kick out immigrants. Greece’s borders, they say, must be sealed with land mines to stop illegal crossing into a country that became the entry point for 90 percent of the European Union’s illegal migrants. Authorities estimate there are about 1 million migrants living in this country of 11 million. Appealing to populist sentiment, Golden Dawn has been gathering donations of food and clothing to deliver to the needy while pledging to make politicians accountable for the crisis. Ordinary Greeks are struggling under tough conditions demanded for rescue loan deals that have pushed the country into a fifth year of recession.

Given that the mainstream parties have sold them out to foreign banks on the one hand and African immigrants on the other, then installed an non-democratic government, Golden Dawn is now the only option left for the Greek electorate. And if the ruling mainstream parties respond by attempting to violate Greek self-determination, they’ll be responsible for the violence that will inevitably ensue. What we’re seeing here is that democracy has always been a means to the mainstream rather than an end in itself. Make no mistake, that applies to the USA every bit as much as it does to the Greeks, the only difference is that since there is no American nation, Americans have tolerated a much larger immigrant invasion, in proportional terms, than the Greeks are willing to accept.

Dissecting the skeptics VI

Having shown the failure of Delavagus to defend Sextus’s defense against the charge of peritrope, we’ll now turn to his explication of the skeptics’ dialectical strategy, as described in To Unknow Our Knowing:

Classical Pyrrhonians argued ad hominem, not in the sense of the logical fallacy of that name, but in the sense that their dialectical strategy necessitates the exclusive utilization of the beliefs, convictions, and assumptions of their interlocutors. In other words, they construct their arguments on the basis of what other people hold to be true. In demonstrating to A the rational groundlessness of his belief x, Pyrrhonians draw exclusively from premises and inferential rules that are themselves accepted by A and that lead to the conclusion that A does not after all know x. At their most abstract, then, Pyrrhonian arguments depend only on our most abstract rational commitments. The Five Agrippan Modes (discussed in my previous post) are merely a handy formulation by skeptics of the rational commitments of non-skeptics (‘dogmatists,’ in Sextus’s sense). For those who accept their constraints, the Five Modes constitute part of the framework of any search for the truth. This is borne out by the fact that the vast majority of epistemological theorizing operates within the assumptions of the Five Modes, that is, such theorizing attempts to formulate a solution to the Agrippan challenge, rather than rejecting that challenge.

Thus, the self-refutatory character of skepticism demonstrates the self-refutatory character of all philosophizing done under the aegis of the rational commitments that give rise to the skeptical conclusion. The proponent of the self-refutation response to skepticism wants to say, in effect, “If the skeptic is right, then the skeptic is wrong.” But what the skeptical arguments in fact show is that if the skeptical arguments are right, then the dogmatists are wrong, for it is they who hold self-refuting rational commitments. At their most abstract, these commitments constitute the very framework of philosophico-rational thought itself.

Seen in this light, skepticism is simply philosophico-rational thought coming to an awareness of its own rational groundlessness.

I have to confess that either I am completely missing something here or Delavagus simply does not know what he is talking about. He claims that classical Pyrrhonians exclusively utilize the beliefs, convictions, and assumptions of their interlocutors, but his claim not only has absolutely nothing to do with any of nine of the Ten Tropes, it also stands directly in contrast with Sextus’s statements about rival philosophical schools. It seems to me – and there is an amount of additional evidence to support this – that Delavagus has failed to understand the Tenth Trope and how it is used to set competing dogmas in opposition to each other in order to reach suspension of judgment. Not only does this strategy not work when dealing with an internally consistent system, but even the examples given by Sextus fall significantly short of his claimed standard of competing dogmas of equal value. How can the myth of Cronus eating his own children possibly be given equal weight with the observed human custom of parents caring for their children? Does any skeptic seriously accept the Twilight novels as an equal counterweight to a scientific consensus? And more pertinently, how can Sextus’s explication of the difference between the Sceptical School and the philosophy of Heraclitus be characterized as making ANY utilization of the Heraclitan beliefs, convictions, and assumptions, let alone EXCLUSIVE utilization?

“For the Sceptic attacks all the dogmas of Heraclitus as having been rashly given, and opposes on the one hand the doctrine of conflagration, and on the other, the doctrine that contradictory predicates in reality apply to the same thing, and in regard to every dogma of Heraclitus he scorns his dogmatic rashness, and then, in the manner that I have before referred to, adduces the formulae “I do not understand” and “I determine nothing,” which conflict with the Heraclitan doctrines. It is absurd to say that this conflicting school is a path to the very sect with which it conflicts. It is then absurd to say that the Sceptical School is a path to the philosophy of Heraclitus.”


At least we can see that Delavagus is a good Pyrrhonian in this one regard: Sextus does not hesitate to engage in his own handwaving. Simply scorning various dogmas as “rashly given” is hardly a valid rebuttal, much less one based exclusively on Heraclitan beliefs, convictions, and assumptions, and moreover, demonstrates quite clearly that Delavagus’s description of the Pyrrhonian dialectical strategy is false. It very much reminds one of the Marxist claims of scientific socialism, which was also portrayed as being beyond criticism or refutation.

Furthermore, in his claim that Pyrrhonians “construct their arguments on the basis of what other people hold to be true”, Delavagus underlines the point I made about his previous post with regards to skepticism’s extremely limited scope and its total irrelevance to nearly everyone outside of the professional philosophical community. Have you ever seen a skeptic attempt to disprove Christianity by accepting the existence of the Creator God and the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ of Nazareth? Of course not. In fact, what this shows is that Delavagus and the modern skeptics are engaged in one gargantuan bait-and-switch, in which they use a strategy of accepting one particular set of very specific philosophical assumptions by a very small group of people – those accepting both the philosophical definition of knowledge as “justified true belief” and the constraints of the Five Agrippan Modes – and then attempting to apply the conclusions they draw to totally unrelated beliefs held by entirely different people. This isn’t merely logically invalid, it is shamelessly deceptive and dishonest.

Delavagus then goes on to assert because the skeptic adopts the rational commitments of the philosophical dogmatist, “the self-refutatory character of skepticism demonstrates the self-refutatory character of all philosophizing done under the aegis of the rational commitments that give rise to the skeptical conclusion.” First, note that this is an admission that the skeptic has no commitment to rational thought. Second, there is a logical error here in that Delavagus is assuming that because the rational commitments gave rise to the self-refuting skeptical conclusion, they necessarily poison all other conclusions that are separately reached from the same foundation. But even if we set aside the eight errors we previously identified in reaching those conclusions, (which are perfectly capable of explaining why skepticism is self-refuting whereas rational thought is not), it should be obvious that the failure of one branch based on the foundation of rational thought doesn’t necessarily mean that all others must fail, especially since Sextus goes to some pains to illustrate the difference between skepticism and the other philosophical schools. The admission that skepticism is self-refuting doesn’t dictate that stoicism necessarily must be as well.

Either the skeptical conclusion is correct and thereby refutes itself along with all philosophico-rational thought or it is incorrect and therefore has nothing to say about it. The proposed defenses of “metaphilosophy” and “a way of life” don’t permit it to escape this dilemma, its only escape is one that Delavagus suggests, but is loathe to state clearly, namely, skepticism is not rational. And this brings us to the great irony of the modern skeptic, who as a general rule considers himself to be a great devotee of reason. The reality is that far from being an attack on religious belief or ideological dogma, skepticism is nothing less than a direct attack on reason itself.

Next section
Dissecting the skeptics VII

Previous sections
Dissecting the skeptics I
Dissecting the skeptics II
Dissecting the skeptics III
Dissecting the skeptics IV
Dissecting the skeptics V

A distinct scent of fascism

Loyalty Day? LOYALTY DAY?

In order to recognize the American spirit of loyalty and the sacrifices that so many have made for our Nation, the Congress, by Public Law 85-529 as amended, has designated May 1 of each year as “Loyalty Day.” On this day, let us reaffirm our allegiance to the United States of America, our Constitution, and our founding values.

It’s official. The USA has become a parody of its former self. Can you even imagine how the sort of people who voted for Obama would have reacted if Bush or Nixon had signed Loyalty Day into law? The limits on MPAI really appear to know no bounds.

Burying black crime

It is, of course, simply outrageous and reprehensibly raciss to notice that large groups of young Africans fail to behave like civilized people on a regular basis:

There’s outrage in Norfolk, Va., today after a white couple was attacked by a group of 100 black teenagers, and the local newspaper did not report on the incident for two weeks, despite the victims being employees of the paper. Even today, the Virginian-Pilot did not cover the crime as news, but rather as an opinion piece by columnist Michelle Washington.

“Wave after wave of young men surged forward to take turns punching and kicking their victim,” Washington wrote, describing the onslaught that began when Dave Forster and Marjon Rostami stopped at a red light while driving home from a show on a Saturday night.

“Rostami locked her car door. Someone threw a rock at her window. Forster got out to confront the rock-thrower, and that’s when the beating began. …

One wonders who these media folk think they’re fooling. Attempting to bury black-on-white crime isn’t going to reduce racial tensions, instead, it’s only going to make it worse when white Americans finally realize that their institutions are working against their interests and cannot be trusted. Today’s lesson is: don’t confront if you don’t carry.

Although, let’s face it, the attack likely could not have happened to a more deserving pair. The beaten white pair were reporters… and their own newspaper didn’t hesitate to throw them under the bus in the interest of burying black crime. (The fact that the idiot was unarmed and still got out of the car to confront an African mob pretty much guarantees that he’s a left-liberal.) One wonders if they are still the same smug, left-liberal anti-racists that they most likely were prior to the mob attack. It should be noted that the black teenagers obviously weren’t trying to seriously hurt the couple, they were just having fun. But, of course, that’s precisely the problem.

In discussing the attack on Twitter, one young gentleman declared “do it for trayvon martin”. It does not appear to have occurred to him that all “doing it” is going to accomplish is assuring that more young Africans end up like Trayvon Martin.

Mailvox: various and sundry

First, a prayer request from RS:

I’m a long time reader of your blog and I know the most of the Ilk are Christians and know first hand the power of prayer. I have a friend whose little girl is going through a very rare form of cancer. She is a fiery redhead and now is facing the loss of her hair due to the chemo and radiation. Would you please ask the Ilk to pray for this little one? She is facing this bravely, but her parents are having a very hard time. It would mean the world to her knowing that so many people are praying for her and her family. Her name is Libby and she is seven years old.

BS asks the wrong person about law school:

I’m very intrigued with your musings regarding lawyers. Are there any situations where going to law school is beneficial? I’ve read some law school guidebooks since you started mentioning this and some of them say that unless you attend one of the top-14 schools (Yale, Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, Chicago, NYU, Berkeley, Michigan, Penn, Virginia, Duke, Cornell, Georgetown & Northwestern) then you may as well just forget it and not go to law school as it won’t be worth the time & effort. If a kid were to get into Columbia or Chicago, would it then be OK for him to attend or even then would he need to get scholarship money to make it a worthwhile investment? Let’s assume that if you do not get into one of the aforementioned top-14 schools that it automatically disqualifies you from attending. In your mind what are the scenarios in which it would be enough to make it worth the effort? Is acceptance into the top-14 enough?

Since the supply of lawyers is already excessive, I see no reason to go to law school unless you’re going to a top five school and you have fairly serious connections in the legal world, by which I mean that you’re going to be made a partner barring any major criminal convictions. Merely being able to get into Columbia or Chicago is irrelevant, sans connections you’re still a dime a dozen.

Hermit, meanwhile, inquires concerning calcio:

My oldest son, who is 7, is a month into his first season of soccer. I don’t have a ton of experience in many contact sports, but I did play soccer for a few years when I was his age. His biggest current weakness is lack of aggressiveness. One kid on his team isn’t the best player, but is always on top of the ball and keeps the opponents off. Which, for now at least, makes up for his lack of skill. I’ve tried to implement Game and assertiveness teaching elsewhere in his life, with mixed results. I was considering doing a daily boot camp ala Full Metal Jacket: “This is my soccer ball, there are many like it, but this is mine. Without my ball, I am useless…”, “Show me your war face!!”, or something to that effect. Do you have any advice on this?

I found that the best way was to simply play in the backyard every now and then and have the kid take the ball away from you. Do it slowly at first, then gradually pick up speed. Once he’s not afraid of attacking an adult running relatively fast, he’s not going to be afraid of attacking kids on the ball who are much closer to his size. It’s also useful, when he’s on the bench, to point out the difference between kids going in hard and kids just sticking their feet out. Ender had a terrible game two weeks ago because he was playing very tentatively after missing a few games on top of a week’s break in the schedule for spring vacation. But now that he understands the importance of controlled aggression, he went out last weekend and had an excellent game while marking the opposing team’s best striker and holding him scoreless. In general, the only way to deal with instinctive fears in sport is to expose the young player to them and gradually help them become inured to it.

The cynic’s summary

A review of A Dance with Dragons posted on Amazon:

Daenerys Targaryen, Jon Snow and Tyrion Lannister sat at the head of the
council table in places of high honor. They had been sorely missed in
the previous volume and were expected to do great things now that they
had returned. Other major characters took up the rest of the seats on
either side of them, while hundreds upon hundreds of side characters
filled their own tables that crammed the great hall like fruits in a
barrel. A cacophony of sounds and colors filled the room, so much that
they could not tell one man from another. All the finery of Westeros and
the lands beyond were present with all their sigils and banners and
native tongues as they awaited the attack of the Others outside their
walls. Winter was coming too, though reports differed on exactly when.

Daenerys
stood up, her tokar billowing down like a sea of pearls on soft eastern
fabric. “Lords, ladies, random no-name filler characters who I would
soon forget in a minute or so, you know why we are all gathered here!”

They all answered in unison. “THE OTHERS! DRAGONS! WINTER! POLITICS! ENTERTAINMENT! WHOOP WHOOP!”

“Yes,
that is indeed what you came here for,” she giggled, as if it were a
secret jest. “The Others are outside our door, winter is coming,” she
winked at Jon. “I have three dragons, and soon I will retake my father’s
throne! But before we get to all that riveting stuff, and since words
are wind and hardly filling, we feast!”

Thousands of confused
whispers greeted her announcement, as if they could not imagine feasting
at a time like this. There’s never a bad time to feast! she thought.

Tyrion quipped next to her, “I would sooner have a whore feast on my-“

Servants
brought it in the dishes then: bowls of venison swimming in butter and
garlic, suckling pigs with apples in their mouths roasted to a light
brown crisp, crunchy capons flavored with garlic and cloves stuffed with
bits of bacon and vegetables, neeps fresh from the soil dabbed with
butter and sweet and sour sauce, cakes and pies and pastries of
chocolate and vanilla and fruit with icing molded to various different
shapes that pleased the eyes as well as the tongue. They tucked into
them, crumbs and sauces coating their beards and doublets. Even the
ladies could not seem to get food stains off their dresses.

A
serving man brought her barley stew with chopped carrots and greens on a
loaf of hollowed flat bread. He was a short man with even shorter hair,
parted in the middle with wisps of grey among the black. He had small,
close-set eyes and a wide, flat nose that made him resemble the suckling
pig on the table. His doublet was brown roughspun slashed with vair and
velvet and bore the sigil of the house he served: a fierce gray troll
on a field of green. The man was born Braavosi, but his mother took him
and fled to Westeros when his father died from the pox, taking a job as a
washerwoman for some minor lord. He did not like spicy foods, his
favorite color was yellow, and he liked to walk along the shoreline as
the sun descended into the sea.

They ate like this for hours,
lustily and with abandon, while the Others banged outside. How rude!
Perhaps they’re hungry, Dany thought.

When they were done Dany
wiped the grease from her chin and addressed the table. “That was an
incredible feast. Let’s have one again in a couple of pages. Jaime, what
is our situation?”

“The Others have us surrounded, your grace,”
he reached for a goblet, which tipped over and spilled when he used his
golden hand.

“I see. Ser Barristan, what do you suggest we do?” She turned to the knight.

“If
I would be so bold your grace, I would suggest you take your dragons to
battle. The Others are cold, fell creatures, and fear dragon fire.”

“That sounds like a splendid idea, Ser Barristan! But I seem to have misplaced my dragons.”

The old knight looked confused. “You…what?”

“Yes,
I don’t really know where they are,” she shrugged. “No matter, I’ll
ride my boyfriend to battle. He’s so handsome, with his forked beard and
blue hair….on second thought, I think I’ll ride him to bed. I’ll
leave the Others and retaking my father’s throne to the rest of you.”
She hiked up her skirts and ran up the stairs to her bedchambers,
singing DAARIO, OH DAARIO in a high pitched, Disney Channel voice.

The
table was silent and befuddled when Ser Barristan cleared his throat
uneasily. “I…suppose my queen and her dragons will not be joining us.
Forgive her…she’s still young…Lord Snow,” he turned to Jon for
rescue. “Will the Night’s Watch avail us? Battling the Others is your
province.”

Jon looked up solemnly from his food, flexing his sword hand. “Wildlings.”

“Excuse me?”

“Wildlings. I must deal with the wildlings.”

Ser
Barristan spoke slowly. “That sounds most…valiant, but…don’t you
think the Others are more important? They’re right outside our-“

“YOU
KNOW NOTHING, SER BARRISTAN!” Jon stood up suddenly, his face fierce.
“None of you do!” He faced each member of the table in turn. “All of you
are so concerned with your game of thrones and your dragons and this
one is backstabbing that one while marrying this one, none of you have
any inkling what’s really happening! There are…so…many…WILDLINGS!
So many! I don’t know what to do with them all! Wildlings in my room,
wildlings in my privy, wildlings in my soup, wildlings, wildlings,
WILDLINGS! You don’t think I would rather vanquish Others and wights,
but how can I when I have to wade through WILDLINGS?!” Tears ran down
his bearded face. “But do you care?! NO! It’s because I’m a BASTARD
isn’t it? WAAAAAHHHH!” He ran from the table, sobbing, his path impeded
by a sea of wildlings.

“Why, isn’t this a lively war council.” The imp laughed.

Ser
Barristan was at his wits end. Will no one do SOMETHING? “Lannister,
while I am loathe to trust you, we could all use your cunning to
navigate this impending battle.”

Tyrion grinned, a terrifying
sight without a nose. “I am flattered Ser Barristan, but I don’t give a
mummer’s fart what happens to any of you. Maybe in the next book. But
for now, all I want to do is to find where whores go. Podrick, fetch me
my armor and steed!”

His squire came out of nowhere, pulling a
pig on a leash. He donned Tyrion in mail made of cardboard painted with
crude, peeling designs, and placed a jester’s cap on his head. The
character assassination was not complete until the imp hopped onto the
sow in a graceful tumble that would not have shamed a mummer, and
galloped away as fast as those piggy legs could take him out of the
castle, and out of the story…while stopping every now and then to ask
passersby “Where do whores go?”.

Not for the first time Ser
Barristan wondered how he had ended up here. Was he the only one who
remembered what really mattered? Surely he wasn’t that old. “So, what
does that leave us?” he addressed the rather emptier table. “Our most
major characters are off dallying about like headless chickens, doing
things no one cares about, ignoring what made our series so riveting in
the first place…” He stopped, there were people missing. “Where are
Bran and Davos?”

Cersei answered him. “I see them at the edge of
my vision sometimes. They come and go so quickly that if you blink too
fast you’ll miss them. Its quite unnatural. I’d rather they stayed dea-”
She gasped when Davos appeared beside her, but was gone again just as
quick.

Barristan placed his head in his hands, never feeling so
old as he did now. “Will NO ONE do something about the Others? Or just
something INTERESTING! ANYTHING that we can do so I won’t go mad?”

“…Osmund Kettleblack and Moonboy for all I know…,” Jaime murmured.

“…Ser Meryn, Ser Ilyn, Queen Cersei…”, prattled Arya.

Stannis gritted his teeth.

Victarion did something crazy or whatever.

“Why am I even in these books?” Asha called out, but was ignored.

Bran popped out from under the table, “I’m almost a man grown!” and was gone again.

“Seven
save us,” Barristan groaned, as the Others broke down the doors and
swarmed into the castle. Barristan faced the readers. “Please, return to
us in The Winds of Winter, spring 2020, if you still care.” The old
knight plopped his head on the table and went into a much needed
sleep…

The plot slept with him.

The sad thing is, that was actually more interesting and better-written than the 959-page slog of the book itself. Let’s face it, in a more honest world, the book would have been entitled “A Literary Death March with The Very Occasional Dragon”.

Paul vs Paul

Best paraphrase:

Krugman: You want to go back decades ago in time.

Ron Paul: You want to go back a thousand years, two thousand years, to Roman and Greek times!

It’s interesting to see that Krugman understood exactly what Paul was saying and attempted to deny his support for the Emperor Diocletian’s policies, although Diocletian-style inflation precisely what he’s advocating. And if we’re not sure where the line between money and non-money is, how on Earth can we expect to correctly manage the economy through the use of precise interest rates?

Dissecting the skeptics V

Having completed my critique of To Know Our Unknowing, I’ll now proceed to examining the second of Delavagus’s two posts on Pyrrhonism, entitled To Unknow Our Knowing:

My previous post ended with the self-defeating conclusion that, as far as we know, we don’t know that we know anything (with the correlate that, insofar as we’re constrained by rational norms, we’re constrained to abjure knowledge-claims). This conclusion was reached a priori: by attempting to think our thought, reflect on our reflection, know our knowing.

For as long as there have been skeptical arguments of this sort, there have been two stock counter-arguments: the peritropē, or self-refutation, argument; and the apraxia, or impracticability, argument. Sextus Empiricus, the only ancient Pyrrhonian whose texts (or some of them, anyway) have come down to us, was perfectly aware of these objections; he argued that they are only effective against an incomplete or distorted understanding of Pyrrhonism. The short version is that Sextus concedes self-refutation, but denies that it constitutes a counter-argument against Pyrrhonism (indeed, the self-refutatory character of skeptical arguments is central to his use of them), but he outright rejects impracticability arguments. Pyrrhonism is not (or at least is not merely) a philosophy; it is an agōgē, a way of life. Sextus characterizes the Pyrrhonian agōgē in terms of living adoxastōs, meaning without opinions or beliefs. In this post, I want to suggest a way of understanding what it means to live adoxastōs.

As I said, Sextus embraces the self-refutatory character of his arguments. He likens them to purgative drugs, which drain themselves away along with the humors they were administered to treat, or to a ladder one kicks away after having climbed up over it (an image appropriated, though probably at second- or third-hand, by both Nietzsche and Wittgenstein). Those who charge Pyrrhonism with self-refutation think that it falls into a dilemma: either the skeptic accepts her own arguments, which (given their self-refutatory character) is logically impossible, or the skeptic doesn’t accept her own arguments, in which case she must also reject (or at least not endorse) their conclusions. But the self-refutation charge overlooks two crucial features of the Pyrrhonian strategy: first, that charging the skeptic with self-refutation amounts to charging philosophico-rational thought as such with self-refutation; and second, that the target of Pyrrhonian arguments at their most general is not any particular content of philosophico-rational thought, but rather the very framework of such thought.

As I showed in Dissecting the skeptics IV, Delavagus’s conclusion to his first post is not self-defeating, but rather invalid, because his suddenly universal claim about the human lack of knowledge is totally dependent upon a peculiar philosophical definition of knowledge and is undermined by no less than eight specific errors in his reasoning. In his second post, Delavagus doesn’t waste any time before resorting to what we have observed is his customary handwaving. Apparently he expects us to simply accept Sextus’s outright rejection of the apraxia argument on the basis of his ancient authority, which of course we can no more do than we can expect Delavagus to accept the historical existence of the Olympian gods on the ancient authority of Homer. So, is Sextus’s outright rejection of the impracticability argument justified?

Well, yes, as it turns out, but only because Sextus makes it very clear that the Pyrrhonian agōgē does not actually entail living by skeptical principles. In Chapter IX, The Criterion of Scepticism, he writes:

“It is evident that we pay careful attention to phenomena from what we say about the criterion of the Sceptical School. The word criterion is used in two ways. First, it is understood as a proof of existence or non-existence, in regard to which we shall speak in the opposing argument. Secondly, when it refers to action, meaning the criterion to which we give heed in life, in doing some things and refraining from doing others, and it is about this that we shall now speak. We say, consequently, that the criterion of the Sceptical School is the phenomenon, and in calling it so, we mean the idea of it. It cannot be doubted, as it is based upon susceptibility and involuntary feeling. Hence no one doubts, perhaps, that an object appears so and so, but one questions if it is as it appears. Therefore, as we cannot be entirely inactive as regards the observances of daily life, we live by giving heed to phenomena, and in an unprejudiced way. But this observance of what pertains to the daily life, appears to be of four different kinds. Sometimes it is directed by the guidance of nature, sometimes by the necessity of the feelings, sometimes by the tradition of laws and of customs, and sometimes by the teaching of the arts. It is directed by the guidance of nature, for by nature we are capable of sensation and thought; by the necessity of the feelings, for hunger leads us to food, and thirst to drink; by the traditions of laws and customs, for according to them we consider piety a good in daily life, and impiety an evil; by the teaching of the arts, for we are not inactive in the arts we undertake. We say all these things, however, without expressing a decided opinion.”

In other words, the Pyrrhonian is eminently practical, because he lives his daily life by giving heed to nature, his feelings, the tradition of laws and customs, and by the teaching of the arts, without any concern for his suspension of judgment or inability to express a decided opinion. The philosophy cannot be impractical because the skeptic maintains a firewall of sorts between his reason and his daily life. This means, of course, that the oft-seen attempts of the modern skeptics to utilize skepticism as a weapon in order to influence these phenomena is a breach of the firewall and therefore intrinsically non-Pyrrhonian. But regardless, we can conclude that Sextus does successfully address the apraxia even if it calls into question the behavior of many of those who claim, incorrectly it would appear, to be Pyrrhonians.

As for the defense against the peritropē charge, I previously explained its flaws in response to an earlier request from Delavagus. Sextus’s argument against peritrope fails on three counts. First, Sextus erroneously conflates the subset of his particular philosophy with the set of all philosophico-rational thought; because we can observe there is philosophico-rational thought that is not Pyrrhonian skepticism, all refutation of the latter cannot automatically be taken as any refutation of the former. Second, even if Sextus were correct and charging the skeptic with self-refutation actually did amount to charging philosophico-rational thought as such with self-refutation, that doesn’t change the fact that if the charge is substantiated and all philosophico-rational thought is, in fact, self-refuting, then the charge of peritrope against Scepticism must also be correct! If the set is refuted, then the subset is refuted as well. So, it’s not a valid defense against the charge. Third, Delavagus doesn’t realize that the intended target of Pyrrhonian skepticism is irrelevant with regards to its self-refuting nature; it doesn’t matter what Sextus is intending to target when it can be shown that the same arguments can be used just as effectively against his own clearly stated aims.

In that earlier exchange, Delavagus attempted to respond to the first point by claiming that Pyrrhonism is not a philosophy and therefore not a subset of all philosophico-rational thought. He wrote: “Pyrrhonism is a metaphilosophy, not a philosophy: it is philosophizing about philosophy itself, about rational thought as such. On my view, it contains no first-order philosophical claims whatsoever. In other words, it is NOT a member of the ‘set’ ‘Philosophies’; it is a critique of the set-as-such.”

But this is another inept attempt at a bait-and switch, because even if we accept his contention that Pyrrhonism is not a philosophy, it still specifically purports to be rational thought, as shown by Delavagus’s heavy reliance upon the Agrippan Trilemma, and therefore remains a subset of the set of all philosophico-rational thought. Moreover, Delavagus’s view that Pyrrhonism is not a philosophy is provably wrong, as in Chapter I, The Principal Differences between Philosophers, Sextus writes:

“It is probable that those who seek after anything whatever, will either find it as they continue the search, will deny that it can be found and confess it to be out of reach, or will go on seeking it. Some have said, accordingly, in regard to the things sought in philosophy, that they have found the truth, while others have declared it impossible to find, and still others continue to seek it. Those who think that they have found it are those who are especially called Dogmatics, as for example, the Schools of Aristotle and Epicurus, the Stoics and some others. Those who have declared it impossible to find are Clitomachus, Carneades, with their respective followers, and other Academicians. Those who still seek it are the Sceptics. It appears therefore, reasonable to conclude that the three principal kinds of philosophy are the Dogmatic, the Academic, and the Sceptic. Others may suitably treat of the other Schools, but as for the Sceptical School, we shall now give an outline of it, remarking in advance that in respect to nothing that will be said do we speak positively, that it must be absolutely so, but we shall state each thing historically as it now appears to us.”

So, Delavagus is clearly wrong, both in claiming that Pyrrhonism is not part of the set of all philosophico-rational thought and in claiming that it is not a philosophy. Indeed, Sextus not only declares skepticism to be a philosophy, but one of “the three principal kinds of philosophy”. (I suspect he’s also wrong to say it “contains no first-order philosophical claims whatsoever”, but we will examine that assertion in a future post.) And therefore, Delavagus’s attempted defense of my attack on Sextus’s argument against peritrope clearly fails, as does the argument against peritrope.

Finally, with regards to Delavagus’s claim that Pyrrhonism is more than a philosophy, but is an an agōgē, a way of life, as well, I note that it is a very strange way of life that makes explicit claims to have nothing to do with the way the philosopher actually lives his daily life, but it is nevertheless true. Still, it should be kept in mind that it is entirely possible for something to fail as a philosophy, but not as a way of life, or vice-versa. In any event, when the aims of Pyrrhonism are taken into account, it becomes readily apparent that the agōgē is nothing more than a form of anti-intellectual, morally neutral stoicism.

Sextus writes in Chapter XII: “We confess that sometimes [the Sceptic] is cold and thirsty, and that he suffers in such ways. But in these things even the ignorant are beset in two ways, from the feelings themselves, and not less also from the fact that they think these conditions are bad by nature. The Sceptic, however, escapes more easily, as he rejects the opinion that anything is in itself bad by nature. Therefore we say that the aim of the Sceptic is imperturbability in matters of opinion, and moderation of feeling in those things that are inevitable.”

It is here that I cannot help but note the irony of Delavagus’s claim to be a modern Pyrrhonist while at the same time confessing to be both depressed and infuriated by my “unbounded arrogance”. He clearly possesses neither imperturbability nor moderation of feeling, regardless of whether one concludes my arrogance is merely an opinion or an inevitable force of nature. Skeptic, doubt thyself! As for the matter of living without opinions or beliefs, we shall save that for the next post.

Next section
Dissecting the skeptics VI

Previous sections
Dissecting the skeptics I
Dissecting the skeptics II
Dissecting the skeptics III
Dissecting the skeptics IV

The death of a coroner

Andrew Breitbart’s death gets curiouser and curiouser with a suspiciously convenient death:

Medical examiners in Los Angeles are investigating the possible poisoning death of one of their own officials who may have worked on the case of Andrew Breitbart, the conservative firebrand who died March 1, the same day Sheriff Joe Arpaio announced probable cause for forgery in President Obama’s birth certificate. Michael Cormier, a respected forensic technician for the Los Angeles County Coroner died under suspicious circumstances at his North Hollywood home April 20, the same day Breitbart’s cause of death was finally made public. “There are mysterious circumstances surrounding his death,” said Elizabeth Espinosa, a news reporter for KTLA-TV. “We’re told detectives are looking into the possibility that he was poisoned by arsenic.”

Now, I actively subscribe to the conspiracy theory of history, but there is one giant question about this particular purported conspiracy that I find troubling. Was Andrew Breitbart really that important? I mean, in terms of pundits, opinion leaders, and intellectuals influencing global public opinion, I don’t think I’d have had him in my top 100. It strikes me rather like trying to change the course of the NFL season by assassinating the punter for the Cleveland Browns.