Why I am an athiest

I think that may be the source of our misunderstanding: You think Pyrrhonism is a form of nihilism. It most decidedly isn't.

Let's not get side-tracked. Do you believe your senses, and why?

There are many people who live and die in their little village without having explored anything outside of it. Their life experiences will be limited to what they observe within their small community, education if they have the opportunity, and any form of electronic communication devices if available to see what's beyond their life experiences.

Most of us in developed countries take it for granted that we have many forms of communication, media, tv, computers, cellphones, magazines, newspapers, and private and public transportation.

We spend $40 to fill our gas tanks while those in villages live on less than $1 a day.

The lifestyles are dramatically different as well as our realities.

That's not side-tracked. It's right at the core of the misunderstanding. You seem to think that Pyrrhonists make claims about metaphysical issues. They don't. That's the point of the training, viz, suspending judgement on the non-evident.

Sensory and mental experience are evident, so there doesn't seem to be any requirement to have any belief in them at all. Simply responding to the evident seems sufficient, in my experience. I seem to be living normally enough without extrapolating from experience to absolute metaphysical truth claims about those experiences. I don't know for sure, but I kinda doubt animals make metaphysical conclusions about anything, and they seem to get along well enough without them, too.

Unless Kuzminski, et al, are wrong, here is a translation of Sextus Empiricus:

"Those who say that the Skeptics [Pyrrhonists] reject what is apparent have not, I think, listened to what we say. As we said before, we do not overturn anything which leads us, without our willing it, to assent in accordance with a passive appearance - and these things are precisely what is apparent. When we investigate whether existing things there are such as they appear, we grant that they appear, and what we investigate is not what is apparent, but what is said about what is apparent - and this is different from investigating what is apparent itself. For example, it appears to us that honey sweetens (we concede this inasmuch as we are sweetened in a perceptual way); but whether (as far as the argument goes) it is actually sweet is something we investigated this is not what apparent but something said about what is apparent."

So you guys trust your senses in that you assume referents exist, over and beyond the sensation?

Why make that leap of faith (for it is one)?

Have you pierced the veil of phenomena, gotten behind them and identified the thing-in-itself? I haven't. The only thing I can attest to is experience. Not what's behind it.

No, I simply realized that your brand of Pyrrhonism is logically flawed, and you haven't as yet.

I am also opposed to any nihilist philosophy, and yours is one, but that's another issue. You could think of an internally coherent form of nihilism, I guess.



Define 'metaphysical truth claim'.

What nihilistic claim does Pyrrhonism make?

I thought you said your English was good enough to understand what I wrote without help. What's the difficult part of that phrase for you?

That's not the point. When I see a bird, I assume a bird exists, without saying anything about the true nature of such bird 'in itself'. Do you follow thus far?

I do. When I see a bird, I have the experience of something that people call 'bird' at that moment. That experience exists at that moment. What that thing is in itself is beyond my knowledge.

And will ever be, but still you assume something IS. There IS a referent, however mysterious, right?

I definitely act as if there were, but to claim that there is (except to abide by conventions of dialog) would be to take a step too far. It doesn't bother me if you do, however. I'm not trying to be evangelical about Pyrrhonism.

If you act as if there were, it means you assume there is a referent. Whether you intellectually assign a truth value of 1 or just “unknown” to that assumption is irrelevant. In practice, you go about your life assuming something is out there, and you would be quite disappointed if suddenly you discovered the world wasn’t as you came to expect. E.g. if you plunged into what looked like a pool of water but landed in fire instead.

That doesn’t solve the question of why you go about your day assuming there is something rather than nothing.

I've already explained that conformity to conventional behavior is a practical matter, learned by first-hand experience. I predict approximate likely outcomes of certain behaviors based on past experience without making metaphysical assertions about the phenomena. I don't assume in the sense that I'm certain something is true or going to be true. I expect to be wrong sometimes, because I have had the experience of being wrong in the past.

Incidentally, in this system the experience of thought is treated as an experience like any other.

I might reiterate that the point of adopting Pyrrhonism isn't to be right about anything. It's a soteriological endeavor, with the goal of experiencing ataraxia.

I've learnt so many big words on this thread.

I shall remember them forever.

I never knew Eva Peron did so much. No wonder Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote a musical about her.

God, this thread is f*cking hilarious!

Here's a joke which expresses it well, and which doubtlessly weill shoot over the heads of most participants here.

René Descartes walks into a bar and stands there, with his hands on his hips looking around. The barman gets annoyed and says:

Hey . . . Buddy . . . ya wanna a drink?

Descartes says: I think not! . . . and POOF!, he vanishes.