The school of Pyrrho has exercised a more legitimate influence. Many
of the arguments by which the Sceptics enforced their advocacy of a
suspense of judgment are antiquated in type, but many also are, within
the limits of the individualistic theory of knowledge, quite
unanswerable. Hume had constant recourse to this armoury. The major
premise of syllogism, says the Pyrrhonist, is established inductively
from the particular instances. If there be but one of these uncovered
by the generalization, this cannot be sound. If the crocodile moves
its upper, not its lower, jaw, we may not say that all animals move
the lower jaw. The conclusion then is really used to establish the
major premise, and if we still will infer it therefrom we fall into
the circular proof.[90] Could Mill say more? But again. The inductive
enumeration is either of all cases or of some only. The former is in
an indeterminate or infinite subject-matter impossible. The latter is
invalid.[91] Less familiar to modern ears is the contention that proof
needs a standard or criterion, while this standard or criterion in
turn needs proof. Or still more the dialectical device by which the
sceptic claims to escape the riposte that his very argument presumes
the validity of this or that principle, viz. the doctrine of the
equipollence of counter-arguments. Of course the counter-contention is
no less valid! So too when the reflection is made that scepticism is
after all a medicine that purges out itself with the disease, the
disciple of Pyrrho and Aenesidemus bows and says, Precisely! The
sceptical suspension of judgment has its limits, however. The
Pyrrhonist will act upon a basis of probabilities. Nay, he even treats
the idea of cause[92] as probable enough so long as nothing more than
action upon expectation is in question. He adds, however, that any
attempt to establish it is involved in some sort of dilemma. That, for
instance, cause as the correlate of effect only exists with it, and
accordingly, cause which is come while effect is still to come is
inconceivable.[93] From the subjectivist point of view, which is
manifestly fundamental through most of this, such arguments suasory of
the Pyrrhonist suspense of judgment ([Greek: epochê]) are indeed hard
to answer. It is natural, then, that the central contribution of the
Sceptics to the knowledge controversy lies in the modes ([Greek:
tropoi]) in which the relativity of phenomena is made good, that these
are elaborated with extreme care, and that they have a modern ring and
are full of instruction even to-day. Scepticism, it must be confessed,
was at the least well equipped to expose the bankruptcy of the
post-Aristotelian dogmatism.
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