Five Modes of Scepticism

Abstract

Abstract This book offers an account of the functioning of the five Agrippan modes of scepticism as presented in the works of Sextus Empiricus. These five modes (of disagreement, hypothesis, infinite regression, reciprocity, and relativity) are analysed, individually, in the book’s first five chapters, and, collectively, in its sixth. Two perspectives on these modes are distinguished from one another—a dogmatic perspective which considers how a dogmatic philosopher might come to suspend judgement on the basis of these modes and a sceptical perspective which considers how a sceptic might come to do so. It is argued that the standard way in which these modes have been understood has been from a dogmatic perspective. The book opens up an alternative sceptical perspective on the modes according to which mode of disagreement (or one version of it) is equivalent to the sceptic’s method of equipollence, and the modes of hypothesis, infinite regression, and reciprocity are different instances of that method (with the mode of hypothesis being a limiting case of the method). It is also argued that the mode of relativity is inconsistent with the mode of disagreement and should be discarded when considering how the modes work together in a combined sceptical strategy. The final chapter offers an account of four different ways in which the modes might be combined together and concludes that each of these ways turns on a number of theoretical assumptions which the sceptic is not in a position to make.