Sextus Empiricus on Non-Assertion

Abstract

It is well-known from the writings of Sextus Empiricus that Sceptics, or at least those Pyrrhonian Sceptics for whom Sextus makes himself spokesman, took pains to mark off from other philosophers by issuing disclaimers about their own philosophical utterances. The Outlines of Pyrrhonism is liberally sprinkled with warnings of the following sort: the Sceptic does not dogmatize (8oy[Lar;eLv); he neither affirms (TLOEvVL) nor denies (v he adopts a stance of (c he says only appears to himself' (,or iavrr qaLv6pWvov); he does not positively claim (PEIPOoiWaDM and many of his utterances cancel themselves (avxT& GpL-npLyp&(PLv) along with all other statements. In this paper want to raise some questions about the force of these disclaimers, about their bearing on some typical Sceptical claims and arguments. At the outset shall consider all the above sorts of expressions together as disclaimers of assertion, even though, as we shall see, Sextus himself puts them to work in interestingly different ways.' have the following kinds of questions in mind. To begin with, if we take these caveats seriously (and seems little doubt that they were meant to be taken so), is the rather large problem of how to construe the remainder of the Sceptic utterances to which they were plainly intended to apply. If the Sceptic is not making an assertion in uttering the words is day when in fact it is day, I am chilled when a cool breeze begins to blow, or there is no proof' after a long disquisition on the subject, what sorts of saying are these and how do they function for him? As for the disclaimers themselves, what is their status, and how are they related to first-order utterances? A problem closely tied in with these questions concerns the relation between the posture of non-assertion and the notion of assent (awyxarTa;0Ea0k) to appearances (vpaLvogva), which must play