Five Modes of Scepticism Sextus Empiricus and The Agrippan Modes Stefan Sienkiewicz Full Chapter

Five Modes of Scepticism: Sextus
Empiricus and the Agrippan Modes

Stefan Sienkiewicz
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Five Modes of Scepticism

OXFORD PHILOSOPHICAL MONOGRAPHS

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The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle
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Five Modes
of Scepticism
Sextus Empiricus
and the Agrippan Modes
Stefan Sienkiewicz
1
3
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For my parents, Richard and Naz—for everything.

Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
1. The Mode of Disagreement 12
Some Features of Disagreement 12
Kinds of Disagreement 15
Is the Sceptic Part of the Disagreement? 19
Disagreement and Undecided Disagreement 22
Principles of Disagreement 25
Two Accounts of the Sorts of Beliefs a Sceptic Can Hold 29
A Dogmatic Mode of Disagreement 31
The Method of Equipollence 34
A Sceptical Mode of Disagreement 41
Chronicling Disagreement and Creating Disagreement 47
Concluding Remarks 51
2. The Mode of Hypothesis 53
When the Mode of Hypothesis Occurs 53
What Hypothesizing Is Not 55
What Hypothesizing Is 59
The Function of Hypothesizing 64
Three Modes of Hypothesis 68
A Sceptical Mode of Hypothesis 72
The Mode of Hypothesis as a Limiting Case of the
Method of Equipollence 74
3. The Mode of Infinite Regression 77
Infinity Introduced 77
The Unacceptability of Infinitely Regressive Arguments 80
The Unsurveyability of Infinitely Regressive Arguments 87
Infinite Regression and the Suspension of Judgement 93
A Dogmatic Mode of Infinite Regression 97
A Sceptical Mode of Infinite Regression 99
4. The Mode of Reciprocity 104
Reciprocity Parallel to Infinite Regression 104
Formal Reciprocity 105
viii CONTENTS
Regressive Reciprocity 108

Conceptual Reciprocity 110
The Unacceptability of Reciprocal Arguments 111
Two Kinds of Priority 114
Asymmetry and Transitivity 116
From Reciprocity to the Suspension of Judgement 118
A Dogmatic Mode of Reciprocity 119
A Sceptical Mode of Reciprocity 121
5. The Mode of Relativity 125
Modes of Relativity 125
The Logical Form of Sextus’ Argument 129
Sub-Argument 1 132
Sub-Argument 2 134
Sub-Argument 3 136
The Nature of Sextan Relativity 137
The Mode of Relativity and the Other Agrippan Modes 143
Relativity and Disagreement 147
6. The Modes Combined 154
Preliminary Remarks 154
Net 1 157
Net 2 166
The Modes Recombined 177
Actual Disagreement, Possible Disagreement, and the Giving
of Reasons 181
Dogmatic Nets 186
References 193
Index Locorum 199
General Index 202
Acknowledgements
This book owes much to many. My interest in Sextus Empiricus was

sparked back when I was an undergraduate when I stumbled across
Jonathan Barnes’s The Toils of Scepticism, without which—simply
put—this book would not exist. That spark was fanned by attending a
splendid series of lectures on Sextus by Benjamin Morison, who first
prompted me to think more about the theoretical underpinnings of the
Agrippan modes and under whose expert guidance I began to articulate,
in an MSt thesis, some of the ideas that still find expression in the
following pages. So many of the insights of this book—if insights they
be—I owe to my conversations with him. To my DPhil supervisor, David
Charles, whose acuity, diligence, kindness, and generosity—both philo-
sophical and otherwise—remain for me exemplary, I owe a debt that
cannot be repaid. To my two doctoral examiners—Jonathan Barnes and
Thomas Johansen—without whose encouragement and advice this book
would not have seen the light of day, I offer my heartfelt thanks. Finally,
to Peter Momtchiloff for his patience and good humour and to the
anonymous readers for Oxford University Press, whose extensive and
thoughtful comments have improved the contents of this book no end,
I am deeply grateful.
In terms of scholarship, the writings of two individuals, in particular,
demand singling out: first, Benjamin Morison, whose work on the
Aenesideman modes has much influenced my thinking about the Agrip-
pan modes, and, second, Jonathan Barnes, whose pioneering Sextan
studies have provided the foil for much of the contents of this book.
A hasty reader might be forgiven for inferring that I only cite the work of
Barnes when I wish to disagree with it or when I wish to contrast a path
taken by Barnes with an alternative path down which I subsequently
tread. Nothing could be further from the truth. Though it will be plain
from the following pages just how much I owe to the writings of Julia
Annas, Richard Bett, Myles Burnyeat, Michael Frede, R. J. Hankinson,
Benjamin Morison, Casey Perin, and Gisela Striker, Jonathan Barnes’s
influence will be apparent on virtually every page.
x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Moving from individuals to collectives, I would like to express my

gratitude to the ancient philosophy community in Oxford of which—in
one way or another—I have been a member for the past fourteen years. It
has been at the centre of my intellectual life and has given me so much.
Long may it flourish. It is impossible to record here the names of all of
the philosophers who have helped me in the writing of this book—let
alone all of those philosophers from whom I have learned—but for their
conversation, correspondence, advice, and encouragement along the way
I would like to thank: Tom Ainsworth, Jason Carter, Ursula Coope,
Matthew Duncombe, Gail Fine, Mark Gatten, Edward Hussey, Terry
Irwin, Dhananjay Jagannathan, Lindsay Judson, Nakul Krishna, Harvey
Lederman, Tamer Nawar, Michael Peramatzis, Martin Pickup, Gonzalo
Rodriguez-Pereyra, Christopher Shields, Gisela Striker, James Studd and
Rob Watt.
I would also like to give hearty thanks to the following institutions: to
the Oxford colleges of Christ Church and Oriel for supporting me so well
as a student and to Balliol for supporting me so well as a fellow; to the
AHRC for awarding me the funding required to complete my postgradu-
ate studies; to the Bodleian Library where virtually every word of this
book was written and to the London Library and the Institute of Classical
Studies Library where a good deal of them were rewritten. In particular,
I would like to thank my wonderful Balliol colleagues both in philosophy
and in classics for making the last five years such a pleasure. I raise a glass
to Adam Caulton, Alex Kaiserman, Adrian Kelly, Ofra Magidor, Jonny
McIntosh, Matthew Robinson, Rowland Stout, Rosalind Thomas and
David Wallace.
Last—but by no means least—I want to record a debt that cannot at all
easily be put into words. To my family (in particular my parents, Richard
and Naz, to whom I dedicate this book), to Emma, and to every one of
my friends—for all those nameless, unremembered (and remembered)
acts of kindness and of love, thank you. This book would not have been
written without you. Of that I am not in the least bit sceptical.
STEFAN SIENKIEWICZ
Balliol College, Oxford
April 2018
Introduction
This book has as its focus a particular type of philosophical scepticism

and a particular aspect of that particular type of scepticism. The type of
scepticism in question is Pyrrhonian scepticism and the particular aspect
of that type of scepticism is its Agrippan aspect.¹ Pyrrho and Agrippa are
shadowy characters—Agrippa the shadowier—and in the following
pages not one citation of either Pyrrho or Agrippa is to be found. This
is for the simple reason that none of their writings (if, indeed, Pyrrho
wrote anything at all²) survive.³ Instead, the main textual source for this
study, which is also our main textual source for ancient Pyrrhonism in
general, is The Outlines of Pyrrhonism by the third-century AD doctor and
philosopher Sextus Empiricus.⁴ It is the version of Pyrrhonian scepticism
presented to us in the pages of Sextus’ Outlines with which I shall be
concerned.⁵
¹ Other varieties of scepticism—for example the Academic and the Cartesian—do not
feature.
² According to Sextus, Pyrrho wrote a poem for Alexander the Great (M 1.282).
Diogenes Laertius in his Lives of the Philosophers claims, at one point, that Pyrrho wrote
nothing at all (I 16) and, at another, that he left nothing in writing (IX 102). Whatever the
truth of the matter, it is reasonable to infer that none of Pyrrho’s writings was philosophical.
³ Agrippa is mentioned once in Diogenes Laertius IX 88. There are no other mentions of
him in the ancient texts and none of his works survive. The situation regarding Pyrrho is
marginally better. His name crops up in Diogenes Laertius, Sextus, and Plutarch; and in
Eusebius’ Preparation for the Gospel (Praep. evang. XIV xviii 1–4) a summary is offered of
some aspects of his thought by his student Timon. I discuss this passage in greater detail in
Chapter 1 n. 17. For further information on Pyrrho see Sedley (1983), pp. 14–16 and Bett
(2000).
⁴ ‘PH’ is the standard abbreviation.
⁵ I shall also, occasionally, make reference to Sextus’ other works, namely Against the
Mathematicians 1–6 and Against the Mathematicians 7–11 (the standard abbreviation is M).
However, my main focus will be on the Outlines. For the Greek texts I have used the
standard Teubner editions: PH (ed.) Mutschmann and Mau (1958); M 7–11 (ed.)
    
Unless I say otherwise, by ‘sceptic’ I should be taken to mean Pyrrhonian

sceptic, by ‘Pyrrhonian sceptic’ I should be taken to mean Pyrrhonian
sceptic as presented by Sextus in the Outlines and by ‘Agrippan aspect of
Pyrrhonian scepticism’ I should be taken to mean those five argument
forms (or ‘modes’) which Sextus outlines for us at PH 1.164–79 and which
Diogenes Laertius (IX 88) attributes to Agrippa.⁶ They are the modes of
disagreement, hypothesis, infinite regression, reciprocity, and relativity.
These are by no means the only argument forms Sextus discusses in the
Outlines—PH 1.35–63, for instance, is taken up with an exposition of ten
Aenesideman modes and PH 1.180–6 adverts to eight modes which target
causal explanations. However, I shall not comment upon either of these
other sets of modes, unless, in so doing, light is shed on one or more of the
Agrippan modes.⁷
Why this Agrippan focus? There are at least three reasons. First, these
modes lie at the heart of the sceptic’s argumentative practice. Sextus
adduces them time and again in the Outlines—indeed they can be seen to
underpin both the ten Aenesideman modes and the eight modes against
casual explanation, though to fully elaborate on this claim would require
writing a different book from the one I have written.
Secondly, these argument forms have intrinsic and abiding philosoph-
ical interest. I hope a sense of their intrinsic philosophical interest
emerges from the subsequent pages. As for evidence of their abiding
interest, one might point to the fact that there has, in recent years, been a
surge of interest in the epistemology of disagreement.⁸ Indeed, taking the
longer view, one can point to the fact that the sceptical problem posed by
the combined modes of infinite regression, reciprocity, and hypothesis
Mutschmann (1914); M 1–6 (ed.) Mau (1961). Translations of PH are based on Annas and
Barnes (2000). Translations of other ancient texts are my own.
⁶ Sextus attributes the modes to ‘the more recent sceptics’ (οἱ νεώτεροι) at PH 1.164.
These sceptics are presumably more recent than the ‘older sceptics’ (οἱ ἀρχαιότεροι) of
whom Sextus speaks at PH 1.36 and to whom he ascribes the ten modes. Elsewhere, at
M 7.345, Sextus attributes the ten modes to Aenesidemus, so we might date the more recent
sceptics of PH 1.165 to somewhere between Aenesidemus and Sextus, that is between 100 BC
and AD 200. For further detail on Aenesidemus’ dates see Glucker (1978), pp. 116–18 and on
Sextus’ see House (1980).
⁷ For reflections on the Aenesideman modes see Annas and Barnes (1985), Striker
(1996a), and Morison (2011) and on the eight modes against causal explanation see Barnes
(1983).
⁸ See, by way of example, the anthologies by Feldman and Warfield (2010) and Chris-
tensen and Lackey (2013).
 
has been a perennial source of reflection for epistemologists. In the words

of Laurence Bonjour it is ‘perhaps the most crucial in the entire theory of
knowledge’.⁹
Thirdly, and for my purposes most significantly, those commentators
who have discussed the Agrippan modes, have—for the most part—
failed to distinguish, or to distinguish sufficiently carefully, between
two importantly different perspectives on these modes. It is the articu-
lation of these two different perspectives which is the central theme of
this book.
The Agrippan modes are introduced to us by Sextus at PH 1.164 as
modes of epochē—a sceptical term of art which Sextus glosses for us at
PH 1.10 as a standstill of the intellect (στάσις διανοίας), owing to which
we neither reject nor posit anything (δι’ἥν οὔτε αἴρομέν τι οὔτε τίθεμεν).
The term is often translated by the phrase ‘suspension of judgement’ and
this is the translation adopted in these pages. In subsequent chapters
I adopt the following characterization of the phenomenon: some epi-
stemic subject, S, suspends judgement with regard to some proposition,
P, just in case, having considered the matter, S neither believes P nor
believes not-P.¹⁰ This book, then, asks of the five Agrippan modes, both
individually and collectively, how they bring about suspension of judge-
ment, so understood. In particular, to reiterate its central theme, it
identifies two different perspectives on this question: one might ask
how some dogmatic philosopher comes to suspend judgement on the
basis of one or more of these modes, or one might ask how a sceptic
comes to suspend judgement on the basis of one or more of these modes.
⁹ Bonjour (1985), p. 18.

¹⁰ The ‘having considered the matter’ clause is important because it prevents suspension
of judgement arising too easily. Without it, I would stand in a relation of suspended
judgement to a whole range of propositions just by virtue of never having entertained
any of the propositions in question. For example, until writing this sentence, I have never
given a moment’s thought as to whether or not Parmenides was left-handed. I therefore
neither believed nor disbelieved the claim, but that is not to say that I suspended judgement
on the matter. Sextus himself emphasizes that suspension of judgement over some question
only arises once the arguments on both sides of the question have been considered (PH 1.8).
For a recent analysis of the concept of suspended judgement, which departs from this
Sextan way of construing suspension of judgement and instead argues that having con-
sidered whether P is neither necessary nor sufficient for suspending judgement over P see
Friedman (2013), pp. 165–81. On Friedman’s view ‘one suspends judgment about p only if
one has an attitude that expresses or represents or just is one’s neutrality or indecision about
which of p, ¬ p is true’ (Friedman (2013), p. 179).
    
These are different questions because the sceptic and the dogmatist are
very different sorts of epistemic agent. One basic difference is that the
sceptic, unlike the dogmatist, is restricted with regard to the sorts of
belief he can hold. As Sextus informs us in a celebrated passage of the
Outlines—PH 1.13—the sceptic does not hold any beliefs, the holding of
which involves assenting to some unclear object of investigation of the
sciences (τήν τινι πράγματι τῶν κατὰ τὰς ἐπιστήμας ζητουμένων ἀδήλων
συγκατάθεσιν). Two main interpretative traditions detailing the sorts of
beliefs a sceptic is prohibited from holding have sprung up from the well-
tilled soil of the PH 1.13 passage, the details of which do not need to
concern us here in this Introduction—they will concern us later. It will
suffice to say that, according to one of these traditions, the sceptic is
prohibited from holding beliefs which have theoretical content (which
I term the Content Interpretation) and, according to the other, the
sceptic is prohibited from holding beliefs which are arrived at by a
process of reasoning (which I term the Grounds Interpretation).¹¹ For
the moment, let us refer to these prohibited beliefs as ‘theoretical beliefs’.
The PH 1.13 passage, therefore, tells us at least one thing about the
respective ways in which a sceptic and a dogmatist come to suspend
judgement on the basis of the Agrippan modes: the dogmatist can reach
suspended judgement by relying on various theoretical beliefs, but a
sceptic cannot.
Of those commentators who have probed the working of the Agrippan
modes, the most significant treatment to date is that of Jonathan
Barnes.¹² Though there have been (albeit briefer) treatments of the
modes by R. J. Hankinson, Harald Thorsrud, and Paul Woodruff, it is
Barnes’s work which will provide the main focus for this study.¹³ It has
two main aims. The first is to show that the reconstruction offered by
commentators, like Barnes, of some of the modes—in particular the
modes of infinite regression and reciprocity—is a dogmatic one. By
this I mean that it is a reconstruction which captures perfectly well
how a dogmatic philosopher might come to suspend judgement on the
¹¹ Barnes (1982) and Burnyeat (1984) can be seen as representative of the Content
Interpretation, Frede (1987) and Morison (2011) of the Grounds Interpretation. I elaborate
on these two traditions of interpretation in greater detail in Chapter 1.
¹² See Barnes (1990a) and Barnes (1990b).
¹³ See Hankinson (1995), Thorsrud (2009), and Woodruff (2010).
 
basis of these modes, but which cannot capture how a sceptic might
come to do so.¹⁴ The reason for this is that on the proposed reconstruc-
tion, the sceptic would have to hold a variety of theoretical beliefs to
which he is not entitled.
The second aim is to effect a change of perspective by approaching the
question of how the modes in general are meant to bring about suspen-
sion of judgement not from the point of view of the dogmatist, but from
the point of view of the sceptic. In this respect, the book can be seen as
opening up an alternative to a line of thinking advanced by Michael
Frede. On Frede’s view, the various first-person locutions that pepper the
Outlines—locutions such as ‘we come to suspend judgement’—are to be
understood as claims made by a sceptic who adopts, temporarily and
purely for dialectical purposes, a set of dogmatic assumptions and
patterns of reasoning.¹⁵ The present work can be seen as an attempt at
seeing how far one can take these locutions at face value—that is, taking
them as claims which a sceptic makes on his own behalf and not for
purely dialectical reasons.
Lest this point be misunderstood, let me stress that, in what follows,
I take no view as to whether Sextus himself was a sceptic who lacked all
theoretical beliefs.¹⁶ In the following pages I often speak of Sextus
‘formulating an argument’ or ‘drawing a conclusion’ or ‘objecting to a
line of reasoning’, activities which, one might reasonably think, would
require the holding of at least some minimally theoretical beliefs. The
point is simply to see how one might characterize the sceptic’s behaviour
if, pace Frede, one interprets those first-person utterances in the context
of the Agrippan modes as utterances made by a sceptic who makes them
sincerely and not for purely dialectical reasons.
In reconstructing the Agrippan modes from a sceptical and not a
dogmatic perspective two questions in particular will be distinguished
from one another and addressed: the question as to how the sceptic puts
the modes to use in his tussles with his dogmatic opponents, and the
question as to how a sceptic might come to suspend judgement on the
¹⁴ Note that the dogmatist could either be the historical figure with whom the sceptic
tussled or the contemporary historian of philosophy who anatomizes, analyses, recon-
structs, and passes judgement on the effectiveness of the sceptic’s arguments.
¹⁵ See Frede (1987c), pp. 204–5.
¹⁶ Lorenzo Corti has emphasized to me in conversation the importance of distinguishing
Sextus from the sceptic referred to in his pages.
    
basis of those modes. The starting point for my response to these

questions is grounded in an insight I share with Benjamin Morison,
who has recently raised the possibility of interpreting the Agrippan
modes in light of the sceptic’s method of equipollence.¹⁷ This is a method
that involves opposing to every argument one encounters, an argument
of equal force but with a conclusion incompatible with the conclusion of
the original argument.
It will emerge that the Agrippan modes end up having very different
argumentative structures depending on whether we think of them from
the perspective of the sceptic or from that of the dogmatist. What
inferences can be drawn regarding Sextus’ literary intentions from this
fact is not a question I pursue. It may be the case that in texts where he
discusses the Agrippan modes, Sextus is self-consciously simultaneously
addressing both a sceptical and a dogmatic reader, aware that the
Agrippan modes could equally bring a sceptic and a dogmatist to sus-
pend judgement. But my concern in this book is not to divine Sextus’
literary intentions. It is simply to stress that the modes will have to
display these different argumentative structures—depending on whether
we think of them as working on a sceptic or on a dogmatist—irrespective
of whether Sextus himself recognized that fact.¹⁸
The details of my attempt to give an account of the sceptic’s deploy-
ment of the Agrippan modes—both against his dogmatic opponent and
against himself—in terms of his equipollent ability will emerge in the
following pages and chapters. For the remainder of this Introduction
I shall outline the overall structure of this book and the main conclusions
that are drawn in each of its chapters.
Unlike Gaul, it is divided into six parts. The first five deal with the
modes individually. The final sixth considers them in combination with
one another. The order in which I treat the modes does not reflect Sextus’
ordering. Though we both begin with disagreement, we then diverge.¹⁹
My reason for altering the order in which Sextus presents them is purely
for ease of exposition, as the following sketch of each chapter should
make clear.
¹⁷ Morison (2014), §3.5.2.

¹⁸ My thanks to the anonymous reader for drawing my attention to this point.
¹⁹ My running order: disagreement, hypothesis, infinite regression, reciprocity, and
relativity. Sextus’: disagreement, infinite regression, relativity, hypothesis, and reciprocity.
 
I begin, in Chapter 1, with the mode of disagreement. After some

preliminary remarks about how the phenomenon of disagreement
should be understood, I distinguish two different principles (consistent
with Sextus’ remarks in the Outlines) which connect the phenomenon of
disagreement with suspension of judgement and two corresponding
versions of the mode of disagreement. One version, which turns on the
phenomenon of disagreement between epistemic peers, is, I argue, a
dogmatic version of the mode—dogmatic in the sense that the sceptic
cannot come to suspend judgement on the basis of it. This is because the
dogmatic version of the mode turns on a number of theoretical claims
which a sceptic is not in a position to believe. A second version, which
turns on the notion of undecided disagreement forms the basis of a
sceptical version of the mode—that is, a mode on the basis of which
a sceptic might come to suspend judgement. This is because, it is argued,
it is one and the same thing to suspend judgement on the basis of
undecided disagreement and to suspend judgement on the basis of a
pair of equipollent arguments.
To make sense of how the sceptic comes to suspend judgement on the
basis of the mode of disagreement is, therefore, one and the same project as
making sense of how the sceptic comes to suspend judgement on the basis
of his own equipollent ability. In the latter part of the chapter I argue that,
whether one adopts the Content Interpretation or the Grounds Interpret-
ation, it is possible to make sense of how the sceptic comes to suspend
judgement on the basis of his equipollent ability—and therefore on the
basis of the mode of disagreement. However, I also point out that the
explanation of the sceptic’s coming to suspend judgement is more
involved if one adopts the Grounds Interpretation. This is because, on
the Grounds Interpretation, the sceptic cannot believe that he is rationally
required to suspend judgement. Following a distinction drawn by Casey
Perin, I suggest how someone who adopts the Grounds Interpretation
might make sense of how the sceptic comes to suspend judgement by
distinguishing two phases in the sceptic’s career: a proto-sceptical phase
during which the sceptic suspends judgement because he believes it is the
rational thing to do and a mature sceptical phase during which the sceptic
suspends judgement not because he believes it is the rational thing to do,
but because he has developed a psychological disposition to do so.
The chapter closes by moving away from the question as to how the
sceptic comes to suspend judgement on the basis of the mode of
    
disagreement and reflects on the fact that undecided disagreement is

utilized by the sceptic in two ways: the sceptic is both a chronicler of
undecided disagreements that rage between various dogmatists and
himself a creator of undecided disagreement by virtue of exercising his
equipollent ability. An appreciation of these two ways in which the mode
might be deployed is shown to offer the beginnings of a response to an
objection that has sometimes been made regarding the power of the
mode of disagreement—namely that instances where the mode will be
effective are few and far between.
Chapter 2 centres on the mode of hypothesis. The opening sections
clarify what is involved in the act of hypothesizing, and a distinction is
drawn between dogmatic and sceptical hypotheses—where the former
are those hypotheses which the sceptic’s dogmatic opponent puts for-
ward to avoid falling victim to either the mode of infinite regression or
the mode of reciprocity, and the latter are those hypotheses which the
sceptic puts forward and which he casts in opposition to the dogmatist’s.
Three different versions of the mode are then extracted from the Outlines
and it is argued that the third of these is the most significant (and indeed
underpins the other versions). It is noted that the mode of hypothesis,
when utilized by a sceptic, is a limiting case of the sceptic’s method of
equipollence: to the dogmatist’s hypothesis the sceptic opposes his own
incompatible hypothesis and these hypotheses are equipollent because
they are supported by precisely the same kind of argument, namely no
argument at all.
Being a limiting case of the method of equipollence, the mode of
hypothesis therefore emerges as a unique Agrippan mode. Unlike the
mode of disagreement (which Chapter 1 showed could have both a
sceptical and a dogmatic face) and unlike the modes of infinite regression
and reciprocity (which Chapters 3 and 4 go on to show also have
sceptical and dogmatic incarnations), the mode of hypothesis is just an
instance of the sceptic’s method of equipollence. Chapter 2 concludes by
giving an account—parallel to that given regarding the sceptical version
of the mode of disagreement in Chapter 1—of how, on both the Content
Interpretation and the Grounds Interpretation, the sceptic can come to
suspend judgement on the basis of the mode of hypothesis.
Chapter 3 is concerned with the mode of infinite regression. Barnes’s
reconstruction of the mode is analysed and a modified version of it is
offered so that it yields a suspensive conclusion. It is then argued that this
 
modified version is a dogmatic version of the mode, for, on Barnes’s

view, some epistemic subject suspends judgement on the basis of the
mode of infinite regression by framing to himself an argument with a
number of theoretical premises, for example the premise that infinitely
regressive arguments are bad kinds of argument. It is noted that when
the sceptic exercises the mode of infinite regression that is merely a
particular instance of his method of equipollence: opposing to one
infinitely regressive argument another infinitely regressive argument
with a conclusion incompatible with the conclusion of the original
argument. A sceptical version of the mode is then constructed, and an
account given of how, on both the Content and the Grounds Interpret-
ation, the sceptic is able to come to suspend judgement on the basis of
the mode.
Chapter 4 has a similar structure to Chapter 3, though here the mode
under scrutiny is the mode of reciprocity. Following Barnes, three dif-
ferent kinds of reciprocity are identified in the Outlines, and it is argued
that only one of these kinds of reciprocity—formal reciprocity—is rele-
vant to an understanding of the mode. Barnes’s reconstruction of the
mode is then analysed and for analogous reasons to those mentioned in
Chapter 3, it is argued that the version of the mode offered by Barnes is a
version by which a dogmatist might come to suspend judgement, but not
a sceptic. Chapter 4 closes as Chapter 3 closed. It is noted that the
sceptic’s use of the mode of reciprocity is a particular instance of his
equipollent ability, and a sceptical version of the mode is presented.
According to this version of the mode, the sceptic suspends judgement
when confronted by a pair of equipollent reciprocal arguments just as he
did when confronted by a pair of equipollent hypotheses in Chapter 2
and by a pair of equipollent infinitely regressive arguments in Chapter 3.
Chapters 1–4, then, form—or should form—a coherent whole. In
Chapter 1, the sceptical version of the mode of disagreement was
shown to be equivalent to the phenomenon of equipollent argumenta-
tion but where the type of equipollent argumentation in question is left
unspecified. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 can be thought of as providing examples
of particular kinds of equipollent argumentation—hypothetical argu-
mentation in the case of Chapter 2, infinitely regressive argumentation
in Chapter 3, and reciprocal argumentation in Chapter 4.
Chapter 5, by contrast, is an anomalous chapter, partly because the
mode with which it is concerned—relativity—is an anomalous mode.
    
One respect in which it is anomalous is the fact that it occurs twice in the
Outlines, once as an Aenesideman mode, and once as an Agrippan one.
Chapter 5 opens by remarking on this fact, and argues that the Agrippan
mode of relativity must be understood in terms of the Aenesideman
mode. The rest of the chapter can be viewed as presenting any Sextan
interpreter with two dilemmas. The first dilemma is to decide with which
type of relativity Sextus is concerned—for three different kinds of rela-
tivity are to be found in Sextus’ discussion of the mode. It is argued that
only one of these kinds of relativity is non-trivial, but if this is the kind of
relativity one opts for, then one faces a second interpretative dilemma
when it comes to integrating the non-trivial version of the mode of
relativity into a system which includes the other four Agrippan modes.
For it is argued that the non-trivial mode of relativity is incompatible
with the mode of disagreement. Given the importance of the phenom-
enon of disagreement, and given the fact that a relativistic thesis is very
much the sort of thesis over which a sceptic would suspend judgement,
Chapter 5 closes by suggesting that, if the choice a Sextan interpreter
faces is a choice between rejecting the mode of disagreement or rejecting
the mode of relativity, opting for the latter course of action is preferable.
The sixth and final chapter analyses how the Agrippan modes (exclud-
ing relativity for the reasons given in Chapter 5) are meant to work in
combination with one another. In the Outlines Sextus presents us with
two such combinations, which, following Barnes’s terminology, I refer to
as ‘nets’. The first half of Chapter 6 offers reconstructions of each of these
nets in turn. In particular, I present a new version of Sextus’ first net
which interprets it in terms of three possible dialectic scenarios that
obtain between a sceptic and three kinds of dogmatic opponent, and
suggest, pace Barnes, that, though complex, it does not lack philosophical
cohesion. Regarding the second net, which is often seen as superior to the
first, it is noted that it is not free from fault—in particular regarding its
omission of the mode of hypothesis.
The final part of the chapter compares both nets with a third net not to
be found in the pages of Sextus but devised by Barnes. It is observed that
Barnes’s net is easier to comprehend and free from many of the defects
which afflict both Sextus’ first and second nets. However, after noting
that Barnes’s net omits the mode of disagreement, a fourth, modified
version of Barnes’s net with disagreement incorporated, is presented.
The chapter closes by reflecting on the fact that all the various nets thus
 
far considered rely on a number of theoretical assumptions which a

sceptic himself cannot make.
The chapter (and the book) therefore ends on an ironical note: though
the sceptic is perfectly able to deploy any of the modes individually
(indeed, one of the morals of Chapters 1–4 was that in deploying the
modes the sceptic is merely exercising his equipollent ability), when it
comes to organizing them into a sceptical system, this is a task which, as
it turns out, only a dogmatist can perform.
1
The Mode of Disagreement
How does the mode of disagreement give rise to the suspension of

judgement? That is the question with which this opening chapter is
concerned. The first half of the chapter is devoted to unpacking what is
meant by ‘disagreement’ and, in particular, what is meant by ‘undecided
disagreement’. The second half is concerned with articulating the con-
nection between undecided disagreement and the suspension of judge-
ment. As outlined in the introduction, two versions of the mode will be
presented: one version which captures how a dogmatist might come to
suspend judgement on the basis of the mode and another version by
means of which a sceptic might come to do so.
Some Features of Disagreement

The Greek for ‘disagreement’ is diaphōnia. Barnes, with a helping hand
from Janacek, has counted about 120 instances of the word and its
cognates in Sextus’ works.¹ And when terms which overlap in meaning
with diaphōnia are taken into account—like stasis, diastasis, amphisbēt-
ēsis, anōmalia, machē, and polemos—as well as terms which point to the
absence of diaphōnia—like sumphōnia, homophōnia, and homologia—
the number of references, both direct and indirect, to disagreement in the
Sextan corpus swells to over 200.
A notion then that Sextus thought important. But how best to char-
acterize it? Two features in particular require elucidation. First, what
kinds of item are the relata that are yoked together by the relation of
diaphōnia? And second, what does the relation of diaphōnia itself consist
in? Barnes provides helpful answers to both of these questions.²
¹ Cf. Barnes (1990a), p. 8 n. 8; Janacek (1962), pp. 70–1.

² Barnes (1990a), pp. 11–13.
    
Regarding the first question he claims that diaphōnia is a relation which

holds between opinions rather than between propositions. Regarding the
second he suggests that when two (or more) opinions stand in a relation
of diaphōnia to one another, this amounts to there being a certain kind of
conflict between those opinions. Both of these claims require further
unpacking and I take them in turn—for while the second is true (subject
to further qualification) the first is false.
This first remark should not be misunderstood. Of course, to say that
I have the opinion that P is just to say that there is some proposition,
P, which I opine. I take Barnes’s point to be not that the opining relation
holds between an epistemic subject and something other than a
proposition—for it does not. The point, rather, is that diaphōnia is a
relation that holds between opined propositions rather than between
propositions simpliciter. So, on Barnes’s view, the proposition that
Vega is conspicuous overhead is not in a relation of diaphōnia with the
proposition that Vega is not conspicuous overhead. Rather, my opinion
that Vega is conspicuous overhead is in a relation of diaphōnia with your
opinion that Vega is not conspicuous overhead. And my opinion stands
in a relation of diaphōnia with yours even if neither of us is aware of the
other’s astronomical views.
Now it is one thing—and perfectly true—to say that diaphōnia can
hold between opined propositions. It is another—and false—to say that
diaphōnia can hold only between opined propositions. Suppose that you
believe that P, and that you believe that P on the basis of some argument
that P. Further suppose that I oppose to your claim that P, a rival and
incompatible claim, Q, which I also support with some argument. From
this description, it does not follow that I believe that Q or, indeed, that
anyone else believes that Q. I might have no opinion whatsoever on the
matter and am simply arguing in favour of Q because I am eristic or
because I am perverse or because I have cultivated a certain disposition
to so argue. As we shall see, the sceptic is a member of this third class of
person: he has cultivated a certain disposition to oppose to any argument
he encounters a rival argument with a conclusion incompatible with the
conclusion of the original argument. I go on to devote several subsections
of this chapter to spelling out what this particular disposition of the
sceptic consists in, so I do not here enter into any detailed exposition of
the phenomenon. What is important, for present purposes, is to empha-
size that there is no requirement, given what Sextus says, to suppose that
    
he was operating with a conception of diaphōnia that restricted the relata

of that relation to being opined propositions.³
As for the second question—what the relation of diaphōnia itself
consists in—clearly two claims merely being different from one another
is not sufficient for them to stand in a relation of diaphōnia to one
another. I might believe that Pyrrho was a sceptical philosopher, while
you believe that Pyrrho travelled to India with Alexander the Great. Our
claims about Pyrrho are different (after all they are not the same) but
they do not conflict. Pyrrho could both have been a sceptical philosopher
and have travelled to India with Alexander the Great. diaphōnia there-
fore involves not merely a difference between claims but a conflict
between claims.
But how to spell out what it means for a pair of claims to conflict?
One natural thought to have is that a pair of claims conflict when they
cannot both be true together. It does not take much reflection, however,
to see that this is inadequate. Not being able to be jointly true, even if it
is necessary, is not sufficient for a pair of claims to conflict.⁴ From the
fact that P and Q cannot both be true together, it does not follow
that P conflicts with Q. The claim that motion exists and the claim
that motion does not exist cannot both be true together. The claim that
motion exists and the claim that Hesperus is non-identical with Hes-
perus also cannot both be true together.⁵ But it is not clear that the
claim that motion exists conflicts with the claim that Hesperus is non-
identical with Hesperus in the same way in which the claim that motion
exists conflicts with the claim that motion does not exist. No doubt the
claim that motion exists and the claim that Hesperus is non-identical
with Hesperus cannot both be true together but this is simply in virtue
of the fact that one of these claims (namely the claim that Hesperus
is non-identical with Hesperus) cannot be true. But there is no point
of contact between them, no issue over which they are divided. By
contrast the claim that motion exists and the claim that motion does
not exist are in conflict with one another: what one claim asserts the
other denies.
³ My thanks to the anonymous reader for prompting me to clarify this point.

⁴ See Barnes (1990a), p. 11 n. 12 who emphasizes this point.
⁵ Equally, the claim that motion does not exist and the claim that Hesperus is non-
identical with Hesperus also cannot both be true.
   
To spell out in greater detail what it is for two claims to conflict

over and above not being able to be jointly true is an issue I do not
enter into here.⁶ In any case, our conception of diaphōnia has been
somewhat sharpened. It is relation that holds between two (or more)
conflicting claims where ‘conflict’ is to be understood merely in terms of
not being able to be jointly true (except in cases where at least one of the
conflicting propositions is a logical contradiction or necessarily false).
Kinds of Disagreement
With all that being said, there are still different ways of understanding
what it is for two claims to stand in a relation of diaphōnia to one another.
Suppose we have two disputants—Quintus and Septimus.⁷ Barnes dis-
tinguishes between three ways in which Quintus and Septimus could
disagree with one another. To appropriate his terminology, they might
have a ‘positive disagreement’ or a ‘disagreement in opinion’ or a ‘dis-
agreement in attitude’.⁸ According to Barnes, a positive disagreement
occurs whenever Quintus and Septimus offer incompatible answers to the
same question. A disagreement in opinion occurs either whenever Quin-
tus and Septimus offer incompatible answers to the same question (i.e.
positively disagree) or whenever Quintus offers an answer which Septi-
mus rejects (or Septimus offers an answer which Quintus rejects). Finally,
a disagreement in attitude occurs whenever Quintus and Septimus hold
conflicting attitudes towards the same question, where to ‘take an atti-
tude’ towards a question is, having considered the matter, either to accept
some proposition as the answer to the question or to reject some prop-
osition as an answer to the question or to suspend judgement over the
question.⁹ Furthermore, these attitudes can conflict in a variety of ways.
Accepting some proposition, P₁, conflicts with accepting some other
proposition, P₂, where P₁ and P₂ are incompatible with one another;
⁶ For further discussion see Stopper (1983), pp. 285–6. There the suggestion is made (in
the context of a discussion of the Stoic notion of conflict) that two claims P and Q conflict iff
neither P is possible given Q and neither Q is possible given P.
⁷ I restrict myself to bilateral disagreements for the sake of simplicity.
⁸ See Barnes (1990a), pp. 13–15.
⁹ In Barnes’s own words: ‘Let us say that someone “takes an attitude” to a question ?Q if,
having considered the matter, he either accepts some proposition as the answer to ?Q or
rejects some proposition as an answer to ?Q or suspends judgement over ?Q.’ See Barnes
(1990a), p. 15.
    
accepting P₁ conflicts with rejecting P₁; and suspending judgement as to

whether P₁ conflicts with accepting P₁ and with rejecting P₁.
For Barnes, the interrelations of these three kinds of disagreement are
clear.¹⁰ Anything which counts as a positive disagreement counts as a
disagreement in opinion, and anything which counts as a disagreement
in opinion counts as a disagreement in attitude. But the converse rela-
tions do not hold. Anything which counts as a disagreement in attitude
may, but need not, count as a disagreement in opinion and anything
which counts as a disagreement in opinion may, but need not, count as a
positive disagreement.
Now given how Barnes has defined disagreements in opinion, it
follows (trivially) that anything which counts as a positive disagreement
counts as a disagreement in opinion. For a disagreement in opinion has
been defined disjunctively as either a positive disagreement or a disagree-
ment which involves one of the disagreeing parties offering an answer to
a question which the other party rejects (or vice versa). However, it is less
clear whether it is true that every disagreement in opinion counts as a
disagreement in attitude.
Suppose Quintus and Septimus disagree over the answer to some
question, Q. For there to be a disagreement in opinion between them is
either for Quintus to offer P₁ as the answer to Q and for Septimus to offer
P₂ as the answer to Q, where P₁ and P₂ are incompatible with one
another, or for Quintus to offer P₁ as the answer to Q and for Septimus
to reject P₁ as the answer to Q. Does it follow from the fact that Quintus
and Septimus have a disagreement in opinion that they also have a
disagreement in attitude?
The issue turns on whether the following principle is true. For some
epistemic subject, S, and for some question, Q,
(*) S offers A as an answer to Q, if, and only if, S accepts A as the
answer to Q.
If (*) is true, then any disagreement in opinion will count as a disagree-
ment in attitude. For, if (*) is true and Quintus offers P₁ as the answer to
Q and Septimus offers P₂ as the answer to Q, then Quintus accepts P₁ as
the answer to Q and Septimus accepts P₂ as the answer to Q. We
¹⁰ See Barnes (1990a), p. 15.

   
therefore have a disagreement in attitude. Similarly, if (*) is true and

Quintus offers P₁ as the answer to Q and Septimus rejects (i.e. does not
accept) P₁ as the answer to Q, then Quintus accepts P₁ as the answer to
Q and Septimus rejects (i.e. does not accept) P₁ as the answer to Q. Once
again, we have a disagreement in attitude.
But is the principle expressed in (*) true? It seems possible to conceive
of circumstances in which (*) is false. For instance, suppose Quintus is
open minded as to whether P₁ is the answer to Q. He offers P₁ as an
answer to Q, but he is not committed to P₁ being the answer to Q, that is
to say he does not accept that P₁ is the answer to Q. He is perfectly open
to considering evidence and arguments to the contrary. Similarly, sup-
pose Septimus is open minded as to whether P₂ is the answer to Q. He
offers P₂ as an answer to Q, but he is not committed to P₂ being the
answer to Q, that is to say he does not accept that P₂ is the answer to
Q. He, too, is perfectly open to considering evidence and arguments to
the contrary. In such a case, it seems that Quintus and Septimus have a
disagreement in opinion (they offer incompatible answers to Q) but do
not have a disagreement in attitude (they are both open minded as to
whether P₁ or P₂ is the correct answer to Q).¹¹
To this putative counterexample to (*) it might be objected that, in the
situation just described, Quintus is not really offering P₁ as an answer to
Q, and Septimus is not really offering P₂ as an answer to Q. Rather,
Quintus is entertaining the possibility that P₁ is the answer to Q and
likewise Septimus is entertaining the possibility that P₂ is the answer to
Q. And, the objection would continue, to entertain the possibility that P₁
is the answer to Q is not to offer P₁ as an answer to Q. However, this
counterargument does not so much argue for the truth of (*) as presup-
pose it. It may be that a condition of offering P₁ as an answer to Q is
accepting P₁ as the answer to Q, but, if so, this is merely a restatement of
(*) and not an independent argument for it.
Perhaps, then, we should be content with the following summary of
the interrelations of our three kinds of disagreement. Anything which
counts as a positive disagreement counts as a disagreement in opinion
(but not vice versa), and in many (but not all) cases something which
counts as a disagreement in opinion will also count as a disagreement in
¹¹ Bueno (2013), p. 29 makes a similar point.

    
attitude. At any rate, however these three kinds of disagreement relate to

one another, Barnes’s distinction between them is both salutary and
important. The question which must now be confronted is whether or
not the distinction is borne out in Sextus’ text.
Instances of positive disagreement are certainly to be found in the
Outlines. PH 3.30 offers one such example. There Sextus sets out a
dispute between various philosophers regarding the fundamental mater-
ial principle of the universe. He writes:
Φερεκύδης μὲν γὰρ ὁ Σύριος γῆν εἶπε τὴν πάντων εἶναι ἀρχήν, Θαλῆς δὲ ὁ Μιλήσιος
ὕδωρ, Ἀναξίμανδρος δὲ ὁ ἀκουστὴς τούτου τὸ ἄπειρον, Ἀναξιμένης δὲ καὶ Διογένης
ὁ Ἀπολλωνιάτης ἀέρα, Ἵππασος δὲ ὁ Μεταποντῖνος πῦρ . . .
Pherecydes of Syros said that the principle of everything was earth, Thales of
Miletus said water, Anaximander (his pupil) the infinite, Anaximenes and
Diogenes of Apollonia air, Hippasus of Metapontum fire . . . (PH 3.30)
The list goes on, but the point should be clear. Pherecydes endorses a
certain material principle of everything, Thales another, Anaximander
another, and so forth. And each principle is incompatible with the
others. So we have a positive disagreement.
As for disagreements of opinion and disagreements of attitude, Barnes
draws our attention to PH 2.18 where Sextus is discussing the criterion of
truth:
Τῶν διαλαβόντων τοίνυν περὶ κριτηρίου οἱ μὲν εἶναι τοῦτο ἀπεφήναντο, ὡς οἱ
Στωικοὶ καὶ ἄλλοι τινές, οἱ δὲ μὴ εἶναι, ὡς ἄλλοι τε καὶ ὁ Κορίνθιος Ξενιάδης καὶ
Ξενοφάνης ὁ Κολοφώνιος, λέγων δόκος δ’ ἐπὶ πᾶσι τέτυκται· ἡμεῖς δ’ ἐπέσχομεν,
πότερον ἔστιν ἢ οὐκ ἔστιν.
Of those who have discussed standards, some have asserted that there is one (e.g.
the Stoics and certain others), some that there is not (among them Xeniades of
Corinth and Xenophanes of Colophon who says: ‘but belief is found over all’);
and we suspend judgement as to whether there is one or not. (PH 2.18)
Here Barnes suggests that we have a trilateral disagreement between

the Stoics, Xenophanes, and the sceptics.¹² The disagreement between the
Stoics and Xenophanes counts as a disagreement in opinion, whereas the
disagreement between the Stoics and the sceptics and between Xenophanes
and the sceptics counts as a disagreement in attitude.
¹² For convenience I leave out Xeniades.

       ? 
Now, given the way in which Barnes defines ‘disagreement in opinion’

it is clear that the Stoics and Xenophanes are involved in a disagreement
in opinion. However, it is less clear that PH 2.18 is case of a trilateral
disagreement between the Stoics, Xenophanes, and the sceptics. For it is
not clear that the sceptics are part of the disagreement that obtains
between the Stoics and the Xenophaneans. To see why this is the case
it is necessary to be more precise about what it means to be ‘part of a
disagreement’.
Is the Sceptic Part of the Disagreement?

The first point to note is that, at the syntactic level, PH 2.18 does not
commit the sceptic to be part of any disagreement with the Stoic and the
Xenophanean. Sextus uses the formula ‘οἱ μὲν ἀπεφήναντο P οἱ δε Q ἡμεῖς
δε R’ to express the views of, respectively, the Stoics (that P), the
Xenophaneans (that Q), and the sceptics (that R). It is a formula that is
echoed elsewhere in the Outlines.¹³ But, in and of itself, this formula is no
evidence for the fact that the endorsers of P, of Q, and of R are involved
in a trilateral disagreement. To determine whether this is the case we
need to know what kinds of claims are being expressed by the propos-
itional variables P, Q, and R.
For example, if P, Q and R are consistent with one another, then far
from there being a trilateral disagreement between the endorsers of P, of
Q, and of R, there will be no disagreement at all between them. Alterna-
tively, even if there is a bilateral disagreement between the endorsers of
P and the endorsers of Q, it may be that the endorsers of R are not part of
this disagreement, for R might be consistent with both P and Q. We can
in fact rule out the first of these possibilities. For, at PH 2.19, Sextus
explicitly refers to the Stoic–Xenophanean–sceptic interchange of PH
2.18 as a diaphōnia.¹⁴ This rules out the possibility of there being no
¹³ See, for example, PH 2.31, 180; 3.23, 65, 119. There are only two variations in the
formula in these texts: the assertoric verb that governs, P, Q, and R changes from passage to
passage; and the first person ἡμεῖς drops out to be replaced by the definite article at PH 2.31,
180; 3.23, 119, and by an explicit reference to the sceptics in PH 3.65. What is common to all
instances of the formula is that the subject of οἱ μὲν and of the first οἱ δε are always
dogmatists, while the subject of the second οἱ δε are always the sceptics.
¹⁴ Indeed, all instances of the triple formula mentioned above in n. 13 (bar PH 3.119) are
also explicitly categorized by Sextus as cases of diaphōnia.
    
disagreement between the endorsers of P, of Q, and of R. There is a

disagreement at work here, but it is yet to be determined whether it is
bilateral or trilateral. As we have seen an examination of the syntax of
‘οἱ μὲν ἀπεφήναντο P οἱ δε Q ἡμεῖς δε R’ does not settle the matter.
We must therefore turn to semantics.
Recall our initial characterization of diaphōnia: it was taken to be a
relation that holds between two (or more) conflicting claims where
conflict is to be understood merely in terms of not being able to be
jointly true (except in cases where at least one of the conflicting proposi-
tions is a logical contradiction or necessarily false). One feature of
disagreements which this characterization leaves out, however, is that
disagreements have a focus. Disagreements occur when two (or more)
parties offer incompatible answers to some question. It is the question
that provides the focus for the disagreement.¹⁵ On the assumption that
two parties are part of the same disagreement only if they offer incom-
patible answers to the same question, then in the PH 2.18 passage there
cannot be a trilateral disagreement between Stoics, Xenophaneans, and
sceptics because the sceptics are not offering answer to the same question
to which the Stoics and the Xenophaneans are offering an answer.
The question around which PH 2.18 is structured is the following: is
there a standard of truth? The Stoics answer that there is one, the
Xenophaneans that there is no such thing. We have a clear case of
two-party disagreement. Now, according to Barnes, the sceptics are
also part of this disagreement ‘insofar as they suspend judgement on
the matter’.¹⁶ But this cannot be right. From the fact that the sceptics
suspend judgement over whether there is a standard of truth, it does not
follow that they are part of the very same disagreement which obtains
between the Stoics and the Xenophaneans. For the sceptics, unlike the
Stoics and the Xenophaneans, are not offering an answer to the question
‘Is there a standard of truth?’ To suspend judgement over some question,
Q, is not to offer an answer to Q but to refrain from offering an answer to
it—to endorse none of the answers to Q.
¹⁵ Barnes is well aware of this. His threefold distinction between positive disagreements,
disagreements in opinion and disagreements in attitudes is couched in terms of kinds of
incompatible responses given to a particular question.
¹⁶ Barnes is referring to the PH 2.18 passage. See Barnes (1990a), pp. 14–15.
       ? 
It is important to be clear that in suspending judgement over whether

there is a standard of truth the sceptic is not claiming that it is indeter-
minate as to whether there is a standard of truth.¹⁷ Were this the sceptic’s
position, then there would be a clear trilateral disagreement between the
Stoic, Xenophanean, and sceptic. They would each offer incompatible
answers to the question ‘Is there a standard of truth?’ But this is not the
sceptic’s position. In suspending judgement over whether there is a
standard of truth the sceptic is claiming (if he is claiming anything at
all) that, given the evidence and the arguments he has so far considered,
he is neither in a position to judge that there is a standard of truth nor in
a position to judge that there is no such thing.¹⁸
So, while the Stoic and Xenophanean offer incompatible answers to
the question ‘Is there a standard of truth?’, the sceptic makes a higher-
order claim about the nature of the dispute, namely that the arguments
and evidence adduced on either side have not yet settled the issue.
The question to which the sceptic is offering an answer is different
from the question to which the Stoic and Xenophanean are offering
answers. If our assumption that two parties are part of the same dis-
agreement only if they offer incompatible answers to the same question
is correct, then the sceptic is not part of the disagreement that obtains
between the Stoic and the Xenophanean.
¹⁷ Though, interestingly, there are grounds for attributing to Pyrrho just such an
indeterministic thesis (at least on one reading of Aristocles’ summary of Timon’s account
of Pyrrho’s philosophical attitudes). Aristocles’ summary is to be found in Eusebius, Praep.
evang. XIV xviii 1–4. There Pyrrho is said to reveal that things are in equal measure
adiaphora, astathmēta, and anepikrita. The translation of these three terms is controversial:
adiaphora can be rendered either as ‘indifferent’ or as ‘undifferentiable’; astathmēta either
as ‘unstable’ or ‘unmeasurable’; and anepikrita ‘indeterminate’ or ‘indeterminable’. (In
Sextus the adjective anepikritos often qualifies diaphōnia—I discuss the sense the term
has in these contexts immediately below.) If we adopt the first translation of each term, then
Pyrrho’s point seems to be that things themselves are indifferent, unstable, and indeter-
minate; if we adopt the second, then he remains neutral as to the nature of things but merely
stresses our own epistemic failings: we are so constituted that we cannot differentiate,
measure, or determine the nature of things. The first translation is therefore the translation
which supports an interpretation of Pyrrho as a proponent of an indeterministic thesis. For
further discussion on this doxographically, syntactically, and semantically complicated
passage see Stopper (1983), pp. 272–5 and Bett (2000), pp. 18–29.
¹⁸ Sextus would say that the arguments for there being a standard of truth and the
arguments for there not being a standard of truth have the feature of equipollence. See
below for further details on this feature.
    
However, it is important to note that it is perfectly possible for a

Barnes-like trilateral disagreement between Stoic, Xenophanean, and
sceptic to obtain. But for this to be the case the question to which
conflicting answers would be given would not be ‘Is there a standard of
truth?’ but something like ‘What attitude ought one to take to the claim
that there is a standard of truth?’ To this question the Stoic would answer
that one ought to affirm that there is a standard of truth, and the
Xenophanean would answer that one ought to deny that there is a
standard of truth. Now in this case, the sceptic would become part of
this disagreement by virtue of suspending judgement on the question as
to whether there is a standard of truth, provided that the claim that the
sceptic expresses by suspending judgement (if indeed he expresses any
claim at all) is the claim that that one ought neither to affirm nor reject
the claim that there is a standard of truth.
Disagreement and Undecided Disagreement

What it is for two or more parties to stand in a relation of disagreement
to one another has now been somewhat clarified. The rest of this chapter
will be concerned to articulate how the mode of disagreement precipi-
tates the suspension of judgement.
The mode is introduced to us at PH 1.165 where Sextus writes,
καὶ ὁ μὲν ἀπὸ τῆς διαφωνίας ἐστὶ καθ’ ὃν περὶ τοῦ προτεθέντος πράγματος
ἀνεπίκριτον στάσιν παρά τε τῷ βίῳ καὶ παρὰ τοῖς φιλοσόφοις εὑρίσκομεν
γεγενημένην, δι’ ἣν οὐ δυνάμενοι αἱρεῖσθαί τι ἢ ἀποδοκιμάζειν καταλήγομεν εἰς
ἐποχήν.
According to the mode deriving from dispute, we find that undecidable dissen-
sion about the matter proposed has come about both in ordinary life and among
philosophers. Because of this we are not able either to choose or to rule out
anything, and we end up with suspension of judgement. (PH 1.165)
It will be noted immediately that here we have a reference not only to

diaphōnia but to anepikritos diaphōnia.¹⁹ It is anepikritos diaphōnia and
not diaphōnia simpliciter which is connected to the suspension of judge-
ment. Elucidating what anepikritos diaphōnia amounts to is therefore a
¹⁹ In the PH 1.165 passage anepikritos in fact qualifies stasis, but, in this passage, I take
diaphōnia and stasis to be synonymous.
    
necessary precursor to elucidating how disagreement is connected to

the suspension of judgement.²⁰
How then are we to interpret the adjective anepikritos? As Barnes
notes, the term contains a twofold ambiguity: the first concerns the
suffix -tos, the second the root epikrin-.²¹ I deal with each ambiguity
in turn, though devote more time to the second since the way in which
one resolves that ambiguity has significant ramifications for how one
interprets the connection between disagreement and suspension of
judgement.
First, the suffix. There are three ways to interpret it, which I shall label
the non-modal sense, the weakly modal sense, and the strongly modal
sense. These three senses correspond, roughly, and respectively, to
the translations ‘undecided’, ‘cannot in the current circumstances be
decided’, and ‘cannot in principle be decided’.²² Does Sextus use the
suffix with one rather another of these senses? The generality of
the question invites a generalized answer: for the most part Sextus was
not concerned with the strongly modal sense, but shifts between either
the non-modal or weakly modal sense.
Two sorts of argument can be put forward to support this position.
The first is textual. Though there are instances in the Outlines where
Sextus does not rule out the possibility of the strongly modal sense (by
leaving anepikritos unqualified²³) at other times Sextus qualifies the term
with phrases such as ‘up to now’ or ‘still’.²⁴ Now in these contexts it
makes little to no sense to understand anepikritos in the strongly modal
sense. For how could the modal status of a disagreement change from
that which in principle cannot be decided to that which might (in the
future) be decided? These occurrences of anepikritos in the Outlines
therefore point towards understanding the term either in the non-
modal or in the weakly modal sense.
There are also philosophical reasons for resisting the strongly modal
interpretation. For, were Sextus to support the strongly modal reading of
anepikritos, his position would be deeply anti-Pyrrhonian. To claim of a
²⁰ In addition to the PH 1.165 passage, Sextus connects disagreement with the suspen-
sion of judgement at PH 1.26, 29, 59, 88, 170, 175; 2.19, 259.
²¹ See Barnes (1990a), pp. 17–19 and pp. 30–2.
²² The ambiguity is noted by Aristotle in Top 145b24–7.
²³ Cf. PH 1.26, 29, 59, 178, 2.85, 116, 3.54.
²⁴ Cf. PH 3.3, 70.
    
dispute that it is in principle undecidable amounts to the claim that there

are no reasons, either actual or potential, that could decide it. Strongly
modal undecidability goes hand in hand with dogmatism. This alone,
irrespective of textual considerations, would have been sufficient reason
not to saddle Sextus with the strongly modal reading.
One might of course still think that there is a residual question as to
which of the two weaker readings (the non-modal and the weakly modal)
Sextus adopted. In an important sense, however, the question is unim-
portant, since, as will be seen, whichever sense is afforded the term, it
does not substantially affect the logic of the Sextan argument. As a result,
from now on, unless I explicitly choose to distinguish between them,
I shall use the expression ‘undecided’ to cover both the non-modal and
the weakly modal sense.
Now to the root ambiguity. There are two ways to interpret epikrin-,
which turns on the different ways of understanding what it means for a
diaphōnia to be decided. There is a sense in which a diaphōnia is decided
when the parties involved in the diaphōnia no longer disagree with one
another. We can imagine a possible world in which Professors Kenny
and Cooper come to agree that the books common to Aristotle’s Eude-
mian and Nicomachean Ethics have their original and proper home in
the Eudemian Ethics.²⁵ But this says nothing about whether it is in fact
reasonable for the participants in the diaphōnia to come to an agreement.
To capture this notion, let us distinguish a second sense in which a
diaphōnia is decided, where a diaphōnia is decided just in case there are
decisive reasons for deciding the diaphōnia one way or the other. For
example, in a possible world in which there are decisive reasons for
deciding the Kenny–Cooper debate in favour of Kenny (or Cooper; it
matters not), then the diaphōnia is decided in this second sense.
What makes it the case that some disagreement is decided in the first
sense is quite different from what makes it the case that some disagree-
ment is decided in the second sense. That a disagreement is decided in
the first sense is a function of whether the disputing parties have, or have
not, put aside their differences and come to an agreement. That a
disagreement is decided in the second sense is a function of whether
there is evidence that decisively settles the disagreement one way rather
²⁵ For the state of play in the actual world see Cooper (1981), pp. 366–85 and Kenny
(1992), pp. 113–42.
   
than another. To signal this difference I shall speak of disagreements

being interpersonally decided (which tracks decisions in the first sense)
and of disagreements being evidentially decided (which tracks decisions
in the second sense).
It is plain that a question’s being interpersonally decided does not
entail that it is evidentially decided—there is a possible world in which
Kenny and Cooper come to agree that the common books have their
home in the Eudemian Ethics (say) but where no decisive reasons for
deciding the diaphōnia one way or the other have been produced (either
by Kenny, by Cooper or by anyone else for that matter). And it is also
plain that a question’s being evidentially decided does not entail that
it is interpersonally decided—there is a possible world in which decisive
reasons have been adduced which settle the question over which Kenny
and Cooper disagree but where neither Kenny nor Cooper recognizes
these reasons as decisive and so they continue to stand in a relation of
diaphōnia to one another.
When Sextus invokes the idea of undecided disagreement does he
have in mind interpersonally undecided disagreements or evidentially
undecided disagreements? That question does not admit of a straight-
forward answer. Sometimes Sextus’ use of the mode suggests the inter-
personal reading, at other times the evidential. For the moment I leave
the question—appropriately enough—undecided. The present task is to
make sense of the connection Sextus draws between suspension of
judgement and undecided disagreement—however construed.
Principles of Disagreement
It should be noted at the outset that is not merely suspension of
judgement with which anepikritos diaphōnia is connected in the Outlines.
There being an anepikritos diaphōnia over P is, at various points,
connected by Sextus to P’s being unclear (ἄδηλον),²⁶ to P’s being unknow-
able²⁷ (ἀκατάληπτος)²⁸ or to P’s being unassertible (οὐδὲν ἕξομεν λέγειν).²⁹
The fact that anepikritos diaphōnia exhibits such varied connections
²⁶ PH 2.116, 182.
²⁷ Or ‘unknown’. The same ambiguity which afflicts anepikritos afflicts akatalēptos.
²⁸ PH 2.145, 168, 3.5, 23, 30, 54, 56, 139, 254.
²⁹ PH 1.170, 3.108, 140.
    
raises thorny exegetical and philosophical issues.³⁰ However, I set these to

one side for the question I wish to focus on is the one raised at the end of
the previous section: what is the connection between suspension of
judgement and undecided disagreement?
According to Barnes what does the work is what he calls the Principle
of Disagreement, which I shall express as follows. For some epistemic
subject, S, and for some proposition, P:
(PD) If S is aware that there is an anepikritos diaphōnia over P, then
S should suspend judgement over P.³¹
Barnes speaks of a ‘Principle of Disagreement’ in the singular. However,
given the distinction drawn in the previous section between interperson-
ally undecided disagreement and evidentially undecided disagreement,
it is preferable to distinguish between two principles of disagreement—
one which turns on interpersonally undecided disagreement and another
which turns on evidentially undecided disagreement. We might express
these two principles as follows:
(IPD) If S₁ knows that S₂ disagrees with S₁ over whether P, then S₁
should suspend judgement over whether P.
(EPD) If S knows that there are no decisive reasons either for or
against P, then S should suspend judgement over whether P.
But are these principles true? And which of them is at play in Sextus’
argument here?
Let us begin with (EPD). Though Barnes does not distinguish (IPD)
from (EPD), when he speaks of Sextus’ ‘Principle of Disagreement’ he
³⁰ Perhaps the thorniest arises from the references to akatalēpsia, for to say of some
proposition that it is akatalēptos is to adopt a quintessentially un-Pyrrhonian stance
towards that proposition. Such a stance is the stance of the negative dogmatist, whom
Sextus identifies with the Academic Sceptic at PH 1.1–4, and from whom he is careful to
distinguish the Pyrrhonist. There seem to be two possible ways to account for these puzzling
references to akatalēpsia in the Outlines. The first is to look beyond the Outlines and tell
some story about how these references are not Pyrrhonian in character but are rather traces
of an earlier and Aenesideman form of scepticism. (For more detail on the connection
between Aenesideman and Sextan scepticism see Bett (2000), pp. 189–213.) The second,
more straightforwardly, is to adopt a non-modal reading of akatalēptos, such that to say
that P is akatalēptos is to say that P is merely unknown and not unknowable.
³¹ Here is Barnes’s version of the Principle verbatim: ‘If someone is aware that there is an
undecided dispute about ?Q, then he ought not to accept or reject any proposed answer to ?
Q.’ See Barnes (1990a), p. 21.
   
has in mind something like (EPD).³² Furthermore, (EPD) seems true.

For if there is an undecided disagreement over P, in the sense that there
are currently no decisive reasons or arguments either for or against P,
and furthermore if I am aware of all this, then surely suspending
judgement over P is not only the rational thing for me to do but the
only rational thing for me to do. For if I believe that it is rational to
decide the dispute one way rather than the other, then, on pain of
inconsistency, I must believe that the dispute is decided. And if
I believe that the dispute is undecided, in the sense that there are
currently no decisive reasons or arguments either for or against P, then
it is irrational for me to plump either for P or for not-P.
But what of (IPD)? (IPD) is a principle which requires more unpacking—
and more motivating—than (EPD). For one thing, as it stands, (IPD) is
false. To see why this is so, let us return to Kenny and Cooper and their
disagreement over whether or not the common books belong to the
Eudemian Ethics. Consider things from Kenny’s perspective. If a prin-
ciple like (IPD) were true, then, merely by becoming aware that Cooper
disagreed with him, Kenny would be obliged to suspend judgement over
whether the common books belong to the Eudemian Ethics. But this
seems wrong. The mere fact that Cooper disagrees with him—in and of
itself—is not a sufficient reason for Kenny to abandon his beliefs about
the common books and suspend judgement on the matter. To make it the
case that suspension of judgement is a reasonable response on the part
of Kenny one might think that, in addition to knowing that Cooper
disagrees with him, Kenny must also, at the very least, know that his
and Cooper’s epistemic credentials match one another. As contemporary
theorists in the epistemology of disagreement like to say, Kenny must
know that he and Cooper are ‘epistemic peers’, where two agents count as
epistemic peers just in case they are equally familiar with the evidence
and arguments that bear on the question and are also equals with respect
to various epistemic virtues such an intelligence, diligence, lack of bias,
and so on.³³
³² See Barnes (1990a), pp. 22–3.

³³ This characterization of epistemic peerhood is taken from Kelly (2006), p. 175. Kelly is
right to note that, outside mathematical contexts, the standards which two things must
meet to count as equal will be context-sensitive. If we hold a very demanding standard of
epistemic peerhood, then no two individuals will count as epistemic peers, for no two
individuals will be equally intelligent, thoughtful, and familiar with the relevant evidence to
    
To bolster (IPD)’s plausibility we might therefore revise it to some-

thing like:
(IPD*) If S₁ knows that S₁ and S₂ are epistemic peers and knows that
S₂ disagrees with S₁ over whether P, then S₁ should suspend judgement
over whether P.
Now though (IPD*) makes the connection between disagreement and
suspended judgement more plausible than (IPD) does, (IPD*) is still not
self-evidently true. Indeed, (IPD*) itself has, in recent years, become the
object of disagreement (if not evidentially undecided disagreement).
Epistemologists have divided into two rival camps that have come to
be labelled in the literature ‘The Steadfast’ and ‘The Conciliatory’. The
Steadfast argue that the appropriate epistemic response to the phenom-
enon of known peer disagreement is not (necessarily) to revise one’s
beliefs, whereas the Conciliatory argue that revision of one’s beliefs in the
face of such known peer disagreement is the appropriate response—
perhaps even to the point of suspending judgement over the disputed
issue.³⁴
Here is not the place to adjudicate the dispute between the Steadfast
and the Conciliatory theorists. The important point to bear in mind is
that we have two different principles—(EPD) and (IPD)—to which
Sextus might be appealing here and consequently two different kinds
of argument which some epistemic subject, S, might frame to himself and
thereby come to suspend judgement:
(DIS-1) (i) There are no decisive reasons either for or against P.
(ii) If there are no decisive reasons either for or against P,
then S should suspend judgement over P.
Therefore,
(iii) S should suspend judgement over P,
precisely the same degree. Analogously, if we have a very demanding standard for equality
of height, then no two individuals will count as being of the same height for no two people
are precisely the same height. If, however, we hold a less demanding standard of epistemic
peerhood, then individuals will be counted as epistemic peers. For the purposes of the
present discussion I assume that the standards for epistemic peerhood are sufficiently
liberal to allow individuals to qualify as epistemic peers.
³⁴ For more detail on the theoretical underpinnings of these two positions see the
volumes by Feldman and Warfield (2010) and Christensen and Lackey (2013).
       
or
(DIS-2) (i) There is peer disagreement over P.
(ii) If there is peer disagreement over P, then S should
suspend judgement over P.
Therefore,
(iii) S should suspend judgement over P.
Both arguments are clearly valid and represent two ways in which an
epistemic subject can move from being aware of undecided disagreement
to suspending judgement. In the case of (DIS-1) the type of disagreement
in question is evidentially undecided disagreement. In the case of (DIS-2)
the type of disagreement in question is interpersonally undecided peer
disagreement. The question is this: can a sceptic reach suspension of
judgement by framing to himself something like (DIS-1) or (DIS-2)?
In the remainder of this chapter I shall argue, first, that the sceptic
cannot arrive at a state of suspended judgement by applying the sort of
reasoning set out in (DIS-2). That is the privilege of his dogmatic
opponent. Second, I shall turn to (DIS-1) and suggest that, subject to
certain qualifications, it is possible for the sceptic to suspend judgement
on the basis of something like (DIS-1). But this is hardly surprising, for
(DIS-1) ultimately turns out to be identical to the method of argument
that Sextus tell us is the method on the basis of which the sceptic comes
to suspend judgement—namely the method of equipollence.
Two Accounts of the Sorts of Beliefs

a Sceptic Can Hold
To see why the sceptic cannot, by his own lights, reason in the way laid
out by (DIS-2), it is necessary to spell out in greater detail two different
ways in which scholars have attempted to specify the kinds of beliefs the
sceptic is able to hold and the kinds of belief he is not able to hold.³⁵
On what I shall call the Content Interpretation, what it is about a belief
that determines whether or not a sceptic is able to hold it, is the content
³⁵ My subsequent characterization of these two ways is indebted to Morison (2011),

pp. 265–8.
    
of that belief. More precisely, it is whether or not the belief has as part of
its content any unclear items (πράγματα ἀδήλα), which, at PH 1.13,
Sextus glosses as those objects of investigation of the sciences (τῶν
κατὰ τὰς ἐπιστήμας ζητουμένων), where ‘science’ has a broad sense
that encompasses not only what we would now call the natural sciences,
but philosophical speculation too.³⁶ To give some Sextan examples, these
would include beliefs like the belief that a standard of truth exists
(PH 1.18), that there are imperceptible pores (PH 2.98), and that the
ultimate principle of everything is water (PH 3.30)—beliefs which Barnes
labels ‘philosophico-scientific tenets’.³⁷
By contrast, on what I shall call the Grounds Interpretation what it is
about a belief that determines whether or not the sceptic is, by his own
lights, able to hold it is not the content of the belief but the grounds on
which the belief is held. To be more precise, if a sceptic comes to believe
P as a result of a process of reasoning, then, on the Grounds Interpret-
ation, the sceptic is not entitled to believe P.³⁸
It is worth emphasizing that although these two interpretations will,
in many cases, single out the same set of beliefs as beliefs which the
sceptic cannot hold, this need not always be the case. To adapt an
example from Benjamin Morison, consider the proposition that God
³⁶ The Content Interpretation can be mined, at various points, from the writings of
Barnes and Burnyeat. According to Barnes (1982) reprinted in Burnyeat and Frede (1997),
p. 81 n. 86, a sentence expresses a belief which a sceptic is not entitled to hold just in case ‘(i)
it expresses a proposition and (ii) it contains at least one term which denotes something
ἀδήλον’. See also Burnyeat and Frede (1997), pp. 74–8. According to Burnyeat (1984)
reprinted in Burnyeat and Frede (1997), p. 99, ‘Pyrrhonian scepticism is scepticism about
the realm of theory, which at this period would include both what we would consider
philosophical or metaphysical theory and much that we can recognise as science.’ Page
references are to the reprinted versions.
³⁷ Burnyeat and Frede (1997), p. 74.
³⁸ The Grounds Interpretation finds expression in the writings of Frede and Morison.
According to Frede (1987a), p. 187 reprinted in Burnyeat and Frede (1997), pp. 9–10: ‘it is
characteristic of the dogmatists that they believe it is possible to go behind the surface
phenomena to the essence of things, to the nature of things, to true reality. We believe that
the objects around us are coloured; in reality, however, they only reflect light of certain
wave-lengths that makes them appear coloured. The dogmatists further believe that it is
reason – if only we would follow it – that can lead us beyond the world of appearances to the
world of real being.’ Again, page references are to the reprinted version. Morison who takes
himself to ‘be following or perhaps refining’ Frede’s interpretation characterizes those
beliefs which the sceptic is not entitled to hold as beliefs which have ‘been arrived at in a
certain way . . . as a result of marshalling arguments or considerations, in favour of the
[beliefs in question]’. See Morison (2011), p. 266.
     
exists.³⁹ Now on the Content Interpretation, this is just the sort of

philosophico-scientific tenet which a sceptic, by his own lights, is not
entitled to believe. On the Grounds Interpretation by contrast, there are
circumstances in which a sceptic would be entitled to believe this very
proposition (for example, if the belief comes to be held on the basis of
habituation or acculturation) even if there are also circumstances in
which he would not be entitled to believe it (for example, if he came to
believe it on the basis of the ontological or the cosmological argument).
These two methods for distinguishing those beliefs which a sceptic can
have and those beliefs which a sceptic has to lack, provide a useful
framework in which to assess the question as to whether the sceptic is
able to reach suspension of judgement by framing to himself the kind of
argument expressed by (DIS-1) or (DIS-2). In my subsequent discussion
(and for the rest of the book) I shall, for the sake of brevity, refer to those
beliefs which are ruled out for a sceptic—either on a Content Interpret-
ation or on the Grounds Interpretation—as ‘theoretical beliefs’.
A Dogmatic Mode of Disagreement

Let us begin with (DIS-2). This is a dogmatic mode of disagreement,
because neither on the Content Interpretation nor on the Grounds
Interpretation is it possible for the sceptic to reach suspension of judge-
ment on the basis of it. Take the Content Interpretation first and
consider the second premise of the argument. It seems plain that this is
not the sort of claim which a sceptic, on the Content Interpretation, is
entitled to believe. This is for the simple reason that (DIS-2)-(ii) is a
theoretical epistemological principle. Indeed, it is a disputed theoretical
epistemological principle—adhered to by the Conciliatory and rejected
by the Steadfast theorists. It belongs to the domain of philosophical
theorizing and, as such, is not the kind of claim which, on the Content
Interpretation, the sceptic is entitled to believe.
Indeed, even if we set this consideration to one side, one might think that
there is another, subtler reason why the sceptic is not in a position to believe
(DIS-2)-(ii). As just noted, (DIS-2)-(ii) is a principle which itself is subject
to disagreement. That is to say, there is disagreement over whether the
³⁹ See Morison (2011), pp. 266–7.

    
appropriate response to disagreement is the suspension of judgement.

Some—the Conciliatory—argue that it is the appropriate response,
others—the Steadfast—deny this. Now suppose the sceptic did believe
(DIS-2)-(ii). That would make the sceptic a member of the Conciliatory
party. Suppose, further, that the sceptic was aware of the disagreement
between the Conciliatory and the Steadfast theorists over the truth of
(DIS)-(ii). Then, as a good member of the Conciliatory party, the sceptic
should no longer confidently believe (DIS-2)-(ii) but move towards the
Steadfast position. It is curious feature of the Conciliatory view—at least
when taken in an unrestricted sense—that it calls for its own rejection:
the sceptic ought not to be Conciliatory when it comes to his response to
disagreements about principles of disagreements—principles just like
(DIS-2)-(ii). Now whether or not it is objectionably ad hoc for the
sceptic to be Conciliatory about all disputed matters but Steadfast
when it comes to disputed principles of disagreement like (DIS-2)-(ii)
is not a question that can be pursued here.⁴⁰ But even if it is not
objectionably ad hoc for the sceptic to be Steadfast when it comes to
disputed principles like (DIS-2)-ii, the dispute over the truth of (DIS-2)-(ii)
between rival theorists only serves to confirm its status as a theoretical
claim. Ipso facto it is not the sort of claim which, on the Content
Interpretation, the sceptic is entitled to believe.
But what if we were to adopt the Grounds Interpretation? Is (DIS-2)-(ii)
still ruled out as a candidate for belief for the sceptic? One might be
tempted to say ‘No’. For, it certainly seems logically possible that the
sceptic believes (DIS-2)-(ii) on the basis of no antecedent ratiocinative
process. It might simply strike the sceptic that (DIS-2)-(ii) is the case just as
it strikes him that it is day (when it is day). So, on the Grounds Interpret-
ation, just as the sceptic can believe that it is day if he arrives at that belief
without reasoning his way to it, so the sceptic can believe that (DIS-2)-(ii)
is the case if he arrives at that belief without reasoning his way to it.
Two points might be made in response to this. First, given the content
of (DIS-2)-(ii), it is plausible to think that an epistemic subject who
believes (DIS-2)-(ii) believes it because he holds a number of related
theoretical beliefs which support his belief in (DIS-2)-(ii). For example,
the belief that the appropriate response to revealed peer disagreement
over P is suspension of judgement with regard to P flows from a further
⁴⁰ For an argument that it is not objectionably ad hoc see Elga (2010), pp. 175–86.
     
theoretical assumption, sometimes labelled the ‘Uniqueness Thesis’,

namely that for any body of evidence, that evidence supports exactly
one doxastic attitude towards any particular proposition—where those
doxastic attitudes are either believing P, disbelieving P, or suspending
judgement over P. But if an epistemic subject does believe (DIS)-(ii)
because they also believe, for example, the Uniqueness Thesis—itself a
contested assumption—then on the Grounds Interpretation (DIS-2)-(ii)
will be ruled out as a candidate for belief for the sceptic.⁴¹
Second, even if we allow that (DIS-2)-(ii) is a belief which, on the
Grounds Interpretation, is not ruled out for the sceptic, the conclusion of
the argument, (DIS-2)-(iii), most certainly is. For, ex hypothesi, (DIS-2)-
(iii) is arrived at by a process of reasoning, namely the reasoning set out
in (DIS-2). So, whether one adopts the Content Interpretation or the
Grounds Interpretation, the sceptic will not be able to reason to a
suspensive conclusion along the lines of (DIS-2).
Of course, the sceptic’s dogmatic opponent, unencumbered by the
restrictions a sceptic has on the kinds of beliefs he can hold, is perfectly
at liberty to reach a suspensive conclusion on the basis of a (DIS-2)-like
argument. We might therefore call the kind of argument set out in (DIS-2)
a dogmatic version of the mode of disagreement. And a question naturally
arises: is there a sceptical version of the mode, a version of the mode which
might induce suspension of judgement in a sceptic? Sextus himself invites
us to consider things from this perspective. Recall the passage in which
Sextus introduces us to the mode.
καὶ ὁ μὲν ἀπὸ τῆς διαφωνίας ἐστὶ καθ’ ὃν περὶ τοῦ προτεθέντος πράγματος
ἀνεπίκριτον στάσιν παρά τε τῷ βίῳ καὶ παρὰ τοῖς φιλοσόφοις εὑρίσκομεν
γεγενημένην, δι’ ἣν οὐ δυνάμενοι αἱρεῖσθαί τι ἢ ἀποδοκιμάζειν καταλήγομεν εἰς
ἐποχήν.
According to the mode deriving from dispute, we find that undecidable dissen-
sion about the matter proposed has come about both in ordinary life and among
philosophers. Because of this we are not able either to choose or to rule out
anything, and we end up with suspension of judgement. (PH 1.165)
Note what was not noted before: Sextus’ use of first-person plurals—‘we
find . . . we are not able . . . we end up with . . . ’.⁴² The perspective is that
⁴¹ For criticism of the Uniqueness Thesis see, for example, Kelly (2010), pp. 119–21.
⁴² The first-person plurals continue throughout Sextus’ discussion of the Five Modes (i.e.
through PH 1.165–77), and indeed through much (if not most) of the Outlines.
    
of the sceptic.⁴³ We are told that, when confronted with an undecided

disagreement over P, the sceptic is unable (οὐ δυνάμενοι) either to assent
to P or to not-P, as a result of which suspension of judgement comes
about (καταλήγομεν εἰς ἐποχήν).
To shed light on the question of how the sceptic might come to
suspend judgement on the basis of the mode of disagreement it will be
well first to outline the general method by which the sceptic reaches
suspension of judgement—for it will be a recurring theme that the
method of equipollence provides a key to understanding how the Agrip-
pan modes bring about suspension of judgement for a sceptic. It will
then be seen that our remaining mode of disagreement, (DIS-1),
suitably qualified, turns out to be identical to the sceptic’s method of
equipollence.
The Method of Equipollence

The method is introduced to us at PH 1.8, where Sextus writes,
Ἔστι δὲ ἡ σκεπτικὴ δύναμις ἀντιθετικὴ φαινομένων τε καὶ νοουμένων καθ’
οἱονδήποτε τρόπον, ἀφ’ ἧς ἐρχόμεθα διὰ τὴν ἐν τοῖς ἀντικειμένοις πράγμασι καὶ
λόγοις ἰσοσθένειαν τὸ μὲν πρῶτον εἰς ἐποχήν, τὸ δὲ μετὰ τοῦτο εἰς ἀταραξίαν.
Scepticism is an ability to set out oppositions among things which appear and are
thought of in any way at all, an ability which, because of the equipollence in the
opposed items and accounts, we come first to suspension of judgement and
afterwards to tranquillity. (PH 1.8)
Scepticism is here described not as a thesis based on a set of arguments,

or a particular state of mind, or a collection of beliefs, but as an ability
(δύναμις). As our passage tells us, it is an ability which involves setting
out oppositions and it is by virtue of the equipollence of the opposed
items and accounts that suspension of judgement arises. All this requires
⁴³ There is, in fact, a curious shifting of perspective during the course of Sextus’
discussion of the Agrippan modes at PH 1.164–79. The first-person references of PH
1.165 continue throughout Sextus’ treatment of each individual mode at PH 1.165–9 (bar
the mode of hypothesis at PH 1.168 where the perspective switches to that of the sceptic’s
dogmatic interlocutor). However, after he has outlined how the modes are meant to work in
combination with one another at PH 1.170–7 Sextus claims that the modes are meant to
induce the suspension of judgement in the sceptic’s dogmatic interlocutor: the modes are
put forward to curb the dogmatists’ epistemic rashness (ἐλέγχειν τὴν τῶν δογματικῶν
προπέτειαν). The implication is that the modes are meant to illustrate how a dogmatist,
rather than a sceptic, comes to suspend judgement. I discuss this issue further in Chapter 6.
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"True," answered Barlow, "and seeing that nobody can tell how little
time may be granted them, it's a cruel sight to see the precious stuff frittered
away. Some fools just kill time—murder it, because they haven't the brain
power to know what to do with it; and such men ought to be took in hand,
like other criminal malefactors, in my opinion, and set to do the world's
work whether they want to or not. But Jeremy's not like that. He's wishful to
do some good; yet things all fall to pieces when he touches them."
"Incompetence is the only word for it," said Judith.
"And with competence writ large before his eyes from his youth up!"
mused Barlow. "Generally it's just the opposite, and you see children either
give their parents away, or offer a good advertisement for their homes, as
the case may be. A child's terrible clever at echoing and copying what goes
on around him, being just so remorseless in that matter as a parrot. They'll
pick up the good, or bad, manners or customs and the general outlook of
their elders, and be a sort of running comment upon their fathers and
mothers to the quick eye that marks 'em; for, unless they are idiots, children
will be learning, and we be teaching 'em something all the time, whether we
want to, or don't. Yet Jeremy breaks the rule, for what did he learn except to
be hard-working and God-fearing? And that unfortunately ain't enough to
make a success of life, though, no doubt, if we were all nearer Christ in
thought and deed, as well as profession, it would be."
"Yes," said Mrs. Huxam. "No child of mine, or yours, ever gave us
away, because, thank God, there was nothing to give away. But they well
might have shone a bit brighter in our mortal view. However, that's God's
affair."
She reviewed her children and took comfort in an interesting

psychological fact.
"So there they stand—Jeremy, a slight man, of good intentions, but no

driving power—and Margery—all right, in the keeping of a man of
character, though I never pretended his character was all I could wish in the
way of religion. But what shows to me the wisdom of God so amazing clear
is Margery's children. Three out of the four are full of Pulleyblank!"
"You may say they have a big pinch," admitted Barlow; "and what does
that amount to? Why, that the Lord knows a good thing when He sees it.
The Pulleyblank character has helped to make England what it is, and if the
world of men and women were flooded with it, the Chosen Few would soon
rise up to be the Chosen Many."
"We can't hope that," she answered, "because the Word says 'no'; but
Margery's two boys and her eldest girl have got character, and if they see
enough of us as time goes on, so much the better for them."
"Margery's got character too—she thinks right," declared Mr. Huxam.
"She does—I'm not judging her. Jacob Bullstone is a difficult man in

some ways, though where she's concerned I don't quarrel with him. Margery
is a very good wife; but she was always fond of pleasure in season and out;
and that's the weakness."
"Well, Bullstone ain't. By no means a pleasure-loving man; and we must

give him credit in his children also. They've been brought up to the dignity
of work. They're not spoiled."
"He'll claim the credit, no doubt; but I shan't be sorry when they're out
in the world."
"The blessing is that they've got what Jeremy never did have," said Mr.
Huxam; "and that's an idea of what they want to do. John Henry will be a
farmer, and there's no shadow of turning with him, young as he is. That's
Pulleyblank. Then Peter's for the dogs. He'll carry on his father's business.
They're not particular good scholars, so schoolmaster tells me, but they'll go
to work presently, knowing all they need to know about learning in general.
And you can get on without a lot of learning, so called, amazing well. Then
Avis is handsome and will be married in a few years. And that only leaves
Auna."
"To call a child after the river was a silly thing, and I never thought the
same of the man after he did it," said Judith.
"It was poetry," explained Barlow. "And you can't fairly blame him.
Margery loves the river and she would have it so."
"He ought to have withstood her. My wish was 'Mary.' We haven't had a
'Mary' since my aunt died."
"Auna's the living daps of what her mother was at eleven years old,"
continued Mr. Huxam. "But Jeremy's the matter now. I'm going to propose
that he sees his brother-in-law as soon as may be. Jacob Bullstone will help
him for his wife's sake, if it can be done. He's always been very well
disposed to Jeremy."
"What can he do?"
"Who knows? We never yet did ask him to lend a hand, and this may be
the appointed time."
Mrs. Huxam was doubtful.
"I shouldn't much wish to be under any obligation in that quarter," she
said.
"You won't be," he replied. "It's Jeremy who goes to the man, not you.
And Jeremy's the sort must be under obligations. He's built so. There's
plenty others like him. They give the stronger Christians a chance to shine
and practise the virtues. You must have weak members for the righteous to
show their light before men."
He stretched for his jujubes and Judith, heaving a sigh, settled down.
Jeremy Huxam was the sort of son a mother is bound to love, even
though her respect has vanished and her ambition disappeared. He had a
charming face, charming manners and a sanguine nature, easily elated and
easily cast down. He was fair, with an amber moustache, which did not
conceal a small and pretty mouth. He had large, grey eyes and a trifling
forehead, over which hung bright, curly hair. He was a sort of womanly
edition of Mr. Huxam, but taller and more gracefully built. Jeremy attached
importance to his clothes and dressed well. His voice was gentle and he
often laughed. He was exceedingly selfish; but he had the knack to please,
and had won many friends, for his own urbane sake as well as his father's.
But new enterprises, begun in hope, always sank into doubt and ended in
exasperation. He was an attractive, futile person, and would continue to be
so.
Mrs. Huxam, remembering her own mighty influence for good on her
husband, sometimes thought that, did her son take a wife, the situation
might be saved; but Barlow deprecated any such enterprise at present,
pointing out that the sort of wife Jeremy would be likely to choose was ill-
calculated to fortify his spirit, or strengthen his footsteps.
Now that opinion of the past echoed with resounding chaos upon his
parents' ears, for Jeremy Huxam returned from Plymouth on the following
day a married man. It was the second, shattering shock in the lives of
Barlow and Judith.
His father went to meet Jeremy, who emerged from a third-class

carriage on the arrival of the train, and then handed out a very fine young
woman. He beamed upon Barlow, shook him warmly by the hand and
turned to the girl who stood behind him.
"Jane," he said, "this is my dear father, and now he'll be yours."
Then he introduced his wife.
"A bit of a surprise, father. You don't remember Jane Parsons, I expect,
daughter of Mrs. Parsons up at Bullstone Farm in the old days; but she's
Jane Huxam now and has honoured me by marrying me. And, from this
great event, there's no doubt my fortunes will change."
Jane Huxam, dark and tall, with a humble expression and a loose mouth,
shook the postmaster's hand very nervously and hoped he would forgive
them.
"We've known each other a longful time," said Jeremy, "and
remembering you thought so well of the Catt family, I was pretty sure you'd
be glad to hear that Jane cared for me. And it's the turning point, and it will
be like your unfailing kindness, father, if you take us hopefully before
mother, as if you was pleased about it."
"We feel that as man and wife we shall be able to get on a lot better in
the world than separate," explained Jane. "Nothing will be difficult to me
when I think of Jeremy."
"Same here," declared her husband. "I always wanted a home-grown

wife, and we're both that fond of Brent that we shall be a lot happier here.
Jane's properly glad to be back, and I'm very wishful to find work near you
and mother. I missed you both a lot. Of course you'll say that we ought to
have told you the glad news, and you must understand Jane was set on
doing so. But the fault is entirely mine, dad."
Having said these things hastily, Jeremy went to see after the luggage,
and Mr. Huxam, who had been too astonished to do more than stare and
listen, turned to his daughter-in-law.
"And when you naturally asked my son to let us hear about this, what
reason did he give for refusing?" he inquired.
"Truth's truth, Mr. Huxam," answered Jane, twisting her wedding-ring,

"and I've told him we must speak the truth in everything, else such a woman
as Mrs. Huxam would turn against us. It's like this. I was assistant at a
pastry-cook's and, of course, I've known Jeremy since we were children,
and he often came to Bullstone Farm after his sister married Mr. Jacob. So
we met in Plymouth, and I went with Jeremy on a steamer, for one of they
moonlight excursions to the Eddystone Lighthouse. And, coming home, he
offered for me, and I said 'yes.' Then I was all for telling the great news; but
he wouldn't."
"And why wouldn't he? There must have been a reason."
"The reason was that he much feared his mother would rise up and
forbid it," said Jane. "Truth's truth, Mr. Huxam, and I won't begin my
married life with a lie, even if we have to live in a gutter. He felt cruel sure
that Mrs. Huxam wouldn't like him marrying, though he never said she
wouldn't like me myself. He felt sure that you would like me, because you
had a very high opinion of my late grandfather, Mr. Matthew Catt, and of
the Catts in general; but he weren't going to take any risks, and being a man
of tender mind, he knew it would hurt him dreadfully if his mother was to
put down her foot against the match. And he felt, rather than face such a sad
thing as that, and cause his mother pain, and suffer a lot himself, and
perhaps even be drove to break it off, which would have pretty well killed
me—in a word, Mr. Huxam, he felt 'discretion was the better part of valour.'
That was his own wise words. And so we were married quite lawful and
regular in a church, and he's got the lines. And if love can make him a
success, he'll be one in future. He's a wonderful man really."
Jeremy returned.
"Tom Bonus will bring along our two boxes," he said. "It's very
comforting to see faces you know round about you again, and I hope I
shan't be called to leave Brent no more. My next job will be tackled with all
the determination of a married man, dad; and, if it suits me, I shouldn't
wonder if I surprised you."
Mr. Huxam began to collect his shattered wits.
"I don't want no more surprises," he answered. "We'll walk round the
long way, and just let me get law and order into the situation afore we go
home. I blame you a very great deal; but that's neither here nor there. My
rule is to face facts and never waste time thinking how much nicer it would
be if they was different. You're married—that's the first thing to grasp—and
the second and more important is this that you are now going before your
mother, wife in hand, and your mother don't know what you've done."
"We've come home properly worked up to face the music," said Jeremy.
"United we stand, dad. We feel that very much indeed; and divided we
should have fallen without a doubt. But well we know that there's nothing
like the plain, unvarnished truth and——"
"Dry up and listen to me," replied his father. "As nought else will serve
but the truth in a case like this, it ain't particular wonderful to hear you say
the truth have got to come out. But why you hid the truth, you know; and
Jane's told me, so I know also. That's your weak nature, and I'm not
troubling myself about you, nor yet this woman, who may very like be too
good for you."
"Far from it, Mr. Huxam," said the young wife. "With all his faults,
Jeremy's a lot better than me."
"Don't eat humble pie, Jane," said her husband. "That's a thing that
never pays with mother. She hates for people to cringe."
"It's your mother and only your mother I'm thinking upon at present,"
continued Barlow, "and according as your mother receives this blow, so it
will be. At best it must shake her to the roots, because it shows up a very
dark and unexpected side of you. Cowards are always cunning, and it don't
astonish me so much, because it's well in keeping with your character to do
a thing behind the scenes you wouldn't dare in the open; but his mother
have always had a soft corner for him, Jane—the only soft corner she ever
allowed herself for anybody—except her Maker—and so this is going to be
an eye-opener for her. And an eye-opener, where the heart is set, always
happens to be the most painful sort."
"You're speaking without allowing for the great powers of my wife,

dad," murmured Jeremy.
"I am," admitted Mr. Huxam, "because I don't know anything about the
great powers of your wife; but I know the great powers of mine, and her
way of looking at everything; and her principles and her trust in even
Higher Powers than her own."
"Our marriage was made in Heaven, if ever there was one, I'm sure,"
ventured Jane.
"It may, or may not have been. But Heaven never meant for you to keep
it hid from Jeremy's parents; and if it was made in Heaven, Mrs. Huxam
would have been the last to try and prevent it," answered Barlow. "The
point for the minute is to break it to her, and I'm inclined to think I can do
that a lot better than my son."
"Devil doubt it!" said Jeremy with great relief. "It's like your sense to
see that, father. I quite agree. I quite agree. Supposing Jane and I go for a
nice walk and come back home to tea?"
"Do Mrs. Parsons know?" asked Mr. Huxam.
"There again," answered Jeremy. "We didn't tell her. Not but well we
know she'll be glad."
"She'll be proud," promised Jane. "It will be the proudest day of her life.
She never hoped anything like Jeremy for me, Mr. Huxam. She knew there
were a good few after me, but never thought of your son."
Mrs. Milly Parsons now dwelt in a cottage by Lydia Bridge, where the
river took a great leap before descending into the meadows and woods of
Brent. Thankfully Jeremy postponed the supreme moment of the day, left
his father to break the news, implored him to do so in a friendly spirit and
wandered off with his wife up the valley beside the river.
Then Barlow Huxam returned to his shop, called Judith from behind the
counter for a moment and prepared to tell her what had happened.
"At my wish, Judy, our son has gone up over and won't be back till tea-
time," he began, but Mrs. Huxam stopped him.
"Who is she?" asked Jeremy's mother quite quietly.
Again Barlow felt the solid earth slipping.
"You know?" he asked.
"Two boxes have come, and Bonus brought them," she answered. "I told
him only one was Jeremy's, and he said very like, but that the other
belonged to his wife."
"It's true. Wonders never cease in our family—well ordered though it
may be. The world's to the young, and a proper mess they seem likely to
make of it. You always thought that marriage would save or settle Jeremy,
and we can only pray that it will save him."
Mrs. Huxam was pale. She mopped her face quietly with a white
handkerchief and remained silent.
"Don't you take on," he begged. "Don't let it shake you."
"Does anything shake me?" she asked. "What right should I have to
stand with the Chosen Few, Barlow Huxam, if anything shook me? It's the
Lord's will and that's enough."
"There!" he said, "faltering creature that I am, I never thought of that."
"No—nor yet Jeremy. But a man don't marry a woman by chance. It had
to be, and it is. And who is she?"
"Jane Parsons—child of Milly Parsons by Lydia Bridge, who was

daughter of the late Matthew Catt of Bullstone Farm. The Lord's doing and
marvellous in our eyes, Judy."
"Things done behind our backs are often marvellous in our eyes, when
we first see them," she answered. "I shall take this as I take everything else,
Barlow, knowing where it comes from."
"It may be a blessing in disguise. She's a fine girl and will have her
mother's little bit of money. Farmer Catt left just in sight of four figures.
They'll be here to tea. They're full of resolutions."
CHAPTER II
AT RED HOUSE
Jeremy and his wife went to dinner at Red House a week after their
return home. His marriage afforded mild entertainment to those who knew
him. Some felt sanguine, others prophesied confusion and failure on a
larger scale than he had yet achieved.
As they walked through a June morning, Jeremy explained to Jane that

Jacob Bullstone was a man of affairs and might be expected to help them.
"Not so much for my sake as Margery's," he admitted; "but he's a

wonderful husband to her, and she will have been at him already I expect.
My sister's delighted that I'm married, and no doubt will feel that now is the
time for my real friends to come forward."
Jane, also of a sanguine temperament, echoed his hopes. She loved him
so much that it seemed hard to suppose the world would deny such a man
his opportunity.
As they neared Red House, they overtook an ancient man walking

slowly before them.
"It's William Marydrew," said Jane. "He was often up over at Bullstone
when Grandfather Catt lived. A proper old figure of fun."
They saluted Billy, who walked with a stick and smoked a clay pipe. He
was bent and travelled slowly. He had snow-white whiskers, which met
under his chin, and a red, crinkled face with a cheerful expression. His eyes
were small and he blinked and saw badly, for they were weak. Jane told him
that she was married, and he said he had heard about it, but other matters
had caused the fact to slip his memory.
"May you be a happy pair and find life go very suent," he hoped.
Billy seemed, however, not so cheerful as of old.
"I trust you find yourself well," said Jane.

"Very well indeed, my dear," he answered. "If I be allowed to go my
own pace and eat my own food, I don't feel a pang. Threatened blindness be
my only cloud so far as the body is concerned. By ninety I shall be so blind
as a mole. And yet what odds? Even so, I shall have had the use of my eyes
for a quarter of a century more than most folk."
"You'm a thought downcast, Mr. Marydrew," ventured Jane. "I always

remember you as a great laughter-maker in my grandfather's time."
"So I was then, and so I will be again," he promised. "I'm a funny old
blid—for why? I never look back and be naturally of a hopeful turn of
mind. But just now, owing to a very fatal accident, I'm under the weather
for the moment."
"If there's anything in the world I could do," said Jeremy.
"No, my dear, there's nothing you can do. You see I've just closed the
eyes of my only daughter. Mercy Marydrew's gone to her reward."
"Good Lord, your famous daughter dead!" exclaimed Jane.
"Died at the Cottage Hospital at half after ten," answered the old man.
"And being myself mortal, I'm under a cloud for the minute. Not for her—
not for her. There never was such a huckster in these parts as Mercy and
never a better saleswoman."
"She had a great renown in Plymouth market," declared Jane.
"Yes—a renowned woman for a spinster. And she counted to work for
another five years and then retire. But there comed a growth—one of they
cursed things that creeps into the flesh unbeknownst. You feel all right for a
bit, but death's burrowing in your vitals all the time; and then you be cut
down and wither away."
"I hope she didn't suffer much," said Jeremy.
"I hope she didn't," answered Mr. Marydrew. "I know she's left me her
savings, God bless her; but I'd a lot sooner she'd been at my death-bed, than
I'd been at hers."
"You'll meet again before so very long," murmured Jane.
"A cheering thought," admitted the old man. "Yes, we shall come
together in a few years, though I dare say that good woman's bit of money
will keep me here longer than you might suppose. She knew very well I
wouldn't waste it. I'm sorry for the parish that she's gone. The farms will
look in vain for a huckster like her. The honestest woman ever I knew, after
her mother."
"A very great loss indeed," said Jeremy.
"Yes, so it is then. You can judge a dead person pretty much by the hole
they make when they drop out. Some don't make no hole—I shan't, and I
dare say you won't; but others was so useful to the neighbours and such a
tower of strength, that when they go, you most wonder how things will be
without 'em."
"There's Owley Cot will be empty for one thing," said Jane.
"Yes, it will; and if bricks and mortar could be sorry for themselves, I
dare say her house would grieve."
They had come to a cottage near Shipley Bridge, the home of Mr.
Marydrew.
"The funeral moves on Monday at noon," he said, "and there will be a

pretty good rally of neighbours I expect."
"Everybody of any account will go," declared Jeremy. "She was a most
popular woman."
"Them that respect themselves did ought to go," answered Billy, "let
alone them that respected her. And if you're going to Red House, break the
news and tell Jacob I'll be pleased to hear his sympathy. I'm very old for a
blow like this, and 'tis no good pretending I don't feel cruel cast down,
because I do."
"And it will get worse, when you grasp it," foretold Jane. "I know it
will."
"It's got to get worse afore it gets better," admitted Billy. "I'm quite
prepared to face that. And tell Jacob to look me up in my misfortune if you
please. He won't need to be told twice."
They left him, entered a grassy plateau beside the river, where towered
ruins of old clay works, and so proceeded toward Red House.
They talked concerning Mr. Marydrew's loss and the familiar figure of
his busy daughter. Then they noticed a boy fishing in the river. He was a
sturdy, hatless youngster clad in patched, grey tweeds, with a mourning
band on his left arm.
"That's John Henry," said Jeremy, "Margery's eldest."
"What's he got a mourning band on for?" asked Jane, and he explained

that Jacob's mother had died during the previous winter.
They passed into the shadowy stillness of the fir wood and soon
emerged before Red House. The contours of the place were unchanged,
save for that gradual growth of tree and shrub which escapes the human
eye; but in certain particulars there were alterations; the old severity of
outline was gone; there was less tidiness and more beauty, for there had
come children and flowers. Margery loved flowers and the plantings of her
first wedded year, greatly prospering, now climbed Red House to its roof
and increased on the river banks. Where roses and bright blossoms could
grow, she had planted them; and they had passed over the river also and
mantled the borders. They intruded into the vegetable patches and so
greatly increased that Jacob sometimes grumbled and uprooted. Where
Margery might set a climbing rose, a tiger lily, a lupin or a larkspur, she had
done so. There were clumps of chrysanthemums for autumn, and the grass
and river sides were sowed with daffodil and crocus for the spring. This
colour flashed in stars and sprays upon the hedges and by the paths, while
in the little garden, once a plat of grass and no more, now opened many
flower beds that broke the green. Even to the kennels she had gone and
roses now hid many of the iron bars. She declared that her passion was for
children, flowers and company; and of these she lacked not the children, or
the bloom.
Margery, in a white gown and a dark blue sunbonnet, met her brother
and his wife and kissed them both. Now she was thirty-four and a woman of
fine presence, yet slight as in her girlhood and delicately fashioned. She
was healthy, but not physically strong. Her eyes told no secrets but gazed
untroubled at the world. None wholly enjoyed her confidence and she spoke
ever of her good fortune, never concerning any thorn that might be
conceded. Thus she was believed to be a woman wholly happy, and indeed
enjoyed her share of happiness. The delight of a secret had lately lent sauce
to existence; for she, and she alone, was in Jeremy's confidence and had
heard of his betrothal and marriage.
She greeted them with kindly laughter, chid them for a brainless couple
and hoped that her brother would at last find work worthy of a married man
and within his power to accomplish.
Jeremy felt no doubt of it. He prattled to Avis and Auna, his little nieces,
while Margery turned her attention to Jane.
"I shall always care a lot for you," she said frankly, "first for your
husband's sake, then for a reason you forget, but I do not. I mind you as a
little one fifteen years ago, when my husband made holiday before I was
married, and took me to Bullstone Farm. That was a great day in my life—
my first treat with Jacob."
"I remember you very well," answered Jane. "I've told Jeremy I've never
forgot you, and I had a bit of your wedding-cake, that mother brought home
from the Huxams.
"And what about your wedding-cake?"
"We didn't have anything like that. Jeremy was so properly anxious to
get the deed done that we rushed it. Mrs. Huxam's forgiven us, because she
says we were in Higher Hands, and that if the Lord hadn't wanted it to
happen, it wouldn't have; but my mother feels it was a good bit of a slight to
keep it dark, and thinks Jeremy was undutiful and didn't pay me enough
respect. But what does it all matter?"
"Not a bit," declared Jeremy's sister. "He's as good as gold, though a bit
faint-hearted. You'll have to make him take himself more serious, Jane."
John Henry interrupted them. He returned with two small trout, which
his mother faithfully promised to eat; and then came Peter from the kennels.
"They are praying for the holidays to come," said Margery. "My boys
both hate their books you must know; and Jacob don't care over-much,
because they're both so clear in their minds what they're wishful to be."
"That's a great thing," said Jane.
"It is then."
Peter resembled his father, while John Henry was said to be like his
grandfather Bullstone. Both, so Jacob held, were true Bullstones—strong,
self-reliant and determined. They grew fast, worked harder at home than at
school, and longed for the time when they might begin life seriously—the
elder on the land, the younger at his father's business.
"Peter's got the love of dogs in him on both sides," explained Peter's
mother, "for I always did love the creatures, and so does Jacob; and John
Henry loves farming."
Her husband, for whom they waited, appeared, and calling Jeremy, who
strolled in the garden with his nieces, they went in to dinner.
Jacob Bullstone had grown stouter, but he was very active still and did
the work of a man of fifty without sparing himself. His dark hair began to
grizzle and his face showed lines, but he preserved his health, lived in the
old way and as yet indulged none of the temptations of middle life.
He chaffed Jeremy, but was in an amiable mood.
"You haven't changed him yet I see," he said to Jane, while he

sharpened a knife and prepared to carve a round of beef.
"I had to bring Auna and Avis a present of course," declared Jeremy.
"They believe in their uncle, they do; and you've got to encourage people
who believe in you."
The girls had shown their father two little brooches.
"Well, we shall see rare sights now no doubt," said Jacob. "With Jane
here to guide the helm, you'll soon astonish us. How did your mother-in-law
welcome you, Jane?"
"Like the wonderful Christian she is," answered Jeremy's wife. "Kissed
me on the forehead and said a few Bible words."
For a considerable time Jeremy and Jane had to listen to the affairs of
their prosperous relations. They were good listeners and praised all they
heard. Of the children only Avis talked. She was a bold, handsome girl full
of self-confidence. Then Margery bade her sons declare their ambitions and
Jacob tried to make Auna talk, but she was very shy. She sat by her father, a
thin, dark maiden, with beautiful eyes and delicate little hands. Jacob
devoted a good deal of his time to her and tempted her to eat. They
whispered together sometimes. Margery watched them under her lids,
smiling. She knew that Auna was dearer to her husband than the other three
children put together, and, in secret to her alone, he did not deny it.
"She's you again," he would say.
But Margery was not jealous for the boys. Them she set highest, and of
them John Henry came first.
When the meal was done, the children departed and Jacob rambled on
concerning them until Margery brought up the subject of her brother.
"Now let's talk about these young people," she said. "For though you're
thirty, Jeremy, you're terrible young still—hardly wife-old, I should have
reckoned."
"I'm young in heart and old in experience," vowed Jeremy. "I've got to a
pitch when I know very well what I can't do, and am set on finding
something I can."
"I was talking to Adam Winter about you but yesterday," continued
Margery. "He's a man in a small way, but sensible and——"
Jacob interrupted her.
"Sensible no doubt. All your friends are sensible I'm sure; but your
brother's come to hear me I believe."
Margery did not answer. Indeed she did not speak again; but she smiled
to herself and Jacob also smiled. It was an unreal smile on both faces.
"I'm not going to do anything on the land," explained Jeremy. "I proved
pretty clearly five years ago that I wasn't cut out for the land."
Jacob chaffed him again.
"Lord knows what you are cut out for—excepting a failure," he said.
"Granted," answered Jeremy; "but that was when I went into life single-
handed. Lots of chaps are failures before they are married; then, afterwards,
they shine out and surprise everybody."
"I've had you in mind. Old Miss Marydrew is going home pretty fast
and she'll leave a gap. I don't say you can fill it, and single-handed you
certainly could not; but along with Jane you might."
Jeremy looked at Jane.
"If I hadn't forgot!" he said. "We met Billy Marydrew back-along,

outside his house, and he was just come from his daughter. She's dead, and
he was very wisht about it."
"Dead!" said Margery. "Poor Mercy gone!"
"Yes, and William wanted it to be told here, and hoped that Mr.
Bullstone would step over," added Jane.
"You ought to have told me before," declared Jacob. "That man is a dear
old friend of mine. The sanest, biggest-hearted soul that ever I knew, and
much to me ever since I was a child. He'll think I'm hanging back, just
because you bird-witted people forgot to tell me."
He rose, but spoke again before he departed.
"Mercy Marydrew was a huckster. She went round in her little cart and
collected butter, eggs and poultry from the farms for Plymouth market. And
to market she went with her baskets, every Friday of her life for thirty
years. Now think of it, Jeremy. How if you did her job round about, and
Jane went to market."
"To drive about in the open air! The dream of my life!" said Jeremy.
"You always say it's the dream of your life, when a new opening is
found for you," laughed his sister.
"Think of it seriously," urged Jacob. "This also means that Owley Cot,
my little house by Owley Farm, is on my hands, and there you'll be in the
heart of your job with the farms all around you. But it's up to Jane more
than you. Whether she'll make a good market-woman is the question. Now I
must be gone for an hour and see that poor chap. This will hit him harder
than he thinks for. I'll be back before you leave."
"I can't find words to thank you," declared Jeremy, "but I'll show it in
deeds, Jacob. To have my own trap and drive about in the open among my
neighbours! It's almost too good to be true."
They turned to Margery and praised her husband when he was gone.
"It's wonderful how life opens out after you're married," said Jane.
"It does," admitted Margery. "It opens but, as you say, Jane, and shows
you all sorts of things you never dreamed. And it also shows how every
little bit of happiness carries its own worm in the bud. However, you'll find
that out for yourself. You know Owley Cot well enough of course?"
"Loved it ever since I was a child," answered Jane. "Mr. Elvin's old
mother lived there; and when she died, a game-keeper and his wife was
there for a bit; then Miss Marydrew rented it from your husband."
"And nobody ever had a better tenant. She did her part and Jacob did
his, and I did mine, which was to plant a lot of roses and nice flowers in the
garden. You'll find it perfect, for she had a trick to make everything about
her look flame new all the time. A very clever woman and Joe Elvin will
miss her, for she was one of the hopeful ones, like her old father, and
cheered the man up. He's a grizzler—born so, yet no call to be. He's had his
share of luck and Jacob says he's pretty snug, but his health's bad."
"I remember Owley Cot," declared Jeremy. "I used to go up to Owley, to

kill rats with my ferret when I was a boy, and I was very friendly with Joe's
son, Robert."
"Robert's going to make a better man than Joe," said Margery. "A very
nice boy, and seeing his father's so melancholy, he's fought shy of it, and
takes a bright view. Jacob says he'll be a tip-top farmer presently."
"Joe used to be kind to me, because he respected mother such a lot—

and father," declared Jeremy.
"He's kind to everybody in his mournful way," answered Margery; "but

he'd always sooner go to a funeral than a wedding, and when he opens the
paper of a morning, so Robert tells me, he always says, 'And who are the
lucky ones?' Then you find he's reading the deaths. Yet nobody would hate
dying more than him."
Jeremy was full of his prospects. He always expatiated over any new
scheme and saw manifold possibilities.
"Of course I'm the last to build castles in the air, or anything like that,"
he declared, "but, all the same, if only Jacob can lend a hand here with the
house and a trap and a horse, he certainly won't regret it. An energetic man
like me, with a good horse, should be able to do far greater rounds than
poor Miss Marydrew, and I'd work up a connection among the farms for
miles and miles round. Then, luckily Jane is used to a shop, and in the
market she would do wonders and get all Miss Marydrew's old custom with
a lot added. In course of time—probably a very short time—I should pay
Jacob's kindness back with large interest, you may be certain. In fact the
idea hasn't a weak spot that I can see."
"There's got to be a new huckster for certain," said Jane. "It's not man's
work as a rule; but I've known men to do it for their wives."
"It's man's work the way I shall do it," promised Jeremy. "And I
shouldn't wonder if I couldn't beat up a good few customers in Plymouth
myself when they hear of this. I made a lot of nice friends there."
"Uncle Lawrence might come to you," suggested Margery. She referred

to her mother's brother, Mr. Lawrence Pulleyblank, an owner of fishing
trawlers and a man after his sister's own heart.
Jeremy's face fell.
"I'm sorry to say it, but Uncle Lawrence doesn't like me very much. You
see he got me that last billet, that failed through no fault of mine; and after
he found I was giving up and coming home, he said some strong things. But
you are all the world to Uncle Lawrence, Margery, and when he hears of
this new and much more important step I'm taking, no doubt, if you
dropped a word, he'd buy his butter and eggs and so on off me and Jane."
"I'm sorry you fell out with him," said Margery.
"I didn't—I didn't," answered her brother. "I don't fall out with anybody.
It was his natural disappointment that I didn't shine in the artificial manure
works. He'll always say it was because I was weak and couldn't stand the
smells. He hasn't got a nose himself, else he wouldn't live on the Barbican.
But I respect him very much and I hope he'll live to respect me. He's
looking forward to your visit as usual."
Lawrence Pulleyblank, an old bachelor, regarded Margery as his special

joy. She visited him every year, and always took a child with her.
"It's the turn of Peter," she said, "and we go down in August."

Five Modes of Scepticism Sextus Empiricus and The Agrippan Modes Stefan Sienkiewicz Full Chapter

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Five Modes of Scepticism: Sextus

Empiricus and the Agrippan Modes

Five Modes of Scepticism

OXFORD PHILOSOPHICAL MONOGRAPHS

For my parents, Richard and Naz—for everything.

Regressive Reciprocity 108

This book owes much to many. My interest in Sextus Empiricus was

Moving from individuals to collectives, I would like to express my

This book has as its focus a particular type of philosophical scepticism

    

Unless I say otherwise, by ‘sceptic’ I should be taken to mean Pyrrhonian

has been a perennial source of reﬂection for epistemologists. In the words

⁹ Bonjour (1985), p. 18.

    

    

basis of those modes. The starting point for my response to these

¹⁷ Morison (2014), §3.5.2.

I begin, in Chapter 1, with the mode of disagreement. After some

    

disagreement and reﬂects on the fact that undecided disagreement is

modiﬁed version is a dogmatic version of the mode, for, on Barnes’s

    

far considered rely on a number of theoretical assumptions which a

How does the mode of disagreement give rise to the suspension of

Some Features of Disagreement

¹ Cf. Barnes (1990a), p. 8 n. 8; Janacek (1962), pp. 70–1.

    

Regarding the ﬁrst question he claims that diaphōnia is a relation which

    

he was operating with a conception of diaphōnia that restricted the relata

³ My thanks to the anonymous reader for prompting me to clarify this point.

To spell out in greater detail what it is for two claims to conﬂict

    

accepting P₁ conﬂicts with rejecting P₁; and suspending judgement as to

¹⁰ See Barnes (1990a), p. 15.

therefore have a disagreement in attitude. Similarly, if (*) is true and

¹¹ Bueno (2013), p. 29 makes a similar point.

    

attitude. At any rate, however these three kinds of disagreement relate to

Here Barnes suggests that we have a trilateral disagreement between

¹² For convenience I leave out Xeniades.

       ? 

Now, given the way in which Barnes deﬁnes ‘disagreement in opinion’

Is the Sceptic Part of the Disagreement?

    

disagreement between the endorsers of P, of Q, and of R. There is a

       ? 

It is important to be clear that in suspending judgement over whether

    

However, it is important to note that it is perfectly possible for a

Disagreement and Undecided Disagreement

It will be noted immediately that here we have a reference not only to

    

necessary precursor to elucidating how disagreement is connected to

    

dispute that it is in principle undecidable amounts to the claim that there

than another. To signal this difference I shall speak of disagreements

    

raises thorny exegetical and philosophical issues.³⁰ However, I set these to

has in mind something like (EPD).³² Furthermore, (EPD) seems true.

³² See Barnes (1990a), pp. 22–3.

    

To bolster (IPD)’s plausibility we might therefore revise it to some-