Skip to main content

Aenesidemus of Knossos and the ontology of doubts



I am in a small conference in honor of Porchat, a Brazilian Neopyrronist. I’m proposing (in my paper today) a reading of Neopyrronism. I maintain that common sense claims (together with some commonly accepted scientific theories or commonly known philosophical disputes) can be accepted by the sceptic only in order to fuel his exercise of doubting. The Neopyrronist takes something like the opposite of a speculative flight. She accepts a basis of science or common sense in order to doubt further. The goal is to maximize doubts. The basis (the Neopyrronist phenomenon) is contingent, it can be anything because any determination can enable further exercises of doubt to take off. Instead of flying towards broader vistas, the Neopyrronist strives to gain further and deeper doubts. She aims to apply her strategies for epokhé further and, in that sense, harbors an atitude where doubts are more worth seeking than belief. She craves to make more use of her weapons that include her doubting machines - say, the modes of Aenesidemus and Agrippa which enables her to suspend the judgement over all kinds of issues. She engages in a flight towards the heights of suspended judgement. It is a speculative flight, but towards a proliferated landscape of doubts and uncertainties. This Neopyrronist is a kind of the opposite of the knowledge seeker - or rather the devil of any knowledge seeker: she aims at spreading consistent and well-argued ignorance.

I contrasted this version of Neopyrronism with my ontology of doubts. Surely, the sceptic can challenge the ontologist of doubt by questioning the belief that there are doubts out there. The sceptic suspends judgement concerning the ontological status of doubts (whether they are out there, in here or in a special substance, a res cogitans). The sceptic is noncommittal concerning doubts and determinations and
takes the ontologist of doubt to work with a fixed determination, a fact of the matter concerning doubts. (The supposed reply of the ontologist of doubt is that there would be no alternative to either an ontology of doubt and an ontology of fact and, facing this tertium non datur, it is better to embrace the former). The sceptic then calls the ontologist of doubt to a battle in open field where the nature of doubts (and determinations) is also there, up for grabs. Both act as if they should look for doubts - the ontologist because she seeks knowledge, the sceptic because she seeks to dismantle all sorts of knowledge claims. The Neopyrronist makes use of some determination to unveil further doubts.

Concerning the ontology of doubts, I was told that Aenesidemus of Knossos (one of the classical sources of sceptic modes, mentioned by Sextus) moved on to follow Heraclitus and the polemos. Aenesidemus became then somehow an ontologist of doubts. Maybe then he is the missing link between the sceptic challenge on justification and the Heraclitean challenge on determination. (See photos above)




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hunky, Gunky and Junky - all Funky Metaphysics

Been reading Bohn's recent papers on the possibility of junky worlds (and therefore of hunky worlds as hunky worlds are those that are gunky and junky - quite funky, as I said in the other post). He cites Whitehead (process philosophy tends to go hunky) but also Leibniz in his company - he wouldn't take up gunk as he believed in monads but would accept junky worlds (where everything that exists is a part of something). Bohn quotes Leibniz in On Nature Itself «For, although there are atoms of substance, namely monads, which lack parts, there are no atoms of bulk, that is, atoms of the least possible extension, nor are there any ultimate elements, since a continuum cannot be composed out of points. In just the same way, there is nothing greatest in bulk nor infinite in extension, even if there is always something bigger than anything else, though there is a being greatest in the intensity of its perfection, that is, a being infinite in power.» And New Essays: ... for there is nev...
1 comment
Read more

Talk on ultrametaphysics

 This is the text of my seminar on ultrametaphysics on Friday here in Albuquerque. An attempt at a history of ultrametaphysics in five chapters Hilan Bensusan I begin with some of the words in the title. First, ‘ultrametaphysics’, then ‘history’ and ‘chapters’. ‘Ultrametaphysics’, which I discovered that in my mouth could sound like ‘ autre metaphysics’, intends to address what comes after metaphysics assuming that metaphysics is an endeavor – or an epoch, or a project, or an activity – that reaches an end, perhaps because it is consolidated, perhaps because it has reached its own limits, perhaps because it is accomplished, perhaps because it is misconceived. In this sense, other names could apply, first of all, ‘meta-metaphysics’ – that alludes to metaphysics coming after physics, the books of Aristotle that came after Physics , or the task that follows the attention to φύσις, or still what can be reached only if the nature of things is considered. ‘Me...
Post a Comment
Read more

Memory assemblages

My talk here at Burque last winter I want to start by thanking you all and acknowledging the department of philosophy, the University of New Mexico and this land, as a visitor coming from the south of the border and from the land of many Macroje peoples who themselves live in a way that is constantly informed by memory, immortality and their ancestors, I strive to learn more about the Tiwas, the Sandia peoples and other indigenous communities of the area. I keep finding myself trying to find their marks around – and they seem quite well hidden. For reasons to do with this very talk, I welcome the gesture of directing our thoughts to the land where we are; both as an indication of our situated character and as an archive of the past which carries a proliferation of promises for the future. In this talk, I will try to elaborate and recommend the idea of memory assemblage, a central notion in my current project around specters and addition. I begin by saying that I ...
Post a Comment
Read more