What if inquiry does not settle the dispute?

An argument after dinner

The plates have been cleared, but Nadia’s guests are still arguing. One says that living well depends on using judgment well, whatever happens to us. Another asks how a life overwhelmed by suffering could count as good merely because someone acts honorably. The first points out that an admirable choice can cost us comfort; the second agrees, but thinks that comfort and suffering must still matter to the goodness of a life.

Nadia understands more than she did before dinner, yet she still cannot settle the disagreement. Must she choose a side, or conclude that the question can never be answered?

Sextus Empiricus, probably writing in the second or third century CE, describes a third response. His Outlines of Pyrrhonism presents a way of continuing to inquire while withholding judgment. Pyrrhonism takes its name from Pyrrho, an earlier thinker, but this lesson follows Sextus’s account, not every ancient form of skepticism. [1] [2]

Holding judgment open

Sextus begins by distinguishing three kinds of inquirer: those who think they have found the truth, those who declare it beyond discovery and those who are still searching. His skeptic belongs to the third group. Epochē, suspension of judgment, means withholding both affirmation and denial about the matter under examination. [1]

The difference shows in what Nadia might say. “I cannot yet decide whether virtue is sufficient for living well” leaves the inquiry open. “Nobody can ever know whether it is sufficient” makes a further claim about the limits of knowledge, and that claim needs support too. Failing to answer a question does not establish that it has no discoverable answer.

Suspension also differs from never having considered the question. Nadia has attended to competing reasons, and her uncertainty comes after examination, not before it. The philosopher Benjamin Morison emphasizes this active character of skeptical inquiry. [2]

When reasons balance

Sextus describes a capacity to set appearances and arguments against one another. When neither side appears more convincing, he calls their strength equal: equipollence. Suspension follows this apparent balance, and he qualifies even that description as a report of how things seem to the investigator at present. [1]

Such balance does not make two contrary claims equally true, and the mere existence of two speakers does not make their reasons equally strong. Nadia would need to examine what each argument assumes and what it establishes. The dinner illustrates the problem; it does not prove that its arguments balance.

Recall the distinction in What does a reason actually support?: premises are the reasons offered, and the conclusion is what they are meant to establish. A valid deduction guarantees its conclusion if its premises are true, and a sound argument is valid and has true premises. Support can also be defeasible, giving good reason to expect something while allowing that further evidence could change our view. Sextus presses a further question. What gives us grounds to accept the premises themselves?

What could settle the disagreement?

Suppose Nadia appeals to an expert. Why trust this expert? Perhaps because their account is reasonable. But if we know it is reasonable only because the same expert endorses it, the support runs in a circle.

Several of the five modes, a group of skeptical challenges, press difficulties of this kind. A disputed claim calls for a reason, and that reason may call for another, indefinitely. Stopping at an unsupported assumption does not settle the dispute for someone who questions it, and circular support brings us back to what needed support in the first place. [1]

These challenges invite replies. Perhaps some starting points need no further proof, or several judgments can support one another without merely assuming what is disputed. Such replies need a defense of their own, but the request for another reason has not, by itself, proved that no belief can be justified. The skeptic can go on to examine each proposed reply and its opponents. Inquiry has become more demanding; it has not ended.

Living while the question stays open

Nadia is thirsty. Does she need a final theory of knowledge before she can drink?

Sextus distinguishes what appears from what someone claims about its underlying nature. Honey tastes sweet to him, and he need not deny that experience while he questions whether sweetness belongs to honey by nature. [1]

He describes ordinary activity as guided by four things: our natural capacities to perceive and think, needs such as hunger and thirst, inherited laws and customs, and the skills we have learned. A skeptic can drink, join a customary observance or practice a craft while withholding the disputed theoretical commitment. [1]

That answer raises questions of its own. Does skillful action already involve beliefs about the world? Scholars disagree about how far Sextus excludes belief. And if a custom is cruel, is following it enough? Explaining how a skeptic stays active does not by itself show how a skeptic should challenge an injustice. [2]

Peace is not a proof

Ataraxia, freedom from mental disturbance, also mattered in the previous lesson. Sextus says that his seekers first hoped to gain it by settling disputed questions, but tranquility came unexpectedly, through suspension. He tells of a painter who was struggling to depict the foam at a horse’s mouth. The painter gave up and threw his sponge at the picture, and the mark it left produced the effect his brush had failed to achieve. [1]

His skeptic still feels cold, thirst and pain. The relief on offer concerns the further disturbance added by judgments about what is good or bad by nature. It is no promise that suspending judgment makes hardship painless, or that anyone can become tranquil on command.

There is a further tension. If an investigator wants every argument to meet an equally convincing opponent, can they remain open to finding a better answer? Morison describes disagreement about what continuing inquiry means here. The relation between inquiry and tranquility needs examining, and feeling relieved would not prove a philosophical claim true. [2]

Try the distinction

Imagine a clockmaker who says, “I have examined rival theories about what time is and cannot choose between them. I can still repair this clock using the skills I learned.” A friend replies, “Then you know that nobody can understand time, and you must think every method of repair is equally good.” Identify two mistakes in the reply. What difficult question about the clockmaker’s activity remains?

Read a possible response

The friend makes two unwarranted leaps. Withholding judgment between the theories does not establish that nobody can understand time, and the theories’ apparent balance does not make all repair methods equally convincing or effective. Sextus allows activity guided by learned skills without settling disputed theoretical questions. The difficult question is whether using those skills already requires beliefs of the kind his skepticism excludes. His account answers the charge that a skeptic cannot act; it does not make every problem about action disappear.

Understanding and living well: an optional checkpoint

How can giving reasons help us understand the world and live well? Across these eight lessons, questions about nature have led into questions about knowledge, justice and conduct. Change and continuity raised the question of what an explanation must account for, and Socratic examination asked whether our beliefs fit together. Aristotle’s causes separated different explanatory questions, while justice and flourishing asked which arrangements and activities deserve to count as good. These inquiries connect, but they do not add up to one agreed philosophy.

Two concepts sharpen the connection. From Plato’s account of education comes dialectic, which examines the assumptions an argument rests on and seeks a first principle that needs no further assumption, because getting an answer right still leaves us asking why it is right. From Sextus comes suspension of judgment, which withholds affirmation and denial when opposing reasons appear equally convincing, keeping inquiry open without declaring knowledge impossible. Both make us examine what supports a claim. The Platonic proposal, though, seeks a justified starting point for understanding, while Sextus describes how inquiry can continue when we have no verdict to offer.

The stakes include how we live. Aristotle’s flourishing, Epicurus’s pleasure and Epictetus’s good use of choice give different accounts of a good life, and their shared concern with conduct does not make those accounts equivalent. That leaves a question none of these lessons settles: how much do we need to understand before we can act responsibly? Remember, too, what kind of evidence we have been reading. These lessons draw on selected translations and interpretations; Plato’s portrayal of Socrates is not a verified transcript, and early Greek fragments survive within later writers’ works. Comparing the arguments does not remove those differences in the evidence.

For an optional case, return to the town distributing water. Its council says, “A well-ordered town is a just town. Everyone has an assigned role, so our distribution is just.” Yet families from one street still receive no water. A critic replies, “We cannot settle what justice is, so we cannot do anything.” Use dialectic and suspension to examine both claims. What remains unresolved, and what limits our comparison?

Read a checkpoint response

Dialectic invites the council to examine its starting assumption: why should assigning roles establish justice? Knowing how the system runs has not answered the families’ claim to water, and raising the question begins an inquiry without reaching Plato’s first principle. The critic goes too far in the other direction. An unsettled account of justice does not show that action is impossible, since Sextus allows ordinary activity guided by needs and learned skills; that answers the claim that a skeptic must be inactive, though it leaves the harder question of how to challenge an unjust custom. Nor does mere disagreement establish that the arguments are equally convincing. The problem of justifying the distribution remains open, and neither concept supplies a complete water policy. As for the sources, this is an original comparison of selected passages, not an ancient exchange in which the thinkers addressed this town.

Carry this forward

At Nadia’s table, the Epicurean examines desires in relation to a pleasant life, the Stoic examines judgment and the good use of choice, and the Pyrrhonian examines their competing claims and may withhold judgment when the reasons appear balanced. All three practices can change a life, but that similarity does not settle their disagreements.

The module closes on a question it has kept open throughout: what do our reasons entitle us to affirm, and how should we live when they leave us undecided? The next module follows some of the ways later thinkers reinterpret these arguments, beginning with Unity, intellect and the life of the soul, where Plotinus asks what might explain the unity of things and the possibility of understanding them. His account gives us a new set of reasons to examine.

Sources and limits

[1] Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Book I, translated as Pyrrhonic Sketches in Mary Mills Patrick’s Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism, Deighton Bell & Co. and George Bell & Sons, 1899; Project Gutenberg ebook 17556, for the accounts of suspension, equipollence, the five modes and skeptical action. I.1–35, I.164–177 and I.196–209 were read completely. The Roman numeral identifies the book and the following numbers identify its sections, not course lessons or print pages. The sections cover:

• Inquiry, suspension and skeptical expressions: sections 1–15.
• Appearances and ordinary activity: sections 19–24.
• Tranquility and opposition: sections 25–35.
• The five modes: sections 164–177.
• Qualifications of the skeptical expressions: sections 196–209.

The title and the preface’s account of the Greek editions and numbering were checked. No omission marker or attached note appears in these selections. This is an English web transcription: no source-image or Greek-text comparison was made, and the entire book was not read. Patrick’s separate critical thesis is not adopted as Sextus’s own account.

[2] Benjamin Morison, “Sextus Empiricus”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, revised 12 March 2026, for specialist interpretation of skeptical inquiry, belief and tranquility. The opening overview, the complete §§3.1–3.3 and the introduction to §3.4, ending before §3.4.1, were read; the whole entry and the works it discusses were not read in full. Quotations from another translation within the entry do not amount to an independent translation comparison.

The continuation of Nadia’s dinner, the expert example, the clockmaker and the explanatory response are original teaching material; the honey and painter examples come from Sextus. The final comparison draws on the evidence recorded in Pleasure, virtue and what is up to us. No specialist or learner review, original-language collation or learner timing is claimed.

The checkpoint revisits the selected arguments in lessons 19–25 and their recorded sources, and each earlier lesson’s translation and interpretation limits still apply. Its water case extends the original example in Justice in a person and a city; it is teaching material, not a historical event.