PHIL 203 Lecture Notes - Lecture 23: Pyrrhonism, Academic Skepticism, Empirical Evidence
3 May 2018
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History of Ancient Philosophy
11.28 Lecture Notes – Epicurus and Epicureanism
Review of Letter to Menoeceus:
- 1. All good and bad stem from sense experience
- 2. Death is privation of sense experience
- (C) Death is nothing to us
- Rid ourselves of concerns that might upset a peaceful or serene state of mind or stop us
from feeling pleasure
- Ataraxia = freedom of disturbance; goal of Epicureanism and actually just all Hellenistic
philosophy
- Assumptions about the soul? – that there is no afterlife
- Source of value = sense experience
- Sense experience
Epiurus’s ie aout skeptiis
- Skepticism – two branches – academic skepticism and pyrrhonian skepticism
- Aadei skeptiis: he a skepti took oer Plato’s Aade
o Takes a more extreme view than Pyrrhonian skepticism
o Take the view that we know nothing
o Self-refuting nature of academic skepticism
o Pg 34, Principle 23 – how can skeptics make the claim about knowledge being
impossible – no grounds to refer to truth or falsity since you doubt all your sense
perceptions
o Lucretius builds on this argument
o How to respond on the part of the skeptics?
▪ Criterion of truth is reason and not sense experience
▪ Says that the senses cannot be refuted
- Pyrrhonian skepticism: No believe will be able to be rationally supported or justified in a
conclusive way (fallibilism)
o Always room for doubt
o We can never legitimately have certainty
o Knowledge might be possible
o Descartes was an infalliblist
- Epicurus – the good is identified with pleasure – he was a hedonist
o Pleasure will always be the normative requirement for principles he gives
o Proper pleasures for us to pursue are ones from nature
o Nature gives us a guide, the senses, to identify what those natural pleasures are
o Purpose of the natural sciences – teach us about the natural world that will
eliiate a troules e a hae eause e do’t ko stuff aout the
world
o His theory of the natural world = atomic theory
o Atomic theory leads to a disturbing consequence
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