November 8th to 11th, 2004

Miss Ophelia Deroy
PhD Student - University of Paris XII, France

PEIRCE AND ANCIENT SKEPTICISMS

ABSTRACT
Peirce refuses violently to be considered as a skeptic, when he is accused to be one, whereas he expresses his great satisfaction to be said "[un]sure of [his] own conclusions" (CP 1.10). Doesn't he also defend a form of radical fallibilism which, as wrote Christopher Hookway, "escapes skepticism only by a crucial hair's breath"? Can't we so remember those logical sorites paradoxes, which Peirce and modern logician of vagueness often quote, that ask what hair is sufficient to pass from baldness to hairiness, and ask what distinctive feature, added to an initial skepticism, is sufficient to escape from it?
The subject has been largely debated and would still deserve an interesting discussion but it is not our point. The purpose of our study will rather be to clarify what should be held as skepticism and what could Peirce mean by this term, when he refuses or, as he sometimes does, accept it.
The first point is to depart from the pejorative sense of the word: as shows the well-known dialogue between Hylas and Philonous written by Berkeley, it is a very rhetorical topos to accuse the adverse philosophical position, to be either dogmatic or skeptical; thus, we must be very prudent in our use of such a polemical vocabulary. Applied principally to Peirce, it is a narrow escape that we confuse doubt and skepticism: as Victor Brochard said, in a study on of 1884, which is still a reference today, the doubt doesn't make the skeptic.
"The true skeptic isn't someone who doubts deliberately, and theorize about his doubts; it's neither someone who believes nothing and says that nothing is true, which is another equivocal acceptance of the term : it is someone who, deliberately and for general reasons, doubts everything except the phenomenon, and keeps on doubting. "
The pertinence of this last definition will have to be qualified, before being compared with Peirce's philosophy. It seems indeed necessary to distinguish between different kinds of skepticism, and every scholar acquainted with Greek philosophy knows that Pyrrho must not be mistaken neither with Carneades nor with Sextus Empiricus.
The historical inquiry therefore seems to give the occasion to qualify the term of skepticism and to specify its links and difference with other philosophical labels, such as phenomenism, probabilism, empirism, relativism, or positivism, which are also applied to characterize Peirce's philosophy or pragmatism in general.
The historical clarification, by exploring the variants of epistemological and practical postures of Skeptics, allows one to distinguish between different senses in the accusation raised against Peirce, besides the global accusation to praise uncertainty. It can also underline different - and changing - answers to destructive skeptical arguments, or different relationships between Peirce and such or such kind of skepticism. It will be the occasion to review, from an historical perspective, the studies and judgements made on skepticism in the nineteenth century, and to stress a particular admiration for the New Academy, and then to complete Max Fisch's admirable work on Greek influences in Peirce's philosophy, with the study of Peirce's scholar knowledge of Ancient Skepticism.
Besides this terminological worry, the rooting of the debate in Antiquity, that Peirce both knew and frequented, aims at giving its full consistence to a perspective often considered as the adversary of philosophers, or at least, as a negative and temporary experience that is necessary for them. Do we have to defend ourselves against skepticism or to recognize some skeptical prudence, to borrow a Greek term that suggests adequately that the problem extends from theoretical aspects to practical problems? In each of the skeptical position, from Pyrrhonian conformism to Sextus' proto-positivism, there is a positive heart of doctrine, which could, with sufficient change, argue with pragmatism and its common interpretations.

Center for Pragmatism Studies
Philosophy Graduate Program
Departament of Philosophy
Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo - Brazil