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Outlines of Pyrrhonism

Sextus Empiricus · Capítulo 7. Chapter VII.—Does The Sceptic Dogmatize?

Capítulo 7. Chapter VII.—Does The Sceptic Dogmatize?

[1.7.13] When we say that the Sceptic refrains from dogmatizing we do not use the term ‟dogma,” as some do, in the broader sense of ‟approval of a thing” (for the Sceptic gives assent to the feelings which are the necessary results of sense-impressions, and he would not, for example, say when feeling hot or cold ‟I believe that I am not hot or cold”); but we say that ‟he does not dogmatize” using ‟dogma” in the sense, which some give it, of ‟assent to one of the non-evident objects of scientific inquiry;” for the Pyrrhonean philosopher assents to nothing that is non-evident.

[1.7.14] Moreover, even in the act of enunciating the Sceptic formulae[7]concerning things non-evident—such as the formula ‟No more (one thing than another),” or the formula ‟I determine nothing,” or any of the others which we shall presently mention,—he does not dogmatize. For whereas the dogmatizer posits the things about which he is said to be dogmatizing as really existent, the Sceptic does not posit these formulae in any absolute sense; for he conceives that, just as the formula ‟All things are false” asserts the falsity of itself as well as of everything else, as does the formula ‟Nothing is true,” so also the formula ‟No more” asserts that itself, like all the rest, is ‟No more (this than that),” and thus cancels itself along with the rest. And of the other formulae we say the same.

[1.7.15] If then, while the dogmatizer posits the matter of his dogma as substantial truth, the Sceptic enunciates his formulae so that they are virtually cancelled by themselves, he should not be said to dogmatize in his enunciation of them. And, most important of all, in his enunciation of these formulae he states what appears to himself and announces his own impression in an undogmatic way, without making any positive assertion regarding the external realities.[8]