Shorter 10 modes of skepticism
Modes of Skepticism are supposed to force you to suspend judgement because you cannot know or cannot be certain.
These are variations on Pyrrhonism:
- based on the variety in animals;
- on the differences in human beings;
- on the different structures of the organs of sense;
- on the circumstantial conditions;
- on positions and intervals and locations;
- on intermixtures;
- on the quantities and formations of the underlying objects;
- on the fact of relativity;
- on the frequency or rarity of occurrence;
- on the disciplines and customs and laws, the legendary beliefs and the dogmatic convictions.
These are from Aenesidemus:
- The feelings and perceptions of all living beings differ.
- People have physical and mental differences, which make things appear different to them.
- The different senses give different impressions of things.
- Our perceptions depend on our physical and intellectual conditions at the time of perception.
- Things appear different in different positions, and at different distances.
- Perception is never direct, but always through a medium. For example, we see things through the air.
- Things appear different according to variations in their quantity, color, motion, and temperature.
- A thing impresses us differently when it is familiar and when it is unfamiliar.
- All supposed knowledge is predication. All predicates give us only the relation of things to other things or to ourselves; they never tell us what the thing in itself is.
- The opinions and customs of people are different in different countries.