Sec19 Grp1: Pyrrho's Paltry Philosophies

The skeptic Pyrrho, an advocate for critical thinking, believes that we should not trust any of our senses. It smells like a pizza, it looks like a pizza, it feels like a pizza, it even tastes like a pizza... but that doesn't mean it's pizza. He'd go so far as to question things like this.

Naturally, this way of thinking is dangerous and irresponsible. ("Oh, look, a cliff with sharp rocks at the bottom. Maaaybe they won't hurt me. Let's test that.")

But the opposite of this, believing all your senses, can be reckless, as well. Say you see a brown cat in the darkness at night. It looks friendly, so you approach it. Turns out it's a hungry bobcat. Whoops.

What's important here is to find your own personal middle ground. It's pretty much an issue of ethics, how far you're willing to believe your eyes, ears, et cetera. As humans, most of us need hard evidence to believe in the validity of something, and yet despite that, we are often torn on the validity of the evidence itself. Say, ghosts. Who's to say they do or don't exist? After all, reality is what you make of it.

We also discussed how Pyrrho went on to say "Unhappiness arises from not getting what you want." Thus, don't want things. Be ascetic. He took the middle path here and deprived himself of potential happiness. The metaphor of life being a roller coaster is quite effective here. Without high experience then low experience, high then low, and so on, we get either tons of lows or tons of highs, in which case we either get super-depressed at our loss or super-elated at our gain.

But does Pyrrho's life of absolute indifference contribute to inner serenity, as he claims, or perhaps instead internal hollowness? Detaching himself from society and emotion and putting himself in a metaphorical isolation tank really only meant he missed out on the joys of life. High then low, high then low, is always more worth it in the end.