Doug, I’m enjoying this exchange. Much more constructive and informative than what some people, who shall go unnamed, manage to do on Don’s Fb page…

> If one evaluates the Hellenistic philosophies using modern criteria about science, all of them are severely deficient, some catastrophically so <

But I’m not interested in the science per se, only in those bits that are directly pertinent to the ethics. If we let go of the Stoic notion of the cosmos as a living organism there also goes Stoic providence. And Epictetus no longer sounds reasonable when he tells us not to be disturbed if our loved ones die.

Also, the agreement with modern science doesn’t have to be in the details, but in the general ethos. The Epicureans got the wrong concept of atoms, but they got right that we live in a universe that is chaotic and meaningless from the point of view of humanity.

> Practitioners of philosophies of life don’t care about unobservables. They are not using the scientific method for their moral choices. <

But I do care for an internally coherent philosophy. If a major tenet of Pyrrhonism is that there is a distinction between evident and non-evident matters, but then it turns out that there is no good way to cash that distinction out, then the Pyrrhonists are in trouble, philosophically speaking.

And if you want to argue that that distinction doesn’t matter to their ethics I think you’ll have a difficult time doing so, as it is a cardinal point of their philosophy.

> I understood your earlier statement about Sextus’ conclusion about certain claims about astrology were absurd or impossible to be an accusation of dogmatism. If you think the claims of astrology are and have been refuted by empirical evidence, then it would seem that you’re in agreement with Sextus <

Yes, I’m in agreement with Sextus. But I don’t think his philosophically allow him to draw that conclusion, again on penalty of incoherence. He can’t have his cake and eat it too. Either he rejects dogmatism about astrology or he throws out his version of skepticism.

> Translating “pithanon” as “probablism” I think is misleading. It makes modern readers think that there were calculations of probability going on, which was not what was happening <

Agreed, but Cicero did coin the word “probabilis” to translate pythanon, and the latter is also often translated as “persuasive,” or “likely,” or “convincing.” And I don’t know of anyone who has written about Academic Skepticism that so much as hints that what Carneades and Cicero were talking about was modern probability theory. Although I do think their ethos is compatible with, for instance, modern Bayesianism.

> as life-hack advice, it’s banal: investigate thoroughly and choose what you find persuasive. I don’t imagine many readers will be lining up for that advice. <

We’ll see. I don’t see a lot of Pyrrhonists around either…

> Perhaps even more promising would be a popular book on Cicero — “How to Think Like Rome’s Greatest Statesman” — showcasing how Cicero applied Academic Skepticism in major issues of his life <

Not a bad idea!