Abstract

This article is a defense of skepticism, specifically Pyrrhonian skepticism, against a potential complication ostensibly threatening its methodological consistency. The conflict contemplated is that the suspension of judgment based on the discovery of equipollence, which is the central highlight of skeptical investigation, is vitiated by the assent given to the equipollence discovered. The apparent difficulty has a conceptual side as well as a practical side, examined here as separate challenges with a section devoted to each. The conceptual challenge is that the skeptical transition from an equipollence of arguments to a suspension of judgment is undermined either by a logical contradiction or by an epistemic inconsistency, perhaps by both, because the determination and affirmation of equipollence is itself a judgment of sorts, one that is never suspended. The practical challenge is that, independently of any conceptual confusion, suspending judgment in reaction to equipollence evinces doxastic commitment to equipollence, if only because human beings are not capable of making assessments requiring rational determination without believing the premises examined to be true and the conclusions drawn to be compelling. The aim of the present article is to demonstrate that the skeptical position is not vulnerable to such objections.