Precept of Pyrrhonism (Scepticism)

Say how it appears, not how it is.

The sceptical phrases — no more this than that, perhaps, I suspend judgement — are reports of a state, not claims about the world. Sextus is explicit that they do not even assert themselves.

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What it asksReport how things appear to you, never how they are

Who it bindsThe sceptic, and only for as long as the appearance lasts

Where it bitesWhen someone demands to know what you actually think

Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

The sceptical phrases are the closest thing Pyrrhonism has to a liturgy, and Sextus is careful about their status: they are not propositions but announcements of how things are striking the speaker at that moment. He compares them to purgative drugs that flush themselves out along with everything else. This matters practically, because the standard objection is that scepticism refutes itself, and the phrases are engineered to sidestep that by never asserting anything. Whether they succeed is the oldest live argument in the tradition.

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