No, Doug Bates, Pyrrhonism is NOT "Greek Buddhism"

Sadly, Mr. Bates, who has an interesting Substack, has published a book to that end, which is one of the first posts on that Substack.

As I said in a note there, to get us started?

Pyrrho almost certainly was NOT significantly influenced by Buddhism, or Jainism, or by the forerunners of Hinduism, or by one of the Indian skeptical movements. Diogenes Laertius is not that well formed, and there’s also a fair gap between Pyrrho and TImon and the foundation of what became known as Pyrrhonic skepticism. Plus, there’s the well-known, if occasionally overstated, issue of translation between Alexander’s invaders and the gymnosophists, whoever they were. This was first raised in his own general time by Onesicritus.

While it’s fun to see Doug Bates tweak Massimo Pigliucci at times (sorry, Massimo, but it is), he either knows all that I’ve said above and more, and so is writing a misleading book, or he doesn’t know that, and not only this but other posts should be taken with grains of salt. I think it's more the latter, but that's no excuse.

And yes, Doug, I know these things. (While I’m here, Hume wasn’t influenced by Hinduism, ether.) 

There's several things wrong with this, for starters:

Even in antiquity Westerners looked to India for wisdom. We know the Neoplatonist philosopher, Plotinus, tried to go there but had to turn back. Some people even claim — on scant evidence — that Jesus went there. But there’s only one Westerner from antiquity whom we know not only went to India, but who brought back something that profoundly influences Western thought to this day. His name was Pyrrho. He was a priest at the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, and a philosopher in the tradition of Democritus. Pyrrho successfully made the trip because he was a member of Alexander the Great’s court during Alexander’s conquest of everything from Greece to India.

Let's dig in. 

First, what are you defining as "antiquity"? Plotinus lived 600 years after Pyrrho.

Second, no, people in Pyrrho's time didn't look to India; they looked to Egypt and Babylon. I mean, Pythagorean tuning comes from ancient Mesopotamia and Pythagoras' own interest in transmigration of souls was asserted by near-contemporary philosophers to come from Egypt. Thales' astronomical knowledge (oft-overstated, as he almost certainly didn't precisely predict an eclipse in 585 BCE) came from Babylon.

Third, calling Pyrrho a member of Alexander's "court" might be stretching it. No, not might be; it most likely is stretching it.

As for Mr. Bates' background? The "about" on the Substack is entirely about the Substack, not him. That's fine, or rather, "fine." At least if you're just doing a generic Substack.

If you're writing a book under your real name about something fairly serious in the world of philosophy, it behooves you to present some credentials. You do not. 

I'll go first. I do not have a degree in philosophy.

That said, I have a degree in classical languages. I have read selections from The Republic, including The Idols of the Cave, in Greek. I've read all of Augustine's On Free Will (De Libero Arbitrio) in Latin. I've taken philosophy classes at the undergrad level beyond Philosophy 101/201 intros, in English.

Fairly related? I have a graduate theological degree.

My personal reading in this particular area begins with Miles Burnyeat's "The Skeptical Tradition," reviewed here. More recently, much more recently, I've read Walter Sinnott-Armstrong's book on Pyrrhonism, and found it wanting, though at least he's a known academic philosopher, and didn't claim Pyrrhonism was Greek Buddhism. Per the one Goodreads reviewer of your book, besides my comment, I have no more interest in BuGoys trying to peddle either actual Buddhism or alleged "secular Buddhism" (no such thing actually exists, as Buddhism is a religion) under cover of something else than I do BuJews doing that. 

And, since you misunderstand Pyrrho, Pyrrho's history, and Pyrrhonism, I have no desire to engage with you.

But, it gets worse at his website. Under "essential reading," with his book naturally first, he then cites Diogenes Laertius, already noted as not that reliable. Next is Stephen Batchelor, among western scholars who have claimed that India "invented" Hinduism for the British Raj. Wrong. People like Buddhism scholar Johannes Bronkhorst are ignored.

More to the matter, whether BuJew or BuGoy, he's another of those people who falsely claim Buddhism is not a religion. He's dealt with in passing here and MUCH more here. I kill multiple birds with one stone in this piece, where I knock out him and Robert Wright, then present a philosophy of religion definition of "religion." Bluntly, on Buddhism, I consider him mendacious. Then there's Christopher Beckwith, whom I've already read about and have no desire to read.

On Hinduism? Hinduism evolved and was formed out of what I call "Indian epic religion" at the time of the Guptas, who in all likelihood pushed Buddhism's sixth patriarch over the mountain. 

For further reference, which he does not reply, essential reading starts with SEP's entry on Pyrrho, its entry on Ancient Skepticism,  the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy's article on Ancient Greek Skepticism, and yes, even Wiki's article on Pyrrho for a starter.

As for the other things I mention above? I've read Stanford's article on Pyrrho stem to stern. I also, per a comment you had to me about Hume, wonder how well you understand him, especially vis-a-vis my comment above that Hume was not substantially influenced by Hinduism. 

As for Bates' qualifications? He started studying Zen 35 years ago, and has plenty of experience. Indeed, today, he's a Zen teacher. As for academic or similar study of Western philosophy, including Pyrrhonism? Given his scurrilous screeds about Western philosophers writing about Pyrrhonism in the following section near the end of his piece, I highly doubt it.

My suggestion in this regard is that Pyrrhonism should be recognized as a previous and successful effort to bring the core message of Buddhism to the West and that Pyrrhonism has upaya to teach the current generation of Western Buddhists. I have immersed myself in Pyrrhonist practice for the past six years. I am writing to testify that it works like the ancient Pyrrhonists claim it does. It works towards the same ends that many Buddhist practices works towards, albeit using a different method. I am also writing to testify that much of what the Western academic literature has to say about Pyrrhonism is about as accurate about Pyrrhonism as descriptions of bicycling would be if they were written by someone who has never ridden a bicycle, never seen one being ridden, never spoken to someone who has ridden one, and who has decided that they can figure it out based on the analyzing the contents of a bicycle assembly manual.

In fact, looking at that, I'm willing to call him mendacious, like Batchelor. (I won't say he's AS mendacious, but I will say "that.") 

At least, at this point, he has removed the mask as to why he wrote the book.

That said, he next offers:

Interestingly, some of the better-known modern Stoic authors such as William Irvine and Massimo Pigliucci report that they seriously considered Buddhism before deciding to follow Stoicism.

Gads. Really?

Oy, Massimo. And now, we know why Bates has tweaked him over neo-Stoicism. That is spelled out in detail in the next few paragraphs. He's right about neo-Stoicism as a non-cure for modern ailments of the soul. He's wrong about neo-Pyrrhonism that he's peddling being the cure, because it's built on an even shabbier foundation than neo-Stoicism.

Now, the idea that Sextus Empiricus may have been passing on Buddhist tradition 500 years after Pyrrho? Possible. Did he call that Pyrrhonism? Yes. Was it directly transmitted from Pyrrho or even close? If not 100-percent certainty against that, I'm comfortable with 98-percent certainty on saying Bates is wrong. And yes, I'm being an Academic, if you will.

Beyond the above, especially since Bates is pushing, in Zen, a form of Buddhism that didn't even exist in Pyrrho's time? Per William Desmond's "Cynics," an overview of Cynicism, THAT philosophy arguably has more connections to Zen than does either stream of Skepticism. But NOBODY is looking to be a modern capital-C Cynic philosopher. 

And, for the depth of his dive into the East? It sure seems to me like many of the Zen ideas he's promoting are actually Daoism, so why isn't he going back to THAT source?

He actually does a bit of that, though using the generally older spelling of "Taoism," which raises an eyebrow:

The next section of this book — Book II — outlines the fundamental concepts of Pyrrhonism and the Pyrrhonist methods for addressing dukkha. Book III discusses how Pyrrhonism fits into Hellenistic philosophy and compares Pyrrhonism with a selection of similar philosophies. Its chapter comparing Pyrrhonism with Buddhism details the ideas from Buddhist philosophy Pyrrho borrowed. Its chapter on Taoism demonstrates how the paradoxical Taoist concept of wu wei can also be explained non-paradoxically using Pyrrhonist terminology. Book IV expands on topics introduced earlier in the book. Among other topics in that section we will pick up the Xinxin Ming again, along with a couple of other famous Buddhist texts, reading them like they were Pyrrhonist texts.

The dishonesty grows! 

Let's go back to Daoism.

Bates surely knows, beyond what I said above, that Laozi almost certainly wasn't a real person, that the Daodejing we have today wasn't what was originally written, and other things. Wiki's entry on it offers a conservative dating the current edition or similar to the third century BCE — a century after Pyrrho. Speaking of? Xinxin Ming wasn't written until Tang Dynasty times, and likely was not written by its putative author. Speaking of? Basically nothing of what we call today Daoism was known in India at the time of Pyrrho.

I know because I've read not only the Daodejing, but also the Zhuangzi, and yes, the I Ching, and, yes, way back when, "consulted" it. Massimo knows that, so I'm not playing hypocrite on the "oy" above. I've also visited multiple "secular Daoism" sites. (That said, Daoism is also a religion. And, while I am here, I changed my thought a couple of years ago, and Confucianism is also a religion.) 

Back to Bates and Daoism, though. Speaking of? More mendaciousness. "Wu wei" in his Buddhism --> Pyrrhonism translator? Daoist, not Buddhist. 

That said, I know why he liked my comment on a Hume Substack about young Hume being a Pyrrhonist. I now know that that's bupkis. 

==

I have also deconstructed the "Buddhism is not a religion" claim here in verse. And again here.

And, disagreeing with Massimo on Homo ethicus

 Massimo seems to be coming more and more of a moral realist. He posted for free this 2024 piece on that.

I disagree and here's why.

I have long thought that we simply “are,” morally, for several reasons.

One is from Walter Kaufmann’s “Without Guilt and Justice.” I am not sure we can make overarching claims about ourselves en toto as a species without getting into Platonism, or without trying to claim a utilitarian view from nowhere and nowhen about the development of human ethics. In other words, on the second half of this first issue, we simply can't step outside of ourselves to make moral judgments about ourselves as a species in that way. (Although little mentioned in the book, critics have generally understood it to be a critique of John Rawls.)

On the Platonist side, these words and ideas don't come from nowhere, though. That's part of why I would call myself a moral semi-realist. 

Another is from either Gödel’s or Tarski’s broader world of thought. It’s not technically within either of their theorems, but more broadly, I think it’s a self-referential claim within a quasi-sufficient quasi-formal structure and can’t stand. Third gets to the evolution of human psychology etc. (Massimo mentioned there’s a specific phrase for non-ev psych theories of the evolutionary development of human psychology, but that was eons ago.) Under this, our moral judgments evolved with our moral actions, and so they’re intertwined; this is kind of a spin-off of the point above.

Related to that would be the idea that our morals evolved as part of larger psychological evolution for Darwinian reasons.

And, if not self-referential, what outside standard do you use and how do you defend that against charges of the Euthyphro dilemma? 

I’m a moral semi-realist, if you had to label me. I’m not a moral realist, but I’m not a moral non-realist, let alone anti-realist, either, per the above, and I specifically reject subtheories within that like moral anarchism. And I am reminded that I need to get back to reading Walter Sinott-Armstrong.

==

Extensive addendum 

See Stanford's Plato for more on moral realism, including how its opposition to moral anti-realism is paired or twinned, as well as what the standard is for making realism-based moral judgments. Moral naturalism sounds nice, but it is not what it sounds like; Plato notes it's a subset of moral realism, and any version of it that does not say that not all claimed moral facts actually are moral facts because they're not naturalistically grounded is not where I'm at.

The real real problem with moral naturalism, as I see it, and as it appears that SEP doesn't see it, is the issue of what is a "moral fact"? Otherwise, it's a kind of tautological idea for anyone who is a methodological naturalist in general. Both moral realism and moral anti-realism are, for such a person, naturalistic. 

What I'm really looking for is, basically, something like an Academic Skeptic version of morals. That is, no moral statements are factual in a narrow sense; some are closer to being factual in how strong they're based on a naturalistic derivation. And, of course, moral skepticism best fits the bill; indeed, the breadth of views within it describe well the breadth of my speculations. Indeed, Sinnott-Armstrong is cited several times in the essay. See also the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry for moral epistemology.

Per his Wiki, Sinnott-Armstrong studied under noted scholar of Pyrrhonism Robert Fogelin. From that, it notes that he's long promoted coherentism, and per the Wiki on that, I take it as the second half of coherentism, the epistemological, not the truth-theory version. See IEP's entry for more.

To put it another way, moral skepticism, per the second half of SEP's article, parallels theories of knowledge. In other words, moral skepticism rejects the idea of moral knowledge as justified true moral belief, or something to that end. That said, per a diagram about two-thirds in, as I reject both halves of the traditional division between Academic and Pyrrhonic Skepticism, so I reject both halves of the similar division on moral skepticism. I say, instead, in both cases, that we can postulate general probabilities and therefore can make some degree of judgment rather than a suspended epoche, but that the probabilities are very general and can not be assigned precise percentages or even very narrow ranges in most cases.

Also, it should be noted that coherentism is NOT Quine's epistemological holism. 

This all said, I found S-A's book on Pyrrhonism sadly wanting. 

Finally, it should be noted that the SEP article on moral skepticism is BY Sinnott-Armstrong. That will make picking back up his "Moral Skepticisms" book even easier. 

WRR First Circle: $125 a month; really?

 I heard that on the radio a week ago, and double checked on its website, and yes.

This is only further acceleration of a trend that started even before COVID, but was massively accelerated by it: Increasing economic disparity within the classical music world.

Twenty years ago, on a six-pack season ticket package for its chorale terrace area, I could go to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra for $10 a concert. (The then-21 concert season came in three seven-part groupings, with one of each seven a chorale based concert that excluded chorale terrace seating.) Buy a second six-pack and it was $9 a concert within that. Buy a third and $8 a pop for that.

The $125 per month is $1,500 per year. If some literally tithed to charity and this was it, that would be a $15,000 annual income. More realistic? If they gave 2 percent to charity, and only here, that would be a $75K annual income. Donate 2 percent, and half to WRR, and you're at $150K, and in the DFW Metromess, not Austin, let alone one of the coasts.

 

Back to the current DSO.

Side note, first: Why are they playing full-length, or nearly so, concerts outside the Meyerson, and NOT a pops-type summer concert? 

Now, the prices.

Cheapest promoted for new subscribers is $148 for four concerts. That's $37 a pop. And, you're not shown available seats until AFTER you buy, which was not the case 20 years ago. Actually a bit cheaper is $256 for eight, just $32.

Creating your own package of three or more is no cheaper? It looks cheaper, but the $4 per concert handling fees, waived on preset packages, is charged. 

Still disagreeing with Massimo in some ways on determinism

 He talks about this issue more in this piece, part 1 of 2 on five "-isms."

This part covers determinism, materialism and reductionism. 

First, he notes he rejects contracausal free will. That's kind of a throwaway, though; doesn't any materialist monist?

Second, he does allow for quantum effects, while not overstating them.

The fail comes on reductionism. He rejects greedy reductionism and allows for emergent properties.

He just fails to apply that idea to libertarian free will, my idea of "something like free will" based in part, indirectly, on Dan Dennett, and even more, directly, on Dan Wegner. Indeed, "libertarian free will" or "compatibilism isn't even mentioned.

Massimo could, again, stand to read some Daniel Wegner. EVERYBODY who pushes the false dichotomy of "free will versus determinism" could. 

And that's the rub.

On the other hand, near the end, he notes:

So what’s my position about reductionism? When I was younger I was attracted by the notion of strong emergence, in great part because as an organismal biologist I simply couldn’t see how things like the development of living beings, and even less the complexity of ecosystems, could ever be reduced to physics. Now I’m not so sure, and in fact the more time passes the more I lean toward reductionism and weak emergence.

So, that may be why he's a harder determinist today. 

Another reason? Before you hit the paywall in his part 2, he appears to be more of a positivist than before. 

What if Noah's curse of Canaan is still being misinterpreted?

 Justin Reed notes Christian churches, EVEN the Southern Baptist Convention, have rejected the idea that there is, or was, some "curse of Canaan" that was Blackness or similar.

Progress, right? But, the core of his piece is that the post-Flood story is still being misinterpreted, as though Noah's curse was correct, and the only incorrect thing has been the identification of what that curse was. 

In other words, just maybe, Noah was nothing more than a grumpy old sot with a hangover. This is better than some other alleys Reed wanders down as side warrens. Yes, people like women were marginalized in antiquity; the idea that we should read their point of view into ancient stories is often overblown.

It also ignores a more straightforward reading. This is Yahweh the nationalist god for the descendants of certain children of Shem. The "divine curse" is not slavery, but an invasion and takeover of their land. You know, Yahweh the proto-Zionist. Because Noah has three sons, Japheth is along for the ride. Surprised that Anglo-Israelite types haven't done more with this.

That said, frankly, and via poetry, I've long wondered if this was a Yahwist version of something like a castration myth like that of Cronos against Ouranos. Fitting that into the above, Ham has a failed castration attempt and is punished for it, as is son Canaan.

How can you write a book about time, its subjectivity, and the self without including Hume?

 Somebody should ask Jo Marchant, because she did exactly that.

In Search of Now: The Science of the Present Moment by Jo Marchant
My rating: 1 of 5 stars 

 

In a book like this, with a title like this and its subtitle, knowing that ideas of selfhood would also be involved, even though he’s a philosopher, not a scientist, I expected a hat tip to David Hume’s famous comment about trying to perceive the self:

"For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I can never catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception."

So I looked at the index.

And Hume, this comment or any other, is not in here!

It’s not like Marchant is philosopher-ignorant. Beyond what I said in the review, her bio on Goodreads would hint at that:

Dr Jo Marchant is an award-winning science journalist based in London. She has a PhD in genetics and medical microbiology from St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College in London, and an MSc in Science Communication (with a dissertation in evidence-based medicine) from Imperial College London. She has worked as an editor at New Scientist and at Nature, and her articles have appeared in publications including The Guardian, Wired UK, The Observer Review, New Scientist and Nature. Her radio and TV appearances include BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week and Today programmes, CNN and National Geographic. She has lectured around the world. Her book Decoding the Heavens was shortlisted for the 2009 Royal Society Prize for Science Books.

There you are.

Besides leaning on Anil Seth for theories of mind and consciousness, she references other living philosophers like Galen Strawson, 20th-century giants like Russell, Husserl and Wittgenstein, goes all the way back to the pre-Socratics, and also references Leibniz from Hume’s own general time.

But no Hume. (And no other British Empiricist, for that matter, even though chapters a little bit over halfway through the book discuss ideas related to empiricist ideas of the mind and the universe.)

Anyway, seeing him not in here, I figured I had to check out the book to figure out how much to review-bomb it because no Hume gets you a ding for sure.

But, “ding”? Hell, no. By the time I was a fair way in, I realized this book was going to get a crushing review bombing, complete with the “mendaciousness” bookshelf tag. (I also gave it the "philosophy" tag, but, per the below, refuse to give it any tag for any natural science.)

Let’s dig in, staying with what all Marchant left out in what I am assuming is intentional philosophy bias against Hume in particular and empiricism in general.

Hume’s comments refer to ideas of a “soul” as well as self or consciousness.

From this, Hume noted elsewhere that without change, we would not have a “now.”

Hume himself writes, “that time or duration consists of different parts: for otherwise we could not conceive of a longer or shorter duration.”

Also, many sites will tell you about Hume’s influence on Einstein. They’ll also tell you, related to that, that Hume questioned Newton’s idea of absolute time.

Aeon has a long essay about this:

‘From the philosophical perspective, nothing nearly as clear seems to have been written on the topic.’ Then he went on to express his intellectual debt to ‘Hume, whose Treatise of Human Nature I had studied avidly and with admiration shortly before discovering the theory of relativity. It is very possible that without these philosophical studies I would not have arrived at the solution.’

See how mendacious it is, from that pull quote alone, for Marchant, in her many mentions of Einstein, to never mention Hume? Read the whole piece, and you'll see in blinding detail the degree of mendaciousness.

Related and coming from the latter part of the book? Her discussion of quantum theory is incomplete on the varieties of interpretations possible, including looking at it in non “romantic” terms of classical statitstical mechanics. More weirdly yet, Schrödinger is never mention in her discussion of the quantum world. At this point, I basically stopped reading and figured we were in one-star territory. My thoughts on Schrödinger, his cat, and his smoking too much Bhagavad Gita.

This all really, really came out about page 200 and shortly thereafter. Before page 100, with the Hume ding, I figured were were at best 3.5 stars rounded down, and by 150 or so, figured we were at 2 stars. Obviously, these things were the final self-burials Marchant committed.

But as noted, she was on the downslope before this.

That’s because I’m not enamored of her choices of modern philosophers of consciousness and ideas and theories of consciousness much more than I am enamored of her writing Hume out of the picture.

First, I’m not enamored of Anil Seth so leaning heavily on him can get you another ding. (Per the link? Active inference with a Bayesian background is itself not bad, but he loves to make overblown claims and is all wet on free will, including repeated strawmanning.)

And while Andy Clark, also leaned on, is somewhat better than Seth, that’s a low bar. Spinning off Clark, she proposes an enactivist version of qualia that sounds like high-octane pure empiricism, but she still can’t reference empiricism. Maybe it’s a matter of fear, of being called out for all the wrongness of empiricism.

The fact that humans’ two primary senses evolved to see electromagnetic radiation of certain wavelengths and hear certain frequencies of material vibrations show that the world of consciousness can’t be entirely “in here.” With light, in fact, all creatures with sensory organs evolved to see in roughly the same wavelengths, with some tilting more left, some more right, a few extending into either the low ultraviolet or the upper infrared, because of the wavelengths of radiation the sun puts out, followed by plant evolution, above all chlorophyll’s color. Things like this continue to put paid to the problems of empiricism or some sort of backdoor neo-empiricism that Marchant may be trying to do, even with dissing The King of Empiricists.

I mean, if you think about it, that's what some of these modern theories of consciousness are — neo-empiricism, in essence. And, that's at core of why they fall short.

I mean, human brains and sensory systems, and animal nervous systems in general, evolved for better survival odds in response to specific environments. In other words, not sensory experiences, but sensory experiences adapted to an "out there."

Although Marchant doesn’t mention directly Karl Friston and his Free Energy Principle as much, it too is considered overstated by many. One critique?

More importantly, we observe that a mathematically central step in the argument, connecting the behaviour of a system to variational inference, relies on an implicit equivalence between the dynamics of the average states of a system with the average of the dynamics of those states. This equivalence does not hold in general even for linear stochastic systems, since it requires an effective decoupling from the system's history of interactions.

This applies to circa page 170. It's kind of like a high-level version of confusing "mean" and "median" as two different types of averaging.

On lesser things, I’m not sure she’s a “determinist,” but she seems to pass forward Seth’s strawmanning of free will. Beyond all of the above, per a low-star reviewer, there’s also not a “throughline” here.

Review bomb complete. And, assuming Marchant has a philosophical bias about even discussing empiricism in general and Hume in particular, I won’t read her again.


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Blogroll updates

Vridar's been removed again, from a combination of not needing to give Neil more airplay and comments of mine there going in the moderation queue and then getting killed.

Added? 

The Gnostic Archive. David Litwa is an up-and-comer in biblical criticism. 

Markus Vinzent's Blog. I disagree with him on running the origin of the Synoptics all through Marcion, but he writes about other NT biblical criticism ideas as well.