The Inconsolable Truth: Why Pyrrhonism Fails to Grieve

Why I still believe Bates' Pyrrhonist position for grief is flawed

Before proceeding, I want to make clear that this critique is not personal. It’s written with respect for the effort behind the original article and in the shared hope that good philosophy sharpens through challenge.

In his recent article on grief and Pyrrhonism, Doug Bates presents what appears to be a gentle and therapeutic application of sceptical thought.¹ He explicitly refuses to respond to my original critique, yet continues to assert the same claims I argued were incompatible with genuine (read historical) Pyrrhonian scepticism. A line-by-line commentary of his expanded article follows, carefully analysing key statements and demonstrating how they collapse under the philosophy they claim to uphold.

Each section is numbered, quoting his text, followed by an analysis.

1. On Word Counts and Evasion

“A rebuttal essay that’s about 2.5 times longer than the article it rebuts… including 91 mentions of ‘Pyrrhonism’ and ‘Pyrrhonist’.”

This line attempts to shift attention from the rebuttal's content to its form. By calling out length and word repetition, Bates invokes a rhetorical manoeuvre Aristotle identifies in Rhetoric: when unable, or unwilling, to meet an argument on its terms, discredit the way it is delivered.

But in philosophy, precision takes space. When writers invoke pyrrhonism as a therapeutic answer to grief, they are not merely making a passing comment but introducing a worldview with metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical consequences. If the 67 words on Pyrrhonism contain conceptual commitments, contradictions, and implications, then each one demands careful scrutiny. That scrutiny may require 2.5 times as many words. It may require ten. Word count is irrelevant.

The comment about “91 mentions of ‘Pyrrhonism’” is similarly misleading. The rebuttal was not a digression into Pyrrhonism but a direct analysis of Bates’s invocation of Pyrrhonism as a superior alternative to Stoicism. The frequency is not inflation; it reflects the thematic centre of the argument.

This opening attempt to undercut the rebuttal by gesturing at its length and vocabulary count is not an argument; it’s poisoning the well. It is a distraction. Worse, it gives early notice that no direct engagement with the critique will follow. Also, if my critique rests on whether his version is consistent with Pyrrhonism, I'd mention it often.

2. On the Refusal to Engage

“Since those 67 words were just about pointing to one key difference between the Stoics and Pyrrhonists… this article will focus on that subject (and not the rebuttal).”

Bates openly declares that he will not respond to my first critique. He dismisses the original 67 words as a minor gesture, “just about pointing”, and reframes the discussion as needing clarification, not correction. But I fear this seems disingenuous.

If the original 67 words were minimal or incidental, they wouldn’t require an entire follow-up article to explain them. The very act of elaboration concedes that those lines contained more than a gesture; they contained claims that Pyrrhonism is a more humane alternative to Stoicism, deals better with grief, and avoids the psychological severity of Stoic detachment.

Though framed sceptically, my rebuttal showed that these claims involved a structure of affirmation, prescription, and value judgment, elements incompatible with Pyrrhonian epoché. Rather than confronting that exposure, Bates sidesteps it, promising to discuss Pyrrhonism “properly” but on his terms, not in response to critique.

This is not philosophical dialogue. It is a strategic reassertion of monologue: he continues asserting the view that was critiqued while refusing to acknowledge it. For example:

"While the Stoics prescribe solutions for grief that are specific to addressing what they view to be an irrational and undesirable passion..."

This is doing quiet framing: the Stoics "prescribe," suggesting rigidity or medicalisation, and treat grief as “irrational,” setting up the Pyrrhonists as the more open-minded alternative. That’s fine rhetorically, but it ignores the Stoic distinction between pathē and eupatheiai, which I covered at length and he avoids entirely.

By not mentioning the distinction between irrational and rational emotions, he’s still building his case on the same caricature of stoicism. He continues:

"...we Pyrrhonists apply a solution that is universal for all disturbing emotions."

This is the first big slip. Saying, "We apply a solution" already treats Pyrrhonism instrumentally as a method designed to fix emotional disturbances. However, classical Pyrrhonism is not a universal therapy; it’s a method for suspending belief due to the equipollence of arguments. To say Pyrrhonism applies a solution presupposes that the goal is emotional relief, which means he’s assigning it a purpose. That violates its non-teleological nature. Here is Sextus Empiricus:

"We did not investigate in order to find a way to achieve ataraxia, but it happened that ataraxia followed our suspension of judgment as a shadow follows a body." (Outlines of Pyrrhonism I.12)

Now, one may question my appeal to Empiricus. While Pyrrhonism may have developed variations across history, Sextus remains the most systematic source and the only one offering us a sustained methodology. Bates’ framing suggests he draws from this line. Thus, it is appropriate to test his claims against Sextus’ standards.

3. Truth and Language

“The Greeks considered truth and reality to be hidden from them. Their word for ‘truth,’ aletheia, literally means ‘unhidden’ or ‘revealed.’ The ancient Greeks generally considered what we experience… to be something less than the truth… In Greek, the term for that impression is phantasiai.”

This section serves as historical groundwork. It correctly introduces the idea that Greek thought distinguished between truth and appearance and that we access the world only through mediated impressions (phantasiai). There is no disagreement on this.

However, what follows in the article is not faithful to this epistemic humility. While this paragraph lays out the philosophical uncertainty built into language and experience, Bates soon slips into confident prescriptions about how grief works, what one ought to do with it, and which emotional outcomes are preferable.

Here’s the issue: You cannot begin with the premise that the truth is veiled and appearances are uncertain. Then, instruct others on how to “deal with” the phantasiai as though you’ve unmasked them.

Pyrrhonism is defined not by merely acknowledging the distinction between appearance and truth but by refusing to go further or affirm the truth or whether it is knowable. Yet, Bates uses this setup as a launchpad for normative claims. That is where the philosophical inconsistency begins.

The original purpose of mentioning aletheia and phantasiai, to frame the sceptical caution, quietly mutates into a rhetorical scaffold for a therapeutic programme. But Pyrrhonism, strictly speaking, is not therapy. It is suspension. It cannot, without self-betrayal, tell you how to feel about your impressions, only that you cannot claim to know whether they are good or bad.

This is the first subtle slippage: the ancient vocabulary is correct, and the interpretation is accurate. But the application, as we’ll see in later sections, violates the suspension it claims to honour.

4. Relativism or Scepticism? You Cannot Have Both

“We talk about objectivity, but no such thing actually exists (or if it does, it is possessed only by gods). We humans are stuck in our own bodies… Everything we know is subjective, regardless of how we throw around the word ‘objective.’ … In Pyrrhonism, its skepticism is in part dependent upon its relativism.”

This is one of the most revealing and self-undermining moments in the piece. Bates asserts that “everything we know is subjective”, a claim that is not only epistemically dogmatic but also fundamentally anti-Pyrrhonian. To say everything we know is subjective is not to suspend judgment but to affirm a universal epistemic claim that objectivity is impossible. This is not scepticism. It is dogmatic relativism dressed in sceptical language.

As laid out in Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhonism avoids precisely this kind of move. The Pyrrhonist does not say “we know nothing” or “everything is subjective,” because such statements require a level of certainty that the Pyrrhonist disavows. Instead, the Pyrrhonist says: It appears to be this way to me, or I do not find a reason to assent to one side or another.

By asserting that “no such thing [as objectivity] actually exists,” Bates commits the very error Pyrrhonism was developed to guard against: he makes an absolute epistemic claim while supposedly suspending belief. That contradiction cannot be reconciled within the Pyrrhonian framework.

Moreover, Bates conflates relativism with scepticism. He smooths this by saying Pyrrhonism is “in part dependent upon its relativism.” But this glosses over a crucial distinction: relativism affirms that truth is relative, whereas Pyrrhonism refrains from affirming anything about truth’s nature. The Pyrrhonist does not say “truth is relative”—they say, I cannot know whether truth is absolute or relative. Relativism is an epistemological position. Pyrrhonism is a suspension of epistemological positions.

So when Bates claims Pyrrhonism is a form of relativism, he doesn’t just make a classification error: he empties Pyrrhonism of its core philosophical integrity. He turns it into the very thing it was designed to avoid: a fixed view. Let us investigate a bit more:

"Sometimes when I’m discussing Pyrrhonism with people who already think they know what Pyrrhonism is… I’ll point out that Pyrrhonism is a form of relativism."

Unfortunately

• Pyrrhonism is not relativism. Relativism asserts that truth is relative to a subject or culture.

• Pyrrhonism refuses to assert anything about truth, period.

Even Diogenes Laërtius says in Lives of the Philosophers:

The Sceptic's position is not "Everything is false," but "We do not know what is true or false."

Bates continues:

"This often produces a knee-jerk response, 'No, it isn’t! It’s a form of skepticism!' Eureka!"

This is a rhetorical trap: He dismisses legitimate criticism as ignorance. And He conflates two incompatible systems, relativism and scepticism, and treats their confusion as enlightenment. But relativism and scepticism are historically distinct:

• Relativism claims knowledge is possible, just relative to standpoint.

• Scepticism (at least Pyrrhonian) suspends judgment altogether, refusing to say that “truth is relative.”

This is further compounded:

"In Pyrrhonism, its skepticism is in part dependent upon its relativism."

This is completely backwards. If anything:

• Pyrrhonian scepticism precedes relativism as a stance.

• It does not build itself upon a metaphysical claim like "truth is always relative."

In fact, if you base scepticism on relativism, you've already committed to a theory of knowledge, which means you're no longer a Pyrrhonist. Nevertheless, Bates says something striking:

"X may be a phantasiai for one person but not for another. No more contradiction. And as a phantasiai, X is not only not necessarily true, there are compelling reasons to doubt X is true."

At this moment, Bates commits a subtle but significant error—what we might call a sleight-of-hand between epistemic neutrality and epistemic negation.

He introduces phantasiai (appearances) as a supposed Pyrrhonist remedy to the contradiction inherent in relativism. That is: if X can appear one way to one person and another way to someone else, we no longer need to speak of conflicting truths; we simply speak of conflicting appearances. So far, this aligns with Pyrrhonism, which, according to Sextus Empiricus, does not deny appearances but refrains from affirming anything beyond them. As Sextus writes:

“We say not what things really are, but only what they appear to us to be, and we do not dogmatically affirm even this.” (Outlines of Pyrrhonism I.19)

However, Bates then makes a non-Pyrrhonian conclusion: “there are compelling reasons to doubt X is true.” This is not merely a refraining from judgment but a positive claim that belief in X is unjustified. And that claim is a judgment that commits him to an epistemic stance more akin to Academic Skepticism, which denies the possibility of knowledge, than to Pyrrhonism, which suspends judgment altogether.

Sextus is explicit on this point. The Pyrrhonist, he says, is:

“...one who is still investigating” and who “asserts nothing positively, not even the statement that he asserts nothing positively.” (Outlines I.13)

Thus, by claiming that we have “compelling reasons to doubt,” Bates has already violated the Pyrrhonist stance. He goes beyond the suspension of judgment and into the territory of propositional defeat. Ironically, committing to a position Pyrrhonism is designed to avoid.

This undermines his own framework: if he asserts that phantasiai are not trustworthy because they give us “compelling reasons to doubt,” he is no longer dealing with appearances as appearances, but evaluating them, precisely what the Pyrrhonist suspends. And so, with this slip, Bates ceases to be a Pyrrhonist and unknowingly becomes a dogmatist about doubt.

This is not a minor quibble. It reveals that the entire orientation of Bates’s piece is based on misreading the tradition he claims to represent. This is a key moment in the article. So I want to linger here a while.

The Epistemic Contradiction at the Heart of Bates’ Pyrrhonism

“Everything we know is subjective, regardless of how we throw around the word ‘objective.’ … In Pyrrhonism, its skepticism is in part dependent upon its relativism.”

This fault line exposes the internal collapse of Bates’ argument. For anyone familiar with Sextus Empiricus, this outright contradicts Pyrrhonian scepticism.

Let us be as clear as possible.

1. Bates says: “Everything we know is subjective.”

2. This is a universal epistemic claim: it asserts something about all knowledge.

3. But Sextus insists: “The Sceptic assents to nothing that is non-evident” (Outlines, I.7).

4. Claims about knowledge being “subjective” or “objective” are non-evident—they concern the nature of truth.

5. Therefore, Bates makes a dogmatic assertion that Pyrrhonists are explicitly forbidden to make.

The Pyrrhonist does not say “everything is relative.” He does not say “truth is subjective.” He withholds judgment on those very claims.

Sextus is absolutely clear on this:

“Even the Sceptic himself, in uttering these [sceptical] formulae, does not dogmatise. For he does not assert that they are true, but he uses them as instruments to produce suspension of judgment” (Outlines, I.206).

Bates, by contrast, makes repeated positive assertions: that we are stuck in subjectivity, that relativism underpins Pyrrhonism, and that truth is beyond our reach. But Sextus warns against this:

“Scepticism is an ability to oppose appearances and judgments in any way whatever, so that we are brought through the equipollence of the opposed objects and statements to suspension of judgment (epoché)” (Outlines, I.8).

Notice: equipollence, not relativism. The Sceptic does not prefer subjectivity; he recognises a stalemate between opposing claims.

Further, Sextus explicitly rejects even relativism:

“If the statement ‘everything is relative’ is true, then it must itself be relative and not absolutely true, in which case it cannot serve as a criterion.” (Outlines, I.140)

Bates’ assertion is not Pyrrhonism. It is what Pyrrhonism was invented to dismantle: dogmatism disguised as humility.

This vindicates my original critique:

“If Pyrrhonism suspends all value judgments, then it must also suspend the claim that suspending judgment is preferable to engaging with grief directly.”

Bates cannot suspend. He asserts. And every time he tells his readers to adopt a particular frame, revise their judgment, or trust in mental rebalancing, he fails to be a Pyrrhonist. He has instead reinvented a therapeutic relativism while giving it Pyrrhos’ name.

As Sextus says:

“We say what is apparent to ourselves and report our own feelings without holding opinions—for we are not able to affirm anything that is non-evident.” (Outlines, I.4)

Thus, to say “everything is subjective” is not sceptical. It is an epistemic assertion. And the moment one affirms it, one is no longer a Pyrrhonist.

This bold, explicit, and repeated contradiction makes it impossible to accept Bates’ framing of grief within a Pyrrhonist tradition. His position's epistemological structure refutes itself by violating the very scepticism it claims to uphold.

5: Misusing Ambivalence and Misrepresenting Aristotle

“Long before Socrates, Greek thinkers had noticed that with regard to good and bad, things appear to be relative in the way Protagoras thought: X is good for one person and bad for another, and these appear to be simultaneously true. For example, death is bad for the deceased and their loved ones but good for the undertaker. Even the same person could experience X as being both good and bad. We even have a word for that. It’s ‘ambivalence.’ With respect to good and bad, the law of non-contradiction seems to have a loophole that even Aristotle could not close.”

This is where Bates’ misuse of philosophical tools becomes clear. He invokes the law of non-contradiction, “the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject in the same respect” (Metaphysics Γ 1005b19)—only to misapply it. To say that death is “bad for the bereaved and good for the undertaker” is not a contradiction. It is a contextual value distinction involving different subjects and different respects.

Aristotle himself anticipates this confusion and builds in qualifiers to avoid it. There is no loophole; there is only a misreading. Ambivalence, too, is not a logical problem but a psychological fact. To feel both grateful and sad about a death is not to assert that the death is simultaneously good and bad in the same respect. It is to register complexity—not contradiction.

The Error in Simple Form

1. Bates asserts that grief reveals good and bad as simultaneously true.

2. He suggests this undermines the law of non-contradiction.

3. But the law only applies when the same property is attributed to the same subject in the same respect.

4. Bates’ example does not meet this condition—it involves different people and different contexts.

5. Therefore, no contradiction arises, and the law stands unviolated.

Conclusion: Bates draws a metaphysical conclusion from an equivocation. He shifts between emotional experience and logical structure without recognising that different rules govern them.

What Would Sextus Say?

Bates claims that this simultaneous experience of good and bad proves the relativity of values and points to truth’s inaccessibility. But this, again, is a dogmatic assertion, not a sceptical suspension.

Sextus writes:

“We do not lay down that appearances are certainly true… but we report them non-committally, as they appear to us.” (Outlines, I.4)

And again:

“To every argument an equal argument is opposed, so that we end by suspending judgment.” (Outlines, I.31)

The Pyrrhonist does not say: “Grief is both good and bad.”
The Pyrrhonist says: “Grief appears good to some and bad to others; therefore, I do not affirm either.”

Bates, by contrast, asserts relativity as the underlying nature of value, using a metaphysical position (Protagorean relativism) that Sextus repeatedly distances himself from. This is not Pyrrhonism. It is an unacknowledged fusion of relativist ethics and rhetorical psychology, dressed in sceptical robes.

Sextus himself rejects relativism when he shows how the claim that “everything is relative” collapses into incoherence:

“If the statement ‘everything is relative’ is true, then it must itself be relative and not absolutely true, in which case it cannot serve as a criterion.” (Outlines, I.140)

Thus, the core of Pyrrhonism—equipollence and suspension—is lost in Bates’ attempt to leverage logical contradiction and ethical subjectivism as tools of rhetorical persuasion. That contradiction undermines his case and confirms the central claim of my original rebuttal: this is not scepticism, it is assertion disguised as moderation.

6: Smuggling Dogma Through the Back Door

“As the Pyrrhonists (and pretty much everybody) have noticed, opposites appear to be the case about the same thing. Such is the case of grief. Sometimes it seems good; sometimes it seems bad. Sometimes it incapacitates; sometimes it spurs action.

What Pyrrho noted from this is that people are not disagreeing about things they have empirical knowledge of (although such knowledge might be potentially available, but that’s a digression), they are disagreeing about something that is not empirically demonstrable. Good and bad do not exist in nature; they exist only in minds. In other words, there’s nothing about any event that is intrinsic to that event that allows us to classify the event as good or bad.”

Bates here makes a strong epistemic claim: that good and bad do not exist in nature, but only “in minds.” This is not a tentative observation. It is a doctrinal position—a clear metaphysical thesis about the nature of value.

That claim may appeal to modern relativistic sensibilities, but it violates the core of Pyrrhonist philosophy.

According to Sextus Empiricus, the Pyrrhonist refrains from asserting what exists “by nature”:

“We say that nothing is by nature good or bad… we say this not as affirming it to be the truth, but as reporting the fact that this is what appears to us.” (Outlines, I.190–191)

But Bates overreaches. His phrase “there is nothing about any event that is intrinsic to that event that allows us to classify it as good or bad” is not a suspension of judgment—it is an affirmation. This amounts to a negative dogma about the nature of value: that there is none.

In fact, he contradicts Sextus directly. Sextus makes clear that even the claim that value is relative or subjective must be suspended:

“Even the statement ‘nothing is by nature good or bad’ must be treated as one of the appearances—not as a universal truth.” (Outlines, I.191)

To assert that “good and bad exist only in minds” is to adopt a form of ethical anti-realism. But the Pyrrhonist makes no such metaphysical claim. The Pyrrhonist notes that some people experience value as real, others do not—and from that refuses to affirm either. Smuggled Metaphysics

1. Bates states: Good and bad exist only in minds.

2. This implies: There are no objective or intrinsic values in nature.

3. But this is a truth claim about the metaphysical status of value.

4. Pyrrhonism requires suspension of judgment about precisely this kind of claim.

5. Therefore, Bates’ claim is not Pyrrhonist—it is dogmatic anti-realism.

Conclusion: Bates is not suspending judgment. He is advancing a metaphysical thesis while calling it scepticism. In short: he rejects Stoic dogma by asserting a relativist dogma in its place. This is the very move Pyrrhonism was designed to avoid.

7: Critiquing Stoicism While Quietly Emulating It

“The Stoic philosopher Epictetus appears to make the same observation when he notes that people are not disturbed by events, but by their dogmas about the events. ‘Dogmas’ here being their philosophical worldview. He goes on to say that death is nothing terrible, or else it would have appeared so to Socrates (Enchiridion 5).

Pyrrho differs from Epictetus here with respect to what to do based on this observation. Epictetus believes that one can eliminate disturbances by adopting Stoic dogmas, such as believing that we should regard our loved ones in the same way we regard hotel rooms that we stay in for just a night (Enchiridion 11); whereas Pyrrho points to holding dogmas as the source of perturbation. For example, for the committed Stoic, experiencing profound grief represents a failure to follow Stoicism. So, in addition to grieving, the Stoic can also feel bad about being a failure as a Stoic.”

Bates positions Pyrrhonism here as a gentler, less dogmatic version of Stoicism. He implies that while the Stoic tightens the grip of doctrine to overcome emotional disturbance, the Pyrrhonist loosens it, allowing emotions to pass through more easily. This contrast is both rhetorically effective and philosophically hollow.

Let’s examine what happens here.

1. Bates agrees with the Stoic observation: that it is judgment, not events, that disturb us.

2. He then critiques the Stoic solution: replacing old judgments with Stoic dogmas.

3. He praises Pyrrho for avoiding this by giving up dogma altogether.

4. Yet Bates himself prescribes a method for dealing with grief: question your judgments, compare perspectives, and suspend your belief about whether your loss was bad.

But that last step is not merely a refusal to judge, it is an active procedure aimed at producing a psychological outcome: tranquillity.

Hidden Prescription, Stoic Form

Ironically, this places Bates right back into Stoic territory. Consider Epictetus’ famous line:

“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of them.” (Enchiridion 5)

And now consider Bates’ version:

“To relieve your feelings of grief—which is a judgment that something is bad—you must dispute your initial judgment.”

There is little daylight between the two. Bates, too, says that your pain stems from your belief. Alter the belief, and the pain will be moderated. This is the same cognitive-behavioural principle the Stoics advocated, only with a different vocabulary and without commitment to a metaphysical doctrine of nature.

But Bates can’t have it both ways. If he offers a therapeutic path, he must acknowledge that Pyrrhonism here functions practically like Stoicism: it offers a method to neutralise disturbance by reforming judgment.

Sextus, again, avoids this trap. He does not instruct anyone to perform a method in grief. He only describes that suspension occurs when equipollent arguments arise. No goal, no system, no recommended behaviour.

“We say that the goal of the Sceptic is tranquillity in matters of opinion and moderation in matters forced upon us.” (Outlines, I.25)

Notice: tranquillity is not achieved by doing something, but by the natural consequence of inquiry leading to suspension. Bates prescribes suspension. Sextus describes it.

That’s the difference between a method and a report—between a covert therapy and a consistent Pyrrhonism.

8: The Stoic Straw Man and the Hidden Ideal

“Of course, Stoics can console themselves that no one really can do Stoicism. Only the Stoic sage can, and they’re as scarce as a phoenix. As Epictetus says of his own students:

‘Why did you assume plumage not your own? Why did you call yourself a Stoic? Observe yourselves thus in your actions, and you will find of what sect you are. You will find that most of you are Epicureans; a few are Peripatetics, and those but loose ones…’ (Discourses 2.19)

It’s kind of strange that even one of the most renowned Stoic teachers of all time should confess that he failed to make Stoics out of his students.”

This is one of Bates’ more disingenuous moments. He gestures toward a kind of humility “look, even Epictetus couldn’t produce a Stoic sage!” while using this observation to rhetorically undermine the entire Stoic enterprise. But this gesture is both a misreading and a setup for a contradiction.

Let’s be clear: Stoic sagehood is aspirational. The ideal sage is not an expected result but a regulative ideal, something like virtue itself in Aristotle. Just as one might aspire to be wise without expecting omniscience, the Stoic also aspire toward apatheia (freedom from irrational passions) without the expectation of perfection.

This is the same move Bates later makes with Pyrrhonism: acknowledging the difficulty of total suspension, yet affirming its therapeutic benefit. So, if Bates grants Pyrrhonism the right to be useful without full realisation, why not Stoicism?

Moreover, by ridiculing the Stoic ideal for being unattainable, Bates falls into a double standard:

• Pyrrhonism = a humble practice, even if difficult to master.

• Stoicism = a delusional quest for sagehood, since no one attains it.

This would only be valid if Pyrrhonism actually avoids idealisation. But as I've shown in previous sections, Bates' version of Pyrrhonism prescribes a method and even suggests it’s easier to succeed with than Stoicism:

“Pyrrhonism is much easier to have success with than Stoicism. It gives practical and achievable methods you can put into action and get results from.”

Ergo,

1. Bates claims Pyrrhonism is not dogmatic.

2. He also claims it provides a practical, achievable method that yields results.

3. However, any philosophy that claims predictable psychological results from prescribed practice offers a therapeutic system and thereby risks becoming a new dogma.

Thus, in mocking Stoicism for its idealism, Bates fails to see that his own Pyrrhonism has morphed into something eerily similar: a promise of tranquillity through intellectual technique.

9: The Pyrrhonist Procedure That Isn’t Pyrrhonist

*"To boil down the Pyrrhonist approach to dealing with grief (or any other disturbing emotion),

You must first realize that what’s disturbing you is in your head. That’s not to say it’s not real; it’s just to make clear what kind of reality it has and where the treatment must be targeted."*

This is a shift in tone from philosophical exposition to psychological advice. The imperative mood, “you must realise…” immediately gives the game away. Pyrrhonists do not tell you what you must do. They do not issue psychological diagnoses. And they certainly do not claim to know where “treatment must be targeted.”

Sextus Empiricus makes it plain:

“The Sceptic does not dogmatize. Even the claim that ‘nothing can be known’ is not asserted as a dogma, but expressed as a report of what happens to the Sceptic.” (Outlines of Pyrrhonism I.4)

Bates continues:

“Next, you must recognize that all judgments of good and bad are disputable. To relieve your feelings of grief—which is a judgment that something is bad—you must dispute your initial judgment.”

This is not merely a psychological tip. It’s an assertion of how grief works. It assumes a model in which negative emotion arises from a specific judgment, and disputing it will relieve it. This is textbook Stoic psychology dressed in Pyrrhonist clothing.

Then we get the clearest contradiction of all:

“By continuing to inquire about all the reasons your judgment may be faulty, you’ll come to a point where these reasons are equal in persuasive strength to the reasons you started out with for grieving. At this point, you can suspend judgment about whether the loved one’s death is a bad or good thing.”

This forces equipollence. But equipollence in Pyrrhonism is not something you manufacture on command; it arises naturally when opposing arguments seem of equal force, as Sextus tells us:

“When people of equal strength disagree about some matter, the result is suspension.” (Outlines I.8)

In Bates’ version, suspension is a goal, and equipollence is an engineered technique. This converts Pyrrhonism into a quasi-Stoic therapeutic method, with all the same pitfalls: replacing one dogma (grief is bad) with another (grief is not bad if I think hard enough).

And finally, Bates writes:

“Grief itself is not a problem; it is immoderate grief that poses problems.”

This is a Stoic principle. One that distinguishes between pathos and eupatheia. And it directly contradicts his earlier claim:

“Everything we know is subjective.”

If all knowledge is subjective, what entitles Bates to pronounce which kinds of grief are “moderate” or “problematic”? Any such judgment presumes a normative standard, and Pyrrhonists suspend all such standards. The argument offered:

1. Pyrrhonists do not prescribe actions—they report outcomes of philosophical investigation.

2. Bates gives a 5-step method for altering emotional disturbance, claiming it brings therapeutic relief.

3. He asserts this method as valid, effective, and practical.

4. Therefore, Bates is not suspending judgment about grief; he is asserting a normative claim about how best to deal with it.

5. This directly contradicts Pyrrhonist principles as stated in Sextus Empiricus.

Conclusion: Bates’ account is not Pyrrhonist—it is a disguised form of therapeutic dogmatism.

10: “Grieving Is a Blessing” — The Final Dogma

The Core Error: Treating Grief as a Mental Object to be Managed

Bates says:

“You must first realise that what’s disturbing you is in your head. That’s not to say it’s not real; it’s just to make clear what kind of reality it has…”

This reveals a deep philosophical confusion. By locating the disturbance “in your head,” Bates prescribes a treatment plan based on asserting the nature of reality, namely, that the grief is subjective, located in the mind, and not in the world. However, as Sextus clarifies, the Pyrrhonist refrains entirely from such assertions.

From Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Book I, Chapter IV:

“Scepticism is an ability… which opposes appearances to judgments in any way whatsoever, with the result that, owing to the equipollence of the objects and reasons thus opposed, we are brought first to a state of mental suspense and next to a state of unperturbedness.”

Here’s the contradiction:

• Bates asserts the location and nature of grief as being “in your head,” thus collapsing appearance and judgment into one.

• Sextus tells us the Pyrrhonist suspends judgment even about what is subjective and what is objective.

Indeed, in Chapter VII of the outlines, Sextus writes:

“For the Pyrrhonean philosopher assents to nothing that is non-evident.”

Saying grief is “in your head” is a non-evident metaphysical commitment. A Pyrrhonist would have to say that grief appears to be a mental disturbance. And stop there. Bates cannot consistently assert this localisation while claiming Pyrrhonist affiliation.

Contradiction in Disputation

Bates says:

“To relieve your feelings of grief… you must dispute your initial judgment.”

But Sextus, in Chapter VI, lays down the foundation of Skeptic method as:

“Opposing to every proposition an equal proposition… so that we end by ceasing to dogmatize.”

Bates uses disputation in service of belief-change. However, the Pyrrhonists dispute precisely to avoid belief altogether. There is no therapeutic arc in Sextus, no plan to get from grief to comfort. That’s Stoic, not Pyrrhonist. Pyrrhonism refuses to guarantee any outcome, even ataraxia (which Sextus, you will recall, himself calls a by-product, not the aim).

Dogmatism Returns

Finally, Bates concludes:

“Consider your grieving to be a blessing…”

Here, he leaps from suspended judgment to a dogmatic moral stance. He proposes a new belief to override the old one, precisely the sort of metaphysical and evaluative movement the Pyrrhonist disavows.

From Chapter VII of Outlines:

“[The Pyrrhonist] does not posit these formulae in any absolute sense… in his enunciation of them he states what appears to himself and announces his own impression in an undogmatic way, without making any positive assertion regarding the external realities.”

Calling grief a blessing is a positive assertion about grief’s evaluative status. This breaks the Pyrrhonist rule of non-assertion and directly violates their rejection of ethical dogma.

When Bates writes:

“Grief itself is not good or bad by nature (contrary to the Stoics, who make much of their aversion to grief). Good things can come from grief.”

We should immediately recall Sextus Empiricus here:

“The Sceptic does not lay down anything as absolutely true… not even the proposition that nothing is true.” (Outlines I.4)

So when Bates says, “good things can come from grief,” he has two options:

1. He means it is a subjective impression (a phantasia) that some people experience grief as beneficial.

2. Or he means it as a general truth about grief's nature and potential.

The former is trivially true and uninteresting; the latter violates Pyrrhonian scepticism.

He continues:

“Grief can lead people to personal growth. It can enhance their sense of gratitude.”

Here we are again in the realm of prescriptive psychology. The very thing that Bates criticised in Stoicism, its structured doctrines about the passions, has returned through the back door. His claim that grief enhances gratitude depends on an assumed causal relation: that grief leads to something else. But to assert this, even probabilistically, is to adopt a framework of psychological explanation, a framework the Pyrrhonist cannot assert as true, likely, or even probable.

“Grieving appears to arise naturally in people who lose loved ones. Why shouldn’t we accept it as being informative to us, no differently from how pain is informative to us if we touch a hot stove?”

Let us pause here. He compares grief to physical pain and suggests it has a functional role. This analogy is persuasive rhetorically but less so philosophically. Why? Because it reintroduces natural teleology, that is, the idea that an experience has a purpose in human life. But Pyrrhonism does not permit such claims. Sextus again:

“We say not that the things are such as they appear, but that they appear in a particular way; and we report our experience without making assertions about the nature of things.” (Outlines I.4)

To say grief is like pain and pain is informative is to claim something about its use, value, and place in nature. That is not suspension; that is assertion.

And finally, the closing line:

“Consider your grieving to be a blessing, and that it arises because your lost loved one was such a blessing to you. Hold onto this blessing equally with the sadness and you’ll find that you can let it all go.”

"Consider your grieving to be a blessing" is not epoché; it is an exhortation. It asks the reader to reframe their experience in light of a preferred evaluative stance. Bates prescribes it as if it were therapeutically obvious: the final “letting go” becomes a quasi-spiritual resolution.

But this is the same thing he mocked in the Stoics; only now has the language changed from “passion” and “virtue” to “blessing” and “letting go.”

Conclusion

This extended analysis has sought not to nitpick Doug Bates' article but to engage seriously with its claims about Pyrrhonism and its proposed application to grief. In doing so, I have demonstrated that his position, however well-intentioned, rests on fundamental misreadings of Pyrrhonian scepticism and the phenomenology of grief itself.

Throughout, Bates consistently makes assertions about the nature of grief, its location in the mind, and the appropriate way to “handle” it. These are not neutral observations but metaphysical commitments, epistemic claims, and moral prescriptions. And they are precisely the kind of claims that Sextus Empiricus warns against.

A Pyrrhonist does not say grief is “in your head.” A Pyrrhonist does not say grief is “a blessing.” A Pyrrhonist does not offer a technique to achieve a moderated state. These are all assertions that take sides in the very evaluative debates that Pyrrhonism aims to suspend. At best, Bates offers a kind of therapeutic minimalism that borrows Pyrrhonist language while quietly abandoning its methodology.

More importantly, my original critique, Grief, Stoicism, and the Limits of Scepticism, has not been addressed. That article did not merely dispute Pyrrhonism as a descriptive account; it showed, I think, that grief, as a lived existential rupture, cannot be reduced to disputable propositions. Grief is not merely a belief about an event; it is a transformation of the self. In this light, Pyrrhonism fails because it reintroduces dogma under the guise of suspension and lacks the conceptual resources to respond to grief’s ontological force. Moreover, Grief is not merely an evaluation to be suspended but a reconfiguration of the world’s significance. The loss of a loved one does not present as a discrete proposition, 'X has died, and that is bad', but as a collapse in the meaningful structure of being-with. In this sense, grief is not a belief but a world-altering event, one that cannot be addressed through techniques of doubt. To suspend judgment on whether it is bad is to misunderstand its very nature.

To face grief with integrity requires more than neutrality. It requires confronting the way loss reorganises our being in the world. Pyrrhonism, by design, brackets precisely the structures grief disrupts: meaning, commitment, and attachment. As such, it cannot help with grief, not because it is too cold but because it is, ultimately, absent. My original claim stands: Pyrrhonism collapses at the threshold of grief. And it must. Because grief calls not for sceptical silence but for meaning.

The bigger question we should probably consider now is simply a challenge to philosophy: Can a philosophy of suspension ever meet the urgency of human need?

If this rebuttal seems spirited or ‘too long,’ it’s because grief deserves more than neutrality. I’m just doing what Pyrrho might: testing the claim, not the claimant.

Andrew.

1. The possibility that Bates is offering a modern adaptation of Pyrrhonism rather than a strict historical one is something I accept with some suspicion, a neo-pyrrhonism; however, in fairness, one is entitled to hold him to Sextus’ standards if that’s the tradition he’s invoking. If Bates had presented his work as inspired by Pyrrhonism rather than grounded in it, many of these contradictions could be softened. But the moment one claims to speak from within the tradition, one inherits the burden of consistency with its core tenets. He claims lineage, not loose inspiration.