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The reason for this seems to be the following: It is possible to pursue unresolved inquiries into all sorts of questions without ever doubting that knowledge is, at least sometimes, achievable. They were reacting to the fact that skeptics of both schools devoted far more time and energy to the case that nothing can be known than to arguments bearing on any other question. But those who saw Academics and Pyrrhonists as skeptics in the modern sense were not simply confusing the condition of the inquirer with the dogmatic rejection of the possibility of knowledge. The condition in which skeptics find themselves regarding the questions they investigate resembles that of negative dogmatists or dogmatic skeptics in being one of not knowing.
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And the fault about which ancient skeptics complain most frequently is rashness or precipitate judgment. On their view, dogmatists of both the positive and negative variety were guilty of calling off their inquiries prematurely. By contrast, skeptics, properly so called, find that question after question remains open and hence calls for further inquiry. Negative dogmatists, or dogmatic skeptics as we may also call them, have satisfied themselves that the questions are beyond resolution. Dogmatists take themselves to have brought many inquiries to a successful conclusion in the first way. Absent either outcome, further inquiry is indicated. Sextus's idea seems to be this: Inquiry into a particular question comes to a natural end either when the question that set the inquiry in train is resolved or when it becomes plain that it cannot be resolved. If not only the Pyrrhonists but also many Academics were skeptics in Sextus's sense, why the persistent tendency, beginning with the ancient skeptics' own contemporaries, to equate skepticism with one of the positions that Sextus expressly opposes to it? And why should a dedication to inquiry set the skeptics apart from members of other schools? Philo of Alexandria, who was active in the first century CE, was able to use the term "skeptikos" (in the sense of "inquirer") of philosophers quite generally. These facts only add to the puzzle, however. What is more, Academics like Carneades and Clitomachus were no more convinced that nothing can be known than the Pyrrhonists, and they and deserved to be described as inquirers at least as much. Though they held that certain knowledge was unobtainable, they believed that it was possible to identify views that enjoyed a high degree of probability or verisimilitude -among them, the view that nothing can be known for certain -and they regarded inquiry for the sake of such discoveries as eminently worthwhile. Even Academics like Philo of Larissa, who did hold that nothing can be apprehended, did not conclude from this that inquiry was pointless. Philosophers of the first type he calls "dogmatists," members of the last group "skeptics," and those of the middle tendency "Academics." In the opening chapter of his Outlines of Pyrrhonism, he distinguishes three types of philosophers: those who take themselves to have discovered the truth, those who hold that it cannot be apprehended, and those who persist in inquiring. Yet Sextus Empiricus, the second-century CE Pyrrhonist -and the only member of the school whose works have survived intact and in bulk -is quite firm on this point. We take skepticism, roughly speaking, to imply a denial of the possibility of knowledge. The term itself is derived from a verb in common use meaning "to inquire" or "to investigate" -hence the skeptic as inquirer. Our use of the term in this way goes back to the seventeenth century. They denied that it described the Academics, but this point could be and was disputed, and later in antiquity the word may have been used as a common designation for both schools.
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The ancient Greek term "skeptic" was used by the Pyrrhonists to describe themselves. Tradition recognizes two schools of ancient skepticism: the Academics and the Pyrrhonists.