PYRRHONISM is the EXTREME BELIEF THAT THERE IS NO BELIEF

Pyrrhonism is extreme scepticism. It is the belief that there are no beliefs. This is not necessarily contradictory because you can believe that there are no beliefs except this one. That would be modified Pyrrhonism. Or so it seems.  But as you believe in nothing you cannot have evidence and belief comes from evidence.  What you are doing is assuming that there are no beliefs, not believing that there are no beliefs.

It is indeed possible that our senses and reason and perception make fools of us.   Anybody that says we can’t prove that reason is right is a Pyrrhonist regardless of all the beliefs they say they have and the things they say they know. Reason is the foundation of belief and knowledge and once you say you can’t be sure of it you can’t be sure of anything you deduce from it either. The basic rule of reason is that A is A. I know this is true for I am X and nobody else and I know I exist for I experience therefore I am and I can’t experience if I do not exist. So, you can know that reason is true and you can see it without a logical argument. You only have to look with your mind’s eye. It is striking that most religionists have not grasped or been told this with the result that all their beliefs are artificial. God’s miracles don’t do anything about it either so somebody else must be responsible for them.

To say nothing can be proved is to say that anything at all can be possible. For example, the sun may be a pot of boiling milk.  Many who think that way are confusing epistemic possibility with logical possibility.  That is to say they think they could sense that the sun is milk and are mistaking that for logic.  It is not logically possible for a sun to be a pot of boiling milk.  It is a mistake to think that just because you cannot totally prove the sun is a sun that it means that you could tell by your senses that it is something else.  Logic matters more than what the senses tell us.  Logic tells you your senses are wrong if they say you are dead when you are walking about.    What is epistemically possible is not necessarily logically possible.

An absolute answer is not the same as a proven one.  1=1 is absolute but not totally provable.

The skeptic usually makes the mistake of thinking that something has to be provable totally to 100% to be considered to be something you know.  Demanding total proof is self-defeating because   It is unaffirmable.

It is said that the sceptic starts off presupposing that to know something is true he must know that he knows it. You can know something while thinking you do not. Or you can think you know something and not know it at all.  The sceptic then can think he knows he knows nothing and be wrong.

Plus if the sceptic thinks she cannot know anything she is presupposing and making that her starting point so it is no wonder she thinks she knows nothing! She is being self-defeating.