I suspect you disagree, but I feel like these differences in stance are a matter of degree and also perhaps a matter of descriptions of mental actions.
There is, of course, a difference between Pyrrhonism and "Socratic Skepticism" but I'm not sure if you're arguing for the fullest version of the former here.
Note all the caveats and links I included in my article going over the extreme caution we need to employ when judging so that we don't do a disservice, and the default assumption that we may be wrong.
You rightly to conclude that there is a list of things we should attempt to judge. I just think that list is bit longer, and people can get into real trouble when they suspend judgement so far as to not guide their own lives with intention.
The Mental action part: you're familiar with "Phantasia".
Buddhism has similar descriptions of judgments/thoughts arising.
Well what do you do with when they pop up?
Meditators attempt to withdraw their attention away from them. And this does work for some things, but the kind of dogmatic, reflexive judgments we make by default don't go away when we leave them alone. At least mine don't.
Generally, mulling them over and judging the judgment is what I need to do to deflate them and "change my mind." even if it's just to achieve nonjudgement about the judgement!
Years of meditations and withdrawing attention never succeeded in this, and I'm a worse person, more miserable, and less focused when I don't judge thoughtfully.
Anyway, I think dialing in the right amount of judgment and suspension of judgment to be one of the works of a lifetime, and I appreciate your pushback.
Skepticism is a tool I greatly appreciate, it's just not the only tool I've found valuable.
Socratic skepticism is a bit difficult to nail down. Even in the early, aporetic dialogs he appears to have a hidden agenda. In the later dialogs he's outright dogmatic. This, of course, is presumed to be Plato speaking through his now-fictional character Socrates. On top of that, there are multiple flavors of the Academic Skeptic Socrates.
Sure, you present caveats, but the directionality is clear and strong. You say more (with the caveat that you could be wrong); I say less (with the caveat, don't get hit by a bus).
Regarding phantasiai, you say:
"Judgments are so reflexive that the ancient Stoics used the term “phantasiai,” to represent their initial form. Yet these pre-cognitive judgments have little relation to reality; one of humanity’s great problems is our reluctance to push back against them. Anyone devoted to the truth examines phantasiai closely before giving or withholding assent."
It was not just the Stoics who used that term; the other schools did, too. It's an important concept in Pyrrhonism. Your take on the phantasiai seems to be the typical Stoic take. When Pyrrhonists talk about the phantasiai, we're talking about the exact same thing that the Stoics are talking about; however, we have a different interpretation of it.
Stoics and Pyrrhonists agree that the phantasiai are forced upon us, and that the phantasiai include all sorts of appearances/impressions besides those that produce a reflexive judgment. We also agree that the phantasiai have a questionable and uncertain relationship to reality. We further agree that anyone devoted to the truth examines phantasiai before taking the next step.
It's that step you call "giving or withholding assent" that we disagree about. My understanding is that when a Stoic gives assent, they're saying that they think the phantasiai is true and real - i.e., kataleptic. We Pyrrhonists say that the Stoics are making a rash judgment in this, and that they cannot show good reason for it. The Academic Skeptics deem what the Stoics do here as outright impossible.
This doesn't mean that the Pyrrhonists withhold all forms of assent, as characters such as Epictetus claim. The phantasiai can be assented to as phantasiai, and used to make practical decisions - without taking that extra step of declaring them to be true representations of reality. In other words, instead of declaring something to be good (as in truly good in reality - what the Stoics say they are doing when they assent), the Pyrrhonist is saying that this seems good, to me, right now, under these circumstances. Whether this is truly good, I suspend judgment about that (or, in another flavor of Pyrrhonism, just reject that such things even exist).
The comparison with Buddhism here that you bring up I think is helpful. We Buddhists recognize the phantasiai, too. The Buddhist technique for dealing with them is different, but, as with, the Pyrrhonists, it is based on giving much more emphasis than the Stoics do to the idea that the phantasiai have a questionable and uncertain relationship with reality.
As for how well the Buddhist technique works, I think your account describes its limitations. It does seem to work for some people, but even then it requires a huge investment in time and effort. My thinking is that Pyrrho's great genius was that his encounter with Buddhism first prompted him to make a novel assembly of ideas already extant in Greek philosophy, primarily from Xenophanes, Democritus, Protagoras, Gorgias, and Aristippus in a way similar to how the Buddha had done with those same ideas (but from different sources), but - and perhaps this is even more important - Pyrrho recognized that the Sophists had a spiritual exercise that could be applied for the same things the Buddhists were using meditation for, and that this Sophist technique yielded results faster and more reliably.
So, this is the technique I prefer to employ now, rather than the letting-go technique. I ask myself whether a judgment on some issue has practical importance. If it does, I try to focus my attention on what is empirical, and the fact that whatever judgment I make will be relative.
Perhaps your real complaint is against those who fetishize being non-judgmental rather than being against the Pyrrhonists.
So true.
I suspect you disagree, but I feel like these differences in stance are a matter of degree and also perhaps a matter of descriptions of mental actions.
There is, of course, a difference between Pyrrhonism and "Socratic Skepticism" but I'm not sure if you're arguing for the fullest version of the former here.
Note all the caveats and links I included in my article going over the extreme caution we need to employ when judging so that we don't do a disservice, and the default assumption that we may be wrong.
You rightly to conclude that there is a list of things we should attempt to judge. I just think that list is bit longer, and people can get into real trouble when they suspend judgement so far as to not guide their own lives with intention.
The Mental action part: you're familiar with "Phantasia".
Buddhism has similar descriptions of judgments/thoughts arising.
Well what do you do with when they pop up?
Meditators attempt to withdraw their attention away from them. And this does work for some things, but the kind of dogmatic, reflexive judgments we make by default don't go away when we leave them alone. At least mine don't.
Generally, mulling them over and judging the judgment is what I need to do to deflate them and "change my mind." even if it's just to achieve nonjudgement about the judgement!
Years of meditations and withdrawing attention never succeeded in this, and I'm a worse person, more miserable, and less focused when I don't judge thoughtfully.
Anyway, I think dialing in the right amount of judgment and suspension of judgment to be one of the works of a lifetime, and I appreciate your pushback.
Skepticism is a tool I greatly appreciate, it's just not the only tool I've found valuable.
Socratic skepticism is a bit difficult to nail down. Even in the early, aporetic dialogs he appears to have a hidden agenda. In the later dialogs he's outright dogmatic. This, of course, is presumed to be Plato speaking through his now-fictional character Socrates. On top of that, there are multiple flavors of the Academic Skeptic Socrates.
Sure, you present caveats, but the directionality is clear and strong. You say more (with the caveat that you could be wrong); I say less (with the caveat, don't get hit by a bus).
Regarding phantasiai, you say:
"Judgments are so reflexive that the ancient Stoics used the term “phantasiai,” to represent their initial form. Yet these pre-cognitive judgments have little relation to reality; one of humanity’s great problems is our reluctance to push back against them. Anyone devoted to the truth examines phantasiai closely before giving or withholding assent."
It was not just the Stoics who used that term; the other schools did, too. It's an important concept in Pyrrhonism. Your take on the phantasiai seems to be the typical Stoic take. When Pyrrhonists talk about the phantasiai, we're talking about the exact same thing that the Stoics are talking about; however, we have a different interpretation of it.
Stoics and Pyrrhonists agree that the phantasiai are forced upon us, and that the phantasiai include all sorts of appearances/impressions besides those that produce a reflexive judgment. We also agree that the phantasiai have a questionable and uncertain relationship to reality. We further agree that anyone devoted to the truth examines phantasiai before taking the next step.
It's that step you call "giving or withholding assent" that we disagree about. My understanding is that when a Stoic gives assent, they're saying that they think the phantasiai is true and real - i.e., kataleptic. We Pyrrhonists say that the Stoics are making a rash judgment in this, and that they cannot show good reason for it. The Academic Skeptics deem what the Stoics do here as outright impossible.
This doesn't mean that the Pyrrhonists withhold all forms of assent, as characters such as Epictetus claim. The phantasiai can be assented to as phantasiai, and used to make practical decisions - without taking that extra step of declaring them to be true representations of reality. In other words, instead of declaring something to be good (as in truly good in reality - what the Stoics say they are doing when they assent), the Pyrrhonist is saying that this seems good, to me, right now, under these circumstances. Whether this is truly good, I suspend judgment about that (or, in another flavor of Pyrrhonism, just reject that such things even exist).
The comparison with Buddhism here that you bring up I think is helpful. We Buddhists recognize the phantasiai, too. The Buddhist technique for dealing with them is different, but, as with, the Pyrrhonists, it is based on giving much more emphasis than the Stoics do to the idea that the phantasiai have a questionable and uncertain relationship with reality.
As for how well the Buddhist technique works, I think your account describes its limitations. It does seem to work for some people, but even then it requires a huge investment in time and effort. My thinking is that Pyrrho's great genius was that his encounter with Buddhism first prompted him to make a novel assembly of ideas already extant in Greek philosophy, primarily from Xenophanes, Democritus, Protagoras, Gorgias, and Aristippus in a way similar to how the Buddha had done with those same ideas (but from different sources), but - and perhaps this is even more important - Pyrrho recognized that the Sophists had a spiritual exercise that could be applied for the same things the Buddhists were using meditation for, and that this Sophist technique yielded results faster and more reliably.
So, this is the technique I prefer to employ now, rather than the letting-go technique. I ask myself whether a judgment on some issue has practical importance. If it does, I try to focus my attention on what is empirical, and the fact that whatever judgment I make will be relative.
Perhaps your real complaint is against those who fetishize being non-judgmental rather than being against the Pyrrhonists.