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Chapter XXII.—Concerning Sophisms
[229] It will not, perhaps, be amiss to give our attention for a moment to the subject of Sophisms, seeing that those who glorify Dialectic
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declare that it is indispensable for exposing sophisms. For, they say, if Dialectic is capable of distinguishing true and false arguments, and sophisms are false arguments, it will also be capable of discerning these, which distort the truth by apparent plausibilities. Hence the dialecticians, by way of assisting life
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when it totters, strive earnestly to teach us the conception of sophisms, their differences and their solutions. They declare that a sophism is ‟a plausible argument cunningly framed to induce acceptance of the inference, it being either false or resembling what is false or non-evident or otherwise unacceptable.”
[230] It is false, for example, in the case of the sophism ‟Nobody offers one a predicate to drink; but ‟to drink absinth” is a predicate; nobody therefore offers one absinth to drink.” Or again, it may resemble the false, as in this case—‟What neither was nor is possible is not absurd;
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but it neither was nor is possible for a doctor, qua doctor, to murder; therefore it is not absurd that a doctor, qua doctor, should murder.”
[231] Or again, it may be non-evident, as thus—‟It is not true both that I have asked you a question first and that the stars are not even in number; but I have asked you a question first; therefore the stars are even.” Or again, it may be otherwise unacceptable, like the so-called solecistic
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arguments, such as—‟That at which you look exists; but you have a frenzied look; therefore 'frenzied' exists;” or ‟What you gaze at exists; but you gaze at an inflamed spot; therefore 'at an inflamed spot' exists.”
[232] Moreover, they attempt also to set forth solutions of the sophisms, saying in the case of the first sophism that one thing is established by the premisses and another inferred in the conclusion. For it is established that a predicate is not drunk and that ‟to drink absinth” is a predicate, but not ‟absinth” by itself. Hence, whereas one ought to infer ‟Nobody therefore drinks the ‘to drink absinth,’” which is true, the inference drawn is ‟Nobody therefore drinks absinth,” which is false, as not deduced from the established premisses.
[233] And as regards the second sophism, they explain that while it seems to lead in a false direction, so that it makes the inattentive hesitate in assenting to it, its conclusion is true, namely ‟It is not therefore absurd that the doctor, qua doctor, should murder.” For no judgement is absurd,
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and ‟the doctor, qua doctor, murders” is a judgement, so that neither is it absurd.
[234] And the method of leading up to the non-evident
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deals, they say, with the class of things that are variable.
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For when, according to the assumption, no previous question has been asked, the negation of the conjunctive premiss is true, the conjunctive or major premiss being false because of its inclusion of the false clause ‟I have asked you a question first.” But after the negation of the major has been asked, as the minor premiss ‟I have asked you a question first” has become true, owing to the fact that the negation of the major has been asked before the minor premiss, the first clause in the negation of the major becomes false while the false clause in the major has become true; so that it is never possible for the conclusion to be deduced if the negation of the major premiss does not co-exist with the minor premiss.
[235] And as to the last class—the solecistic arguments—some declare that they are introduced absurdly, contrary to linguistic usage.
Such are the statements made by some of the Dialecticians concerning sophisms—though others indeed make other statements; and what they say may be able, perhaps, to tickle the ears of the casual hearer, superfluous though it is and the result of vain labour on their part. Probably this can be seen from what we have said already;
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for we have shown that truth and falsehood, according to the Dialecticians, cannot be apprehended, and that by a variety of arguments as well as by the refutation of their evidences for the validity of the syllogism, namely proof and axiomatic arguments.
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[236] And there are many other special objections bearing on the topic before us which we might mention, but now, for brevity’s sake, we mention only this one.
As regards all the sophisms which dialectic seems peculiarly able to expose, their exposure is useless; whereas in all cases where the exposure is useful, it is not the dialectician who will expose them but the experts in each particular art who grasp the connexion of the facts.
[237] Thus, for instance, to mention one or two examples, if a sophism such as this were propounded—‟In diseases, at the stages of abatement, a varied diet and wine are to be approved; but in every type of disease an abatement inevitably occurs before the first third day;
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it is necessary, therefore, to take for the most part a varied diet and wine before the first third day,”—in this case the dialectician would be unable to assist in exposing the argument, useful though the exposure would be,
[238] but the doctor will expose the sophism, since he knows that the term ‟abatement” is used in two senses, of the general ‟abatement” in the disease and of the tendency to betterment after the crisis in the strained local conditions, and this improvement in the local strain generally occurs before the first third day, but it is not for this but for the general abatement in the disease that we recommend the varied diet. Consequently he will say that the premisses are discordant, since one kind of ‟abatement” is adopted in the first premiss, namely that of the general condition, and another—that of the local condition—in the second premiss.
[239] Again, in the case of one who suffers from fever due to aggravated ‟contraction” or obstruction, if an argument is propounded in the form—‟Opposites are cures of opposites;
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cold is the opposite of the present feverish condition; therefore cold is the treatment which corresponds to the present feverish condition,”—here again the dialectician will keep silence,
[240] but the doctor, since he knows what morbid states are fundamentally persistent and what are symptoms of such states, will declare that the argument does not apply to the symptoms (not to mention the fact that the result of the application of cold is to aggravate the feverish condition) but to the persistent morbid states, and that the constipation is persistent but requires an expansive method of treatment rather than contraction, whereas the resultant symptom of inflammation is not fundamentally persistent, nor (consequently) is the state of cold which seems to correspond thereto.
[241] Thus, as regards sophisms the exposure of which is useful, the dialectician will not have a word to say, but he will propound for us arguments such as these
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—‟If it is not so that you both have fair horns and have horns, you have horns; but it is not so that you have fair horns and have horns; therefore you have horns.”
[242] ‟If a thing moves, it moves either in the spot where it is or where it is not; but it moves neither in the spot where it is (for it is at rest) nor in that where it is not (for how could a thing be active in a spot where it does not so much as exist?); therefore nothing moves.”
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[243] ‟Either the existent becomes or the non-existent; now the existent does not become (for it exists); nor yet does the non-existent (for the becoming is passive but the non-existent is not passive); therefore nothing becomes.”
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[244] ‟Snow is frozen water; but water is black; therefore snow is black.”
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And when he has made a collection of such trash he draws his eyebrows together, and expounds Dialectic and endeavours very solemnly to establish for us by syllogistic proofs that a thing becomes, a thing moves, snow is white, and we do not have horns, although it is probably sufficient to confront the trash with the plain fact in order to smash up their positive affirmation by means of the equipollent contradictory evidence derived from appearances. Thus, in fact, a certain philosopher,
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when the argument against motion was put to him, without a word started to walk about; and people who follow the usual way of life proceed on journeys by land and sea and build ships and houses and beget children without paying any attention to the arguments against motion and becoming.
[245] And we are told of an amusing retort made by the physician Herophilus:
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he was a contemporary of Diodorus who, being given to juggling with dialectic, used to promulgate sophistical arguments against motion as well as many other things. So when Diodorus had dislocated his shoulder he came to Herophilus to get treated, and the latter jestingly said to him—‟Your shoulder has been put out either in the place where it was or where it was not; but it was put out neither where it was nor where it was not; therefore it has not been put out;” so that the Sophist begged him to leave such arguments alone and apply the treatment prescribed by medical art as suitable to his case.
[246] For
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it is, I think, sufficient to conduct one’s life empirically and undogmatically in accordance with the rules and beliefs that are commonly accepted, suspending judgement regarding the statements derived from dogmatic subtlety and furthest removed from the usage of life.
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If, then, dialectic would fail to expose any of the sophisms which might usefully be exposed, while the exposure of all the sophisms which we might perhaps grant it capable of exposing is useless, then in respect of the exposure of sophisms dialectic is useless.
[247] Starting even from the actual statements made by the dialecticians one might show concisely in this wise that their technical arguments about sophisms are superfluous. The dialecticians assert that they have resorted to the art of dialectic not simply for the sake of ascertaining what is deduced from what but chiefly for the sake of knowing how to discern the true and the false by means of probative arguments. Thus they declare that dialectic is ‟the science of what is true and false and neither.”
[248] Since, then, they assert that a true argument is one which draws a true conclusion by means of true premisses,
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when an argument is propounded which has a false conclusion we shall at once know that it is false and shall not yield it assent. For the argument itself must either be illogical or contain premisses that are not true.
[249] The following considerations show this clearly: The false conclusion in the argument either follows from the combination formed by its premisses, or it does not so follow. But if it does not so follow, neither will the argument be logically sound; for an argument, they say, is logically sound when its conclusion follows from the combination formed by its premisses. If, again, it does so follow, then—according to their own technical treatises—the combination formed by its premisses must necessarily be false; for they say that the false follows from the false and nohow from the true.
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[250] And from what we have already said
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it is plain that according to them the argument which is not logically sound or not true is not probative either.
If, then, when an argument is propounded with a false conclusion we know at once that the argument is neither true nor logically sound, because of its false conclusion, we shall not assent to it, even if we fail to see wherein the fallacy lies. For just as we refuse our assent to the truth of the tricks performed by jugglers and know that they are deluding us, even if we do not know how they do it, so likewise we refuse to believe arguments which, though seemingly plausible, are false, even when we do not know how they are fallacious.
[251] Further, since the sophism leads, they say, not only to falsehood but also to other absurdities, we must discuss it more at large. The argument propounded leads us either to an inadmissible conclusion or to one of such a sort that we must needs admit it. In the latter case we shall assent to it without absurdity; but if it leads to what is inadmissible, it is not we that ought to yield hasty assent to the absurdity because of its plausibility, but it is they that ought to abstain from the argument which constrains them to assent to absurdities, if they really choose to seek truth, as they profess, rather than drivel like children.
[252] Thus, suppose there were a road leading up to a chasm, we do not push ourselves into the chasm just because there is a road leading to it but we avoid the road because of the chasm; so, in the same way, if there should be an argument which leads us to a confessedly absurd conclusion, we shall not assent to the absurdity just because of the argument but avoid the argument because of the absurdity.
[253] So whenever such an argument is propounded to us we shall suspend judgement regarding each premiss, and when finally the whole argument is propounded we shall draw what conclusions we approve.
And if the Dogmatists of the School of Chrysippus declare that when the ‟Sorites”
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is being propounded they ought to halt while the argument is still proceeding and suspend judgement, to avoid falling into absurdity, much more, surely, would it be fitting for us, who are Sceptics, when we suspect absurdity, to give no hasty approval of the premisses propounded but rather to suspend judgement about each until the completion of the whole series which forms the argument.
[254] And whereas we, by starting undogmatically from the observation of practical life, thus avoid these fallacious arguments, the Dogmatists will not be in a position to distinguish the Sophism from the argument which seems to be correctly propounded, seeing that they have to pronounce dogmatically that the form of the argument is, or is not, logically sound and also that the premisses are, or are not, true.
[255] For we have shown above that they are neither able to apprehend the logically valid arguments nor yet capable of deciding that a thing is true, since—as we have shown from their own statements—they possess neither a Criterion nor a Demonstration that commands general agreement. Thus far, then, the technical treatment of Sophisms so much talked of amongst the Dialecticians is otiose.
[256] And we say much the same regarding the distinguishing of ambiguities. For if the Ambiguity is a word or phrase having two or more meanings, and it is by convention
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that words have meaning, then all such ambiguities as can be usefully cleared up—such, that is, as occur in the course of some practical affair— will be cleared up, not certainly by the dialectician, but by the craftsmen trained in each several art, as they have personal experience of the conventional way adopted by themselves of using the terms to denote the objects signified
[257] —as, for example, in the case of the ambiguity ‟In periods of abatement one should sanction a varied diet and wine.”
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And in the ordinary affairs of life we see already how people —ay, and even the slave-boys—distinguish ambiguities when they think such distinction is of use. Certainly, if a master who had servants named alike were to bid a boy called, say, ‟Manes” (supposing this to be common name for a servant) to be summoned, the slave-boy will ask ‟Which one?” And if a man who had several different wines were to say to his boy ‟Pour me out a draught of wine,” then too the boy will ask ‟Which one?”
[258] Thus it is the experience of what is useful in each affair that brings about the distinguishing of ambiguities.
All such ambiguities, however, as are not involved in the practical experiences of life but in dogmatic opinions, and are no doubt useless for a life void of dogmatism,—concerning these the Dialectician, in his own peculiar position,
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will be similarly forced, in view of the Sceptic attacks, to suspend judgement, in so far as they are probably linked up with matters that are non-evident and non-apprehensible, or even non-substantial.
[259] This subject, however, we shall discuss later on;
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and if any Dogmatist should attempt to refute any of our statements he will be strengthening the Sceptic argument by adding support to their suspension of judgement about the matters in question as a result of our mutual antagonism and interminable dissension.
Having said thus much concerning ambiguities we now conclude therewith our Second Book of Outlines.
Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes. Sextus Empiricus. Robert Gregg Bury (Translator). London. 1933.
Funding provided by Tisch Library, Tufts University.