Dale Tuggy was kind enough yesterday to drive all the way from Tucson to my place in the foothills of the Superstition Mountains. He came on short notice and late in the day but we managed to pack in more than six hours of nonstop conversation on a wide range of philosophical and theological topics. He was still going strong when, two hours after my bedtime, I had to send him on his way.
Talk got on to mysterianism, of course, and his ongoing debate with James Anderson. Dale made a distinction that I hadn't considered, namely, one between belief and acceptance. My tendency up to now has been to identify believing that p with accepting that p. Up to now I thought I should make a four-fold distinction: Accept, Reject, Suspend, Withhold.
For the distinction between belief and acceptance, see Raimo Tuomela, Belief Versus Acceptance.
I repaid Dale for his gift of the belief vs. acceptance distinction by pointing out the distinction (or putative distinction) between supension and withholding which I borrow from Benson Mates:
Benson Mates, The Skeptic Way, Oxford UP, 1996, p. 5: ". . . the characteristic attitude of the Pyrrhonists is one of aporia, of being at a a loss, puzzled, stumped, stymied." Aporia is not doubt. Doubt implies understanding, but aporia is a lack of understanding. The modern skeptic may doubt, but not the ancient skeptic.
Connected with this is a distinction between epoché as the withholding of assent and suspension of judgment. One can withhold assent from an assertion without granting that it makes sense; but if one suspends judgment then one has a clear propositional sense before one's mind which one neither affirms nor denies. See Mates, p. 32. A good distinction! Add it to the list.
So, strictly speaking, aporia is not doubt and epoché is not suspension of judgment. Close but not the same.
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