ABSTRACT
At the very beginning of Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Sextus Empiricus tells people that there are three fundamental kinds of philosopher. Each kind of philosopher engages in philosophical investigation. If agnosticism is a philosophical view of this sort, Scepticism is not a form of agnosticism. For, Sextus insists, the Sceptic has no philosophical views. Someone who has agnosticism as a view about some matter is, for Sextus, a Dogmatist. A denial of discovery is itself a discovery, namely, what the investigator rightly or wrongly takes to be the discovery that a certain discovery cannot be made. Someone in the agnostic state of mind about p is neutral on the question whether p is true. Characterizing this neutrality, however, is no easy philosophical task. Still, there is reason to think it cannot be just a matter of lacking a belief in either p or its negation.
