ABSTRACT
According to a frequent charge, skepticism is not “livable” because it refuses to accept anything as true. Ancient Greek skeptics accept the need to respond to this challenge, but they deny that human life is impossible unless one takes certain things to be true. The chapter examines how the Pyrrhonian skeptic Sextus Empiricus, and the Academic skeptic Carneades, justify this denial. Sextus says that the skeptic investigates, but this investigation is not aimed at discovering the truth about things—that is, at discovering their real nature. This does not prevent the skeptic from living a life based on how things appear. But Sextus would not understand this as involving an acceptance of truths since he conceives of truth as correspondence to an independent reality. Carneades, by contrast, does have an orientation toward the truth and is prepared to accept certain claims as likely to be true. But he still stops short of committing himself to their truth.
