ABSTRACT
Agrippa clearly appreciated the broad Sceptical scope of the concept of relativity, and discerned relativistic features underlying all of the Modes of Scepticism. Agrippan Scepticism is not confined to the 'non-evident objects of scientific inquiry'. Although Diogenes and Sextus preserve the same ordering, there seems no rationale for it; and it breaks up the modes from Regress, Hypothesis, and Reciprocity, which form a coherent class. Relativity is a matter of differential appearances – and relativity of appearances goes to establish the facts of dispute. Relativity, at least in its Agrippan context, should perhaps not be treated as a separate Mode at all. The Formal Modes are prohibitions on certain types of reasoning. Hence the Formal Modes attempt to block any attempt to establish by further reasoning the rational preferability of one or other of the disputing claims.
