Sextus offers a battery of sceptical arguments to back his claim that for any proposition its contradictory can be asserted with equal justification. Clearly, the same object can look very different from a distance than it does from nearby, but why should we think the closer inspection more accurate than the other? Sometimes it is only by standing back that something can be seen clearly. To someone who claims snow is white, it could be pointed out that snow is only frozen water, and that water is colourless. Of course, we can give explanations as to why snow ‘appears’ white and water ‘appears’
...more
