Aristotle on Perception, Phantasia, and Skepticism

It has often been thought that Aristotle and Plato had almost no interest in skepticism and that what interest they might have had did not translate into a response to skepticism. In this dissertation I argue that this is wrong: Aristotle was concerned with and began to develop responses to some forms of ancient skepticism, including a form very close to Pyrrho's. In Metaphysics IV he argues that a large number of his predecessors were committed to the view that the search for truth is futile, which I argue is a skeptical position. I trace the views which, according to Aristotle, lead to skepticism and argue that he introduced the notion of phantasia (appearance) into his theory of perception in order to avoid just this consequence. I try to show how Aristotle uses phantasia to account for perceptual error, thus allowing him to distinguish different sorts of perception on epistemic grounds. I show that Aristotle was aware of all of the major features of Pyrrho's philosophy except Pyrrho's eudaimonism. Aristotle also developed a sophisticated response: he argued that should anyone refuse to make unqualified judgments, at least concerning what is good and bad, she would be totally unable to act. This is as far as I am aware, the earliest version of an argument later developed by the Stoics and called ' apraxia' or 'the Gorgon.' Finally, I briefly sketch a possible positive response to skepticism, based ultimately on induction from a sufficiently large and reliable set of perceptions.