Sceptics Sentence Examples

A similar view is that of the ancient sceptics.

Nominalism was a doctrine of sceptics and suspected heretics, such as Berengar of Tours and Roscellinus.

In the 2nd century the school became closely connected with the philosophical sect of the Sceptics, whose leader, Sextus (200 B.C.), was an empirical physician.

The Sophists and the Sceptics, Plato and Aristotle, the Stoics and the Epicureans took up the question, and from the time of Locke and Kant it has been prominent in modern philosophy.

There were numerous sceptics, however, who did not hesitate to assert that the import of the message so obviously locked in these curious inscriptions must for ever remain an absolute mystery.

By sceptics the word " dogma " is generally used contemptuously, for an opinion grounded not upon evidence but upon assertion; and this attitude is so far justified from the purely empirical standpoint that theological dogmas deal with subjects which, by their very nature, are not susceptible of demonstration by the methods of physical science.

Carneades, practically a 5th-century sophist, is the most important of the ancient sceptics.

It is men's opinions or unwarranted judgments about things, say the sceptics, which betray them into desire, and painful effort and disappointment.

Both Zeller and Hegel remark upon the difference between the calm of ancient scepticism and the perturbed state of mind evinced by many modern sceptics.

Universal doubt Ancient was the instrument which the sceptics of antiquity recommended for the attainment of complete peace of mind.

The difference might easily be interpreted either as a sign of sentimental weakness on the part of the moderns or as a proof of the limitation of the ancient sceptics which rendered them more easily satisfied in the absence of truth.

It seems to prove, at all events, that the ancient sceptics were more thoroughly convinced than their modern successors of the reasonableness of their own attitude.

It is true we find many thinkers who' deny the competency of reason when it ventures in any way beyond the sphere of experience, and such men are not unfrequently called sceptics.

This tone, which fairly represents the attitude of ancient sceptics, is rare among the moderns, at least among those who are professed philosophers.

These sceptics are primarily Apologists.

And, as a matter of fact, it has been seen that many so-called sceptics were rather critics of the effete systems which they found cumbering the ground than actual doubters of the possibility of knowledge in general.

The mahatmas exhibited their " astral bodies " to her, " precipitated " messages which reached her from the confines of Tibet in an instant of time, supplied her with sound doctrine, and incited her to perform tricks for the conversion of sceptics.

But, in spite of these materialistic tendencies, he followed Hume in reducing matter and everything knowable to phenomena of consciousness; and, supposing that nothing is knowable beyond phenomena, concluded that we can neither affirm nor deny that anything exists beyond, but ought to take up an attitude which the ancient sceptics called Aphasia, but he dubbed by the new name of Agnosticism.

But the sceptics cannot be regarded as having proved their point.

Thus they too, despite their air of dogmatism, were in effect sceptics.

From the days of Protagoras, when this hostility was triumphant and contemptuous, to the days of Isocrates, when it was jealous and bitter, the sophists were declared and consistent sceptics.

Common doctrine, that is to say, common doctrine of a positive sort, they could not have, because, being sceptics, they had nothing which could be called positive doctrine; while there was a period when even their scepticism was in no wise distinctive, because they shared it with all or nearly all their contemporaries.

Orthodox churchmen, Evangelical and Tractarian alike, were alarmed by views on the incarnate nature of Christ that seemed to them to impugn his Divinity, and by concessions to the Higher Criticism in the matter of the inspiration of Holy Scriptures which appeared to them to convert the "impregnable rock," as Gladstone had called it, into a foundation of sand; sceptics, on the other hand, were not greatly impressed by a system of defence which seemed to draw an artificial line beyond which criticism was not to advance.

The controversy as to the selfevidence of perception in which the New Academy effected some sort of conversion of the younger Stoics, and in which the Sceptics opposed both, is one of the really vital issues of the decadence.

Many of the arguments by which the Sceptics enforced their ad vocacy of a suspense of judgment are antiquated in type, but many also are, within the limits of the individualistic theory of knowledge, quite unanswerable.

It is natural, then, that the central contribution of the Sceptics to the knowledge controversy lies in the modes (Tp07rot) in which the relativity of phenomena is made good, that these are elaborated with extreme care, and that they have a modern ring and are full of instruction even to-day.

Neoplatonism had accepted the Aristotelian logic with its sharper definition than anything handed down from Plato, and, except the logic of the Sceptics, there was no longer any rival discipline of the like prestige.

Even in his time there were sceptics who pointed dubiously to the full-grown bones of "widows" and of men among the so-called virgin relics.

Thus the Roman edition contains (of metrical works) exegetical discourses, hymns on the Nativity of Christ, 65 hymns against heretics, 85 on the Faith against sceptics, a discourse against the Jews, 85 funeral hymns, 4 on free-will, 76 exhortations to repentance, 12 hymns on paradise, and 12 on miscellaneous subjects.

But those who, like the positivists, agnostics and sceptics, deny the possibility of metaphysics as a theory of the ultimate nature of things, are still obliged to retain philosophy as a theory of knowledge, in order to justify the asserted limitation or impotence of human reason.

To him are ascribed the five tropes (pente tropoi) which, according to Sextus Empiricus, summarize the attitude of the later ancient sceptics.

On the other hand, he came to represent those aspects of Peripateticism most alien to the spirit of Christendom; and the deeply religious Moslem gave his name to the anti-sacerdotal party, to the materialists, sceptics and atheists, who defied or undermined the dominant beliefs of the church.

In his medical work he belonged to the "methodical" school (see Asclepiades), as a philosopher, he is the greatest of the later Greek Sceptics.

His claim to eminence rests on the facts that he developed and formulated the doctrines of the older Sceptics, and that he handed down a full and, on the whole, an impartial account of the members of his school.

The refusal of Raymund meant the choice of Godfrey of Bouillon, who had, as we have seen, become prominent since the siege of Arca; and Godfrey accordingly became - not king, but "advocate of the Holy Sepulchre," while a few days afterwards Arnulf, the chaplain of Robert of Normandy, and one of the sceptics in the matter of the Holy Lance, became "vicar" of the vacant patriarchate.

At the same time, the essence of eclecticism is the refusal to follow blindly one set of formulae and conventions, coupled with a determination to recognize and select from all sources those elements which are good or true in the abstract, or in practical affairs most useful ad hoc. Theoretically, therefore, eclecticism is a perfectly sound method, and the contemptuous significance which the word has acquired is due partly to the fact that many eclectics have been intellectual trimmers, sceptics or dilettanti, and partly to mere partisanship. On the other hand, eclecticism in the sphere of abstract thought is open to this main objection that, in so far as every philosophic system is, at least in theory, an integral whole, the combination of principles from hostile theories must result in an incoherent patchwork.

The main tendency of this destructive scepticism is essentially the same from its first crystallization by Aenesidemus down to the most advanced sceptics of to-day (see Scepticism).

This view was held by the sceptics of the New Academy (see Scepticism and Carneades).