Pyrrhon Of Elis was the Greek philosopher from whom Pyrrhonism takes its name; he is generally accepted as the father of the sceptics. Scepticism, also spelled skepticism, in philosophy is the attitude of doubting knowledge claims set forth in various areas. Although doubt and inquiry form the basis of philosophical thought, sceptics take this on the extreme end of the spectrum and declare to doubt everything. They have challenged the adequacy or reliability of philosophical claims by asking what principles they are based upon or what they actually establish. The original Greek meaning of skeptikos was “an inquirer,” someone who was unsatisfied and still looking for truth.
Following the argument of Plato, sceptics believe that human reason and perception can not be relied upon and therefore we can never truly identify our thought to be true. With this view, they asserted that any form of knowledge we acquire depending on our senses is unreliable and questionable – and so for every justification, the opposite and the contradictory are equally plausible. Sceptism can be regarded as an extreme form of relativism. Yet regardless of its absurdity, many theories of sceptism have a strong influence over the scientific philosopher and logicians of the 20th century.
