central objective. The Academic skeptics focused on criticizing the dogmas of other schools of philosophy, in particular of the dogmatism of the Stoics. They Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BC. It dealt with a wide variety of subjects, including astronomy, epistemology, mathematics, political philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, ontology, logic, biology, rhetoric and aesthetics. Greek philosophy continued throughout the Hellenistic period and later evolved into Roman philosophy. Greek philosophy has influenced much of Western culture sinc Pyrrho of… Around 266 BC, Arcesilaus became head of the Platonic Academy, and adopted skepticism as a central tenet of Platonism, making Platonism nearly the same as Pyrrhonism. After Arcesilaus, Academic skepticism diverged from Pyrrhonism. This skeptical period of ancient Platonism, from Arcesilaus to Philo of Larissa, became known as the New Academy, although some ancient authors added further subdivisions, such as a Middle Academy. The Academic skeptics did not doubt the existence of truth; they just doubted that humans had the capacities for obtaining it. They based this position on Plato's Phaedo, sections 64–67, in which Socrates discusses how knowledge is not accessible to mortals. While the objective of the Pyrrhonists was the attainment of ataraxia, after Arcesilaus the Academic skeptics did not hold up ataraxia as the central objective. The Academic skeptics focused on criticizing the dogmas of other schools of philosophy, in particular of the dogmatism of the Stoics. They acknowledged some vestiges of a moral law within, at best but a plausible guide, the possession of which, however, formed the real distinction between the sage and the fool. Slight as the difference may appear between the positions of the Academic skeptics and the Pyrrhonists, a comparison of their lives leads to the conclusion that a practical philosophical moderation was the characteristic of the Academic skeptics whereas the objecti In general, the ancient Greeks acknowledged their Egyptian forebears, and in the fifth century BC, the philosopher Isocrates declared that the earliest Greek thinkers traveled to Egypt to seek knowledge; one of them Pythagoras of Samos, who "was first to bring to the Greeks all philosophy". Although Greeks acknowledged Egyptian wisdom, modern scholarship regards Greek philosophy as a distinctive and original intellectual tradition developed independently by Greek thinkers. He was seen as the founder of a line of philosophy that culminated in Pyrrhonism, possibly an influence on Eleatic philosophy, and a precursor to Epicurus' total break between science and religion. === Pythagoreanism === Pythagoras lived at approximately the same time that Xenophanes did and, in contrast to the latter, the school that he founded sought to reconcile religious belief and reason. Aristotle's fame was not great during the Hellenistic period, when Stoic logic was in vogue, but later peripatetic commentators popularized his work, which eventually contributed heavily to Islamic, Jewish, and medieval Christian philosophy. His influence was such that Avicenna referred to him simply as "the Master"; Maimonides, Alfarabi, Averroes, and Aquinas as "the Philosopher". Aristotle opposed the utopian style of theorizing, deciding to rely on the understood and observed behaviors of people in reality to formulate his theories. They based this position on Plato's Phaedo, sections 64–67, in which Socrates discusses how knowledge is not accessible to mortals. While the objective of the Pyrrhonists was the attainment of ataraxia, after Arcesilaus the Academic skeptics did not hold up ataraxia as the central objective. The Academic skeptics focused on criticizing the dogmas of other schools of philosophy, in particular of the dogmatism of the Stoics. They acknowledged some vestiges of a moral law within, at best but a plausible guide, the possession of which, however, formed the real distinction between the sage and the fool. Slight as the difference may appear between the positions of the Academic skeptics and the Pyrrhonists, a comparison of their lives leads to the conclusion that a practical philosophical moderation was the characteristic of the Academic skeptics whereas the objectives of the Pyrrhonists were more psychological. ==== Middle Platonism ==== Following the end of the skeptical period of the Academy with Antiochus of Ascalon, Platonic thought entered the period of Middle Platonism, which absorbed ideas from the Peripatetic and Stoic schools. More extreme syncretism was done by Numenius of Apamea, who combined it with Neopythagoreanism. Handbook of Greek Philosophy: From Thales to the Stoics Analysis and Fragments, Trafford Publishing ISBN 1-4120-4843-5 John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (archived from the original, 6 February 2015), 1930. Freeman, Charles (1996). Egypt, Greece and Rome. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-815003-9. Grayling, A. C. (2019-11-05). The History of Philosophy. Penguin. ISBN 978-1-9848-7875-5. William Keith Chambers Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy: Volume 1, The Earlier Presocratics and the Pythagoreans, 1962. Søren Kierkegaard, On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates, 1841. A.A. Long. Hellenistic Philosophy. University of California, 1992. Kahn, C.H. 1994. Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Luchte, James. 2011. Early Greek Thought: Before the Dawn. New York: Continuum. Martín-Velasco, María José and María José García Blanco eds. 2016. Greek Philosophy and Mystery Cults. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Nightingale, Andrea W. 2004. Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy: Theoria in its Cultural Context. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press. O’Grady, Patricia. 2002. Thales of Miletus. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Preus, Anthony. 2010. The A to Z of Ancient Greek Philosophy. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow. Reid, Heather L. 2011.

According to the Feigl-Reichenbach-Salmon-Schurz pragmatic justification of induction, no predictive method is guaranteed or even likely to work for predicting the future; but if anything will work, induction will work-at least when induction is employed at the meta-level of predictive methods in light of their track records. One entertains a priori all manner of esoteric prediction methods, and is said to arrive a posteriori at the conclusion, based on the actual past, that object-level induction is optimal. Schurz's refinements largely solve the notorious short-run problem. A difficulty is noted, however, related to short-run worries but based on localized disagreement about the past, a feature characteristic of real debates (especially early modern) involving induction in intellectual history. Given the evidence about past events, <i>unfiltered by induction</i>, meta-induction might support a partly non-inductive method-especially as judged by proponents of esoteric prediction methods, who presumably believe that their methods have worked. Thus induction is justified meta-inductively in contexts where it was uncontroversial, while not obviously justified in key contexts where it has been disputed. This objection, momentarily sensed by Reichenbach regarding clairvoyance, is borne out by the Stoics' use of meta-induction to justify both science and divination and by ancient Hebrew examples of meta-induction. Schurz's recently introduced criteria for acceptance of testimony play a crucial role in arriving at object-level induction using meta-induction, but one might question them. Given the need for judgment in accepting testimony, it is unclear that the subjectivity of Howson's Bayesian answer to Hume's problem is overcome. pmc J Gen Philos Sci J Gen Philos Sci 365 springeropen 101763023 Journal for General Philosophy of Science 0925-4560 1572-8587 pmc-is-collection-domain yes pmc-collection-title Springer PMC10511355 PMC10511355.1 10511355 10511355 37745185 10.1007/s10838-022-09620-7 9620 1 Article Does Meta-induction Justify Induction: Or Maybe Something Else? http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7299-5137 Pitts J. Generally this Bayesianism has tended toward a subjective form (Howson et al. 1993 ). Indeed objective Bayesianism had become rare among philosophers prior to Jon Williamson’s work (Williamson 2010 ). Colin Howson devoted an entire book to the problem of induction, written from a subjective Bayesian perspective (Howson 2000 ). He noted that philosophers generally agree that Hume’s problem cannot be solved; but rather than drawing interesting consequences, they promptly forget this fact when thinking of other matters and proceed as if induction were in fact clearly justified (Howson 2000 , 1–2). It is observed that Cicero was himself an augur (Roman state diviner), that the two parts of the dialog should be read in balance especially in light of the precedent of presenting two sides without passing judgment (Beard 1986 ), and that Quintus’ arguments are not effectively refuted in the second part of the work (Schofield 1986 ; Denyer 1985 ). Cicero’s work has recently received attention in the philosophy of science (Cabrera 2020 ). Of greater significance than Cicero’s own view, however, is that important Stoics had defended divination with arguments of the sort provided by Cicero. Thus for the Stoics the ever-lengthening chain of fulfilled predictions increased the belief in future successes and represented an experimental proof for determinism based on the generalization of the observed concatenation of the events A and B . (Sambursky 1959 , 68–69) The extent of the successful track record of divination, however, was controversial, though Given that meta-induction not only can be invoked as a logic of prophecy, but already was by the Stoics, and implicitly by the Israelites as well, it is too quick merely to assume or assert without investigation that experience vindicates science full-time (exceptionless induction) and never vindicates prophecy. The surprise lessens somewhat if one recalls how early modern rationalism often competed with orthodox faith, or how orthodox Aristotelian philosophy (Averroism) often competed with all the Abrahamic faiths in medieval times (such as regarding the eternity of the world vs . creation in the finite past), making empiricism and philosophical skepticism potentially attractive to the religious. William James is a relatively recent proponent of empiricism as pro-religious: Let empiricism once become associated with religion, as hitherto, through some strange misunderstanding, it has been associated with irreligion, and I believe that a new era of religion as well as of philosophy will be ready to begin. (Goodman 1983 , 64, emphasis in the original) Of course there is no guarantee that “we” all arrive at the same reflective equilibrium, much as is the case with Howson’s subjective Bayesianism. If one clings to pure facts and renounces opinions, then one encounters much the same problem that befalls likelihoodism, namely, that there are interesting and meaningful questions that have no answers, such as how probable theories are in light of the evidence (Royall 1997 ; Sober 2008 ; Pitts 2013 )—a question that one would surely have preferred to answer if possible. But one shouldn’t overstate the problem. Obviously one should milk the facts for all that they are worth. In the context of meta-induction, there will presumably be many esoteric views with a poor track record. There might be new meta-inductive simulations to run, perhaps with some uncertain observations, missing memories, or the like, that could shed light on such issues. Such work might give part of the answer to Hume’s problem, but there will be some subjective remainder requiring at least implicit attention to priors. Philosophy could become boring if fundamental questions often received final answers. Fortunately boredom should not set in here, because there is more work to do.