A Human Strategy by Matt Berry, aphorism 144
144
A thorough skeptic is one who denies the possibility of a starting place — but nonetheless finds it impossible to act accordingly. Indeed, I never found a skeptic so thorough that he would go hungry due to his inability to prove the significance of the menu. And just like the rest of us, the skeptic still ranks authors according to their worth and makes his purchases accordingly. He scans the newspaper for a good movie and then proceeds toward the cinema with an unconscious confidence that all will proceed as anticipated. The laboratory rat, too, sniffs and “knows” full well that the cheese has been pressed once again in that self-same corner, and he sets off with an unconscious confidence that all will proceed as before ... that is to say, as anticipated.
However, when it comes to philosophical conversation, competing stimuli are neglected because they are of “no importance” — stimuli which set up a desire this moment, then knock it down in the next — which have our philosopher, who plans out his ascent up the mountain of knowledge, sliding down a mud hill without a word to say in his own defense. He draws his conclusions accordingly: “philosophical knowledge” is ineffective. He has now been reconditioned into a thorough skeptic. Humorously, he does not see the behavioral influence but still takes pride in the fact that he has indeed debunked the primacy of logic. Ironically, he implies the very primacy of logic in his own mind with his constant debunking of “logic as starting place” by way of logic ... a primacy betrayed by his very unwillingness to look elsewhere.
In short, his skepticism still ignores behavioral reality. Consequently, his knowledge is indeed ineffective. His certainty “that no logical philosophy can have a legitimate starting place” evidently does not stop him from wanting to discuss the matter. “Pride in debunking” is his wedge of cheese, by which he wants this logical maze. This is the paragon of nine-to-five philosophers. What a perfect little mouse he is who loves his cheese so much that he will run the maze again and again to prove that it is just a maze ... but never realizing that he at the same time proves he is just a mouse by his inability to see how or why he wants the maze. Consequently, he sees not a single, convenient piece of day-to-day behavior. Diet, as far as he is concerned, has no value next to his one and only “certainty of logical impossibility.”
That one should pursue such a thorough skepticism at the expense of tactical wisdom is indeed an interesting case. The solution is one of stimulus management ... generalship, where a thousand desires are marshaled toward a single victory like so many drilled soldiers under Caesar. Yet the thorough skeptic turns an ear to his untried advisor at precisely that moment where his own eyes are required most ... at a moment which he thinks too small to be considered a “battle.”