Even Academics like Philo of Larissa, who did hold that nothing can be apprehended, did not conclude from this that inquiry was pointless. Though they held that certain knowledge was unobtainable, they believed that it was possible to identify views that enjoyed a high degree of probability or verisimilitude—among them, the view that nothing can be known for certain—and they regarded inquiry for the sake of such discoveries as eminently worthwhile. What is more, Academics like Carneades and Clitomachus were no more convinced that nothing can be known than the Pyrrhonists, and they and deserved to be described as inquirers at least as much.
These facts only add to the puzzle, however. If not only the Pyrrhonists but also many Academics were skeptics in Sextus's sense, why the persistent tendency, beginning with the ancient skeptics' own contemporaries, to equate skepticism with one of the positions that Sextus expressly opposes to it? And why should a dedication to inquiry set the skeptics apart from members of other schools? Philo of Alexandria, who was active in the first century CE, was able to use the term "skeptikos" (in the sense of "inquirer") of philosophers quite generally.
Sextus's idea seems to be this: Inquiry into a particular question comes to a natural end either when the question that set the inquiry in train is resolved or when it becomes plain that it cannot be resolved.
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