Two Truths Doctrine - Correspondence With Greek Scepticism

Correspondence With Greek Scepticism

McEvilley (2002) notes a correspondence between Greek Pyrrhonism and Madhyamika doctrines:

Sextus says that there are two criteria:
  1. hat by which we judge reality and unreality, and
  2. hat which we use as a guide in everyday life.

According to the first criterion, nothing is either true or false nductive statements based on direct observation of phenomena may be treated as either true or false for the purpose of making everyday practical decisions.

The distinction, as Conze has noted, is equivalent to the Madhyamika distinction between "Absolute truth" (paramārthasatya), "the knowledge of the real as it is without any distortion," and "Truth so-called" (saṃvṛti satya), "truth as conventionally believed in common parlance.

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