The Thing about Sunlight:

In Dante's inferno or Blake's deranged pit,
in a cosmical egg or à plomb chaotique,
whether one world or many doesn't mean shit.

Should you fall to the bottom, your ass gets a kick,
not slightly transformed, (did you think I meant lick?).
Not sure of your hist'ry, thrown back through the mirror,

if you trust it's a myst'ry, you needn't keep score.
If this wasn't as true as you lick off your thumb,
then where do you s'pose all that sunlight came from?

– Pyrrho's Technique

By its own definition, "thing" is either and both an unnamed and indeterminate autonomosity, so therefore, is only presumed to be materially existent, unless as a stand-in or proxy for some relation or process, in which case matter is immaterial and existence incorporeal. In any language it translates to "garble". And applying to anything, once named or observed, it loses its thingness, and hence, its material objectivity – now it's glaringly subjective – for

1. consideration on the one hand, or
2. 'exploitation' on an other, and
3. ignorance by any other criterion than luminosity (like stars in your eyes) or feeling (like a headache)

an affinity perchance or adventure which may lose its thing for animosity or paranoia: by association in the first which makes it relative to something else so is no longer independent; destruction in the second by virtue of its consumption or corruption (something we can't be directly assured of when even repressed skeletons emerge from dark closets); and outright disappears in the third like a closing wound or zipper – in any case it may just be a phantom, so we can with confidence proclaim "no thing exists" in dream or awake but for that we have just named or witnessed.

By any reasonable extension, nothing is unknown and all that's left is reality, a world where there's naught left to know. When all questions are obsolete the thing as such and any other self is dogma or what's read in any dictionary once one erasses all contra-dictions. Ignoring any sophistry annihilates all poetry, the chief`linguistic substance which so upset Plato, the nature of language games of which entendres or polysemy, anomolies are the`necessary conditions for any comparison, definition and assessment concerning any context, predictive predilection, and without any of which witness wanton predicates or you're placed under predation, sometimes called "into perdition".

Without some kindred for comparison, to name an unwitnessed thing eliminates all chance for consideration, use or antipathy, a thing which only authorities can offer (it's often all they have) so is taken as such, like a ding an sich as if one missed the garage door entirely, and with no ambivalence, call for property damage or a speedy ambulance. Dogma's truth is given, no questions asked, but it's no gift when every thing else is taken, most of which is room for curiosity and exploration. Doubt and fallibility or each judgment fast suspended returns the gift as an offering or suggestion and nothing gets expended. In lieu of inquests for an answer or tit-for-tat exchange, nothing can be shared except erotic poems and carnage, in either case transformed, it means it'll never be the same and even when if noticed, nothing will be missed, except perhaps the sunshine or more light on the subject though not directly in your eye.

Skepticism, ranging from a simple suspension of judgement to the outright denial of truth (although Pyrrho suggested "we neither deny nor affirm anything"), need not lead to passivity (that is literally impassive or "impressively impassable") and indifference nor to morality and the formulation of an ethics (as has been traditionally demanded by seekers of the right and true – but not the beautiful), nor to an impossible impasse, (just to double emphasize the point) although there may be no shortage of dilemma for decision-makers, meddlers and other fast-talkers equiped with intellectual ammunition in thirty round clips. A proper dialectic is just a pair of shoelaces or a set of reins: right and left make no difference to keeping your boots on while holding your horses.

ANTISYNTHESIS:

"The mode, power, might or technique of the Sceptical School is to place the phenomenal in opposition to the intellectual "in any way whatever," and thus through the equilibrium of the reasons and things opposed to each other, to reach, first the state of suspension of judgment, and afterwards that of imperturbability. We do not use the word power in any unusual sense, but simply, meaning the force of the system. By the phenomenal, we understand the sensible, hence we place the intellectual in opposition to it. The phrase "in any way whatever," may refer to the word power in order that we may understand that word in a simple sense as we said, or it may refer to the placing the phenomenal and intellectual in opposition. For we place these in opposition to each other in a variety of ways, the phenomenal to the phenomenal, and the intellectual to the intellectual, or reciprocally, and we say "in any way whatever," in order that all methods of opposition may be included. Or "in any way whatever" may refer to the phenomenal and the intellectual, so that we need not ask how does the phenomenal appear, or how are the thoughts conceived, but that we may understand these things in a simple sense. By "reasons opposed to each other," we do not by any means understand that they deny or affirm anything, but simply that they offset each other. By equilibrium, we mean equality in regard to trustworthiness and untrustworthiness, so that of the reasons that are placed in opposition to each other, one should not excel another in trustworthiness.

... The fundamental principle of the Sceptical system is especially this, namely, to oppose every argument by one of equal weight, for it seems to us that in this way we finally reach the position where we have no dogmas."

– Sextus Empiricus

AGRIPPA'S OR MÜNCHHAUSEN TRILEMMA

1. All justifications in pursuit of certain knowledge have also to justify the means of their justification and doing so they have to justify anew the means of their justification. Therefore there can be no end. We are faced with the hopeless situation of an infinite regression.
2. One can stop at self-evidence or common sense or fundamental principles or speaking 'ex cathedra' or at any other evidence, but in doing so the intention to install certain justification is abandoned.
3. The third horn of the trilemma is the application of a circular argument.

The agreement of slaves or antagonists, consensus leads more to dogma if not politically, democratic submission, a sacrifice or compromise. Like the Zapitistas the German assembly was a thing, but only birthed after being held up against the wall by Latin broadswords or their equivalent. Before confederation for defense from French and English conquistadors, the Iroquoian council called up nothing and stood nowhere. They were called up to help with someone facing some impending uncertainty (or so the story goes).

Before any administrative council, the thing was a festival or what happens within a circle of interest. A meet, moot or meat, the sense of which is the same, a stretch or an affair, the place for a fair. Prior to the middle ages, which is to say, in myth-time and truth was just what's trusting, the thing of aesthetic mutuality 'twas neither an economic fare nor politically fair, that certain place where justice must always proceed both from and with some jousting and never just in jest. In lieu of divinity, recipe or chance supposition, a thing is just another choice or means for a movement when confronting uncertainty. As they used to say, "bad company often makes strange bed-fellows" just prior to prescribing a strong laxative.

"We say that the Sceptic does not dogmatise. We do not say this, meaning by the word dogma the popular assent to certain things rather than others (for the Sceptic does assent to feelings that are a necessary result of sensation, as for example, when he is warm or cold, he cannot say that he thinks he is not warm or cold), but we say this, meaning by dogma the acceptance of any opinion in regard to the unknown things investigated by science. For the Pyrrhonean assents to nothing that is unknown. Furthermore, he does not dogmatise even when he utters the Sceptical formulae in regard to things that are unknown, such as "Nothing more," or "I decide nothing," or any of the others about which we shall speak later. For the one who dogmatises regards the thing about which he is said to dogmatise, as existing in itself; the Sceptic does not however regard these formulae as having an absolute existence, for he assumes that the saying "All is false," includes itself with other things as false, and likewise the saying "Nothing is true"; in the same way "Nothing more," states that together with other things it itself is nothing more, and cancels itself therefore, as well as other things. We say the same also in regard to the other Sceptical expressions. In short, if he who dogmatises, assumes as existing in itself that about which he dogmatises, the Sceptic, on the contrary, expresses his sayings in such a way that they are understood to be themselves included, and it cannot be said that he dogmatises in saying these things. The principal thing in uttering these formulae is that he says what appears to him, and communicates his own feelings in an unprejudiced way, without asserting anything in regard to external objects...

It is evident that we pay careful attention to phenomena from what we say about the criterion of the Sceptical School. The word criterion is used in two ways. First, it is understood as a proof of existence or non-existence, in regard to which we shall speak in the opposing argument. Secondly, when it refers to action, meaning the criterion to which we give heed in life, in doing some things and refraining from doing others, and it is about this that we shall now speak. We say, consequently, that the criterion of the Sceptical School is the phenomenon, and in calling it so, we mean the idea of it. It cannot be doubted, as it is based upon susceptibility and involuntary feeling. Hence no one doubts, perhaps, that an object appears so and so, but one questions if it is as it appears. Therefore, as we cannot be entirely inactive as regards the observances of daily life, we live by giving heed to phenomena, and in an unprejudiced way. But this observance of what pertains to the daily life, appears to be of four different kinds. Sometimes it is directed by the guidance of nature, sometimes by the necessity of the feelings, sometimes by the tradition of laws and of customs, and sometimes by the teaching of the arts. It is directed by the guidance of nature, for by nature we are capable of sensation and thought; by the necessity of the feelings, for hunger leads us to food, and thirst to drink; by the traditions of laws and customs, for according to them we consider piety a good in daily life, and impiety an evil; by the teaching of the arts, for we are not inactive in the arts we undertake. We say all these things, however, without expressing a decided opinion." (ibid)

But a virtue itself, particularly one of submission (piety) or aloofness (disinterest), is incompatible with every-day life taken together with any other pro- or im-posed value: there is an impiousness lurking 'neath the lines of every skeptic wishing a voice without being cast into the pit undone or too early. Virtue is only true of and in itself or when in the isolation of solitary confinement, which is to say out of space or context, emulated or enframed, in-flamed and therefore false or dying, but without the insinuation of lying and that is sometimes called hypocrisy or else delusion. It may just be outside of myth-time, everything's absurd or cast with self-allusion – a thing witnessed shining on every regime may be as certain as any sunburn on a cloudless day or gamma rays when shady so to wish to further cloud things up would be by all a thing of virtuous desire often, traveling underneath the name of mayhem.

"One cannot but recall here a witty formula of life under a hard Communist regime: Of the three features—personal honesty, sincere support of the regime and intelligence—it was possible to combine only two, never all three. If one was honest and supportive, one was not very bright; if one was bright and supportive, one was not honest; if one was honest and bright, one was not supportive."

– Žižek

What is thought to be a dilemma concerning reality is no such thing should you follow Einstein's advice and enlarge your circle of interest or compassion to let things fall where they may but not refrain from taking action or speaking things relatedly. Such as was in myth-time is now mislabeled ancestor worship, the same folks who say "If it was good enough for grandpa then it's good enough for me.

To wit: Consider a child is in the street and comes along a bus. Either may be your own but the juxtaposition presents three alternatives.

1. The first, if you're a human and you don't drop dead in shock, is your heart clogs up your throat and your gut falls down an elevator shaft and you're there (the "mother panic maneuver"), and just in time at that.
2. On the other hand your grasp comes up empty – the child was just an optical illusion – and pausing in momentary dismay, the bus grinds your new haircut out from the pothole and into the asphalt.
3. The weighty analysis. Should you have prior stopped to consider more carefully the options and the situation and then proceed with more certainty or do nothing, walk without a care and guarantee your safety or prevent the accusation you've been once again in error?

The smart thing would be to have abstained from all demands that say that you should cut your hair and hope for the best because if it's not one thing, it'll always be t'other. Burying your feelings on any matter never meant, except by chance, you'll come out any other end unscathed or less demented like reversing the transmission back across the railroad tracks to re-align your front suspension. But just in case, so said Pascal, all lacking in a certainty, you give it a shot, and that's experimentalism, believe it or not. On clear days even juries cast the shadows of a doubt.