Is Suspending Judgement an Evasion When Evidence Is Insufficient?

When a serious allegation appears and the public material conflicts, saying “I cannot judge yet” is often treated as a refusal to take a position. Yet affirmation, denial and suspension are three distinct epistemic attitudes. When evidence is insufficient, the third need not be weaker than the first two.

Ancient Pyrrhonism called suspension of judgement epochē. The sceptic described by Sextus Empiricus did not stop investigating; they withheld assertion when opposing arguments appeared equally forceful and could not yet be resolved. That tradition also linked suspension with tranquillity, a goal we need not simply import into modern life. Public judgement today should focus more directly on whether a conclusion is proportionate to its evidence. The Stoics raised a famous objection: if judgement is suspended about everything, action seems impossible. This criticism reminds us not to turn suspension into a universal escape from responsibility.

My judgement is that responsible suspension has three conditions: explain why the available evidence is inadequate, continue looking for material that could distinguish the competing accounts, and state what new evidence would reopen the judgement. With an unverified allegation, we can decline to declare it true or false while still choosing not to forward it and taking steps to protect people who may be affected. Action does not always require complete factual certainty.

The real evasion is not “I do not yet know”. It is refusing to specify what is missing, while also declining responsibility for inquiry and interim action. Suspension protects conclusions from outrunning their reasons; its limit is that uncertainty must not become a permanent excuse to neglect questions that can be investigated or must be addressed.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism-ancient/
https://iep.utm.edu/ancient-greek-skepticism/