Ton Deuteron Ploun

There are two main characters in Stoic epistemology: the sage, who is wise, has επιστημη, and never errs; and the fool, who is ignorant but sometimes has καταληψεις. For the fool, though, the flaws in his system of beliefs vitiate these καταληψεις and so his ignorance is complete.

Whoever isn’t a sage is a fool (in much the same way that he who isn’t virtuous is completely vicious). There are two ‘cognitive achievement spaces’ – the cognitive achievement space that represents the certain, systematic, unshakeable space that is wisdom, and then the space that is everything else. We’re all in the ‘other else’ cognitive achievement space, as none of us are the σοφος.

Success and adequacy, then, is an all or nothing matter. This continues in the tradition of Socrates…since a person’s overall set of commitments is contradictory, no individual “plank” is safe.

But Socrates was notoriously rationalist (Plato? What is the Socrates that Meinwald refers to? She makes reference to the Republic here, as well as the Socratic elenchus more generally.) while the Stoics are empiricist. Wouldn’t this act as an important difference between Platonic epistemology and that of the Stoics. Might the empiricism of the Stoics lead us to hold that certain ‘planks’ (those from clear and distinct impressions) are safe?

Perhaps one way to respond to this is to note that επιστημη requires that one assent to the impression in a way that is unswayed by argument. If one has any false belief, then she can be swayed argument and thus has not assented in a way such that she can be said to have επιστημη.

We see this same position in ethics (the man drowning in 30 feet of water and the man drowning in 3 feet of water) and so it is natural to expect an analogous situation in Stoic epistemology.

Many scholars present a far more complicated account of Stoic epistemology, one that loses that starkness and clarity native to Stoicism.

Starkness and clarity are native to Stoicism? Consider Cicero in De Finibus (1.13) who says that he’s going to address Epicurean ethics first because that one is easiest to address (with the implication that Stoicism and Neo-Aristotelian accounts are much more complicated and more difficult to address).

An example of a complicated account of Stoic epistemology is provided by Annas (in “Stoic Epistemology”) who presents a series of forms of acceptances: assent, δοξα, καταληψις, επιστημη. She arrives at this ordering by looking at at Cicero’s recounting of Zeno’s fist analogy and SE’s account which says that καταληψις is between δοξα and επιστημη.

While neither account says that δοξα is above mere assent, Annas’ exposition does. But what sort of assent is weaker than Stoic δοξα?

Annas holds that δοξα and ignorance are distinct but finds that the Stoics blur the distinction between them.

This article will clarify how opinion should be characterized. Meinwald will argue for the restoration of a simple, clear-cut view with no form of assent below δοξα.

“Assent to an appearance generates a commitment which in the best case is knowledge and in all others is opinion (ignorance)” (218).

Look at Cicero Acad. 1.41: “What was grasped by sense perception Zeno called itself a sense perception, and if it had been so grasped that it could not be disputed by reason, he called it scientific knowledge, but if it were otherwise, he called it ignorance.”

Cicero Acad 1.42 = Zeno placed cognition between scientific knowledge and ignorance.
SE 7.151 = The Stoics say 3 things are linked together: scientific knowledge, opinion, and cognition between them.

One might think these are related in such a way that each characterizes a form of commitment corresponding to the contrast between the fool at the sage. Each has his own form of commitment. The sage has επιστημη and the fool has opinion/ignorance.
– this view is taken up in the middle books of the Republic.

I presume in book five when Plato says that knowledge is of things that are and belief is of things that are and are not. Or perhaps the allegory of the cave. Regardless, though, this doesn’t seem analogous. In the cave, the object of cognition is different – the lover of sights and sounds has as his object a particular thing of beauty while the philosopher has as his object of cognition the Form itself. Meinwald will go on to say that both the σοφος and the fool can have καταληψεις, presumably of the same thing, but because of their cognitive state (σοφος = stable, systematic, completely true beliefs; fool = not σοφος’s state) the καταληψις for the one will be knowledge and for the other mere opinion. This doesn’t seem analogous to Plato.

Just as any individual is either a sage or a fool, so too any mental disposition is an instance of επιστημη or δοξα/αγνοια

“Each character would have his proprietary form of commitment. And for the most clear-cut view each of these forms of commitment would be made up of eponymous parts, i.e. knowledge as a state would consist of bits of knowledge, and opinion=ignorance as a state would be made up of bits of opinion=ignorance” (219).

But the work of most scholars goes against this. Why? Because it is generally thought that an individual opinion is assent to an incognitive impression. Once you accept this account, you give up the simple picture in one of two ways:
1) you disturb the relation between the state of opinion and individual opinions
2) you take opinion and ignorance to be different states.

Gorler adopts view (1). He says that someone has the disposition of opinion if some individual commitments are opinions (ie assents to non-kataleptic impressions). This means that some of the commitments that make up the disposition aren’t themselves opinions.

But this leads us to worry about the Stoics not making it clear if they’re talking of the state of opinion or particular opinion. They’re vague about this in places, and if they actually held the view as advocated by Gorler, you would expect them to be much more precise in their use of the words.

The more mainstream option is (2) where ignorance and opinion come apart. Both Annas and Long & Sedley make δοξα cover assents to the incognitive while ignorance extends to all commitments that fall short of knowledge. So opinion consists of all and only particular opinions (while ignorance is the state).

This gives up on the binary set-up that seemed characteristically Stoic. Further, it doesn’t take into account (or, perhaps, does not adequately take into account) that the Stoics sometimes do seem to identify opinion with ignorance.

What we should do is review our evidence for taking ‘assent to the incognitive’ as the mark of opinion. (I’ll call it the AI argument)

* * * *

A central bit of evidence in favor of the AI argument is a bit of Plutarch. Looking at this bit of Plutarch (On Stoic Self-Contradictions; LS41E) we see that if one opines, she yields to impressions which are incognitive.

This passage gives us the conditional ‘if one assents to the incognitive, then she opines’ but it does NOT give us the conditional ‘if one opines, then she assents to the incognitive’.

Another passage LS point to is at 41G which commits us to the position that since the sage doesn’t opine, he doesn’t assent to anything incognitive. This commits us to the claim that if the sage were to assent to the incognitive, then he would opine. It does not commit us to AI.

CM proceeds to address other passages – Cicero Acad 2.59 and 2.60; and LD 41D2 – that LS point to to support AI. CM argues that they fail to offer adequate evidence for the claim.

We may take Acad 1.41-2 to lend support for AI. But we need not. The argument that Arcelaus presents is as follows (CM pg 226):
(1) cognition occurs either in a sage or in an inferior man
(2) cognition in a sage is knowledge
(3) cognition in an inferior man is opinion
(4) there’s no other possibility
(5) so there’s nothing between knowledge and opinion to be the criterion

If we look at SE 7: 153-4, we see evidence for the simple reading. As presented, if we take the complex interpretation (the one advocated for by LS and Annas), then Arcesilaus says something false (namely, if a cognitive impression occurs in an inferior man, it is opinion) since that view says that opinion is defined as assent to the incognitive (and Arc. says that cognition in an inferior man is opinion).

The simple reading can handle this argument, but it must account for P5: there is nothing between knowledge and ignorance to be the criterion.

Whether (5) follows from (1) – (4) depends on the interpretation of ‘between’ that we use. We can’t mean it like paving stones, where one paving stone is between two others, because then knowledge couldn’t be opinion and SE goes on (at 7.151) to describe it thusly. Also, cognition is said to be common to both the wise and foolish.

We should think of ‘between’ as a sort of yoke connecting two things (like two oxen yoked together). This lends support to the simple reading since cognition figures in to both knowledge and opinion.

If we take ‘between’ in this way and go back to P5 we see that A’s argument is neither embarrassing failure or a knockout (because it doesn’t show that cognition can’t be between knowledge and opinion) and so the Stoics still have room to respond to Arc.’s worries. This preserves the dialectical requirement as put forward by Annas in “Stoic Epistemology”.