The Stoics' account of the cognitive impression

Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy

Volumn 23, Issue , 2002, Pages 147-179

  Reed, Baron ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 63849333485     PISSN: 02657651     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book Series    
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References (25)

1. See also T. Brennan, 'Reasonable Impressions in Stoicism', Phronesis, 41 (1996), 318-34 at 324-5, for several persuasive arguments that some cognitive impressions are non-perceptual. Both the Stoics and the Academics standardly use perceptual impressions as examples in the debate over the cognitive impression, and I shall follow them in that practice. Nevertheless, the issues to be discussed here could easily be stated more generally, if necessary, to apply to non-perceptual impressions as well
2. For more on the cognitive impression serving as the criterion of truth for the Stoics sec G. Striker, 'The Problem of the Criterion', in S. Everson (ed.), Epistemology [Epist.] (Cambridge, 1990), 143-60 at 151-2
3. R. Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge, 3rd edn. [ToK] (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1989), 43-8, is a well-known example
4. For example, Frede says that if the weak interpretation of the Stoics' account is in fact correct 'their school should have been deserted in no time' ('Stoics and Skeptics', 66). But, given his endorsement of the weak interpretation in 'Stoic Epistemology', he must have come to see some merit in it. James Allen also opts for the weak interpretation in 'Carneadean Argument', in Assent, 217-56 at 232-3
5. Annas, 'Stoic Epistemology' ['St. Ep.'], in Epist. 184-203 at 197
6. Some contextualists have recently argued that basic versions of externalism completely fail to explain the appeal of scepticism and are implausible to that extent. If that is indeed a theoretical failing of externalism, it represents another sense in which Annas's interpretation of the Stoic-Academic debate is uncharitable. For this argument see K. DeRose, 'Solving the Skeptical Problem', in Philosophical Review [PR], 104 (1995), 1-52
7. Frede, 'Stoics and Skeptics', 84
8. W. Sellars, 'Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind', in Science, Perception and Reality (Atascadero, 1963), 127-96
9. L. Bonjour, 'Can Empirical Knowledge Have a Foundation?', American Philosophical Quarterly, 15 (1978), 1-13
10. Some externalists have rejected (2); sec J. Van Cleve, 'Foundationalism, Epistemic Principles, and the Cartesian Circle', in PR 88 (1979), 55-91
11. W. Alston, 'Epistemic Circularity', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research [PPR], 47 (1986), 1-30
12. and E. Sosa, 'How to Resolve the Pyrrhonian Problematic: A Lesson from Descartes', Philosophical Studies, 85 (1097), 229-49
13. For compelling reservations about this strategy see W. Alston, The Reliability of Sense Perception (Ithaca, NY, I993), esp. 3
14. J. McDowell, 'Criteria, Defeasibility, and Knowledge' ['CDK'], revised edn. in J. Dancy (ed.), Perceptual Knowledge [Perc. K.] (Oxford, 1988), 209-19 at 210. The highest common factor may be either an independent entity (e.g. a sense datum) or a property of the perceiving subject. For a version of the sense-datum theory see A. J. Ayer, The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge [Foundations] (New York, 1940)
15. for a version of the latter, so-called adverbial, theory see R. Chisholm, Perceiving (Ithaca, NY, 1957)
16. See R. Fumerton, 'Argument from Illusion', in J. Dancy and E. Sosa (eds.), A Companion to Epistemology (Oxford, 1992), 23-7 at 23
17. See P. Butchvarov, Skepticism about the External World [Skepticism] (Oxford, 1998), 31-2, for some options. He recommends adapting the explanation given in the case of delusion
18. See e.g. J. L. Austin, Sense and Sensibilia (Oxford, 1962), 52
19. Alternatively, we may say that the unreal object has all of the same properties as a real object with the exception of the property of existence. For the classic statement of this view see A. Meinong, 'The Theory of Objects', in L. L. Blackman (ed.), Classics of Analytic Metaphysics (Lanham, 1984), 51-60
20. The Inquiry and the Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man are both in The Works of Thomas Reid, ed. W. Hamilton (Edinburgh, 1872). For this presentation of Reid's views on perception and direct realism I rely on J. Immerwahr, 'The Development of Reid's Realism' ['Development'], Monist, 61 (1978), 245-56
21. For a consideration of how sensations are brought under concepts by being synthesized in the imagination see P. F. Strawson, 'Imagination and Perception', in R. C. S. Walker (ed.), Kant on Pure Reason (Oxford, 1982), 82-99
22. See LS 240, and A. A. Long, 'Stoic Psychology', in Cam. Hist. 560-84 at 578 n. 39
23. There are lekta of various types, including propositions, questions, imperatives, etc. (see LS 199), but we can plausibly suppose that propositions are the lekta that subsist in accordance with rational cognitive impressions. It is somewhat less clear what to say about non-rational impressions-i.e., the impressions that animals and young humans have. Some commentators have argued that, for the Stoics, even non-rational impressions have some sort of propositional content; see e.g. R. Sorabji, 'Perceptual Content in the Stoics', Phronesis, 35 (1990), 307-14, and G. Lesses, 'Content, Cause, and Stoic Impressions', Phronesis, 43 (1998), 1-25. Others have argued that this is not so, e.g. Frede, 'Stoics and Skeptics' and 'Stoic Epistemology'. I take no stand on whether the content of non-rational impressions is constituted by a proposition, an incomplete lekton (i.e. a predicate; see D.L. 7. 63; LS 33F. 3), or something else-so long as non-rational impressions have their content only in the same derivative way that rational impressions do
24. Contra LS 164, this is not the distinction between existence and subsistence, although both the Stoics and Meinong also make that distinction. Rather, the distinction is between objecthood and being of any sort (existence or subsistence). On this point see V. Caston, 'Something and Nothing: The Stoics on Concepts and Universals', Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 17 (1999), 145-213 at 151-8
25. For a similar argument see W.Alston, 'Perceptual Knowledge', in The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology (Oxford, 1999), 223-42. It should be noted that in a later paper ('Knowledge and the Internal', PPR 55 [1995], 877-95) McDowell conceives of his answer to scepticism as coming from a commitment to fallibilism. Although he argues that fallibilism fits nicely with direct realism, it is not clear why fallibilism is not equally compatible with some form of indirect realism