On Knowledge

The Stoic theory of knowledge builds directly on their epistemology, but I find it better conceived and more complete. As Zeno pantomimed many thousands of years ago, the states of knowledge can be traced with two hands. An open palm is an impression. A loosely held fist is assent. A tight fist is cognition, or katalepsis. Finally, a second hand wrapped around a tight fist is scientific knowledge – episteme.

There is also opinion, doxa. Reading that, by the way, cleared up a longstanding question of mine about what ‘doxography’ was. Anyway, opinion according to Sextus Empiricus was weak and false assent. Plutarch, however, held that opinion was assent to the incognitive. It seems the latter is the prevailing Stoic view. The Stoic sage would never opine on anything, for all opinion was false and blameworthy. According to Arcesilaus, then, the Stoic sage must necessarily always suspend judgment, lest he opine. I suppose that’s too lofty of a goal, but not a bad one. A person is right to suspend judgment until he can be sure of his impressions – since one can never be sure, judgment should necessarily always be suspended.

The inferior man, which includes everybody due to the impossibility of becoming a true sage, is always ignorant. Even his assent to true cognitive impressions is ignorance. Since the Stoics typically framed their beliefs in dichotomies, there is no middle ground between the sage’s excellence and the inferior man’s ignorance. Assent to true cognitive impressions comprises scientific knowledge for the sage because he, to use Long and Sedley’s words, has freed himself from “all doubt, uncertainty, falsehood, and instability from his cognitive state”.

Of course, to prevent realizing the futility of man’s quest, one must partially reject the dichotomy of knowledge and strive for a more complete grasp of episteme. Otherwise, why even try at all? Hence, a modern day Stoic handbook should perhaps allow deviations from the scripture, identifying a series of ‘intermediate’ states of knowledge, much like the ‘preferred’ and ‘non-preferred’ neutral objectives in Stoic ethics.