Annas, J. E. (1991) Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind (book)

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allowing for the phenomenon of meaningfulness, while merely avoiding what he sees as obscure and
metaphysically undesirable intermediary entities.
[33] This is the aspect of the theory of prolepsis which has received most recent attention. See Sedley
(1973) for the text; also Manuwald (1972); Long (1971); Glidden (1983, 1985).
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development of a concept. We have a prolepsis of justice, for example; and Epicurus makes some points
about it which are relevant more generally.[34] The concept of justice has a clear central core: a law not
leading to mutual advantage, claims Epicurus, is not just. But the concept can tolerate quite a lot of
variation for example, in the balance of advantage. And it can even tolerate fairly radical change of content
if changed circumstances make different means necessary for the mutual gaining of advantage.
The objections to such an empiricist theory of concepts and meaning are familiar; here what matters is
that prolepseis are what are needed to fill out the Epicurean account of perception. We can easily see how a
perception would involve not only a phantasia or appearance, but also an application of some prolepsis to
the appearance. The perceiver would thereby identify and classify what is perceived, and also, since
prolepseis function to give words meaning, would be able to articulate in language the content of what is
perceived. Such an account would make perception a function of the whole person, involving both irrational
and sentient and rational and cognitively interpreting soul.
However, although an account like this is what Epicurus needs for his theories overall, it is not explicit in
the sources (which indeed tend to assign perception to the irrational soul), and we can only look for a
diagnosis of its absence. Epicurus' theory suffers from a lack of clear relationship between the rational and
irrational soul and clear demarcation of their functions. It also suffers from the fact that, unlike the Stoics,
Epicurus has no very convincing location for perceptual content. Stoic rational appearances are items which
convey content, and what the mind does is to articulate and interpret this, assenting to a lekton as a result.
Epicurus, however, thinks that lekta are metaphysically objectionable entities, and that there are no such
things; so he has to give an account of how we receive information in perception which lacks a mechanism
[34] Kuriai doxai 37, 38.
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for receiving content from the appearances. On Epicurus' view the mind somehow conceptualizes and
articulates the informational content of perception as a result of sensory barrage by images and is able to do
this because repeated experiences have built up patterns in the mind atoms which amount to the possession
of concepts. It is undoubtedly the less satisfactory view.
Epicurus was notorious in antiquity for believing that "all perceptions are true." As an epistemological
thesis, this seems to have been adopted for antisceptical reasons: since perceptual experience is the
foundation for all our knowledge, some perceptions must be true, and we must accept that all are if we are
not to get entangled in sceptical arguments which discredit some perceptions on the basis of others.[35] The
obvious sceptical objections to the thesis are met by the obvious expedient: all perceptions are true, and
falsehood is always due to added belief.[36] Perception never goes wrong insofar as it is the reception of
information from outside; belief involves a reaction on our part which can go right, but can also go wrong.
This arms the Epicureans against sceptics, and indeed we often find sceptics and Epicureans drawing
different conclusions from the same material.[37] However, this role for belief is problematic. That we have a
factor in ourselves accounting for error allows the process of perception itself to be a totally passive
reception of data; but since thinking was supposed to be like perception in being just such a passive
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reception, it is hard to see how we get the error-permitting process out of
[35] See Striker (1977, 135 38). For an account of Epicurus as a naturalistic epistemologist, who is not
motivated by the challenge of scepticism, see Everson (1990).
[36] D. L. 10. 32; Sext. Emp. Math. 8. 63 66. See Striker (1977) and Taylor (1980).
[37] So Lucretius, on the basis of one short antisceptical argument (4. 469 77), feels free to put to
Epicurean use quantities of material used in the later sceptical tradition (4. 324 468). This material is
particularly prominent in Aenesidemus' Ten Modes, particularly the Fifth in Sextus' ordering (see Annas and
Barnes 1985). Diogenes of Oenoanda (new frag. 9) seems to have a similar attitude. Cf. Gigante (1981);
Fowler (1984).
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thinking; indeed a parallel factor would seem required to account for error in thinking. How to account
convincingly for error is a problem facing all empiricist accounts which make our information-receiving
mechanisms conspicuously passive.
Problems arise when we press the question, What is the perception which is always true? The thesis is
expressed in a great variety of ways. What is said to be always true is perception or appearance (phantasia )
or perception and appearance or the appearances occurring through perception or "the senses" in
general.[38] These differences matter, for if Epicurus is wavering between a wider and a narrower notion of
what the item is which is always true, he is by the same token also wavering between a wider and a
narrower notion of what the added belief element is which can produce falsity.
It is easy to see what gets Epicurus into trouble here. He wants a commonsense epistemology: we can
rely on our perceptions. But the thesis that all perceptions are true is rapidly seen to be false at the
commonsense level, for the "conflicts in perception" of which the sceptics made so much arise very
obviously. I see the tower as square close up, round at a distance. The wine heats me and chills you.
Epicurus did not have a satisfactory single answer to this. Plutarch preserves a passage which suggests a
relativistic solution: we do not really have conflicting appearances about the same thing, the wine. Rather,
because of its atomic constitution, the wine is heating to me, cooling to you.[39] Sextus suggests another
way of avoiding the conflict: each of us truly reports how the thing in question appears to us, so we are not
disagreeing about the object, but merely reporting its different appearances.[40] Both these answers are
retreats from common sense. Inevitably, given his [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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