Carneades’ Approval as a Weak Assertion: A Non-Dialectical Interpretation of Academic Skepticism

Abstract

Academic skepticism is usually interpreted as a type of discourse without an assertion (a dialectical interpretation). I argue against this interpretation. One can interpret Carneades’ notion of approval as our notion of weak assertion and thereby ascribe to him his own views (a non-dialectical interpretation). In Academica Cicero reports the debate about the status of approval as a kind of assent among Carneades’ followers, especially the views of Clitomachus and Philo of Larissa. According to Clitomachus, approving impressions implies acting on them without taking them as true, while according to Philo of Larissa, approval is taking something as true without certainty. In more modern terms, we can say that Philo refers to the notion of weak assertion and Clitomachus to non-assertion. Thus Clitomachus’ reading correlates with a dialectical reading, and Philo’s reading correlates with a non-dialectical reading. Philo’s reading leads to the interpretation of Carneades as a quasi-fallibilist. It is difficult to establish the precise position of the historical Carneades because he was hesitant in his oral teaching. Still, there is some basis in Carneades’ theory for interpreting approval as weak assertion (comprising three degrees of persuasiveness involving rational consideration of what seems to be true). My aim in this essay is thus to argue that a quasi-fallibilist and non-dialectical reading is applicable to the historical Carneades.

The essay was originally presented at the 13^th International Conference of ISSEI, the University of Cyprus, Nicosia, 2–6 July 2012, in the workshop “Academic Skepticism: Philosophical Reflections on Knowledge and Rhetoric,” chaired by Professor Sebastien Charles. My thanks to Ramon Roman-Alcala, Stephane Marchand, Mates Veres and other participants for their helpful comments. This research work was financed by Polish funds for science in the years 2009–2012 as project N N101 109137.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Gisela Striker, “Academics versus Pyrrhonists, Reconsidered,” in The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Skepticism, ed. Richard Bett (New York: Cambridge University Press 2010), 201, and “Sceptical Strategies,” in Doubt and Dogmatism: Studies in Hellenistic Epistemology, ed. Malcolm Schofield, Myles Burnyeat, and Jonathan Barnes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 56; Diego Machuca, “Ancient Skepticism: The Skeptical Academy,” Philosophy Compass 6.4 (2011): 264 n. 16.

2. Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe and D. Paul, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969), 341.

3. Harald Thorsrud, Ancient Scepticism (Stocksfield, UK: Acumen, 2009), 79, and “Arcesilaus and Carneades,” in The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Skepticism, 75.

4. Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians (Adversus Mathematicos VII and VIII), trans. Richard Bett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 7.257; hereafter abbreviated as M and cited in the text.

5. Cicero Marcus Tullius, On Academic Scepticism, trans. Charles Brittain (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., 2006), 2.79; hereafter abbreviated as Acad. and cited in the text.

6. Michael Frede, “The Sceptic’s Two Kinds of Assent and the Question of the Possibility of Knowledge,” in The Original Sceptics: A Controversy, ed. Miles Burnyeat and Michael Frede (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., 1998), 142.

7. Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Scepticism (Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes), trans. Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 1.3; hereafter abbreviated as PH and cited in the text.

8. Richard Bett, “Carneades’ Distinction between Assent and Approval,” Monist 73 (1990): 14.

9. Charles Brittain, introduction to Cicero, On Academic Scepticism (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2006), xxvii.

10. Striker, “Sceptical Strategies,” 55.

11. See Thorsrud, “Arcesilaus and Carneades,” 73, and Ancient Scepticism, 80.

12. Thorsrud, Ancient Scepticism, 77.

13. Thorsrud, “Arcesilaus and Carneades,” 75–78.

14. Marc Foglia, “Michel de Montaigne,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2014), 9; at: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/montaigne/. See David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999), chap. 12.

15. “Fallibilism is the doctrine that our knowledge is never absolute but always swims, as it were, in a continuum of uncertainty and indeterminacy” (Charles S. Peirce, Collected Papers, ed. C. Hartshorne and P. Weis (Cambridge, MA Harvard University Press, 1931), vol. 1, paragraph 171.

16. See Thorsrud, Ancient Scepticism, 78, 84.

17. Richard Bett, “Carneades’ Pithanon: A Reappraisal of its Role and Status,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 7 (1989): 78.

18. Thorsrud, Ancient Scepticism, 83.

19. Machuca, “Ancient Skepticism: The Skeptical Academy,” 262.

20. Pierre Couissin, “Le stoicisme de la nouvelle Academie,” Review d’historie de la philosophie 3 (1929): 241–76; English translation, “The Stoicism of the New Academy,” in The Skeptical Tradition, ed. Myles Burnyeat (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press 1983), 31–63.