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ABSTRACT
This paper argues for a view that maximizes in the Stoics epistemology the
starkness and clarity characteristic of other parts of their philosophy. I reconsider
our evidence concerning doxa (opinion/belief): should we really take the Stoics
to define it as assent to the incognitive, so that it does not include the assent of
ordinary people to their kataleptic impressions, and is thus actually inferior to
agnoia (ignorance)? I argue against this, and for the simple view that in Stoicism
assent is either, in the case of the fool, doxa = agnoia, or alternatively, in that
of the sage, epistm (knowledge). This view, together with reflection on the
appropriate sense of between in the relevant reports of SE and Cicero, yields
a sympathetic reading of an otherwise problematic challenge Sextus reports
Arcesilaus as having prepared for the Stoic claim that katalpsis, which is the
criterion of truth, is between knowledge and opinion; on my view each side is
proceeding in a philosophically legitimate way.

Stoic epistemology presents its main characters clearly and distinctly, so

that standard scholarship agrees on the following tenets. The sage is wise:
he has epistm (knowledge/scientific knowledge/wisdom/understanding)
and never errs. The fool in contrast is ignorant: though under favorable
conditions from time to time he has normal impressions that cannot be
wrong (Stoic kataleptic/cognitive impressions), the flaws in his overall
system vitiate even these attachments, so that his ignorance is comprehensive. Whoever is not a sage is a fool.
In this set-up, the fool is not a figure of so to speak idealized ignorance. That is, the fool and the sage are not symmetrically counterpoised,
not equally abstracted figures representing practically unattainable extremes with real human beings falling somewhere on a continuum between
them. Rather, the fool is the complement of the sage in such a way that
to him is assigned all parts of cognitive achievement space except the
region that represents the certain, systematic, unshakeable, and unerring
disposition that is wisdom, i.e. to the fool is assigned all parts of cognitive achievement space that we regular types occupy.
This is a view that wants to make success and even adequacy an
all-or-nothing matter. It has been seen as a continuation of the program

Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2005

Also available online www.brill.nl

Phronesis L/3

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of Socrates, 1 who considered as discredited anyone who failed his

elenchus though, for all that this showed, some of such a persons individual opinions could be perfectly true. The important thing was that since
such a persons overall set of commitments (concerning relevant matters)
was contradictory, no individual plank in his platform was reliably safe.
There is also a certain kinship2 with the low assessment the Divided Line
and Cave passages made of people at the lower levels that assessment
did not depend on saying that each of their particular opinions was or
could be false.
This all-or-nothing approach manifests itself in Stoic ethics in the
famous image:
na, fasn, ll sper pxun pxvn n yaltt tw pifaneaw odn
tton pngetai to katadeduktow rguiw pentakosaw, otvw od o pelzontew ret tn makrn ntvn ttn esin n kak&
Yes, they [the Stoics] say, but just as in the sea the man an arms length from
the surface is drowning no less than the one who has sunk five hundred fathoms,
so even those who are getting close to virtue are no less in a state of vice than
those who are far from it. (LS3 61T = SVF III. 539, from Plutarch, On Common
Conceptions)

In the case of Stoic ethics, the rest of the view is as clear-cut and striking as these characterizations. Thus the austerity inherent in the point that
everyone below the surface is equally drowning also characterizes such
tenets as that only virtue matters or that only the sage can do anything
properly. It is natural to expect an analogous situation in Stoic epistemology, and this is just what we find in a treatment of it like Tad Brennans
when he is summarizing what he represents as uncontroversial basics
before going on to controversial work on the emotions.4 Yet when we
look at detailed work on Stoic epistemology itself, we find that interpreters
are not in agreement and that their reconstructions, even taken individually, tend to lose the starkness and clarity native to Stoicism.
Accepted November 2004
1
Michael Frede, Stoics and Skeptics on Clear and Distinct Impressions, in Myles
Burnyeat (ed.), The Skeptical Tradition (Berkeley, 1983), 65; A. A. Long & D. N.
Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers hereafter LS (Cambridge, 1987) I, 259.
2
See Julia Annas, Stoic Epistemology in Stephen Everson (ed.), Epistemology
(Cambridge, 1990), 188 on the relationship of Stoicism to Platos Republic.
3
I reunite text and translation from LS vol. II and vol. I respectively, citing them
by their (common) boldface LS numbers.
4
Tad Brennan, The Old Stoic Theory of Emotions, in Juha Sihvola and Troels
Engberg-Pedersen (eds.), The Emotions in Hellenistic Philosophy (Dordrecht, 1998),
27, 34.

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An extreme example is Julia Annas, who provides a particularly inclusive exposition of the basics of Stoic epistemology.5 Since this is in the
context of a paper largely devoted to the debate between the Stoics and
the Skeptics concerning katalpsis as the criterion of truth, her treatment
of our issues does not answer all the questions it may prompt. For my
purposes, the fascinating part is the series she presents of forms of acceptance by a mind of an appearance: assent, doxa (opinion/belief),6 katalpsis (apprehension), knowledge. While she does not say explicitly how she
derives this ordering, it seems to be by combining parts of texts from
Cicero and Sextus. Cicero (Acad. II. 145 = SVF I. 66) reports the famous
pantomime whereby Zeno represented appearance/impression, assent, apprehension, and knowledge: by his hand with open palm, with slightly
clenched fingers, formed into a fist, and then finally with the fist forcefully secured by the other hand. Annas seems to be in mix-and-match
mode and to combine parts of this sequence with the report of Sextus
(Adv. M. VII. 151), who tells us that apprehension is between knowledge
and doxa. That is, she seems to arrive at her ordering by taking assent,
apprehension, and knowledge as they are in the Cicero report (impression
is not one of her numbered stages as it is not yet a form of acceptance).
She then seems to deal with Sextus saying that apprehension is between
knowledge and doxa by putting in doxa just below apprehension in her
series.
Notice however that while neither source tells us that doxa is higher
than mere assent, Annas exposition does.7 Commenting on this part of
her sequence, Annas writes, In any perception, there will be not only an
appearance, but some kind of acceptance by the persons mind of the
propositional content of the appearance. The weakest form of this is assent
(sunkatathesis). The next strongest is belief (doxa).8 This seems to me
highly puzzling: what mere assent weaker than Stoic doxa can possibly

Stoic Epistemology, 186-88.

Annas discusses (fn. 7) belief and opinion as translations of doxa, and plumps
for belief. I use opinion in this paper to harmonize with the extracts from LS, but
for present purposes the choice is no more significant than that.
7
An alternative reconstruction of her thought process is that Annas bases herself
on Acad. I. 40-42. This would give all her terms in a single source, but has the infelicity that this text is primarily in terms of inscientia (agnoia, ignorance), whose relation to opinio (doxa) is not at all clear. And note that according to Annas, ignorance
is not equivalent to doxa. In any case, the main point that the source does not contain
information supporting Annas representation of the relation between doxa and assent
would still hold.
8
Stoic Epistemology, 186.
6

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be eludes me. So a perplexity special to Annas presentation is whether

doxa is in a sense higher than mere assent. Note also that Annas does not
seem to give a definite position in the basic progression to agnoia. A common perplexity concerns whether in Stoicism the latter is better than opinion. (This follows if one supposes, as we will see Annas does, that the
mark of doxa is assent to the incognitive; some parts of a fools ignorance
are his assents to his cognitive impressions.) She flags however that the
exact relation between ignorance and doxa is tricky; she holds them officially
distinct but finds the Stoics sometimes blurring the line between them.
In general in the literature, messiness seems to collect around the notion
of doxa (opinion/belief). Thus, in this essay I will aim to clarify how opinion should be characterized.9 I will argue for the restoration of a simple,
clean-cut view, which eliminates any assent lower than doxa as well as
any suggestion that ignorance can be better than opinion. On my picture
assent to an appearance generates a commitment which in the best case
is knowledge, and in all others is opinion (= ignorance).
*

Let us start by laying out some standard texts on the comparatively uncontroversial notions of knowledge and ignorance. Here is Sextus on
knowledge:
fasin . . . pistmhn mn enai tn sfal ka bebaan ka metyeton p
lgou katlhcin . . . katlhcin . . . tiw st katalhptikw fantasaw sugkatyesiw: katalhptik d fantasa kat totouw tgxanen lhyw ka
toiath oa ok n gnoito ceudw.
The Stoics say . . . Scientific knowledge is cognition which is secure and firm and
unchangeable by reason . . . Cognition . . . is assent belonging to a cognitive impression; and a cognitive impression, so they claim, is one which is true and of such
a kind that it could not turn out false. (LS 41C = SE, Adv. M. VII. 151-52; cf.
LS 41H = SVF III. 112, from Stobaeus)

Cicero goes more quickly over cognition and knowledge, but relates
knowledge to ignorance clearly:
quod autem erat sensu comprensum id ipsum sensum appellabat, et si ita erat
comprensum ut convelli ratione non posset scientiam, sin aliter inscientiam
nominabat

A subsequent effort will examine the Stoic treatment of weak assent in generating opinion.

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What was grasped by sense-perception Zeno called itself a sense-perception, and

if it had been so grasped that it could not be disrupted by reason, he called it
scientific knowledge; but if it were otherwise, he called it ignorance. (LS 41B =
SVF I. 60 = Cicero, Acad. I. 41; cf. LS 41I = SVF III. 663 = Stobaeus II. 68,
18-23)

So we have: kataleptic impressions cannot be wrong; knowledge is unshakeably secure assent to kataleptic impressions; anything less is ignorance.
Now armed with characterizations of knowledge, katalpsis (cognition,
apprehension) and ignorance, we will be able to entertain our theme question of how opinion fits in. Let us start with a superficially similar pair
of statements:
sed inter scientiam et inscientiam comprehensionem . . . collocabat
cognition . . . [Zeno] placed between scientific knowledge and ignorance (LS 41B
= SVF I. 60 = Cicero, Acad. I. 42)
tra gr ena fasin kenoi t suzugonta llloiw, pistmhn ka djan
ka tn n meyor totvn tetagmnhn katlhcsin
The Stoics say there are three things which are linked together, scientific knowledge, opinion, and cognition stationed between them. (LS 41C = SE, Adv. M.
VII. 151)

Are Cicero and Sextus telling us the same thing so that opinion and ignorance are equivalent notions in Stoicism? One might incline to think so,
and this would contribute to a clear-cut view, one featuring a contrast
between two forms of commitment that corresponds to the contrast we
started with between the sage and the fool. (To carry out this view one
has of course to specify the sense in which katalpsis is between knowledge and ignorance in Cicero and between knowledge and opinion in
Sextus, but that must be done in any case and we will come to it in due
course.) 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 pieces of knowledge, and opinion = ignorance as a state would be made
up of bits of opinion = ignorance. This is not only the simplest way of
thinking of the relation between the states and commitments falling under
them, but is the one taken in the importantly antecedent work of Socrates
and the middle books of Platos Republic.10

10

Discussion recurs throughout the stretch of the Rep. from 474 to 541.

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The picture such a view affords features a series of simple, binary oppositions: just as an individual person is either a sage or a fool, so any mental disposition is either wisdom or opinion = ignorance, and so also any
individual commitment is either wisdom or opinion = ignorance. Just as
the sage is approved and the fool disparaged, so the state of wisdom is
approved and the state of opinion = ignorance is disparaged, and so also
individual bits of wisdom are approved and individual bits of opinion =
ignorance are disparaged. Indeed, just as all disparagement of people is
of the fool, so all disparagement of mental states is of opinion = ignorance and so also all disparagement of individual commitments is of bits
of opinion = ignorance.
However, the detailed work of mainstream scholars goes against this
view. This is because it is widely thought to be the mark of an individual opinion to be assent to an incognitive impression. Once one accepts
this the two options remaining both involve sacrificing the simple picture:
one must either disturb the simple relation between the state of opinion
and individual opinions, or take opinion and ignorance to be importantly
different states. Each of these has been spelled out by leading scholars;
let us consider them in some detail.
The first option is to follow the suggestion described by W. Grler11
that opinion considered as someones mental level has a complicated relation to individual opinions: someone is at the mental level of opinion (i.e.
the sub-sagacious level) if some of his individual commitments are opinions = assents to non-kataleptic impressions. This removes the threat of
opinion at the mental state/disposition level coming apart from ignorance,
but at the cost of disturbing the simple pattern relating mental state and
individual commitments we had above. (The simple pattern still holds for
knowledge: knowledge the state is made up only of individual bits of
knowledge.) Now some of the individual commitments that are part of the
overall state of opinion are not themselves opinions. Notice that, if this is
the Stoic view, the circumstance of their very often not making it clear
whether they are talking about the state of opinion or an individual bit of
opinion becomes an issue, since individual opinions are no longer typical
of all parts of the overall state.
The other and perhaps more mainstream option is to let opinion and
ignorance come apart. Both Julia Annas and LS make doxa the state cover
only assents to the incognitive, while ignorance extends to all commit11

In his famous Asyenw sugkatyesiw: zur stoischen Erkenntnistheorie,

Wrzburger Jahrbcher fr Altertumswissenschaft N.F. 3 (1977), 84 fn. 5.

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ments that fall short of knowledge.12 Thus, the mainstream option is to

understand opinion (the disposition/state/overall commitment set) as consisting of all and only individual opinions, preserving the relation between
individual opinions and opinion as a mental state. However, since this
yields a state understood in such a way as to differ importantly from ignorance, it sacrifices the binary set-up that seemed characteristically Stoic.
This ought to challenge us to say why the Stoics introduced these two as
distinct. Are there three epistemologically significant mental states? Or could
it be that one is the important contrast with knowledge while the other is
merely an accessory serving some specialized function? LS go some way
towards addressing this with the idea that a non-sages kataleptic commitments correspond to a progressives proper functions in ethics.13 But
then why does ignorance have such a negative name?
Intriguingly, both Annas and LS point out some evidence that some
Stoics failed to distinguish between, or indeed actually identified, doxa
and ignorance.14 In the light of this I would like to propose that we review
critically our evidence for taking assent to the incognitive as the mark
of opinion. If we can depart from the standard view on this we can restore
the simple picture that appealed initially and avoid having to choose
among such complicated constructions as those we have reviewed.15
*

Let us start with LSs favorite piece of evidence (cited, in this connection, earliest and most often):
. . . te tow prostiyemnouw t tr& . . . martnein lgousin, n mn
dloiw ekvsi, propptontaw, n d ceudsi, diaceudomnouw, n d koinw
katalptoiw, dojzontaw
12

Stoic Epistemology, 186; LS I, 257-58.

LS I, 257, 259. We should connect this with Longs previous work on the ethical
progressive, in his Hellenistic Philosophy (New York, 1974), 129, 204, and 214 ff.
14
Stoic Epistemology, 187; LS I, 258.
15
We receive no guidance on this theme from three of the major treatments of
Stoicism from the last three decades. In J. M. Rist, Stoic Philosophy (Cambridge,
1969), The Criterion of Truth (133-151) focuses very tightly on its theme, and
Knowing and Willing (219-232) concerns only knowing as it pertains to willing.
While the title of Rist (ed.) The Stoics (Berkeley, 1978) sounds comprehensive, none
of its contributors has happened to thematize our issue. Finally, Michael Fredes Stoic
Epistemology in Keimpe Algra, Jonathan Barnes, Jaap Mansfeld, and Malcolm
Schofield (eds.), The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy (Cambridge, 1999),
295-322, has an internal dialectic because of which it also does not consider our issue.
13

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. . . On these occasions the Stoics say that those who assent to one of them . . .
are guilty of error; that they are precipitate if they yield to unclear impressions,
deceived if they yield to false ones, and opining if they yield to ones which are
incognitive quite generally. (LS 41E = SVF II. 993, from Plutarch, On Stoic SelfContradictions)

Clearly this passage is committed to:

If one assents to the incognitive one opines.

But it is not at all clear that we have any right to take this as a biconditional, i.e. to supply the other direction:
If one opines one assents to the incognitive.

It is fascinating that LS themselves say concerning another passage, it

should be noted that Arcesilaus says assent to the incognitive is opinion
(41C10 [= SE, Adv. M. VII. 156-57]) and not opinion is assent to the
incognitive, which leaves it open that some opinions may involve assent
to cognitive impressions.16 It seems to me that this point applies equally
to our passage. Thus I dont see how it can show that assent to the incognitive is the mark or definition of opinion. Of course, if we already knew
that was the definition we could take this passage to be relying on it, but
by itself this does not seem decisive.
A similar situation seems to me to obtain with another passage which
LS cite (as their 41G1) as showing that as the Stoics normally use the
term doxa, it refers to beliefs that result from assent to the incognitive.17
It runs:
cedow d polambnein odpot fasi tn sofn, od t parpan
katalpt tin sugkatatyesyai, di t mhd dojzein atn mhd gnoen
mhdn.
They [the Stoics] say that the wise man never makes a false supposition, and
that he does not assent at all to anything incognitive, owing to his not opining
and his being ignorant of nothing. (LS 41G = SVF III. 548, from Stobaeus)

Clearly the passage is committed to the following:

Since the sage does not opine, he does not assent to anything incognitive.

Thus it is also committed to:

16
17

LS I, 258.
LS I, 258.

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If the sage assents to the incognitive he opines.

Here as before, it is not at all clear that we have any license to take the
relationship to be a biconditional. Thus, I dont see how this passage any
more than Arcesilaus ap. SE (about which LS were so careful) shows that
opinion is assent to the incognitive.
How good is our other evidence that opinion is assent to the incognitive? LS say that claim has Zenos authority (40D [= Cicero, Acad. II.
77-78] and cf. Cicero, Acad. II. 60.18 We will turn to the other passage
next, but for now lets concentrate on LS 40D.
quaesivit de Zenone fortasse quid futurum esset si nec percipere quicquam posset sapiens nec opinari sapientis esset. ille credo nihil opinaturum, quoniam esset
quod percipi posset.
We may take him [Arcesilaus] to have asked Zeno what would happen if the
wise man could not cognize anything and it was the mark of the wise man not
to opine. Zeno, I imagine, replied that the wise man would not opine since there
was something cognitive.

LS, I suppose, take this to show that Zeno gave his authority to the claim
that opinion is assent to the incognitive because they suppose the claim
to be required for the inference to go through. And this may appear to be
so if one considers the line of thought to be:
There is something cognitive therefore [any]one can make commitments without
opining.

LS may suppose that if opinion includes not only assent to the incognitive but also unstable, weak assent to the cognitive, then there being something cognitive would not be enough to show that [any]one can avoid
opining. But this possibility is not relevant given the context, since the
discussion here is about the wise man.19 Given that Arcesilaus and Zeno
are discussing what a sage will do, there being something cognitive for
him to assent to will allow him to avoid opinion, even construed in the
broader way I am advocating. The wise mans assents to his cognitive
impressions are automatically free from the weakness of the fools which
render them mere opinions. Once we are thinking about the bearing of the
context, we can also see that since it is not a treatment of opinion in general, this passage is somewhat unsuited as a source for an official general
characterization.
18
19

LS I, 257.
Thanks to Michael Alexander for suggesting this to me.

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I think we can treat LSs other text, from a bit earlier in Acad. II, in
just the same way. The passage they cite runs (starting a little further back,
in II. 59):
Mihi porro non tam certum est esse aliquid quod comprendi possit . . . quam sapientem nihil opinari, id est numquam adsentiri rei vel falsae vel incognitae.

As before, we should be aware that this is not a general discussion of

opinion but just an expression of the impossibility of the sages opining.
He whose commitments are stable would not endorse something false
or incognitive. Thus I would here prefer the translation of Rackhams
Loeb:
For my part, moreover, certain as I am that something exists that can be
grasped . . . I am still more certain that the wise man never holds an opinion, that
is, never assents to a thing that is either false or unknown

to LSs more interpretative rendering of the crucial bit:

. . . opining is assenting to a thing either false or incognitive.20

Let us now look at the remaining bit of evidence LS cite as support for
the claim that the general characteristic of opining is assent to the
incognitive.21 Their 41D2 = SVF II. 131, from Anon. Stoic. (P. Herc.
1020) does not read that way to me. It runs:
[ti] d m [d]ojzein | t[n so]f[n plev] ko|lou:[ye]:n [fame]n toi|at:[a:
pr][to]n mn t| m doke[n] a[t] mh|dn: gr dk:h[s]w s|[tin d]j[a
]katl[hp]t[ow
We say that the wise mans absence of opinion is accompanied by such characteristics as, first of all, his supposing nothing; for supposal is an incognitive
opinion.

Certainly this builds the incognitive into the definition of doksis (which
LS render as supposal), but this very passage seems to treat doksis as
distinct from doxa. For why should supposing nothing follow from absence
of opinion if supposal is opinion? On the other hand if supposal is a
species of opinion the point since the wise man never opines, a fortiori
he never indulges in supposal could be worth stating. Thus it seems most
natural to me to read this passage as saying that supposal is the kind of
opinion which is incognitive rather than as saying that supposal is opinion,
20
21

LS I, 257-58.
LS I, 257.

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which as always is incognitive. But now the circumstance that incognitive is the differentia of a species of opinion seems to confirm that opinion as such need not be incognitive, that is, to tell against the position LS
hold.
*

Do any other texts indicate that there is a clear-cut distinction between

ignorance and opinion in Stoicism? Cicero, Acad. I. 41-42 (LS 41B) can
be read in accord with LSs general interpretation, but need not be especially if we depart very slightly from their punctuation and translation.22
With a more neutral punctuation we would have:
quod autem erat sensu comprensum id ipsum sensum appellabat, et si ita erat
comprensum ut convelli ratione non posset scientiam, sin aliter inscientiam nominabat, ex qua existeret etiam opinio, quae esset imbecilla et cum falso incognitoque communis (adjusting the semicolon before ex qua existeret to a comma).
What was grasped by sense-perception Zeno called itself a sense perception, and
if it had been so grasped that it could not be disrupted by reason, he called it
scientific knowledge, but if it were otherwise, he called it ignorance, taking this
to be the source of opinion as well, which was something weak and common to
what was false and incognitive (substituting common for LSs related to).

Let us read this keeping in mind that, in the context, we have been considering the sages unshakeable grasp and are now going back down
from the epistemic peak: if the grasp is not unshakeable we already deal
with ignorance/opinion. Even this first step down a shakeable kataleptic grasp is disastrous: we can appreciate its horribleness more fully
when we reflect that it is a kind of ignorance/opinion, where ignorance/
opinion as such can be a matter of false or incognitive assent. That is, the
horror of ignorance/opinion is that it is common as well to the false and
incognitive.23 Even LSs related to could support this interpretation if
we take it that Cicero is saying that what is bad about opinion is that it
is also related to the false and incognitive, instead of taking opinion is
related to the false and incognitive to gesture at the definition of what
opinion is.
22

I am very grateful to James Allen for showing me how to deal with this passage; I simply follow his advice in this section.
23
Cf. the use of the idea of being common in the debate about the cognitive
impression (Acad. II. 33-34): being common to the true and false is used to show that
the kinds of impressions put forward as the criterion cannot fulfill that function.

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* *

Another major text is so far from indicating that Stoic opinion and ignorance are completely distinct that correcting this assumption removes what
otherwise appears to be a crucial difficulty in the dialectical situation. I
refer to the challenge Sextus reports Arcesilaus as having prepared for the
Stoic claim that katalpsis, which is the criterion of truth, is between
knowledge and opinion, and common to the wise and foolish:
tata d legntvn tn p tw Stow Arkeslaow ntikaystato, deiknw
ti odn sti metaj pistmhw ka djhw kritrion katlhcsiw. ath
gr n fasi katlhcsin ka katalhptik fantas& sugkatyesin, toi n
sof n fal gnetai. ll n te n sof gnhtai, pistmh stn, n
te n fal, dja, ka odn llo par tata mnon noma metelhptai.
Arcesilaus contradicted these statements of the Stoics by proving that cognition
is no criterion in between scientific knowledge and opinion. For what they call
cognition and assent to a cognitive impression occurs in either a wise or an inferior man. But if it occurs in a wise man, it is scientific knowledge; and if in an
inferior man, it is opinion; and there is no further variation except a purely verbal one. (LS 41C = SE, Adv. M. VII. 153-54)

On the usual understanding of opinion and its difference from ignorance,

Arcesilaus is providing an argument that clearly doesnt work. (Cf. LS,
who seem to start by criticizing Arcesilaus, later consider the possibility
that Zeno did not distinguish opinion and ignorance so that the argument
works after all, but then never wholeheartedly endorse the interpretation
of Zeno this would require.24) For Arcesilaus argues as follows:
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)

Cognition occurs in either a sage or an inferior man.

Cognition in a sage is knowledge.
Cognition in an inferior man is opinion.
Theres no other possibility.
So there is nothing between knowledge and opinion to be the criterion.

But on the standard view (3) is false: cognition in the inferior man cannot be opinion, if opinion is defined as assent to the incognitive.
Arcesilaus could of course be cheating and hoping that no-one will
notice that (3) is false, but how could a Stoic opponent fail to notice a
misstatement of the very character of opinion? Another diagnosis is that
Arcesilaus himself mistakes Stoic ignorance for opinion. For if we substitute for (3):
24

LS I, 257-58.

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(3) Cognition in the inferior man is ignorance

we would have something true. We would then have correspondingly to

modify (5) to:
(5) There is no such criterion as katalpsis between ignorance and knowledge

to yield a reasonable argument. Both of these diagnoses are problematic.

To sum up simply, given the standard view of Stoic opinion, Arcesilaus
here is either cheating or so badly informed as to cast his argument completely in terms of the wrong notion. Yet surely he was in a better position to be aware of Zenos set-up than we are. Now with the standard
view already looking ill-supported, the reluctance we should feel to see
Arcesilaus as incompetent becomes another reason to abandon the thesis
that the mark of opinion is assent to the incognitive. Of course, this step
toward rehabilitation would be pointless unless there is some other interpretation on which the dialectical situation looks better. Let us consider
how it plays out if read with my simple interpretation.
Clearly, (1) comes out true on the binary interpretation cognition does
occur in either a sage or an inferior man. The uncontroversial (2) still
holds cognition in a sage is knowledge. Now the contentious (3) comes
out true as well: on the simple, binary picture cognition in an inferior man
is opinion, since this picture makes any commitment of any inferior man
opinion. Of course the binary view is fine on (4): theres no other possibility. So on the simple picture Arcesilaus has set up everything preceding the conclusion fairly. But things become interesting when we consider
(5): there is nothing between knowledge and opinion to be the criterion.
Whether (5) follows and whether that matters for Stoicism seem to me to
depend on the interpretation we give to between. We have now come
round to considering a point that I flagged earlier. So before trying to
assess our present argument, let us go back a bit and think carefully about
our reports that the Stoics put katalpsis between knowledge and opinion/
ignorance. The main evidence is the exposition in Sextus that precedes the
skeptical attack we have been considering (SE, Adv. M. VII. 151-52 = LS
41C) and Cicero, Acad. I. 41 (= LS 41B).
When we just hear that a thing is between two others, the kind of picture that most readily springs to mind is of three paving stones set in a
line, or a subway rider in a row of seats with fellow passengers to both
the right and left sides. That is, we think of a series of coordinate elements
strung out in a row, with no overlapping. This picture in fact may be
responsible in part for the hegemony of the standard interpretation of Stoic

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opinion for if knowledge, cognition, and opinion are related as are my

paving stones, then opinions cannot be cognitions. But notice that this
reading immediately faces a challenge in dealing with the other half of
the picture, the relation between knowledge and cognition. If the paving
stone model has it that opinions cannot be cognitions then it would seem
also that knowledge cannot be cognition. Yet knowledge is a kind of cognition as Sextus continues:
n pistmhn mn enai tn sfal ka bebaan ka metyeton p lgou
katlhcsin
Scientific knowledge is cognition which is secure and firm and unchangeable by
reason. (LS 41C2 = SE, Adv. M. VII. 151)

So to uphold the standard view one has to say that the cognition which
is between knowledge and opinion is mere cognition. That is, knowledge, the first paving stone, is an extra-fancy kind of cognition, and cognition the second and non-overlapping stone means those cognitions that
are not unshakeably firm and so fall short of knowledge.
However this move is far from felicitous. For a few lines later we read
n tn <mn> pistmhn n mnoiw fstasyai lgousi tow sofow, tn d
djan n mnoiw tow faloiw, tn d katlhcin koinn mfotrvn enai
Of these they say that scientific knowledge is found only in the wise, and opinion only in the inferior, but cognition is common to them both (LS 41C5 = SE,
Adv. M. VII. 152)

and here cognition clearly cannot have the force of mere cognition
if the wise also have it cognition cannot be understood to fall short of
unshakeable stability.
Another indication that the paving stone model isnt quite right is
the language Sextus uses in opening his report of this key point when he
tells us:
tra gr ena fasin kenoi t suzugonta llloiw, pistmhn ka djan
ka tn n meyor totvn tetagmnhn katlhcin
The Stoics say there are three things which are linked together, scientific knowledge [epistm], opinion [doxa] and cognition [katalpsis] stationed between
them. (LS 41C1 = SE, Adv. M. VII. 151)

For while the garden path and subway models fit the talk of the middle
element as being stationed between the two others, they seem to me to

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resist the initial phrase that the three elements are suzugounta linked
together as LS render it.
It is not natural to say that our three flagstones or three subway passengers are linked together. The elements of a chain bracelet are of course
linked, and one might say that the participants in a sance have linked
their hands. In the ur-image of suzugounta, a pair of animals is yoked
together. This ur-image makes it obvious that the key thing about the situation is that one yoke is common to the two animals. It is not a third
animal plopped into the row, but a thing of another sort lying over (at
least part of ) each of them and so joining them together. And while
linked together changes the image, it is a good translation because it
also features a form of overlap or jointure. What differentiates the paving
stone and subway rider cases from the bracelet, sance, and farm/chariot
models is that in the first two cases there is no such overlap we merely
have our three coordinate elements strung out in their row.
Thus a careful reading of what Sextus tells us the Stoics say about
knowledge, katalpsis, and opinion already tends to suggest that these
three are not as free from overlap as the phrasing of being stationed
between on its own might have suggested. We should reject the paving
stone model and free ourselves from the influence of any support it may
have lent the standard view. My simple picture by contrast works well
with the language of yoking. For cognition, on the binary interpretation,
figures in both knowledge and opinion: all knowledge involves cognition,
and some cognitions are opinions (if they are unstable, resulting from
weak assent). In the sense that it figures in both, cognition joins knowledge and opinion, and this is what the image of yoking gets at.25
Our evidence from Cicero is the much briefer
sed inter scientiam et inscientiam comprehensionem illam quam dixi collocabat
That cognition I mentioned above he placed between scientific knowledge and
ignorance. (LS 41B2 = SVF I. 60 = Acad I. 42)
25
Tony Long raises the issue whether my yoking model is consistent with my wanting cognition to cover all knowledge but only some opinion. I still think it is: I take
the crucial idea of a yoke to be that of two things being connected by a third that
overlaps each, with no essential commitment on whether a yoke in general must lie
over the whole or just a part of what it yokes. Thus, even if one normally does yoke
animals more symmetrically, this part of the set-up need not be preserved in the application of the image any more than the fact that what is yoked has hooves need carry
over.

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Surely Ciceros language is compatible with the gloss that cognition is

common to knowledge and ignorance = opinion, i.e. with the yoking
model and the binary interpretation. So our examination of the passages
in Sextus and Cicero laying out the claim that katalpsis is between
knowledge and opinion/ignorance shows that the paving stone model
sometimes fails, while the yoking model is always compatible with the
texts. The standard view of Stoic epistemology in turn loses a bit of support, while the simple binary picture receives some confirmation.
Now let us return to the dialectical situation with Arcesilaus. I said earlier that things got interesting with his conclusion:
(5) There is nothing in between knowledge and opinion to be the criterion.

Does this follow problematically from the previous steps, that katalpsis
occurs in either a sage or a fool, and so is either knowledge or opinion,
there being no other possibility? With all the work we have done on various interpretations of between it is now easy to see that they play a
role here.
Arcesilaus has proceeded fairly in steps (1)-(4), and this does indeed
show that there is nothing between knowledge and opinion to be the criterion if one interprets being between on the paving stone model. On the
other hand our own reflection on the Stoic set-up has shown that this
model is not as well suited to Stoic epistemology as the yoking one. And
on the yoking model, a binary set-up with knowledge and opinion still
does not show that cognition cant be between them: it is the common
element that joins them and doesnt have to be a third coordinate element
like them but in the middle. So I think, looking at the dialectical situation overall, that it turns out to be neither an embarrassing bit of incompetence from Arcesilaus nor an easy knock-out by him, but rather
something more appropriate to the ability of both sides. Thus my interpretation satisfies the desiderata Annas sets out for interpreters of Stoic/
Skeptic debate.26 The Stoics have a dogma (cognition is between knowledge and opinion) which naively read is subject to a certain objection,
and Arcesilaus hopes to lead his opponent down the garden path and
exploit that. Yet the Stoics are not without a way forward, because it is
open to them to reject the paving-stone model, and to develop and articulate the other interpretation of between which is in fact the one suited

26

Stoic Epistemology, 193-94.

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to their theory. Such articulation would constitute endorsement of the simple binary picture I presented initially as Stoic in character.27
University of Illinois at Chicago
Department of Philosophy

27
Thanks to the Editors, and to James Allen, Tony Long, and Wolfgang Mann for
reading and commenting on drafts of my work, and for their encouragement.