Single Idea 20805

[catalogued under 12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 1. Empiricism]

Full Idea

In general one can find nothing in our conceptions that is not known to oneself in direct experience. For it is grasped either by similarity to what is revealed in direct experience, or by expansion or reduction or compounding.

Gist of Idea

All our concepts come from experience, directly, or by expansion, reduction or compounding

Source

report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Mathematicians 8.58

Book Reference

'The Stoics Reader', ed/tr. Inwood,B/Gerson,L.P. [Hackett 2008], p.50


A Reaction

Although the stoics allow for purely a priori knowledge, this quotation sounds comprehensively empirical.

Related Idea

Idea 20785 Our conceptions arise from experience, similarity, analogy, transposition, composition and opposition [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius]