Combining Texts

Ideas for 'works (fragments)', 'On the Senses' and 'The Concept of Dread (/Anxiety)'

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3 ideas

13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 1. Justification / c. Defeasibility
If a grasped perception cannot be shaken by argument, it is 'knowledge' [Zeno of Citium, by Cicero]
     Full Idea: What had been grasped by sense-perception, he called this itself a 'sense-perception', and if it was grasped in such a way that it could not be shaken by argument he called it 'knowledge'. And between knowledge and ignorance he placed the 'grasp'.
     From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - Academica I.41
     A reaction: This seems to say that a grasped perception is knowledge if there is no defeater.
13. Knowledge Criteria / B. Internal Justification / 4. Foundationalism / d. Rational foundations
A presentation is true if we judge that no false presentation could appear like it [Zeno of Citium, by Cicero]
     Full Idea: I possess a standard enabling me to judge presentations to be true when they have a character of a sort that false ones could not have.
     From: report of Zeno (Citium) (fragments/reports [c.294 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - Academica II.18.58
     A reaction: [This is a spokesman in Cicero for the early Stoic view] No sceptic will accept this, but it is pretty much how I operate. If you see something weird, like a leopard wandering wild in Hampshire, you believe it once you have eliminated possible deceptions.
13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 6. Relativism Critique
How can we state relativism of sweet and sour, if they have no determinate nature? [Theophrastus]
     Full Idea: How could what is bitter for us be sweet and sour for others, if there is not some determinate nature for them?
     From: Theophrastus (On the Senses [c.321 BCE], 70)
     A reaction: The remark is aimed at Democritus. This is part of the general question of how you can even talk about relativism, without attaching stable meanings to the concepts employed.