Logic and Theory of Knowledge 129
say one has experience. For experience is the plurality of presentations
similar in kind.
- Of conceptions, some come into being naturally in the stated ways
and without technical elaboration, but others, already, come into being
through our teaching and efforts. The latter are called just conceptions,
while the former are also called basic grasps.
- But reason, according to which we are termed rational, is said to
be completely filled out with basic grasps at the age of seven years. And
a concept is a phantasm of the intellect of a rational animal. For when
a phantasm occurs in a rational soul, then it is called a concept, taking
its name from "mind" [ennoema, from nous].
- Therefore, all the phantasms which strike irrational animals are only
phantasms and those which occur in us and in the gods are phantasms
in general and specifically concepts. Gust as denarii and staters, on their
own, are denarii and staters, but when they are given to pay for a ship-
passage, then they are called "ship money" in addition to being denarii
[and staters].)
Aetius 4.12.1-6 (=Dox.Gr. p. 401-402;
SVF 2.54) What the difference is between
the presentation, the presented object,
the 'phantastic', and the phantasm.
[11-13]
- Chrysippus says that these four things differ from each other.
Presentation, then, is an experience which occurs in the soul and which,
in [the experience] itself, also indicates that which caused it. For example,
when we observe something white by means of vision, there is an experi-
ence which has occurred in the soul by means of vision; and <in virtue
of> this experience we are able to say that there exists something white
which stimulates us. And similarly for touch and smell.
- Presentation [phantasia] gets its name from light [phos ]; for just as
light reveals itself and the other things which are encompassed in it, so
too presentation reveals itself and that which caused it.
- The presented object is that which causes the presentation. For
example, the presented object is the white and the cold, and everything
which is able to stimulate the soul.
- The 'phantastic' is a groundless attraction, an experience in the soul
which occurs as the result of no presented object, as in the case of people
who fight with shadows and punch at thin air. For a presented object
underlies the presentation, but no presented object [underlies] the 'phan-
tastic'.
- A phantasm is that to which we are attracted in the 'phantastic'
