Hellenistic Philosophy Introductory

(Marvins-Underground-K-12) #1

124 //-3 to //-5


Nobody. And the Hooded Man is like this ... [There is a lacuna here,
which includes the introduction of the sorites.] 'It is not the case that
two are few and that three are not [few]; and it is not the case these are
[few] but four (and so on up to ten) are not [few]; but two are few;
therefore, so is ten.' .... [There is a lacuna here.] The Nobody is an
argument which draws a conclusion and is composed of an indefinite
and a definite, having an additional statement and a conclusion, for
example, 'If someone is here, that [someone] is not in Rhodes; <but
someone is here; therefore, there is not someone in Rhodes>.' ... [There
is a lacuna here.]



  1. And this is what the Stoics are like in logical matters, so that they
    can maintain that the wise man is always a dialectician. For everything
    is seen through consideration of it in arguments: both what belongs to
    the topic of physics and again what belongs to ethics. For if the logician
    is supposed to say something about the correct use of terms, how could
    he fail to say what are the proper names for things? There are two
    customary facets of the virtue [i.e. dialectic]; one considers what each
    existent thing is, the other what it is called. And this is what their logic
    is like.


Cicero Academica 1.40-42 [11-4]



  1. But in that third part of philosophy [i.e., logic] he [Zeno] made
    quite a few changes. First, he made some new claims here about the
    senses themselves, which he held were joined to a sort of stimulus received
    from the outside world (he called this a phantasia but we may call it a
    presentation-and let us hold on to this term, for we will have to use it
    often in the rest of our discussion). But to these presentations which are,
    as it were, received by the senses he joined the assent given by our minds,
    which he claims is in our power and voluntary. 41. He said that not all
    presentations are reliable, but only those which have a distinctive kind
    of clear statement to make about the objects of presentation; when this
    presentation is discerned all on its own, then it is "graspable" ... But
    when it had been received and approved then he said it was a "grasping"-
    like those things gripped by one's hand. Indeed, that is how he derived
    the word, since no one had previously used this term in this connection;
    and Zeno used quite a few new terms (for he was advancing new theories).
    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; if not, he called it ignorance,
    which is also the source of opinion which is weak and a state shared with
    what is false and not known. 42. But between knowledge and ignorance

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