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    Carmelics

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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Assent to a cognitive impression should only be given if one has reason to believe deceptive but convincing impressions are not possible in the current context.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Requiring certainty about the absence of deceptive impressions before assenting generates an infinite regress, as each meta-level check is itself an impression subject to the same standard.
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    • 2.Sextus Empiricus argued that no criterion for distinguishing true from false impressions can be established without circular reliance on the very faculty being evaluated.
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    • 3.A standard of assent that cannot be satisfied without prior assent to its own reliability is self-undermining, not epistemically cautious.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Peirce and later externalists argue that reliable cognitive functioning does not require the agent to have conscious access to evidence of that reliability.
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    • 2.The Stoic sage's cognitive impressions are, by the Stoics' own account, reliably veridical due to the sage's trained rational nature, not due to reflective meta-checks at the moment of assent.
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    • 3.Imposing a context-sensitive reflective condition on assent conflates the epistemic standards appropriate for the novice with those appropriate for the perfected reasoner, collapsing a distinction central to Stoic moral epistemology.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Later Stoics held that the cognitive impression commands assent only if there is no impediment.
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    • 2.A cognitive impression must be tested and found irreversible before assent is warranted.
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    • 3.Cognitive impressions can be indistinguishable from false impressions from the subject's point of view.
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