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    Carmelics

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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that The cognitive impression can no longer serve as an automatic, self-guaranteeing criterion of truth for the sage.

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

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Cognitive impressions can be subjectively indistinguishable from false impressions.
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    • 2.If cognitive impressions are indistinguishable from false ones, the sage cannot be confident that what seems to be a cognitive impression actually is one.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Descartes' demon hypothesis shows that even maximally vivid, compelling impressions can systematically misrepresent reality without the subject detecting this.
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    • 2.If systematic undetectable error is possible even for the most forceful impressions, vividness and forcefulness cannot themselves constitute epistemic self-certification.
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    • 3.The Stoic sage, being rational, must acknowledge that the phenomenological character of an impression is logically independent of its truth-tracking reliability.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Sextus Empiricus documented that the Academics, particularly Carneades, successfully produced cases where non-cognitive impressions are phenomenologically identical to cognitive ones.
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    • 2.If the sage cannot phenomenologically distinguish cognitive from non-cognitive impressions in principle, assent to any impression requires an independent criterion beyond the impression itself.
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    • 3.Without such an independent criterion, the cognitive impression collapses into a circular standard: it is reliable because it feels reliable, which is no criterion at all.
      ?

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