Seventh installment:
Arrian, a student of Epictetus, wrote eight books, The Discourses of Epictetus, of which four survive. Selections from those eight books were also collected in the Enchiridion, or “Handbook.” The Discourses give us a quite vivid portrait of the man who inspired them, and also give us fascinating glimpses into his singular didactic style. We very quickly see how Epictetus ran his school, the nature of its curricula, and how he mentored his students. We see his earnestness, his zeal, and piety, but we also get a good dose of his sharp and often acerbic sense of humor. It is no wonder that Arrian felt he ‘had to get this down.’
It also can be quite a challenge to understand exactly what is being said in the chapters of the Discourses. The text is composed of lecture notes, we must recall.
So, with that genesis in mind, I’ve set out to read through the four books, a chapter at a time, while also breaking up the text with commentary, (essentially my best guesses as to how we might flesh out what can be very brief or truncated sketches of dialogue and argumentation), as it was no easy business for Arrian to get down what he had experienced in the lecture halls of Nicopolis!
Commentary is in italics! Also, please forgive any formatting issues (spacing between paragraphs) that you see. They stubbornly will not go away no matter what I do!
Book I, Chapter 7:
Of the Use of Equivocal Premises, Hypothetical Arguments and the Like
This chapter does two things. It gives us a taste of how Stoics viewed the art of reasoning, some of the content that their logic classes would cover, and what purposes existed for taking such pains.
(A note of explanation about the two topics listed in the title. Firstly, ‘equivocal premises’ refers to any argument made up of a set of premises that in some way or another, have terms which are equivocal. That is; one and the same word or term in the premise is used in two often subtly different ways in order to allow the argument to trade on that ambiguity, ending in a conclusion based on fallacious reasoning. Hypothetical arguments, on the other hand, have us assume, for their sakes, hypotheses and draw logical consequences of those provisionally adopted assumptions.)
The chapter gives a sketch of the challenges introduced by these, for they can either purposefully or inadvertently lead reasoners into error. This is something the committed Stoic student would like to avoid. He or she does want to reason validly or cogently, in determining right conduct, and in pursuit of other truths. Epictetus here uses the two examples to make a case for the importance of familiarity with the concepts and terms of formal and informal logic in allowing one to avoid pitfalls as one indulges the give and take, question and answer, dialogical world of philosophical discourse. We don’t want the wool to be pulled over our eyes either by others, or by ourselves!
Most men are unaware that the handling of arguments which involve equivocal and hypothetical premises, and, further, of those which derive syllogisms by the process of interrogation, and, in general, the fact that the handling of all such arguments, has a bearing upon the duties of life. For our aim in every matter of inquiry is to learn how the good and excellent man may find the appropriate course through it and the appropriate way of conducting himself in it.
Put succinctly, if your aim is to use reason to lead a good life, then you would not want to inadvertently be led in the wrong direction by use of reason. So, it makes sense to become familiar with the terrain of reasoning, and certain pitfalls it contains so as to avoid being led into error on the important questions above mentioned. Avoiding fallacies is best done by gaining experience in logical argumentation, its formal and dialogical uses, and detecting, not only instances of valid or cogent reasoning, but instances of bad reasoning.
Let them say, then, either that the good man will not enter the contest of question and answer, or that, once he has entered, he will be at no pains to avoid conducting himself carelessly and at haphazard in question and answer; or else, if they accept neither of these alternatives, they must admit that some investigation should be made of those topics with which question and answer are principally concerned.
This is extremely quick. We need to reconstitute the ‘Sanka freeze-dried’ argument here, add water, and spell it out more explicitly:
Let’s suppose you have a good man that wants to remain good while he enters the arena of ‘question and answer.’ He is presented with an engraved invitation to enter into argument, enter into the sort of case-making and ‘question and answer’ dialogue that is carried out in the philosophical schools. Epictetus tells us there are three possible responses to the invitation only one of which renders it most likely that the good man will survive the experience retaining his status as good:
- He steers clear. (How then will he know the correct course to take in his efforts to remain good? He must reason to do so. It’s unavoidable.)
- He enters, knowing that such argumentation and discussion can allow him to maintain course, but that it can also lead him astray. But, he makes no serious efforts to discern valid or cogent reasoning from invalid or unsound reasoning. (This opens the risk that he can be too easily led off course by incorrect reasoning or rhetorical methods.)
- He enters, and also takes pains to learn enough to enable him to make these discernments, and follow arguments, detecting their strengths and weaknesses. (This is the best possible strategy for him to take.)
For what is the professed object of reasoning? To state the true, to eliminate the false, to suspend judgement in doubtful cases. Is it enough, then, to learn this alone?
It is enough, says one.
Is it, then, also enough for the man who wants to make no mistake in the use of money to be told the reason why you accept genuine drachmas and reject the counterfeit?
It is not enough.
Epictetus is making a point here: The aim of reasoning is not simply recitation of criteria, nor recitation of the goals of reasoning; nor the various attitudes one should take to one’s evidence base. No, it involves more than this. We want the ability to tell when a proposition is true, false or worthy of suspension of judgment and we want to be able give legitimate reasons in support of these judgments, reasons that will withstand critical scrutiny. That will invariably mean that we need to get clear when evidence supports the statements that serve as premises of arguments with which we are presented, and when systems of statements that make up arguments do lend logical support to their conclusions.
He continues with the analogous case he just introduced, testing for counterfeit currency:
What, then, must be added to this?
Why, what else but the faculty that tests the genuine drachmas and the counterfeit and distinguishes between them?
Wherefore, in reasoning also the spoken word is not enough, is it? On the contrary, is it not necessary to develop the power of testing the true and the false and the uncertain and of distinguishing between them?
It is necessary.
What else besides this is proposed in reasoning? Pray accept the consequence of what you have properly granted. Come, is it enough, then, in this case also merely to know that this particular thing is true?
Again, this is not very clear, too condensed, more Sanka.
Here’s the point:
When it comes to systematic knowledge, as for instance a natural science, it is not enough to know that a single proposition is true, for this is not how we come at science. It is not how we come at life either. We do not find ourselves accepting and handling singular propositions in isolation from each other. They come in sets, some allegedly supporting others, these in turn, supported by still others. The whole is in fact, a very complex array. We find ourselves having to confront articulated and coordinated collections of propositions, and we’d best learn how to deal with these complex networks.
Logical relations between propositions are dependency relations in their truth values. We can determine these by becoming familiar with the sorts of relations that conserve truth values, and the relations that do not. What is more, we can train to detect those factors that may lead us to incorrectly think that truth values have been conserved or transmitted between related propositions, or from those propositions in arguments that serve as premises or evidence to those propositions in those arguments that are allegedly supported by these, that is; the arguments’ conclusions.
It is not enough, but one must learn in what way a thing follows as a consequence upon certain other things, and how, sometimes, one thing follows upon one, and at other times upon several conjointly. Is it not, then, necessary that a man should also acquire this power, if he is to acquit himself intelligently in argument, and is himself not only to prove each point when he tries to prove it, but also to follow the argument of those who are conducting a proof, and is not to be misled by men who quibble as though they were proving something? There has consequently arisen among us, and shown itself to be necessary, a science which deals with inferential arguments and with logical figures, and trains men therein.
But of course, there are times when we have, with sound reasoning, granted the premises, and the inference from them is so-and-so; and, in spite of its being false, it is none the less the inference.
We need an example here. Suppose we have a deductive argument that has the following properties: 1. We examine each premise in the argument and judge that they are true. 2. They do validly support the conclusion of the argument. Formally, we see that if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. Yet, 3: We examine the conclusion just as carefully as we have the premises, and judge that, on its own merits, it is false, despite 1 & 2. A simple example:
P1. Sensible objects are evident to our sensory faculties.
P2. The only things evident to our sensory faculties are our sensory states.
C3. Sensible objects are sensory states.
This argument fits the bill. The phrase ‘sensory objects’ can be taken in two ways, as can the word ‘evident.’ These ambiguities can very well lead us to accept both 1 and 2, but not 3. The different meanings:
‘Sensible object’
Meaning 1 = Physical thing capable of causing sensory states in us.
Meaning 2 = Thing directly perceived via sense experience (i.e., sensory states)
“Evident”
Meaning 1 = Something the existence of which is indirectly supported by some body of evidence
Meaning 2 = Something the existence of which is directly supported by some body of evidence.
In this example, the ambiguities can lead us into accepting 1, 2, and rejecting 3, even though the argument form is deductive in nature, and runs something like this.
All A are B
All B are C
All A are C
Another possible example that trades on a couple of ambiguities (of the words “good” and “is”), and has relevance to the good life:
P1. Pleasure is good.
P2. People should pursue good
C. People should pursue pleasure.
With examples like this in mind, Epictetus continues:
What, then, should I do? Accept the fallacy? And how is that possible? Well, should I say, “it was not sound reasoning for me to grant the premises?” Nay, but this is not permissible either. Or, “This does not follow from what has been granted?” But that is not permissible, either. What, then, must be done in these circumstances? Is it not this, that the fact of having borrowed is not enough to prove that one is still in debt, but we must add the circumstance that one abides by the loan—that is, has not paid it—and just so our having once granted the premises is not enough to compel us to accept the inference, but we must abide by our acceptance of the premises? And what is more, if the premises remain until the end what they were when they were granted, there is every necessity for us to abide by our acceptance of them, and to allow the conclusion that has been drawn from them; for from our point of view and to our way of thinking this inference does not now result from the premises, since we have withdrawn from our previous assent to the premises. It is necessary, therefore, to enquire into premises of this kind and into such change and equivocal modification of them, whereby, at the very moment the question is put, or the answer made, or the deduction drawn, or at some other similar stage in the argument, the premises take on modified meanings and give occasion to the unthinking to be disconcerted, if they do not see what follows in consequence. Why is it necessary? In order that in this matter we may not behave unsuitably, nor at haphazard, nor confusedly.
Otherwise put, we should, when we run into disconcerting cases like this, set about to do what we’ve done with our examples. Ferret out the ambiguous terms, spell out the different arguments that can be crafted from the different combinations of meanings distributed over those terms, and thereby get clear about how the ambiguities led to the discomfort. Once we’ve done this, we will have dissolved the issue, and, if someone had been trying to snooker us into accepting the conclusion of such an argument, we need not, and can point out where the mistake either was intentionally or unintentionally incurred. Epictetus also drives home an allied point with the ‘loan’ argument; we must sometimes get clear about implicit premises, unstated propositions. These too have effect on arguments’ validity or cogency.
There is great value in practicing at this sort of thing as ambiguities and unstated premises abound in language and argument, and can often be quite subtle, misleading even those with great experience or intelligence. ‘So,’ Epictetus says, ‘that is why we Stoics insist on taking logic seriously as a discipline.’
What is more, we can say the same thing about hypothetical modes of argumentation. These, while not necessarily involving any ambiguities in terms, can also lead to disconcerting results. In either case, just because we have accepted some statement or statements provisionally, for purposes of argument, need not imply that we always and forever stick with those same premises. We may have good reason to change our minds as to their truth values. We have seen how a careful analysis of ambiguous terms in an argument can lead us to justifiably doing so. Now, let’s see how careful analysis of hypothetical premises can do so as well, leading us to abandon a premise we had provisionally accepted. An example (we need not accept either premise 1 or 2, and can take this argument as showing why):
- There is a first cause
- Every event must have a cause.
- Therefore, the first cause must have a cause
- Therefore, the first cause is not the first cause.
And the same holds true of hypotheses and hypothetical arguments. For it is necessary at times to postulate some hypothesis as a sort of stepping-stone for the subsequent argument.
Granted we sometimes need to do this; what kinds of questions follow from this common practice? Here are some:
Are we, therefore, to grant any and every hypothesis that is proposed, or not every one? And if not every one of them, what one? And when a man has granted a hypothesis, must he abide forever by it and maintain it, or are there times when he should abandon it and accept only the consequences which follow from it without accepting those which are opposed to it?
Yes.
That ‘yes’ is a wonderfully pithy answer: It’s import? Depending on circumstances we often find good reasons for each of these possibilities when dealing with hypotheticals.
But someone says, “If you once admit a hypothesis that involves a possibility, I will compel you to be drawn on to an impossibility.”
We’ve seen that with our little sample argument just above…
Shall the prudent man refuse to engage with this person, and avoid enquiry and discussion with him?
Not necessarily, for the exploration is valuable in itself, and there is nothing compelling you to avoid it, in that, if done carefully and conscientiously, this sort of exploration familiarizes us with more possible lines of argument, or possible explanations for things than we would otherwise be able to find. For, often, on our own, we lack the imagination for formulating some of the possible hypotheses that might cover a situation. This can perhaps be accounted for from lack of experience, or creative capacity. When we engage the hypothetical products of others, we make up for such lack, and enable a more thorough exploration. Finally, in cases like our sample, deriving absurd results does teach us lessons, it allows us to narrow down where suspect assumptions lie, and what dumping one or more of them would logically entail. That, in itself, is valuable exploration. What is more, if exploration of the logical consequences of a hypothesis does indeed lead to impossible results, we’ve eliminated that hypothesis as a candidate. That’s progress!
Yet who but the prudent is capable of using argument and skillful in question and answer, and, by Zeus, proof against deceit and sophistic fallacies?
It must be emphasized that only people sufficiently conversant and practiced in logic will be able to undertake these explorations while not falling into traps or being misled, either by their own reasoning or those deliberately trying to fool, or those unintentionally producing bad arguments.
But shall he argue, indeed, and then not take pains to avoid conducting himself recklessly and at haphazard in argument?
No, he should not do this.
And if he does not, how will he any longer be the sort of man we think he is?
If we had thought of him as a man who respects truth and is not reckless, we will see we were incorrect and that he is a careless person that has not taken measures he could have, that would make it more likely that he would continue ‘only in truth.’ In short, he will not appear to be all that serious about reasoning, but perhaps playing games. Certainly, he would be perceived as reckless.
But without some such exercise and preparation in formal reasoning, how will he be able to maintain the continuity of the argument?
A closely related point: Without some effort toward familiarizing himself with formal and informal logic the man will not be able to follow the flow of any extended argumentation presented to him, and will not be able to determine validity or cogency, even if he is able to make judgments as to the truth or falsity of individual premises of the arguments in question.
Let them show that he will be able, and all these speculations become mere superfluity; they were absurd and inconsistent with our preconception of the good man.
Otherwise put: Without all of these aspects of training in logic, the man will be seen as irresponsible intellectually or scientifically, not really one that takes the state of his knowledge (including the knowledge of good and evil) seriously. While not necessarily a bad man for so doing, he comes off as callow; unserious.
So, at this point, we have been given a portrait of the serious Stoic, one sufficiently versed in the discipline of logic so as to be able to enter into dialogue and argument concerning the good life and all the other aspects of intellectual life. But, we also get a ‘first-things-first’ message here. Anyone purporting to be a practicing Stoic who has not taken upon himself the task of mastering logic is no Stoic, but a pretender. This is clearly a message intended for his students.
So, naturally, at this point, Epictetus gives what amounts to a pep-talk to those logic students that have taken these admonitions to heart and who were, no doubt, burning the midnight oil trying to master all the material in their logic courses, (some of which was certainly, authored by the aforementioned virtuoso of opacity, Chrysippus):
Why are we still indolent and easy-going and sluggish, seeking excuses whereby we may avoid toiling or even late hours, as we try to perfect our own reason?
Students procrastinating in the face of a difficult, potentially Sisyphean task? Say it ain’t so! And what would such a student come up with if chastised for putting off that study? Epictetus tells us, and he speaks from his own experiences as student. (This is why the plural first-person “we” is used here):
If, then, I err in these matters, I have not murdered my own father, have I?
Oh boy. Wrong answer. Epictetus got the wood laid to him for that one. Musonius Rufus, his teacher, had none of it!
Slave, pray where was there in this case a father for you to murder? What, then, have you done, you ask? You have committed what was the only possible error in the matter.
[Indeed, this is the very remark I made to Rufus when he censured me for not discovering the one omission in a certain syllogism.]
This was probably an exercise in detecting missing or implied premises in ordinary language arguments by casting them into the syllogistic forms provided by Aristotelian logic.
“Well,” said I, “it isn’t as bad as if I had burned down the Capitol.”
Again. Wrong answer:
But he answered, “Slave, the omission here is the Capitol.” Or are there no other errors than setting fire to the Capitol and murdering one’s father?
Rufus to Epictetus: You are showing yourself to be unserious, and irresponsible by being a lazy student, Epictetus! You are taking on great risks, and even endangering others with your laxity. Now, buck up and get to work! Stop rationalizing and crack those books!
But to make a reckless and foolish and haphazard use of the external impressions that come to one, to fail to follow an argument, or demonstration, or sophism—in a word, to fail to see in question and answer what is consistent with one’s position or inconsistent—is none of these things an error?
Rufus to Epictetus: Sleep is optional, young man! Study your logic, and no more excuses!