“To these things which are perceived, and as it were accepted by the senses, [Zeno] adds the assent of the mind, which he considers to be placed in ourselves and voluntary. … After it had been received and approved, then he called it comprehension, resembling those things which are taken up in the hand. … That which was comprehended by sense he called felt, and if it was so comprehended that it could not be eradicated by reason, he called it knowledge; otherwise he called it ignorance: from which also was engendered opinion, which was weak, and compatible with what was false or unknown. But between knowledge and ignorance he placed that comprehension which I have spoken of, and reckoned it neither among what was right or what was wrong,”
Cicero
I heard this passage and loved it. I also loved the response that followed from the host in the same podcast:
Knowledge is defined by Zeno as that which is comprehended by the senses and cannot possibly be denied. These are the so-called kataleptic impressions, like the notion that it is day outside (if it is), or that two plus two equals four (right, that’s not the result of sense perception, not all kataleptic impressions are triggered by external objects). Knowledge is rare among human beings, who mostly dwell in one of the other two categories: ignorance (defined simply as the opposite of knowledge) and opinion. Opinion is “compatible” with both falsity and knowledge. I may hold to some opinions that will turn out to be true, even though I don’t have sufficient reason to conclude that they are true. Contrariwise, I may hold to some opinions that will turn out to be false, even though I think I have good reasons to consider them true. Since only the sage can possibly know that his kataleptic impressions are true, this is a call for the rest of us to stay humble: by all means, develop and refine your opinions (otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to make decisions and act in the world), but hold on to them only lightly, because you ain’t no sage.
Massimo Pigliucci
Much of what ails the world at this very moment (when people deny that climate change is true, that vaccines work, or that Trump lost the US presidential election in 2020) grows from people who mistake their opinions for truth, rather than mere hopes, wishes, and fictions. In holding their opinions as truths, they create a personal identity and belief system around falsities, despite evidence to the contrary. Their senses “feel” words and ideas that they receive from their preferred media source and they make a choice: they choose to accept the “felt” without first being responsible.
You see, the responsibility is the tough part. It is the part that requires a requisite understanding of the fundamental principles of logic. It is the part that requires practice and contemplation. It is the part that requires humility. It is the part that denies false dichotomies. It is the part that acknowledges nuance and complexity. It is the part that empathizes. It is what begs us to eradicate false notions and perceptions through the faculty of reason, not rationalization.
And we should all be humble. Very humble. When you meet an expert in this world who isn’t humble, you are best served to be immediately skeptical. You are even better served to be even more skeptical when a non-expert acts just (or more) confident, because the more complicated the matter, the more variables that need to be accounted for and the more variables that need to be accounted for, the likelihood of an expert being 100% right grows increasingly small. When a non-expert purports to have answers to the same questions, the likelihood of their being right is infinitesimally smaller still. Never forget that … then remember that you aren’t an expert either.
So by all means, develop and refine your opinions, but hold onto them lightly, because you ain’t no expert. And you certainly ain’t no sage.