Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- 1 Knowledge and the good life: the ethical motivation of the Cyrenaic views on knowledge
- PART I SUBJECTIVISM
- PART II SCEPTICISM
- 6 The causes of the pathē: objects in the world
- 7 Our ignorance of other minds
- 8 Some remarks on language
- PART III SUBJECTIVISM, EMPIRICISM, RELATIVISM: CYRENAICS, EPICUREANS, PROTAGOREANS
- Appendix: Sources and testimonies
- References
- Index of names
- Index locorum
- Subject index
7 - Our ignorance of other minds
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- 1 Knowledge and the good life: the ethical motivation of the Cyrenaic views on knowledge
- PART I SUBJECTIVISM
- PART II SCEPTICISM
- 6 The causes of the pathē: objects in the world
- 7 Our ignorance of other minds
- 8 Some remarks on language
- PART III SUBJECTIVISM, EMPIRICISM, RELATIVISM: CYRENAICS, EPICUREANS, PROTAGOREANS
- Appendix: Sources and testimonies
- References
- Index of names
- Index locorum
- Subject index
Summary
The subjectivism of the Cyrenaics and their scepticism with regard to knowledge of the real properties of objects are related to the position that they adopted with regard to our knowledge of other people's pathē. In connection with their discussion of other minds the Cyrenaics also made some remarks about language. Sextus provides the only surviving piece of evidence on both these subjects, which I shall cite immediately below. In this chapter I shall discuss the evidence concerning other minds, and I shall dedicate the next chapter to the remarks about language.
195. So, we are all unerring with regard to our own pathē, but we all make mistakes with regard to the external object. And those are apprehensible, but this is inapprehensible because the soul is too weak to distinguish it on account of the places, the distances, the motions, the changes, and numerous other causes. Hence, they say that no criterion is common (koinon) to mankind but that common names (onomata koina) are assigned (tithesthai) to the objects.
196. All people call something (ti) white or sweet in common (koinōs), but they do not have something common (koinon ti) that is white or sweet. Each person is aware of his own private (idion) pathos, but whether this pathos occurs in him and in his neighbour from a white object (apo leukou) neither he himself can tell, since he is not submitting to the pathos of his neighbour, nor can the neighbour tell, since he is not submitting to the pathos of the other person.
197. And since no pathos is common (koinon) to us all, it is hasty to declare that what appears to me of a certain kind appears of this same kind to my neighbour as well. […]
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- The Epistemology of the Cyrenaic School , pp. 89 - 104Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998