With\u00a0Antiochus of Ascalon<\/strong>\u00a0(c.125-88\u00a0BCE<\/small>), Platonism took a dive back to its roots \u2013 or at least, it claimed to do so. Antiochus\u2019 teacher was Philo of Larissa, who was the last of the Academics who were associated with the actual Academy of Plato. Antiochus is considered to be the first major philosopher of the Middle Platonism period. Significantly, Antiochus\u2019 Platonism was no longer anchored to Athens \u2013 the city that brought forth Ancient Greece\u2019s greatest philosophers \u2013 and instead became associated with Alexandria and Syria (where Antiochus died). His famous students included Cicero, Ariston, Dion, and Varro.<\/p>\n Antiochus’ philosophy was an attempt to dogmatize Platonism, and thus opposed the\u00a0scepticism\u00a0for which the Academy had become famous. He did this by trying to merge early\u00a0Platonic\u00a0philosophy with\u00a0Aristotelian\u00a0philosophy – saying that they were both\u00a0Socratic\u00a0at the core – along with the sophisticated\u00a0Stoic philosophy of his day.<\/p>\n Some of his ideas include:<\/p>\n Antiochus rebelled against the\u00a0Academy\u2019s scepticism and was far more sympathetic than his\u00a0Platonic\u00a0predecessors to both\u00a0Stoic\u00a0and\u00a0Peripatetic philosophy. Important in his \u2018dogmatic\u2019 revival of Platonism was a concept he called\u00a0krit\u00earion t\u00eas al\u00eatheias<\/i>\u00a0\u2013\u00a0the criterion of certainty<\/b>.<\/p>\n Antiochus joined the Stoics in saying that certain impressions\u00a0must<\/i>\u00a0be true, and sometimes we can know that an impression is true because of its feeling, a feeling of absolute certainty[1]<\/sup><\/a>. This is problematic.\u00a0In a nutshell, the principle problem of\u00a0epistemology\u00a0\u2013 the study of\u00a0knowledge\u00a0\u2013 is quite simply \u201cHow can we know?\u201d So when Antiochus answers \u201cWe know by sensing certainty,\u201d we’re not quite convinced. But let\u2019s join him for a bit anyway.<\/p>\n First of all, Antiochus says, we cannot deny that certain simple\u00a0sense\u00a0impressions are true: dark, loud, soft, and so forth[2]<\/sup><\/a>. These are seen in combinations, so we see\u00a0lines\u00a0and\u00a0squares\u00a0and\u00a0movement, and hear a repeating\u00a0tone\u00a0or a\u00a0sound\u00a0become louder. When the senses see these in combinations then we grasp\u00a0objects\u00a0\u2013 like horses and dogs. Objects too can be grasped in combination, and thus we are led to general perceptions, such as \u201cHuman beings are rational and mortal\u201d.<\/p>\n Let us begin therefore from the senses, whose verdicts are so clear and certain that if human nature were given the choice, and were interrogated by some god as to whether it was content with its own senses in a sound and undamaged state or demanded something better, I cannot see what more it could ask for.\u00a0(Academic Priora<\/a>)<\/small><\/p><\/blockquote>\n No doubt you noticed Antiochus\u2019\u00a0leap\u00a0from simple sensations to objects. It’s not his only one.<\/p>\n How can Antiochus defend this thesis? It\u2019s one thing to say that I\u2019ve absolute certainty about a simple sense impression, but it\u2019s quite another to insist that I have the same certainty about something more complicated, like an object, or a series of objects and their relations. But!<\/a>\u00a0it\u2019s only a problem because we\u2019ve made certain assumptions, assumptions which are pretty universal today \u2013 whether justified or not. Importantly, we assume that there\u2019s a significant difference between the senses which see the dog and the mind which identifies it as the dog. Presumably, I might say, my eyes take in the colours of the dog and then the mind sticks it together and identifies it as a dog based on previous experiences.<\/p>\n Right there, gloats Antiochus, you\u2019ve split\u00a0mind\u00a0and the\u00a0senses. It\u2019s the\u00a0chasm\u00a0between the two, as you conceive them, that\u2019s responsible for introducing fallibility into the system. Antiochus follows the Stoics in saying that the senses are the source of all\u00a0information, and that mind is a type of sense superior to the other five. The mind is the sense that can recall memories and perform\u00a0analogical\u00a0inferences.<\/p>\n This is not as na\u00efve as it may sound, and if you\u2019ll step into my\u00a0DeLorean<\/a>\u00a0with me I\u2019ll show you why.<\/p>\n What sort of information gets into your\u00a0eye? Technically, all of it. But not in the way that you\u2019d be inclined to imagine. Have you ever opened up a random file with\u00a0Notepad? Get an image file and open it with your image program of choice. It\u2019s a picture, right? Now open it up with Notepad. Not only is that mess still a picture, but it\u2019s also the same picture as before. That\u00a0raw(ish) data\u00a0you see in the text file is what comes into your eye.<\/p>\n A lot of processing in the brain is needed just to get the raw light data into simple patterns: contrasting colours, lines, planes, relative lightness and darkness, you get the\u00a0picture<\/a>.<\/p>\n The question that needs to be addressed here is what do we actually perceive. We obviously don\u2019t perceive the raw data, but how much more processing occurs before we see what we see? If we\u00a0contort\u00a0Antiochus a bit then this question becomes relevant. Antiochus assumed that when a simple perception is consistent then we can\u2019t disagree with it. Fallacies arise from misjudgments, and hence anything that doesn\u2019t depend on our judgments can\u2019t be false[3]<\/sup><\/a>. If\u00a0objects<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0classes<\/i>\u00a0and even higher\u00a0notions<\/i>\u00a0can be formed before we perceive them, then they can\u2019t be false.<\/p>\n Let me ask you, do you see faces\u00a0as<\/i>\u00a0faces, or do you see the sensory data of faces (lines, colours, shapes, shades) which you\u00a0recognize as<\/i>\u00a0faces? For faces,\u00a0famously<\/a>, the former is true to an exceptional degree. We employ highly-specialised\u00a0face-recognition pathways<\/a>\u00a0preconsciously. A face is perceived as a face before we can even judge it as a face.<\/p>\n What about other objects \u2013 what about dogs and horses? Are they produced by judgment (per the old Academics), or are they the product of the mind\u2019s eye (which the Stoics identified to be a sense)? I believe it\u2019s true to say that most of the consciousness depends on preconscious processing. It is before you\u2019re capable of making any judgments that the mind\u2019s eye takes in the raw visual data and transforms it into lines and shapes, and eventually transforms even that into\u00a0an<\/i>\u00a0object, and at some remote stage, transforms that into a particular object class. The more abstract this processing becomes (from our point of view) the less we understand it \u2013 for now.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, Antiochus\u2019 criterion of certainty starts to make more sense and can be\u00a0anachronistically<\/a>\u00a0defended.<\/p>\n Insofar as reality exists it can be categorized and described by principles of\u00a0Bayesian inference<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0Personally, I suspect this<\/a>\u00a0to be a metaphysical underpinning of the\u00a0world<\/a>: the world is the sum relation of all things, the patterning of which can be described with absolute accuracy by appeal to infinite\u00a0sets\u00a0of regularities which can fit those relations. Which is to say: to say that something is a thing, is to observe that there are commonalities which span multiple identities. Or again: to say that something is a dog is to know that that thing would still be a dog if a second dog were found.<\/p>\n Still not clear, I know. The brain operates by Bayesian inference. At an abstract level, what the brain does is take in data and formulate it into patterns with the purpose of needing less and less energy with each intake of data. It achieves this by remoulding its patterns with new data, to make integrations easier. Essentially this is why we\u00a0expect\u00a0things, or why new things surprise us, or why we can divide the world into\u00a0categories\u00a0of things \u2013 like dogs and horses. It also forms the basis for\u00a0long-term potentiation\u00a0– the molecular mechanism for forming memories.<\/p>\n If reality and consciousness can both be described by\u00a0the principles<\/em>\u00a0of\u00a0statistical\u00a0regularity, then Antiochus might be right that I can defend my ideas by saying that they\u2019re clear. By “clear” I have to mean that they are not imposed on by my own judgements.<\/p>\n The problems that remain in 2010 are problems that Antiochus in his own day too failed to resolve: How abstract can our thoughts become before our judgments impinge on them? And how, for that matter, can we know whether our preconscious conceptions have been tainted by consciousness?<\/p>\n I would add another problem, and a\u00a0tentative<\/a>\u00a0solution: If cognitive processes are dependent on the preconscious necessity of deriving patterns from the world\u2019s data, then how can we be sure of the data we\u2019re receiving? We can\u2019t, we\u2019re innately limited. Our only\u00a0criterion of certainty<\/strong>\u00a0is the world in its entirety. And so, to seek to know the world is our\u00a0only<\/a>\u00a0choice.<\/p>\n [1]<\/sup><\/a> Straight off the bat, Antiochus makes sure to exclude experiences like dreams and hallucinations by defining them as abnormal. This brings a whole host of assumptions and problems of its own, which I won\u2019t go into here.\u00a0 Food for thought: what does it mean that waking consciousness is \u201cnormal\u201d, and if that is the case, then what does it mean for normal consciousness to be distorted by a dream? Do we perceive dreams or are we distorted by them?<\/p>\n\n
Antiochus and confident impressions<\/h4>\n
Your eyes vs the mind\u2019s eye<\/h4>\n
Restoring Antiochus in 2010<\/h4>\n
\n