Perceptual Content in the Stoics

Abstract

There is a view about animal phantasia in the Stoics which has the best possible credentials', and is likely to become an orthodoxy. And yet I hope that somehow it can be resisted, because if it is true, I believe the Stoics will be in deep trouble, while if it is false they will be in the clear. According to this view, animal phantasia is rudimentary. It is not propositional in form. Its closest analogue is perhaps Plato's account of the senses in Theaetetus 184D-187B. The soul uses the senses, according to Plato here, for perceiving such qualities as whiteness, but cannot use them for hitting on something's being the case (ousia) or the truth (aletheia). If this is all that phantasia supplies to animals, on Stoic theory, how can we explain all that they do in the world? Typically, an animal that follows a scent does not merely perceive the scent in isolation, but perceives it as lying in a certain direction, and otherwise would not go in the right direction for it. But this already involves predication: the scent is connected with a direction. We can put this by saying that the animal has the perceptual appearance that the scent comes from that direction, or the perceptual appearance of it as coming from there (these are not sharply distinguished by the Stoics). I shall describe such appearances as propositional, meaning no more than that one thing is predicated of another. I have argued elsewhere2 that the narrowing of perception posed no problem for Plato, because he did not, on the whole, deny animals doxa, belief. Even in