EPISTEMOLOGY According to some of our ancient sources, Carneades was a sceptic of the less radical kind who, while rejecting the possibility of knowledge, accepted that the wise man could legitimately hold mere belief The two Academics focus their attack on Zeno at diVerent points Zeno held that no wise man would hold mere belief, but if he relied only on cognitive impressions his assents would all count as knowledge Arcesilaus and Carneades agree with each other that there are no cognitive impressions and therefore no knowledge, but the former concludes that the wise man will give no assent, while the latter concludes that the wise man will hold mere belief (Cicero, Acad 148) On another account, however, in evaluating Carneades’ position we need to make a more subtle analysis of the mental phenomena studied by the epistemologist Instead of simply distinguishing between an appearance and assent to the appearance, we have to introduce a new notion of impulse (horme) While assent is voluntary and can be withheld, appearance, we know, is outside our control But appearance is inevitably followed by impulse, and it is possible to follow this without the mental assent in which truth is to be found and falsehood to be avoided (Plutarch, adversus Coloten 1122 LS 69a; Cicero, Acad 103–4 LS 69i) This distinction appears to have been introduced in order to answer a common objection to radical scepticism: if the sceptic suspends judgement, how can he live a normal life How can he get into a bath if, for all he knows, it is a chasm? The answer is that he does not judge, rashly, that it really is a bath; but he is swept along by his bath-entering impulse In nonphilosophical discussions a wise man may even follow his impulses so far as to give the answers ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to questions Pyrrhonian Scepticism In the Wrst century bc there grew up a new fundamentalist school of scepticism which regarded the Academics as having watered down scepticism in unacceptable ways The founder of this school was Aenesidemus, but he and his followers described their version of scepticism as Pyrrhonism, after Pyrrho of Elis, a soldier in the army of Alexander the Great, whom they regarded as their founding father Aenesidemus wrote a lost book of Pyrrhonian discourses that set out his diVerences with Academic 175