Nurtured by Nature

Abstract

This chapter is about the metaphysical and psychological assumptions underlying early Stoic epistemology. I show that, according to the Stoics, each thing is qualified by nature in such a way as to be both a kind of thing and a unique thing. I also show that the mind of a human adult is qualified by nature in such a way as to be able to form thoughts about all sorts of qualified things, as long as it has acquired notions about them. I then detail how notions are acquired, i.e. how nature operates in such a way that human beings first receive all sorts of information through the senses and then retain some of this information, so that we acquire the ability to recognize things in our environment as what they are, and to distinguish them from other things. It is at this point of our development that we become rational, according to the Stoics, and as rational creatures we are able to give assent to some of our thoughts and engage in reasoning. These are the abilities that we, according to Chrysippus, need to have in order to successfully orient ourselves in the enormously complex world of qualified things.