Knowing Enough To Assent To An Impression

This week’s edition is the result of a reader responding to last week’s call for questions and writing suggestions. This reader wrote:

This is a fantastically practical question, and I’m going to answer it next. Before that though, I humbly request that if you’re not yet a listener of the podcast, and you like listening to podcasts, that you consider subscribing to mine, “Practical Stoicism”, on either Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Thanks.

When we know enough vs. when our assents are appropriate

Let’s imagine our friend is late for dinner. We’re standing outside the restaurant, it’s ten minutes past our original reservation, and we can’t be sat until our entire party is present.

What are some impressions we might have swirling around in our head?

None of these yet-to-be-assented-to impressions are bad to be having, they’re just a byproduct of your stream of consciousness. You’re going to think things you can’t control all the time. The measure of a Stoic, at least on this front, is not whether they are presented with a bunch of wild impressions by their mind. Rather, the measure is how they choose which impressions to assent to and then internalize as truth or belief.

We may not be able to know, beyond any shadow of doubt, why our friend is late, but we can reason ourselves to assenting to the impression that is most reasonable to assent to based on what we know.

If no impression seems reasonable, then we can hold off on assent altogether and say,

It’s not about choosing the “correct” impression, it’s about choosing only to believe what is morally (and rationally) defensible such that, when asked why we chose what we chose, we can provide a solid explanation for the choice we made. It’s not important that we’re right — it’s important that we’re morally Just and appropriate in our choices.

Imagine you’re out for a walk, after dark, in a big city

You turn a corner to find a man holding a woman at knifepoint. The man hasn’t noticed you. You reason that you’re witnessing an injustice, and, further, that this is an injustice you are capable of preventing (from going further) and ethically obligated to act to prevent from going further.

You stealthily approach the assailant, grapple with him, manage to get the knife away from him and, in a “heat of the moment” bid to put space between him and you, you push him away. He stumbles back into the road where he is promptly clipped by a passing vehicle.

He’s not killed, but his arm has been broken and he’s clearly in a lot of pain.

You turn to the woman, expecting her to be relieved, but she looks more scared now than she did before. Scared of you.

Suddenly, from across the road, a few men come running and shouting to the aid of the wounded assailant.

As the surreal nature of this response begins to sink in, you realize that you’ve attacked an actor in the middle of a scene being filmed by a small independent film crew.

The law will almost certainly find that pushing an innocent actor into the street, resulting in his near death and a broken arm, was not “the right thing to do”. However, was it, in your estimation, the Just thing to do based on what you knew at the time you chose to take the actions you did?

Was it Just to, seeing what you saw, assent to the impression that someone needed help and to believe that you had a duty, as you were both present and capable, to provide that help?

We’re not trying to do the “right thing” as Stoics. Instead, we’re only ever trying to do the Just thing. If we have sufficient evidence to assent to an impression of Just action, and we assent to it, only to find out later that unknowable unknown unknowns were at play, is the Justness of our choice diminished at all? Have we done anything vicious?

The Stoics would say no, so long as we did our due diligence in our reasoning before choosing and taking action.

The Ancient stoics had a less extreme example than the one I just provided, to make this same point

If someone offered a Stoic sage a wax apple that was so brilliantly constructed that it was indistinguishable from a real apple, and that sage assented to the impression that the apple was real, and took a big waxy bite of it, would that make the sage a phony sage?

No, of course not.

If someone deceives us, we’re not to be blamed for being ignorant of the deceit (unless, of course, this person has deceived us before and we are well aware of their trickster character and we choose to exclude that knowledge from our thinking processes). Just like if someone opens the front door of our house, enters while we’re not home, and steals all our stuff, we’re not to blame for leaving the door unlocked – they’re to blame for being vicious thieves!

If someone endeavors to trick us, whether or not they are successful, that’s a reflection of their character not ours.

Where’s the line, though?

We cannot decide, “meh, we can’t ever know everything about anything, so let’s never choose any action and never be useful to anyone ever.”

This is deeply unStoic, as it posits that the value-measure of choice and action are their outcomes instead of the Justness of a choice, action, or series of choices. It is neither Just nor Courageous to withdraw our participation from the Cosmopolis simply because we’re bound to make mistakes. Instead, this is unjust and cowardly.

We also cannot decide, “we must always make a choice to act, we must always do something. It doesn’t matter if all the choices seem unjust or illogical, action must be taken in order for us to be worthwhile citizens of the Cosmopolis. Even if it’s a ‘lesser of two evils’ sort of thing, we must choose one. Silence is violence”

This is also deeply unStoic, because it posits that the value-measure of choice and action are the act of choosing and process of action themselves. It is neither Just nor Temperate to choose or act simply for the sake of choice and action. Instead, it is unjust and self-indulgent.

So, where’s the line?

There’s not a static answer that I can give you here. No one can – not even Zeno could! There is just this one guideline:

We cannot be afraid of abstaining from assent, nor of time revealing that a different choice would have resulted in a more preferable outcome. The latter will prevent us from ever choosing or acting, while the former will ensure that we frequently risk acting unjustly.

Instead, we must look at what we know and ask the following two questions (in this order):

1. Does the information I possess about this situation enable me to assent to any of my impressions reasonably and justly? If no, abstain from assenting to any impression and be confident that doing so is both a Just and appropriate choice to make. If yes, however, then ask yourself this next question:
   

2. Is the impression I’m assenting to defensible on the front of moral appropriateness? In other words, is the impression appropriately Just and logically sound based on the information available to you at the time? You might reason yourself to assenting to an unjust and unsound impression that is immoral and inappropriate - so, watch yourself carefully.

If you have (what you honestly deem to be) sufficient information, and if the choices you are making lean in the direction of the Good and not the Bad, then your choice will be Just no matter the outcomes.

Our moral goodness isn’t determined by others, it is determined by us. No one else knows anything about how we make our choices, they only know how to armchair quarterback our choices (and actions) once they have the gift of hindsight.

Ignore the peanut gallery. Think for yourself, and think well.

Thanks for reading.