This is the 26th week of Untranslatable Words and we're again traveling back in time to Greece, the land of philosophy! For this occasion we're talking about a very philosophical concept from ancient Greece that I think it's very interesting.
This week's word is the ancient greek: acatalepsy.
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Acatalepsy
When I read what this term was about it really called me because I've thought this about many things, even reality itself, and fiding this exists as a concept, that it not only happened to me, was very interesting.
In philosophy, acatalepsy (from the Greek ἀκαταληψία "inability to comprehend" from alpha privative (α̉-) and καταλαμβάνειν, "to seize") is incomprehensibleness, or the impossibility of comprehending or conceiving a thing. *
Acatalepsy is doctrine held by the Academics of the Middle Academy, and by the sceptics, that human knowledge never amounts to certainty, but only to probability. It is the antithesis of the Stoic doctrine of katalepsis (i.e., the ability to apprehend). According to the Stoics, katalepsis was true perception, but to the Pyrrhonists and Academic Skeptics, no perception could be known to be true. All perceptions were thus acataleptic, i.e. what, if any, conformity between the object and the perception of that object was unknown and, for the Academic Skeptics, could never be known. * *
Stoicism is a philosophy of personal ethics informed by its system of logic and its views on the natural world. This is a philosophy I'm very fond of because it has provided me tools to make my life experience better, like teaching me to think of failures as a good, normal and therefore accepted thing part of life. For the Stoics, the mind is constantly being bombarded with impressions, and it is only through reason that we gain clear comprehension and conviction; the mind has the ability to judge—approve or reject—an impression, enabling it to distinguish a true representation of reality from one that is false; and they affirmed these impressions such as when one believes an oar dipped in the water to be broken because it appears so. This is what katalepsis is. * *
Then, the Pyrrhonists and the Academic Skeptics were the two schools of philosophical skepticism that proposed an antithesis of the Stoic doctrine of katalepsis, while to the Stoics katalepsis was true perception, to the Pyrrhonists and Academic Skeptics no perception could be known to be true. For the Academic Skeptics, acatalepsy meant that human knowledge never amounts to certainty, but only to plausibility. For the Pyrrhonists it meant that knowledge was limited to the phantasiai (typically translated as "appearances," meaning a person's sensed experience) and the pathē (one's feelings). *
Now, letting aside all the philosophical talk, there were times I found myself thinking I could never really know something because maybe my senses couldn't be trusted, like what my eyes showed me was just a fake image and what I was seeing wasn't really what I was seeing, like the broken oar dipped in the water wasn't a real image as if my eyes were lying to me. I would then start touching things and rely on my sense of touch, to see if there was a difference from my touch to my sight.
Once I sensed there was no difference between my sight and touch I would either abandon this "crazy" acataleptic idea and would continue with my life like it never passed through my mind or I would get dissappointed and try to think more about it while staring at the stuff. I used to do this often when I was younger and now I rarely do it, maybe because once I started reading philosophy and knew some people already thought of this and tried it I instantly stopped doing it for obvious reasons, this wasn't a conscious decision though.
Even though I'm supposed to be clearer about it at this point, I still think both positions are valid and I don't think I'm the only one. The Stoics said that one ought not to give credit to everything which is perceived, but only to those perceptions which contain some special mark of those things which appeared, but I also think that there are appearances and that even our own feelings may cause these impressions to be unreal. The thing is, or seems to be, to find that special mark but still, where would this certainty come from?
What do you think? Do you trust your senses? Please feel free to let me know what you think in the comments!
Thank you very much for passing by! And if you have an Untranslatable Word you'd like to suggest, please don't hesitate to do so! :)
Previous Untranslatable Words:
#1: Torschlusspanik
#2: Mono no aware
#3: Rasāsvāda
#4: Cavoli riscaldati
#5: Nefelibata
#6: Sturmfrei
#7: Jootha
#8: bilita mpash
#9: resfeber
#10: Vāde mēcum
#11: sankofa
#12: annus mirabilis
#13: voorpret
#14: pikit mata
#15: ranorànilac
#16: gagung
#17: gumusservi
#18: yaourter
#19: nunchi
#20: flâneur - the aesthetic experience of wandering through the city
#21: xibipíío - how the Pirahã deconverted a Christian man
#22: aduantas - rambling between two nuances
#23: Eh - Canada's proud politeness
#24: Janteloven - the egalitarian nature of Nordic countries
#25: Dadirri - finding the answers by contemplating ourselves
