The Missing Evidence is Evidence
I recently decided to start covering Modern Stoic Fallacies periodically. I have been combatting some of these fallacies for years on Facebook, in my blog, and on my podcast. However, I typically only mention them briefly and haven’t provided much analysis. All of these fallacies have the same goal: to justify removing Stoic physics from the holistic system the ancient Stoics created to make Stoicism compatible with agnosticism and atheism.
Before I go any further, I will repeat what I have stated numerous times before. I support the development of a modern, agnostic version of Stoicism? However, there is a condition. A modern, agnostic version of Stoicism must not be built on a foundation of fallacies that distort, misrepresent, and discredit the traditional theory and practice as the ancient Stoics created it. I fully support Modern Stoics, like the late Lawrence Becker, who openly stated he intended to abandon Stoic physics to create a “new” synthesis of Stoicism. I do not support those who claim their new synthesis is essentially the same as that produced by the ancient Stoics or what it would have become if the Stoa remained active into modern times. Those assertions are wishful thinking at best.
Some of my listeners might wonder why I am spending time refuting Modern Stoic fallacies. That is a fair question. I believe these Modern Stoic fallacies must be refuted for three reasons. First, those entirely new to Stoicism may wrongly assume these fallacies are supported by historical facts, scholarship, or logical thinking. They are not. Second, Traditional Stoics need to understand these Modern Stoic fallacies do not discredit or refute the deeply spiritual form of Stoicism they know and appreciate from reading the Stoic texts and recognized Stoic scholarship. Finally, these fallacies unintentionally opened the door to other newly minted adaptations of Stoicism that bring disgrace to the tradition of the ancient Stoa.
Some of these fallacies are repeated so frequently on social media platforms they become memes. One pervasive example most anyone who has been on Stoic social media platforms has seen is, “Stoicism is not a religion.” While that statement is factually accurate, it is used to infer something false about Stoicism. I will covert that in a future episode.
The first fallacy I will tackle is what I call The Missing Evidence is Evidence Fallacy.
This fallacy proposes the possibility some of the ancient Stoics were agnostics. Curiously, rather than offering evidence supporting this possibility, the author speculates that the evidence might exist in Stoic texts no longer available to us. In other words, he wants to leave open the possibility that missing Stoic texts might lend credence to his hope that some of the ancient Stoics were agnostic about the providential nature of the cosmos. Again, I call this The Missing Evidence is Evidence Fallacy.
This Modern Stoic fallacy is not repeated as often as others on social media. I hope that is because many people see the errant reasoning used in this fallacy and understand the unintended consequences of its use. Nevertheless, like most Modern Stoic fallacies, this one serves a specific purpose—it attempts to justify removing Stoic physics, which includes the concept of a divine and providential cosmos, from Stoicism. Here is the source of this Modern Stoic Fallacy:
Only about 1% of the ancient Stoic writings survive today, at a rough estimate. We have substantial texts from only three authors: Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. They were all late Roman Stoics and we have only fragments from the early Greek Stoics, including the founders of the school. (Also some important ancient secondary sources, especially in the writings of the Platonist Cicero.) None of these Stoics appear to have been agnostics themselves but others may have been.[1]
To be fair, this is not the whole argument presented by this Modern Stoic to support his conclusion that “Marcus Aurelius and perhaps also Epictetus believed that agnosticism or even atheism may have been consistent with the Stoic way of life.”[2] In fact, this particular piece includes several pages of supporting circumstantial evidence and contains several Modern Stoic Fallacies I will address in future episodes. Nevertheless, it is clear from this passage alone the author is appealing to missing textual evidence to support his final claim.
Let’s begin by placing this fallacy into the structure of an informal logical argument to analyze it.
Premise #1: Only about 1% of the Stoic texts survive today.
Premise #2: Most of what we do know about Stoicism comes from a small sample of sources, and most of that is from the Roman Stoics (Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius). Fragments from the founders and secondary writing are notably helpful)
Premise #3: None of these Stoics appear to have been agnostics.
Conclusion: However, other Stoics may have been agnostics.
In this format, we quickly see this is a classic example of a non sequitur, which means “does not follow” in Latin. In other words, the conclusion that “some other ancient Stoics may have been agnostics” does not logically follow from the fact that only a tiny percentage of the ancient Stoic texts are available to us today.
Before I tackle the conclusion drawn from this Modern Stoic fallacy, I also want to address a word in Premise #3 that is critical to assessing it. The word is “appear,” and it’s used in the final sentence of the passage that originated this fallacy. Again, that reads:
None of these Stoics appear to have been agnostics... [bold emphasis added]
The word “appear” is a guarding term in this sentence. People use guarding terms to protect an assertion from attack by reducing its claim and leaving open the possibility it may be wrong. Guarding terms serve a legitimate purpose in philosophical dialogue because many philosophical assertions are not provable in any objectively testable way. Therefore, honesty often necessitates guarding terms to point out a degree of uncertainty or limit the scope of an assertion.
Nevertheless, guarding terms can also be deployed to gently persuade a reader or listener to accept an otherwise questionable assertion as true. That is why guarding terms are used so frequently by lawyers in the courtroom to sway a jury toward a conclusion of innocence or guilt based on evidence that can be ambiguous. In philosophy, guarding terms can deliver insinuations and inferences the facts or logical arguments do not fully support. This type of argumentation is called sophistry.
A sophistry is a clever but fallacious argument intended to establish a point through trickery.[3]
In this Modern Stoic fallacy, the guarding term “appear” is used to subtly call into question the beliefs of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. Again, the author asserts that none of these Stoics appear to be agnostics. However, this guarding term implicitly leaves open the possibility they may have been agnostic. It would have been easy for the author of this fallacy to write:
None of these Stoics were agnostics themselves…
However, the author chose to write it differently. Again, he wrote:
None of these Stoics appear to have been agnostics themselves… [bold emphasis added]
The word “appear” helps guard the conclusion, which reads:
…but others may have been. [emphasis added]
Within this conclusion, we see another guarding term. In this instance, it’s the phrase “may have been.” The combination of these guarding terms encourages the reader to assent to the possibility some of the ancient Stoics may have been agnostics while simultaneously guarding the author’s conclusion from refutation. The use of these guarding terms allows the author to suggest a possibility—that some ancient Stoics may have been agnostics—without making a factual claim that can be directly challenged with evidence. If the author made an unambiguous assertion that one or more of the ancient Stoics were agnostics, he would be left unprotected from the question: “Which ones?”
Nevertheless, this fallacy only works for those who have not read the Stoic texts and scholarship or those willing to ignore the facts about Stoicism. This assertion may work in a court of public opinion, where fellow agnostics and atheists populate the jury. However, it does not stand up to the historical evidence. Such an assertion would never withstand the scrutiny of peer-review by credible scholars of Stoicism.
While it is certainly true Stoic theology, as expressed in the surviving texts, varied slightly between individual Stoics and over time. There is no evidence any ancient Stoic was agnostic as that word is commonly understood today. They were all deeply committed to belief in the existence of God in the form of a providentially ordered cosmos. I am not aware of a single credible scholar who has argued otherwise. Trust me when I say I have looked. I have also asked the author of this article, publicly and repeatedly, to reference any scholar who supports his assertion. To date, I have received none.
This highlights one common feature of Modern Stoic fallacies: they never reference credible scholars to back their assertions. Why? In this case, no credible scholar would suggest Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, or any other ancient Stoic was agnostic about the existence of God.
Let’s get back to the Modern Stoic Fallacy I’m addressing in this episode. Again, I call this The Missing Evidence is Evidence Fallacy. It opens with an accurate assessment of the current state of Stoic texts. Only a tiny percentage of the known Stoic texts survived and are available today. Archeologists may discover more in the future from archeological sites like Herculaneum;[4] however, we cannot rely on that being the case. Neither is it reasonable to assume a future discovery will support an argument or doctrine clearly refuted by the texts we currently have. We currently have enough texts, from various sources, to discern the doctrines of the ancient Stoics. If new scrolls are discovered, we might learn some new details or discover an unknown internal debate over a minor point of doctrine. However, it is highly unlikely we will find any divergence on the fundamental doctrines that define the Stoa.
Using missing textual evidence as evidence to support any conclusion opens the door to a multitude of misguided applications of Stoicism, some of which already exist. If we open with Premise #1 and #2 from this Modern Stoic Fallacy, let’s consider some other ways Stoicism can be twisted to support positions even Modern Stoics will argue are not Stoicism. Remember:
Premise #1: Only about 1% of the Stoic texts survive today.
Premise #2: Most of what we do know about Stoicism comes from a small sample of Stoics sources, and most of that is from the Roman Stoics (Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius).
The Theist Possibility
Premise #3: None of these Stoics appear to have advocated full-blown theism—the concept of a transcendent God.
Conclusion: However, some other ancient Stoics may have believed theism was compatible with Stoicism.
The Christian Possibility
Premise #3: None of these Stoics appear to have been Christians.
Conclusion: However, some other ancient Stoics may have been Christians who argued accepting Christ as one’s lord and savior is necessary to experience eudaimonia.
The Prosperity Possibility
Premise #3: None of these Stoics appear to have advocated Stoicism as a strategy for financial prosperity.
Conclusion: However, some other ancient Stoics may have taught Stoicism as a strategy for financial prosperity.
I hope you get my point. Sadly, the list of possibilities is limited only by the imagination of those willing to distort Stoicism to support their personal beliefs and help achieve their desires. Ironically, several Modern Stoic authority figures have attempted to push back against existing groups distorting Stoicism. Unfortunately, their desire to have Stoicism their way opened the door to this mischief. When we step outside the Stoic texts and credible, peer-reviewed scholarship to make arguments about Stoic doctrines and practices, we abandon the rational means to argue against these groups who misrepresent Stoicism for their preferred ends.
Finally, to help make the absurdity of this form of reasoning clear, imagine the following exchange during a hearing in a court of law where the defense has asked the judge to dismiss a murder case due to lack of evidence.
Defense attorney: Your honor, I’m asking you to dismiss this case against my client because there is no evidence linking him to this murder.
Judge: Prosecution, what evidence do you have to support this charge?
Prosecutor: Your honor, this murder happened ten years ago, and the house it occurred in has been almost entirely remodeled by the new owners. Therefore, we could only recover about 1% of the evidence that likely existed in the original murder scene. Moreover, the evidence we collected comes exclusively from the basement, attic, and a large kitchen pantry.
While there is no evidence the defendant committed this murder in the basement, attic, or kitchen pantry, the defendant may have murdered the victim elsewhere in the remodeled portions of this house. It’s a big house, your honor.
Judge: I certainly hope your insinuation of missing evidence isn’t the only evidence you have to claim this man murdered the victim.
Prosecutor: Oh no, your honor. I have a lot of other circumstantial evidence to suggest the defendant may have been inside the home where this murder occurred or somewhere nearby during at least sometime around the time this murder was committed. Additionally, his ex-wife says he’s an angry man, and we know he owns a gun.
Judge: Do you have any physical evidence or credible witness testimony that puts the defendant at the murder scene or otherwise connects him to this murder?
Prosecutor: Well, no, your honor, but I’m convinced that people on this jury, many of whom are already predisposed to find this defendant guilty, will find my circumstantial evidence convincing.
Judge: Case dismissed!
Yes, that is a ridiculous scenario. Sadly, it is no more ridiculous than the case presented by the author of this fallacy to a jury of Modern Stoic atheists who want to believe the ancients Stoics would have considered agnosticism or even atheism compatible with Stoicism. This is called an ad populum fallacy because it entails “appealing to the emotions of a crowd…”[5] We commonly refer to it as preaching to the choir. People who already believe the speaker’s message, or want to believe it, don’t need evidence or sound reasoning.
Many of the Modern Stoic Fallacies are convincing to atheists because they want Stoicism to be open to agnostics and atheists. These arguments typically do not offer historical facts or scholarly support because none is needed to convince those who want to believe the author’s conclusion. Ironically, many of these same people are the first to demand facts and evidence from Traditional Stoics when topics like logos, providence, or God are discussed.
Modern Stoics cannot have it both ways. They cannot argue that lost Stoics texts may have opened the door of the Stoa for agnostics and atheists while simultaneously claiming that the same door is closed to other new variants of Stoicism they do not like. If you open that door with bad reasoning, others will walk through it. Sadly, within the last decade, we’ve already witnessed Stoicism being twisted into a “manly” philosophy, a politically conservative philosophy, and a means to achieve financial prosperity. I am not suggesting this Modern Stoic fallacy is solely responsible for these misrepresentations of Stoicism. I am arguing it is one of many Modern Stoic fallacies created to open the door of the Stoa to agnostics and unintentionally paved the way for others to enter and misrepresent Stoicism.
If we allow bad reasoning, like alluding to what might exist in lost Stoic texts, to support a position, we abandon rational, philosophical discourse and open the door to sophistry. Worse, we leave the door of the Stoa open to a multitude of popular social movements that are incompatible with Stoicism.
No! Missing evidence is NOT evidence.
ENDNOTES:
[1] Robertson, D. (2012, October 7). Stoicism: God or Atoms? Donald Robertson. https://donaldrobertson.name/2012/10/07/stoicism-god-or-atoms/
[2] Ibid
[3] Sinnott-Armstrong, W., & Fogelin, R. (2010). Understanding Arguments: An Introduction to Informal Logic (8th ed.). Wadsworth. p. 85
[4] Magazine, S., & Knudsen, J. M., Henrik. (n.d.). Buried by the Ash of Vesuvius, These Scrolls Are Being Read for the First Time in Millennia. Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved February 13, 2022, from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/buried-ash-vesuvius-scrolls-are-being-read-new-xray-technique-180969358/
[5] Weston, A. (2008). A Rulebook for Arguments (Fourth Edition). Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. p. 74
