 One might plausibly question whether Carneades’ resistance to (straightforward Stoic) assent was the “heroic” defense of rationality against opinion and error Clitomachus took it to be (Cicero Ac. 2.108). It remains very controversial whether there is a coherent distinction to be made between approving a view and assenting to its truth (see the wider discussion in Burnyeat &amp; Frede [ed.] 1998). But a case can be made that acts of pretense, imagination, and supposition require taking on views in a manner distinct from that of belief and that the rational activities of the radical skeptic are founded on supposition (see Striker 1980 [1996]; Bett 1990; Reinhardt 2018). Another way to support the distinction is to note that the process of arguing for and against a thesis, in the way Carneades did, can leave one stuck with a view one way or the other, but without being aware of any rational ground for preferring this view. After constant repetition of this process, one can see how the Academics might have come to have the view that their views or “beliefs” are all non-rational in the specific sense that they were not actively formed in accordance with the explicit criteria of rationality advocated by the dogmatic philosophers. And if they remained committed—in the same attenuated or “non-rational” sense—to the Socratic ideal of inerrant knowledge, one can see why they might try to preserve their rationality by not giving their assent to the views they found themselves holding. A case along these lines is made in Brittain 2005 [2008]. Philo, at any rate, initially agreed with Clitomachus that Carneades’ ability to maintain something like these critical stances towards all beliefs—his own as well as the theories of his philosophical opponents—represented a paradigm of self-conscious rationality (see Numenius fr. 28).