 This second stage gives the Academics a way of accepting impressions and acting on them that preserves the thesis that rationality demands that one should always suspend assent. Thus, by combining both stages, Clitomachus was able to argue that the Academic is free to “follow” or “approve” persuasive impressions without assenting to them: the Academic has a “practical criterion” that allows for action without presupposing the cognitive access to objective truth required for rational assent (Sextus M 7. 166; cf. Cicero Ac. 2.108). Clitomachus, however, did not restrict the application of this “practical” criterion to cases of ordinary action (pace Görler 1994). He also explicitly claimed that it gave the radical skeptics a means to explain their philosophical activities, i.e., their arguments and views (Cicero Ac. 2.104; cf. 2.32). He was thus in a position to explain the Academics’ apparent commitment to the theses that assent is irrational and knowledge is unattainable. These are views that the radical skeptic finds “persuasive”; but they are not “beliefs”, at least not in the Stoic sense, because the Academic does not take them to be true.