Back in June, Kevin Timpe asked Gardeners for ancient references to Free Will Skepticism.
Before there was anything called philosophy, religious accounts of man's fate explored the degree of human freedom permitted by superhuman gods. Creation myths often end in adventures of the first humans making choices and being held responsible. But a strongfatalism is present in those tales that foretell the future, based on the idea that the gods have foreknowledge of future events. Anxious not to annoy the gods, the myth-makers rarely challenged the implausible view that the gods' foreknowledge is compatible with human freedom. This was an early form of today's compatibilism, the idea that causal determinism and logical necessity are compatible with free will. Heraclitus (535-475) claimed that everything changes ("you can't step twice into the same river") but that there were laws or rules (the logos) behind all the change. The early cosmologists' intuition that their laws could produce an ordered cosmos out of chaos was prescient. Our current model of the universe begins with a state of minimal information and maximum disorder. Early cosmologists imagined that the universal laws were all-powerful and must therefore explain the natural causes behind all things, from the regular motions of the heavens to the mind (νοῦς) of man. The physiologoi transformed pre-philosophical arguments about gods controlling the human will into arguments about pre-existing causes controlling it. The cosmological problem became a psychological problem. Some saw a causal chain of events leading back to a first cause(later taken by many religious thinkers to be God). Other physiologoi held that although allphysical events are caused, mental events might not be. This is mind/body dualism, perhaps the most important of all great dualisms. If the mind (or soul) is a substance different from matter, it could have its own laws different from the laws of nature for material bodies, and agents might originate new causal chains. The materialist philosophers Democritus and his mentor Leucippus were the first determinists. With extraordinary prescience, they claimed that all things, including humans, were made of atoms in a void, with individual atomic motions strictly controlled by causal laws. Democritus said: "By convention (nomos) color, by convention sweet, by convention bitter, but in reality atoms and a void." νόμῳ χροιή, νόμῳ γλυκύ, νόμῳ πικρόω, ἑτεῇ δ’ ἄτομα καὶ κενόν (Diels Kranz, fragment B125) Democritus wanted to wrest control of man's fate from arbitrary gods and make us moreresponsible for our actions. But ironically, he and Leucippus originated two of the greatdogmas of determinism, physical determinism and logical necessity, which lead directly to the traditional and modern problem of free will and determinism. Leucippus stated the first dogma, an absolute necessity which left no room in the cosmos forchance. "Nothing occurs at random (maten), but everything for a reason (logos) and by necessity." οὐδὲν χρῆμα μάτηῳ γίνεται, ἀλλὰ πάντα ἐκ λόγου τε καὶ ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης The Pythagoreans, Socrates, and Plato attempted to reconcile an element of human freedom with material determinism and causal law, in order to hold man responsible for his actions. The first major philosopher to argue convincingly for some indeterminism was probablyAristotle. First he described a causal chain back to a prime mover or first cause, and he elaborated the four possible causes (material, efficient, formal, and final). Aristotle's word for these causes was ἀιτία, which translates as causes in the sense of the multiple factors responsible for an event. Aristotle did not subscribe to the simplistic "every event has a (single) cause" idea that was to come later. Aristotle opposed his accidental chance to necessity: Nor is there any definite cause for an accident, but only chance (τυχόν), namely an indefinite (ἀόριστον) cause. It is obvious that there are principles and causes which are generable and destructible apart from the actual processes of generation and destruction; for if this is not true, everything will be of necessity: that is, if there must necessarily be some cause, other than accidental, of that which is generated and destroyed. Willthis be, or not? Yes, if this happens; otherwise not. Tracing any particular sequence of events back in time will usually come to an accidental event - a "starting point" or "fresh start" (Aristotle calls it an origin or arche (ἀρχῆ) - whose major contributing cause (or causes) was itself uncaused, e.g., it involved quantum indeterminacy. Whether a particular thing happens, says Aristotle, may depend on a series of causes that goes back to some starting-point, which does not go back to something else. This, therefore, will be the starting-point of the fortuitous, and nothing else is the cause of its generation. Beyond causal sequences that are the result of chance or necessity, Aristotle felt that some breaks in the causal chain allow us to feel our actions "depend on us" (ἐφ' ἡμῖν). These are the causal chains that originate within us (ἐv ἡμῖν). Aristotle knew that many of our decisions are quite predictable based on habit and character, but they are no less free nor we less responsible if our character itself and predictable habits were developed freely in the past and are changeable in the future. This is the view of some Eastern philosophies and religions. Our Karma (etymologically one's character) has been determined by past actions (even from past lives), and strongly influences our current actions, but we are free to improve our Karma by good actions. Epicurus did not say the swerve was directly involved in decisions. His critics, ancient and modern, have claimed mistakenly that Epicurus did assume "one swerve - one decision" and that "free " actions are uncaused. But following Aristotle, Epicurus thought human agents have the autonomous ability to transcend necessity and chance (both of which destroy responsibility), so that praise and blame are appropriate. ...some things happen of necessity, others by chance, others through our own agency. ...necessity destroys responsibility and chance is inconstant; whereas our own actions are autonomous, and it is to them that praise and blame naturally attach. Parenthetically, we now know that atoms do not occasionally swerve, they move unpredictablywhenever they are in close contact with other atoms. Everything in the material universe is made of atoms in unstoppable perpetual motion. Deterministic paths are only the case for very large objects, where the statistical laws of atomic physics average to become nearly certain dynamical laws for billiard balls and planets. We know Epicurus' work largely from the Roman Lucretius and his friend Cicero. Lucretius, a strong supporter of Epicurus, saw the randomness as enabling free will, even if he could not explain exactly how, beyond the fact that random swerves would break the causal chain of determinism. Again, if all motion is always one long chain, and new motion arises out of the old in order invariable, and if the first-beginnings do not make by swerving a beginning of motion such as to break the decrees of fate, that cause may not follow cause from infinity, whence comes this freedom (libera) in living creatures all over the earth, whence I say is this will (voluntas) wrested from the fates by which we proceed whither pleasure leads each, swerving also our motions not at fixed times and fixed places, but just where our mind has taken us? For undoubtedly it is his own will in each that begins these things, and from the will movements go rippling through the limbs. The Latin original libera in "whence comes this freedom" has often been translated as "free will," influenced perhaps by the centuries-old free will debate. But Lucretius himself clearly distinguishes the "free" (libera) from the "will" (voluntas). If there is free will, all things do not happen according to fate; if all things do not happen according to fate, there is not a certain order of causes; and if there is not a certain order of causes, neither is there a certain order of things foreknown by God. Epicurus saw that if the atoms travelled downwards by their own weight; we should have no freedom of the will [nihil fore in nostra potestate], since the motion of the atoms would be determined by necessity. He therefore invented a device to escape from determinism: he said that the atom while travelling vertically downward by the force of gravity makes a very slight swerve to one side. This defence discredits him more than if he had had to abandon his original position. Zeno said that every event has a cause, and that cause necessitates the event. Given exactly the same circumstances, exactly the same result will occur. It is impossible that the cause be present yet that of which it is the cause not obtain. ἀδύνατον δ’ εἴναι τὸ μὲν αἴτιον παρεῖναι, οὖ δέ ἐστιν αἴτιον μὴ ὑπάρχειν. The Stoic influence persists to this day, in philosophy and religion. Most of the extensive Stoic writings are lost, probably because their doctrine of fate, which identified God with Nature, was considered anathema to the Christian church. The church agreed that the laws of God were the laws of Nature, but that God and Nature were two different entities. In either case strict determinism follows by universal Reason (logos) from an omnipotent God. Stoic virtue called for men to resist futile passions like anger and envy. The fine Stoic morality that all men (including slaves and women) were equal children of God coincided with (or was adopted by) the church. Stoic logic and physics freed those fields from ancient superstitions, but strengthened the dogmas of determinism that dominate modern science and philosophy, especially when they explicitly denied Aristotle's chance as a possible cause. Whereas the past is unchangeable, Chrysippus argued that some future events that arepossible do not occur by necessity from past external factors alone, but might (as Aristotle and Epicurus maintained) depend on us. We have a choice to assent or not to assent to an action. This is a controversial idea and may be inconsistent with orthodox Stoic doctrines, since it suggests the existence of alternative possibilities and the capacity to do otherwise. Chrysippus said our actions are determined (in part by ourselves as causes) and fated (because of God's foreknowledge), but he also said correctly that they are not necessitated, i.e., pre-determined from the distant past. Chrysippus would be seen today as a compatibilist, as was the Stoic Epictetus. He also has a strong element of agent-causalism. Alexander believed that Aristotle was not a strict determinist like the Stoics, and Alexander himself argued that some events do not have pre-determined causes. In particular, man is responsible for self-caused decisions, and can choose to do or not to do something, as Chrysippus argued. However, Alexander denied the foreknowledge of events that was part of the Stoic identification of God and Nature. Caught between the horns of a dilemma, with determinism on one side and randomness on the other, the standard argument against free will continues to render human freedomunintelligible (ἄδελον).
The consequence is a world with but one possible future, completely determined by its past. Some even argued for a great cycle of events (an idea borrowed from Middle Eastern sources) repeating themselves over thousands of years.
(Metaphysics, Book V, 1025a25)
(Metaphysics, Book VI, 1027a29)
In general, many such causal sequences contribute to any event, including human decisions. Each sequence has a different time of origin, some going back before we were born, some originating during our deliberations.
(Metaphysics Book VI 1027b12-14)
Lucretius' "first beginning" (primordia motus principium) seems to be a reference to Aristotle's starting point (ἀρχῆ)) and a kind of causa sui that would start additional new causal chains under the control of the mind ("just where our mind has taken us").
Although he defends human freedom, Cicero ridicules the presumptive Epicurean idea of achance swerve as the cause of our decisions. (Note that Epicurus did not involve chance in decisions that are "up to us." For him chance simply breaks the chain of causal determinism.) Cicero's implication has created the mistaken notion that for libertarians, chance is the direct cause of action.
Thank you for this invaluable resource!
Posted by: Kip | August 22, 2009 at 09:41 AM
Thanks for the kind words, Kip.
The links in the post will take you to many more I-Phi resources - the thoughts on free will of over 125 philosophers and a few dozen scientists here, plus over 50 core concepts useful to understand the free will problem here, and a glossary of terms here.
By the way, my guesses on the originators...
The First Determinist was Democritus.
The First Indeterminist and Incompatibilist was Aristotle.
The First Agent-Causal Libertarian was Aristotle, followed by Epicurus, then Carneades.
The First Event-Causal Libertarian was Epicurus, according to the untrustworthy accounts of the Epicurean Lucretius and the anti-Epicurean Sceptic Cicero.
The First Compatibilist was Chrysippus.
What do other Gardeners think?
Posted by: Bob Doyle | August 23, 2009 at 08:12 PM
I tend to regard Plato as one of the earliest recorded Compatibilists.
Also, I disagree with your categorization of Aristotle. Aristotle was surely an autonomist and an agent-causalist, but I have yet to see anything in his writings that preclude him from endorsing a form of agent causal compatibilism.
Posted by: Mark Smeltzer | August 23, 2009 at 08:27 PM