The Stoics on Determinism and Compatibilism

Ricardo Salles

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351881531
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

The Stoics on Determinism and Compatibilism is an important book which reconstructs the arguments deployed by the Stoics in favour of the view that everything is necessary and examines the development of the different arguments given by the Stoics that this is compatible with moral responsibility and desert. The book carefully distinguishes two separate theses in Stoic theory, that everything that happens and is the case has a cause and that causation is necessitating. The book also provides a new reconstruction of Stoic compatibilism distinguishing four different compatibilist theories. Salles has written a book which is non-technical in it's approach and which assesses the Stoic positions on determinism, compatibilism, freedom and responsibility in the light of the modern debate on this issue. Covering not just the ancient debates and thinkers such as Epictetus and Chrysippus but also examining the compatibilist views of the major modern theorist Harry Frankfurt, finding indications of his main intuitions already present in the Stoic arguments and tackling the positions of Suzanne Bobzien.

PART I
DETERMINISM

Chapter 1

The Basis of Stoic Determinism (a): Everything has a Cause

The claim that everything – states and events – has a cause is one of the two theses on which Stoic determinism is grounded. In the first section of this chapter, an analysis is offered of the argument developed by Chrysippus to support this thesis. This argument introduces the fatalistic idea that the future is already fixed. So the analysis of the argument is complemented in the second section with a discussion of the nature of Chrysippus’ specific brand of fatalism. Section three is devoted to recapitulating the argument presented in this chapter and to drawing a map of different kinds of fatalism, in which the difference between Chrysippean fatalism and the fatalist theory attacked by Aristotle in int. 9 is studied in some detail.

1.1 Bivalence, Future Truth and Causation

Before looking into why Chrysippus thought that everything has a cause, some elements of the Stoic theory of causation are worth considering.

In outline, Stoic causation works as follows:¹ (i) causal relations obtain between bodies, one of which, the cause, causes the other to satisfy a certain predicate (for example, the knife is a cause to the flesh of its satisfying the predicate to be cut); (ii) when a body A causally acts upon a body B, the effect of A’s activity is the predicate satisfied by B,² although this may mean, not that the effect is literally the predicate itself, but rather, as has been pointed out by one of the latest scholars to deal with this issue,³ that the effect is the predicate’s being satisfied by B; finally (iii) this satisfaction is often an event: Dion’s desire to walk caused that the predicate to walk be satisfied by him, where his walking is an event; but it may also be a mere state: the knife’s acting upon my flesh caused that the predicate to be in pain be satisfied by me, where my being in pain is a state, not an event.

Regarding the notions of states and events, the latter, as construed in modem event theory,⁴ are for the Stoics logically reducible to states. Think of an event type such as the walking by Plato from the Academy to the outer walls of Athens. In it, Plato satisfies the predicate to be walking from the Academy to the outer walls of Athens. In Stoic theory, the identity of this event is fixed by two elements: (a) the qualities in virtue of which the body that walks is Plato as opposed to, for example, Aristotle; and (b) the disposition (ἕξις) in virtue of which the body Plato is disposed in a certain way (πω̆ς ἔχον), namely in such a way as to be walking from one place to the other.⁵ The disposition mentioned in (b) may be exercised by a different body differently qualified, for example, Aristotle. If so, a different type of event occurs: the walking by Aristotle from the Academy to the outer walls of Athens. Similarly, the same qualified body may be disposed in a different way, in which case too a new event type occurs, for example, Plato’s walking back from the outer walls of Athens to the Academy.⁶ These events are different although each is analysable in terms of a certain state of a body, namely the possession by the body of certain qualities and dispositions. States, therefore, are logically prior to events. This, however, does not mean that there is a one-to-one relation between the set of Stoic events and that of Stoic states. For there are states such that no event is analysable in terms of them (‘Plato’s being white’ would be an example).

To go back to the notion of cause, the Stoics also maintained that any cause is active. In order for A to cause a predicate P to be satisfied by B, A itself has to undergo some activity or change, and A has this causal efficacy in virtue of this activity or change. Thus, any body that acts as a cause must itself satisfy a predicate that expresses an activity. In order for the knife to cause the flesh to satisfy the predicate to be cut, it must engage in a cutting activity and thus satisfy the predicate to cut. The Stoics were thereby departing from Aristotle and his followers. On Aristotle’s view, there are things that do not have to undergo any motion or change to cause other things to move or change. Among these we find, notably, the unmoved movers of Met. V, but also the Aristotelian final causes in general.⁷ For the argument of the present chapter, we only need to bear in mind that ‘everything has a cause’ simply means that whenever a predicate is satisfied by a body, there must be a cause of its being satisfied by that body.

To show that everything does have a cause, Chrysippus employed an argument based on the principle of bivalence:

(PB) For any proposition P, P is either true or false.

The argument focuses on propositions that express events, or ‘motions’, but it would also apply to propositions that express the states into which these events are analysable and, presumably, also to propositions that express states into which no event is analysable, for example, the proposition Plato is white.

In essence the argument proceeds as follows: (i) if there were causeless events, (PB) would not apply to propositions about future occurrents; but (ii) every proposition is either true or false (including those about future occurrents); therefore, (iii) there cannot be causeless events; thus, (iv) every event has a cause. According to Cicero at F 20:

If there is movement without a cause, it is not the case that every proposition (what the dialecticians call an axiôma) will be either true or false. For what does not have any efficient causes that bring it about will be neither true nor false. But every proposition is true or false; so there is no movement without a cause.⁸

The argument as a whole is formally valid in virtue of its logical form, which is a modus tollendo tollens. Its eventual soundness will depend on whether each of its two premisses is plausible. In the Cicero passage, neither is argued for. Both are attested elsewhere either for Chrysippus or simply for ‘the Stoics’.⁹ But again they are introduced without argument. To examine their plausibility, we need to look into their meaning.

The second premiss may be read as implying that any future-tense proposition is now either true or false, as is somehow suggested by the text: ‘every proposition is either true or false’ (assuming that the ‘is’ is tensed and refers to the present). On this reading, Chrysippus is not holding the trivial thesis that every future-tense proposition will be either true or false at the future time indicated by its tense (and its temporal indicator, if any); to take an example, that a proposition such as I go to the cinema on the last Friday of September 2022 at 5 p.m. will be either true or false on the last Friday of September 2022 at 5 p.m.¹⁰ The idea is, rather, that any proposition asserting the occurrence of a future state or event is already either true or false (that is, before the time indicated by its tense and by its temporal indicator, if any):

(P₂) For any proposition P such that S occurs at t, where S is an event and t is a future time, P is already either true or false.

As far as the text goes, no implications are drawn for predetermination. In other words, the emphasis is on (P₂) and not on either (P_n) or (P_i):

(P_n) If P is already true, it is thereby necessary either now or at t (or both) that S occurs at t.

(P_i) If P is already false, it is thereby impossible either now or at t (or both) that S occurs at t.

Generally, philosophical objections to the prior truth or falsity of propositions about future occurrents as expressed in (P₂) are not directed so much against their prior truth or falsity per se, as against the possible link their prior truth or falsity may bear to prior necessitation as in (P_n) and (P_i). Aristotle, for example, on one influential interpretation of int. 9, rejects prior truth on the belief that, if it were conceded, prior necessitation would also have to be conceded.¹¹ But in fact prior truth and prior necessitation are two logically independent claims, the former of which does not have to i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Abbreviations, Translations and References
• Introduction
• Part I Determinism
• Part II Compatibilism
• Select Bibliography
• Index of Names
• Index Locorum