Chrysippus’ cylinder: agency in a material universe
Do we live in a material universe governed by cause and effect? I believe so. Do we, then, have free will? It depends on what you mean by that term. The so-called problem of free will is one that keeps intelligent and well intentioned people arguing in circles forever, and there is of course a huge philosophical literature about it (see, for an introduction, this article from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Heck, some misguided scientists even think they can, and indeed have, solved the problem experimentally! (This article by Adina Roskies explains why that’s problematic.) I will not defend the above assertions here, but accept them as given and proceed with what I think is a more interesting discussion. Please note that this post should be of far wider interest than just to people attracted to Stoicism in particular, as the messy issue of “free will” arises for any philosophical position.
The Stoics, I believe, had the right picture in mind, though they did get one major thing wrong (but it was reasonable at the time). So, what I’m going to try in this essay is the following: i) explain Chrysippus’ famous metaphor of the rolling cylinder to introduce the Stoic distinction between internal and external causes; ii) properly use the metaphor to understand why the Stoics (indeed, the ancient Greco-Romans in general) didn’t use the word “freedom” in this context, and were right to do so; iii) address the famous “lazy argument” that was meant to defeat the Stoic position, and that still rears its ugly head in some contemporary discussions; iv) summarize the original Stoic conception of Fate as it relates to universal causality; and v) introduce a “deflated” version of the Stoic doctrine, which I believe is more appropriate for modern Stoics.
I. Chrysippus’ cylinder
Cicero, in De Fato (43), presents Chrysippus’ metaphor of the rolling cylinder in this fashion: “‘In the same way therefore,’ he says, ‘as a person who has pushed a roller forward has given it a beginning of motion, but has not given it the capacity to roll, so a sense-presentation when it impinges on the will, it is true impresses and as it were seals its appearance on the mind, but the act of assent will be in our power, and as we said in the case of the roller, though given a push from without, as to the rest will move by its own force and nature.”
Dorothea Frede (who is my main source for the material that follows) beautifully and clearly sets the stage for a discussion of the cylinder metaphor in her chapter on Stoic Determinism published as part of The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics, a collection that is a must for the serious prokopton. Chrysippus thought that the cosmos are embedded in a universal web of cause-effect, and that nothing happens without a cause — including, of course, human decisions.
The cylinder is meant as a visual aid to conceptually distinguish external from internal causes: the first ones are exerted by the environment in which an object (or a human being) finds itself. The second ones have to do with the inner mechanisms defining a given object (which in the case of humans include our character, dispositions, and judgments). If you push the cylinder on a flat surface, it will roll. But the push — an external cause — is only part of the explanation. The cylinder will roll also because it is a cylinder, as opposed to, say, a cube. Cubes don’t roll, even if you push them. It is in the nature of cylinders to roll when pushed, but it isn’t in the nature of cubes to do so. Similarly, it is in the nature of humans to make judgments about things, but such judgments are not in the nature of rocks, or plants, or most other animals (so far as we know).
Consider, for instance, a case in which I offer a bribe to a policeman. The bribe is an external cause for his potentially corrupted behavior. But that cause will be efficacious with some policemen but not others (because they have different characters and arrive at different judgments) or even with the same policeman in one instance but not another (because either or both of additional external and internal conditions have changed). Crucially, though, under the same exact combination of internal and external circumstances the policeman will (will not) agree to be bribed by me.
II) Not free will, but what is “up to us”
One of the fundamental doctrines of Stoicism is often referred to as the dichotomy of control. As Epictetus puts in the Enchiridion (1.1): “Some things are within our power, while others are not. Within our power are opinion, motivation, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever is of our own doing; not within our power are our body, our property, reputation, office, and, in a word, whatever is not of our own doing.”
Epictetus then continues to say that if you understand and internalize the dichotomy, “no one will ever be able to coerce you, no one will hinder you, you’ll find fault with no one, you’ll accuse no one, you’ll do nothing whatever against your will, you’ll have no enemy, and no one will ever harm you because no harm can affect you.”
While this is referred to in modern Stoicism as the dichotomy of control, the standard Stoic phrase is that some things are “up to us” and other things are not “up to us.” But what could this possibly mean, within the framework of a philosophy that accepts the notion of universal causality? (Notice that I’m staying purposely away from using the common term “determinism.” There is a reason for this, and it will become clear by the end.)
The answer lies in the conceptual separation between external and internal causes that Chrysippus made. Mind you, they are all causes, so the distinction is not to be taken as somehow deeply metaphysical. It’s just that some causal mechanisms happen to be internal to the human being, and that we know we can work on them to alter them in a desired direction (by way of education, social pressure, reasoned discourse, or the threat of jail time).
As Frede puts it: “It is easy to see why despite the complexity of the inner processes that lead to human action, the Stoics upheld the tenet that persons always act in the same way under the same circumstances. Given the same impressions and the same inner dispositions, the individual will always consent to those impressions. … Responsibility does not depend on the condition that we are always capable of acting otherwise; responsibility depends on the condition that human beings have it ‘in them’ to make up their own minds on how to act. … [The Stoics, therefore] were concerned with the question of how to attain the right inner makeup that enables a person to comprehend the decrees of reason and to follow them in the right way.”
So for the Stoics there is no contradiction inherent in the triad of {universal causality} <> {not doing things differently under identical conditions} <> {moral responsibility for our actions}. Universal causality holds; and both external causes (our environment) and internal ones (our desires, inclinations, and especially judgments) are all part of that universal causal web; and our actions are “ours” precisely in the sense that they spring from causal mechanisms that are internal to us. If all the above is true, of course we would arrive at the same judgments provided that all conditions (external as well as internal) were the same.