Determinism

phyllo · August 9, 2019, 12:24pm

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.

howtobeastoic.wordpress.com/2017/03/30/chrysippus-cylinder-agency-in-a-material-universe/

iambiguous · August 9, 2019, 7:24pm

Given the manner in which I have come to understand determinism “in my head” “here and now”, the Stoics back then, no less than the author above, no less than me typing these words, no less than and you reading them, are all inherently/necessarily in sync with the laws of matter.

And so…

Nothing is either right or wrong, reasonable or unreasonable [then or now] if everything is only as it ever could have been in the past, as it can be now in the present or as it will be in the future.

So far as I know, we do not know enough about cause and effect going back to an understanding of existence itself, to make a comprehensive distinction between the nature of cubes and cylinders and human brains.

The judgments made by conscious minds may well be just another manifestation of matter having evolved into brains entirely in sync with the laws that that compel matter having evolved into cubes and cylinders.

Again, the assumption here seems to be that the policeman’s character and judgment somehow reflect “internal” “choices” that “transcend” the laws of matter in a way that the matter in cylinder and the cube are oblivious to.

Now, this might be true if somehow it can be demonstrated that, say, God exists to intercede here with one of His creations [us]. Or that science has finally come to understand in its totality how the human brain is in fact able to embody this:

“Up to us” even though what we think, feel, say and do are still wholly in sync with the laws of matter.

And how did Epictetus go about demonstrating this? These “internal” aspects of “I”. What actual empirical proof did he have that the brain functions such that the distinction regarding control can reconcile “no free will” with “up to us”.

Chemically, neurologically, materially, how does that work in the brain to distinguish the psychological illusion of free will from the assumption that ontologically nature compels all aspects of “I”?

Instead, we get only more “general descriptions” of all this in a “world of words”:

In other words, how “deeply metaphysical” is the most comprehensive explanation and the final truth behind the free will/determinism debate?

phyllo · August 9, 2019, 7:37pm

Did you get anything out of that post?

No new ideas? No interesting ways to look at the subject? No new avenues of exploration and inquiry?

Nothing?

iambiguous · August 10, 2019, 1:16am

All I can do is react to it from my own perspective. The manner in which I view determinism “here and now”. The points being raised may well be more sophisticated than my own. But I can’t just “will” myself to grasp that and then reconfigure the points I made in order to reflect what I should have learned.

All the while still more convinced that my reaction was compelled by nature more than as a reflection of a “free will” I have no capacity to actually pin down.

Really, what did the Stoics know about the human brain back then…compared to what neuroscientists today have learned about it?

phyllo · August 10, 2019, 10:56am

The short answer was “No, I didn’t get anything out of it”.

It has nothing to do with “free will”. In a deterministic system, the entity (you, me, a black box, a cylinder) is exposed to a multitude of inputs. It ignores some and it processes some. Then it acts on the results of the processing.

For example, when a person leaves work, gets on a bus, gets off the bus and walks home … he sees, hears, smells and feels trillions of things. He might overhear someone say that “the seawater was very warm today” which may prompt him to decide to go to the beach the following day. Thus his actions change as a result of a random input.

Saying that he has to have “free will” in order to decide to go to the beach or that he has no choice but to go to the beach, completely ignores the process that we witness happening in us and in other people.

By that logic, I guess it’s pointless to read anything written prior to 1989 when the internet was “invented”. Prior to that, people were a knuckle-dragging morons who didn’t know or understand anything.

Actually you can understand human psychology and behavior without knowing much about the brain. Just like you can live, learn and prosper without knowing much about your body. Or drive a car without knowing how it works beyond understanding the cause and effect of the controls.

To answer your question … The Stoics probably know very little about the brain but they knew a lot about being human.

promethean75 · August 10, 2019, 11:17pm

Unlikely. Nobody says ‘the seawater was very warm today’ unless they’re a marine biologist or at least a chemist. Ordinary folks just say ‘the water’. Now there are roughly three marine biologists and four chemists per every four hundred people, which drastically reduces the chances of the protagonist passing one on the way home.

Were you aware of this when you wrote that, or are you just trying to be difficult?

iambiguous · August 11, 2019, 5:03pm

Yet another fascinating conjecture regarding just how mind-boggling human “reality”/reality may well be:

nytimes.com/2019/08/10/opin … e=Homepage

iambiguous · August 14, 2019, 10:16pm

This is typical of you in retort mode. I try to explain myself but that’s not the reaction you are looking for. Or are demanding. Instead, I have to agree with you that had I taken the “chrysippus-cylinder-agency-in-a-material-universe” argument seriously, I would have gotten, say, what you got out of it?

Again, depending entirely on how someone has come to understand – given some measure of free will – the meaning of “ignoring” here. From my frame of mind, determinism subsumes all matter in a future that unfolds only as it ever could have. The multitude of inputs, whether pertaining to me, you, a black box or a cylinder, are all inherently, necessarily embodied in the laws of matter.

We act and we ignore differently from the box and the cylinder. How? In that we consciously “choose” to. But that is only a manifestation of matter having evolved into a human brain that is not yet fully understood by science. There may be an element of actual volition embedded in the chemical and neurological interactions that unfold in our brain matter. And, sure, it may be traced back to one or another God; or to one or another understanding of living matter itself that makes it profoundly – qualitatively – different from the mindless matter in the black box and the cylinder.

Okay, you tell us what that is. Demonstrate it to us such that there can be no doubt whatsoever that human beings are able to freely opt for one set of behaviors rather than another.

Instead we get this:

In other words, we are simply to assume that the seqjuence of choices made by the man in this example, like the sequence of choices made by you to bring it to our attention, “proves” that how you understand all of this is more rational than the way I have come to understand it.

But: How does this demonstrate that what appears to you here to be random inputs really are random? Why, instead, can it not be argued that this is but an illusion of randomness. That all of these inputs are intertwined wholly in sync with the laws of matter.

We could be watching a movie of a man leaving work, getting on a bus, going off the bus, walking home, etc… These acts aren’t random if they are entirely scripted. Right? Well, why can’t it be argumed that nature itself is the director here. Only we have no idea how that came to be because we have no kidea how to understand nature going back to existence itself.

Let alone, teleologically, figuring out if there is any meaning or purpose “behind” what nature and its laws entail. Instead, that’s where your God comes in. Assuming of course that you came to understand God as you do freely, of your own volition, and in the manner in which you understand the meaning of that.

Logic? It’s just common sense that the Stoic’s understanding of a functioning human brain was considerbly less than our understanding today.

Note to others:

What on earth is he trying to suggest here about the internet? There is what was known about computer technology before 1989 and after.

On the other hand, image taking a trip in the Way-Back Machine and explaining the internet to the Stoics. Assuming some measure of human autonomy and/or volition and/or free will of course.

If you actually do believe that one can understand human psychology without first having a comprehensive understanding of the human brain – compelled or not – I have no illusions about ever changing your mind.

Right, like what they knew about being human was enough for them to demonstrate definitively that what they knew was not wholly compelled by the laws of nature. Like these laws were different for them back then.

phyllo · August 15, 2019, 8:25am

You don’t need to explain yourself yet again. I have read that same explanation dozens of times. I understood it on a previous reading and my memory is not so bad that I forgot it.

You don’t have to agree with it at all. You can vehemently disagree. But I would like to see some evidence that you actually thought about before you disagreed.

In all the thousands of posts, that have been directed towards you and you have responded to, I don’t recall that you ever thought that an idea had any merit and that it caused you to think, research, and analyze.

IOW, you never seem to respond : “That’s an interesting idea. I had not thought of that. Let me think about it for a while. No, after much reflection, I believe the flaw lies in this part of the argument.”

Again, depending entirely on how someone has come to understand – given some measure of free will – the meaning of “ignoring” here. From my frame of mind, determinism subsumes all matter in a future that unfolds only as it ever could have. The multitude of inputs, whether pertaining to me, you, a black box or a cylinder, are all inherently, necessarily embodied in the laws of matter.

We act and we ignore differently from the box and the cylinder. How? In that we consciously “choose” to. But that is only a manifestation of matter having evolved into a human brain that is not yet fully understood by science. There may be an element of actual volition embedded in the chemical and neurological interactions that unfold in our brain matter. And, sure, it may be traced back to one or another God; or to one or another understanding of living matter itself that makes it profoundly – qualitatively – different from the mindless matter in the black box and the cylinder.

Okay, you tell us what that is. Demonstrate it to us such that there can be no doubt whatsoever that human beings are able to freely opt for one set of behaviors rather than another.

I don’t see how I can demonstrate “that human beings are able to freely opt for one set of behaviors rather than another” when that’s not even my point of view. I’m not saying that there is anything “profoundly – qualitatively – different”.

You don’t understand my position even after all these posts.

No. I’m saying that reducing all human decisions and actions to being “compelled by natural laws” is a lame and ineffective way of describing humans. It’s dumbing it down too much.

Sure but you don’t need to understand the functioning of the human brain if you take a black box approach.

I’m suggesting something about you … that you sound like one of those people who think that everyone in the past was an idiot without understanding of anything.

You don’t need to understand atomic structure, or the existence of existence, in order to build a cathedral in the Middle Ages. You need a good understanding of how stone and wood behave.

A misrepresentation of the Stoic position. I guess you only skimmed the article.

obsrvr524 · August 15, 2019, 10:43am

So can I briefly interrupt to ask how many of the 30 most recent posters on this board don’t believe in determinism?

Karpel_Tunnel · August 15, 2019, 1:16pm

I’m agnostic.

Karpel_Tunnel · August 15, 2019, 1:19pm

phyllo:

This is typical of you in retort mode. I try to explain myself but that’s not the reaction you are looking for. Or are demanding.

You don’t need to explain yourself yet again. I have read that same explanation dozens of times. I understood it on a previous reading and my memory is not so bad that I forgot it.

Instead, I have to agree with you that had I taken the “chrysippus-cylinder-agency-in-a-material-universe” argument seriously, I would have gotten, say, what you got out of it?

You don’t have to agree with it at all. You can vehemently disagree. But I would like to see some evidence that you actually thought about before you disagreed.

In all the thousands of posts, that have been directed towards you and you have responded to, I don’t recall that you ever thought that an idea had any merit and that it caused you to think, research, and analyze.

IOW, you never seem to respond : “That’s an interesting idea. I had not thought of that. Let me think about it for a while. No, after much reflection, I believe the flaw lies in this part of the argument.”

Again, depending entirely on how someone has come to understand – given some measure of free will – the meaning of “ignoring” here. From my frame of mind, determinism subsumes all matter in a future that unfolds only as it ever could have. The multitude of inputs, whether pertaining to me, you, a black box or a cylinder, are all inherently, necessarily embodied in the laws of matter.

We act and we ignore differently from the box and the cylinder. How? In that we consciously “choose” to. But that is only a manifestation of matter having evolved into a human brain that is not yet fully understood by science. There may be an element of actual volition embedded in the chemical and neurological interactions that unfold in our brain matter. And, sure, it may be traced back to one or another God; or to one or another understanding of living matter itself that makes it profoundly – qualitatively – different from the mindless matter in the black box and the cylinder.

Okay, you tell us what that is. Demonstrate it to us such that there can be no doubt whatsoever that human beings are able to freely opt for one set of behaviors rather than another.

I don’t see how I can demonstrate “that human beings are able to freely opt for one set of behaviors rather than another” when that’s not even my point of view. I’m not saying that there is anything “profoundly – qualitatively – different”.

You don’t understand my position even after all these posts.

In other words, we are simply to assume that the seqjuence of choices made by the man in this example, like the sequence of choices made by you to bring it to our attention, “proves” that how you understand all of this is more rational than the way I have come to understand it.

No. I’m saying that reducing all human decisions and actions to being “compelled by natural laws” is a lame and ineffective way of describing humans. It’s dumbing it down too much.

Logic? It’s just common sense that the Stoic’s understanding of a functioning human brain was considerbly less than our understanding today.

Sure but you don’t need to understand the functioning of the human brain if you take a black box approach.

What on earth is he trying to suggest here about the internet? There is what was known about computer technology before 1989 and after.

I’m suggesting something about you … that you sound like one of those people who think that everyone in the past was an idiot without understanding of anything.

If you actually do believe that one can understand human psychology without first having a comprehensive understanding of the human brain – compelled or not – I have no illusions about ever changing your mind.

You don’t need to understand atomic structure, or the existence of existence, in order to build a cathedral in the Middle Ages. You need a good understanding of how stone and wood behave.

Right, like what they knew about being human was enough for them to demonstrate definitively that what they knew was not wholly compelled by the laws of nature. Like these laws were different for them back then.

A misrepresentation of the Stoic position. I guess you only skimmed the article.

This was an extremely clear explanation of what you meant and what was frustrating (or disrespectful) and what was missing.

promethean75 · August 15, 2019, 1:43pm

I’m supersonic.

Karpel_Tunnel · August 15, 2019, 1:54pm

Well, if we know you’re velocity you’re location can’t be determined, re:Heisenberg.

Arcturus_Descending · August 15, 2019, 3:45pm

obsrvr524

Determinism is the philosophical belief that all events are determined completely by previously existing causes.

If we take out the words ALL and COMPLETELY then I can certainly say yes as I personally see that there are events which were caused by events which went before, though it may take awhile for them to catch up.
For instance, and I may be wrong here, would the Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor as it did if we had not bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which in my book was also imfamous).

Aside from that, Will or free will may not be perfect but we do have the power to change history and to change our personal history. We can develop more self-awareness, we can change or let go of certain of our embedded patterns from childhood through self-determination. There does seem to be a lot of randomness in the world which some might argue is also pre-determined but I suppose it all depends on how one sees things.
Is it possible that if determinism IS our belief, then we have already re-created the world as such, for those
who do?

I am agnostic but if there is possibly some creator god does this mean that we could not have evolved into creatures of free will? Are we already pre-determined creatures? Looking at the world the way it is, it hardly seems to me that we can be so pre-determined based on how we rise up and struggle and fight at certain events and try to change them.

Of course, at the same time, I can also see how easily influenced we can become by situations and circumstances but this does not mean that we do not have the power to change things albeit some things may be quite difficult to change - but still we go at it.

So, we are both pre-determined in ways and self-determined also…a harmony of opposites.

obsrvr524 · August 16, 2019, 10:47am

So the answer to my question was “no”.

I think the rule is that if everything isn’t determined then it isn’t determinism.

That answered a lot of potential questions.

Thanks for your input.

Karpel_Tunnel · August 16, 2019, 11:05am

Do you mean retro-causation?

Like would Japan not have bombed Pearl Harbor if the US wouldn’t have been going to Atom bomb Hiroshima and Nagosaki? The future event causing the past one?

iambiguous · August 16, 2019, 6:05pm

“this atheist believes in free will”
James Kirk Wall from the ChicagoNow web page

No, according to what the hard determinists claim to believe given the gap between this claim and a demonstrable proof that is verifiably true and not able to be falsified.

Similarly regarding the arguments that free-will advocates claim. Claiming free-will is not the same thing as providing demonstrable proof that it exists.

Instead, most of these discussions and debates take place in a world of words.

In my view, the part encompassing factors that influence our behaviors is embodfied existentially in dasein. It then becomes a matter of 1] assuming some measure of autonomy and 2] recognizing “I” as an existential contraption confronted with conflicting goods and political economy in the is/ought world.

See what I mean? Has he demonstrated empirically, experimentally that this is so? Such that a prediction might be made as to which of those 10,000 decisions is the one made unimpeded?

As for, “hard determinism is dead, and every instance of the 100 word scenario has a different human civilization”, I’ll need that explained a bit further.

Yes, assuming that we are able to establish that she chose B instead of A in a manner that was not compelled by nature.

On the other hand, as always, I’m left with the feeling that [in an autonomous world of whatever measure] I am simply not understanding the point itself.

iambiguous · August 16, 2019, 7:13pm

You’re the objectivist. So there is only one explanation that will suffice. The one that coincides with your own, uh, contempt for me here?

And to demonstrate that I am worthy of this contempt, you insist that you just know that I did not think through the argument above. How do you know this? Because had I actually read the argument carefully and thought it through, I would not have reacted as I did.

Again, depending entirely on how someone has come to understand – given some measure of free will – the meaning of “ignoring” here. From my frame of mind, determinism subsumes all matter in a future that unfolds only as it ever could have. The multitude of inputs, whether pertaining to me, you, a black box or a cylinder, are all inherently, necessarily embodied in the laws of matter.

We act and we ignore differently from the box and the cylinder. How? In that we consciously “choose” to. But that is only a manifestation of matter having evolved into a human brain that is not yet fully understood by science. There may be an element of actual volition embedded in the chemical and neurological interactions that unfold in our brain matter. And, sure, it may be traced back to one or another God; or to one or another understanding of living matter itself that makes it profoundly – qualitatively – different from the mindless matter in the black box and the cylinder.

Okay, you tell us what that is. Demonstrate it to us such that there can be no doubt whatsoever that human beings are able to freely opt for one set of behaviors rather than another.

But my point is that until it is able to be demonstrated that this very exchange is not entirely in sync with the laws of nature, all we are left with are the assumptions we make about determinism. And, indeed, the assumption that you make is that I do have the capacity to understand your position if only I would exercise my free will and make an actual effort to understand it.

Instead, that you merely believe this to be the case “here and now” becomes all the proof that you and your ilk need.

Thus…

Again, I have the actual option not to reduce all human decisions down to being “compelled by nature”, but my “lame and ineffective” thinking is the reason that I don’t.

Really, compelled or not, I get that part.

This is simply preposterous to me. Until we come to understand definitively how mindless matter evolved into living matter evolved into conscious matter evolved into self-conscious matter grappling to understand the relationsdhip between “outside the black box” “the black box itself” and “inside the black box”, we are always going to be dealing with all of the “unknown unknowns” embedded in questions this big.

And to argue that the gap between the Stoics understanding of the human brain and that which neuroscience understands about it today isn’t of fundamental importance is, well, preposterous.

It has absolutely nothing to do with the Stoics being “idiots”, and everything to do with the explosion of scientific knowledge we have at our disposal that they did not.

On the other hand, I might be lamely and ineffectually misunderstanding your point again.

As though what you need to understand about building a cathedral is on par with what you would need to know to resolve once and for all whether human beings have freedom or volition or autonomy or will to power or whatever you want to call it.

iambiguous · August 16, 2019, 7:30pm

Just for the record, my own argument on this thread revolves less around what any particular individual might believe about determinism, and more around what he or she is able to actually demonstrate is in fact true about it.

“Here and now”, based on the assumption that the human brain is matter going back to whatever explains the existence of matter itself, it seem reasonable [to me] to suppose that the laws of matter are no less applicable to it.

At least until 1] the existence of God is demonstrated or 2] there is news flashed around the globe that science has finally pinned down a complete understanding of the relationship between the brain, the mind, and “I”.

Or, sure, until a philosopher has concocted an argument in which, theoretically, the demonstration revolves entirely around a world of words.