Agency and Integrality: Philosophical Themes in the Ancient Discussions of Determinism and Responsibility

297 Pages·1985·10.579 MB·English

by  Michael J. White (auth.), Michael J. White (eds.)

AGENCY AND INTEGRALITY
PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES SERIES
IN PHILOSOPHY
Editors:
WILFRID SELLARS, University of Pittsburgh
KEITH LEHRER, University of Arizona
Board of Consulting Editors:
JONATHAN BENNETT, Syracuse University
ALLAN GIBBARD, University of Michigan
ROBERT STALNAKER, Cornell University
ROBERT G. TURNBULL, Ohio State University
VOLUME 32
MICHAELJ. WHITE
Department of Philosophy, Arizona State University
AGENCY AND
INTEGRALITY
Philosophical Themes in the Ancient Discussions of
Determinism and Responsibility
D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY
A MEMBER OF THE KLUWER ACADEMICPUBUSHERSGROUP
DORDRECHT / BOSTON / LANCASTER / TOKYO
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
White, MichaelJ., 1948-
Agency and integrality.
(Philosophical studies series in philosophy; v. 32)
Includes bibliographies and indexes.
1. Determinism (Philosophy)--History. 2. Responsi
bility-History. 3. Causation-History. 4. Philosophy,
Ancient. 1. Title. II. Series.
B187.D47W44 1985 123 85-18257
ISBN-13: 978-94-010-8857-2 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-5339-0
DOl: 978-94-009-5339-0
Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company,
P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, Holland.
Sold and distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada
by Kluwer Academic Publishers,
190 Old Derby Street, Hingham, MA 02043, U.S.A.
In all other countries, sold and distributed
by Kluwer Academic Publishers Group,
P.O. Box 322,3300 AH Dordrecht, Holland.
All Rights Reserved.
© 1985 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1985
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
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retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE ix
CHAPTER ONE: Introduction: The Immortal Chimpanzee at its
Typewriter
A. Plenitude and the Temporal-Frequency Model of the
Modalities 1
B. Plenitude and Atomist Cosmology? 4
C. Summary and Conclusion 5
Notes 6
CHAPTER TWO: The Legacy of Aristotle 8
A. Pitfalls 8
B. Three Types of Necessity 11
C. Aristotle's Fundamental Modal Principle 19
D. Absolute Necessity and the Ultimate Mover 23
E. Aristotle and Determinism 28
(1) The "Proto-Reconciliationist" Option 39
(2) The "Straightforward" Indeterminist Options 39
(3) The Future-Indeterminacy/Past-Determinism Option 42
F. The Energeia-Kinesis Distinction and Aristotelian
Determinism 54
G. Summary and Conclusion 58
Notes 61
CHAPTER THREE: Diodorean Fatalism 69
A. Diodorus the Megarian? 69
B. Diodorus' Denial of Motion 72
C. Diodorus' Account of the Alethic Modalities and His
Fatalism 75
D. The Master Argument and Diodorean Fatalism 79
E. Summary and Conclusion 90
Notes 92
v
VI TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER FOUR: Chrysippus' Compatibilism 98
A. The Avoidance of Necessity and Retention of Fate 100
B. "Obscure Causes" and Chrysippus' Compatibilism 115
C. "What Is Up to Us" and Fate 120
D. Chrysippean and Spinozistic Reconciliationism 127
E. Summary and Conclusion 132
Notes 134
CHAPTER FIVE: Peripatetic Polemics 140
A. Stoic and Peripatetic Conceptions of Heimarmene 140
B. Causal/Temporal Sequences: Stoic and Peripatetic
Conceptions 143
C. A Fronte Conditional Necessity 146
D. A Tergo Conditional Necessity 155
E. Summary and Conclusion 165
Notes 168
CHAPTER SIX: Cosmic Cycles, Time, and Determinism 173
A. Two Versions of Cosmic Cycles 173
B. Cosmic Cycles and the Temporal-Frequency Model
of the Modalities 181
C. Cosmic Cycles and the Actuality of the Future 192
D. Summary and Conclusion 203
Notes 208
CHAPTER SEVEN: Plotinus and Human Autonomy 215
A. Book III of the Nicomachean Ethics and its Aftermath 215
B. A Stoic Metaphysical Move 220
C. Moral Responsibility and Aristotle's Predicament 224
D. Plotinus and Ennead 3 226
E. Plotinus and Ennead 6 229
F. The Constative and Performative Views of
Responsibility-Attribution 236
G. Summary and Conclusion 238
Notes 242
TABLE OF CONTENTS VB
CHAPTER EIGHT: Philosophical Postscript 246
A. The Temporal-Frequency Model of the Alethic Modalities 246
B. Responsibility and Determinism 261
Notes 267
APPENDIX 271
Notes 274
INDEX LOCORUM 276
INDEX OFNAMES 282
PREFACE
It is not very surprising that it was no less true in antiquity than it is today
that adult human beings are held to be responsible for most of their
actions. Indeed, virtually all cultures in all historical periods seem to have
had some conception of human agency which, in the absence of certain
responsibility-defeating conditions, entails such responsibility. Few
philosophers have had the temerity to maintain that this entailment is
trivial because such responsibility-defeating conditions are always
present. Another not very surprising fact is that ancient thinkers tended
to ascribe integrality to "what is" (to on). That is, they typically regarded
"what is" as a cosmos or whole with distinguishable parts that fit together
in some coherent or cohesive manner, rather than either as a "unity" with
no parts or as a collection containing members (ta onta or "things that
are") standing in no "natural" relations to one another. The philoso
1
phical problem of determinism and responsibility may, I think, best be
characterized as follows: it is the problem of preserving the phenomenon
of human agency (which would seem to require a certain separateness of
individual human beings from the rest of the cosmos) when one sets about
the philosophical or scientific task of explaining the integrality of "what
is" by means of the development of a theory of causation or explanation
( concepts that came to be lumped together by the Greeks under the term
"aitia") .
So much by way of explanation of the title of this book. Its content does
not lend itself to such a facile (or short) explanation. Although Aristotle
was wont to characterize his philosophical predecessors as "searching (in
more-Of-less crude and untutored ways) after aitia," it is arguable that the
idea of a "theory of aition-hood" develops with Aristotle himself.2 At any
rate, there is evidence of increasing concern in post-Aristotelian ancient
thought with the concept of causation as well as with the intimately
related concept of conditional necessity or necessitation. There is also an
increased concern with the relation between a theory of aitia or causes
and human responsibility or "freedom." In other words, during the
course of ancient philosophy subsequent to Aristotle there developed
philosophical discussions bearing a recognizable relation to what the
IX
x PREFACE
contemporary student finds in his Introduction to Philosophy textbook
under the section entitled "Freedom and Determinism." However, in
some cases the resemblance is misleading: it can lead us, for example, to
the conclusion that the ancients were capable of amazing non-sequi
turs - or even lapses into insanity - when in the throes of philosphical
debate on this issue. One source ofthe problem, I will be suggesting in the
following pages, is that ancient discussions of the freedom-determinism
issue often involve concepts of causation or conditional necessity that are
significantly different from the concepts implicit in post-Newtonian (or
post-Laplace an or post-Humean) discussions of the freedom-deter
minism issue.
This book is primarily devoted to a philosophical analysis of some
ancient concepts of aitia and of the alethic modalities of necessity and
possibility (and their contradictories). I am especially, but not exclu
sively, concerned with the relation between these concepts and the issue
of human responsibility or freedom. In one case, that of Aristotle, the
discussions of the issue of determinism and of the issue of responsibility
occur separately (in Chapters Two and Seven, respectively). Aristotle
has much to say of philosophical interest and historical importance on
both issues. My excuse for not relating more closely Aristotle's discus
sions of the two issues is skepticism on my part as to whether the
"dialectic" of the determinism-responsibility issue had developed to the
point where the two issues were very closely related in his own mind.:1
Indeed, one general thesis of this book is that developments in post
Aristotelian ancient philosophy concerning the relation between causes
and explanations (both subsumed, as I have already mentioned, under
the Greek term "aitia") and developments concerning the relation
between the concepts of aitia and of time were necessary conditions for
the formulation of something the contemporary philosopher would
recognize as the "determinism-responsibility issue."
It can correctly be inferred from my use of the phrase "philosophical
analysis" in the preceding paragraph that I would put the emphasis on
"philosophy" in the phrase "history of philosophi' in characterizing this
book. (Hence the book's subtitle.) My conception of the history of
philosophy is a "pluralistic" one. In particular, I in no way denigrate
history of philosophy that emphasizes the "history." But I do not regard
this book - and would not want it to be judged - as a comprehensive
historical survey of the philosophical discussions of causation, the alethic
modalities, and human responsibility from the mid-fourth century B.C.
PREFACE xi
to the latter part of the third century A. D. It is nonetheless true that, with
the exception of the occasional intrusion of a later commentator such as
Boethius or Philoponus, this is the time period (from Aristotle to
Plotinus) with which the book is concerned. In working on the manu
script, when I reached a point where I was forced to choose between
historical caution and the concoction of a philosophically interesting
"likely story," I invariably chose the latter alternative. There are
advantages, in addition to the promotion of irenicism, to a pluralistic
conception of the history of philosophy!
Despite the philosophical "skew" of the book, which I have now
dutifully confessed, the "history" is not altogether lacking in most of it.
An exception is the last chapter and appendix, where I release some
pent-up philosophical ruminations pertaining to the temporal-frequency
model of the alethic modalities and to philosophical methodology and the
determinism-responsibility issue. These philosophical postscripts are
largely ahistorical but have at least some tangential connection to the
preceding chapters. Philosophical skew also helps to explain the
prominence given to a secondary leitmotiv in the book: ancient versions
of the temporal-frequency conception of the modalities, and of
associated versions of the principle of plenitude. I simply find these
concepts intriguing.
The material in this book is "new" in the sense that no extended section
of it has, in its present form, previously appeared in print. Parts of it,
however, do build upon several of my published articles. The most direct
dependence occurs in Sections Band C of Chapter Six and in Chapter
Five. The former sections represent, in part, an expansion and reworking
of material that appeared in my article Time and Determinism in the
Hellenistic Philosophical Schools', Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie
65/1 (1983),40-62. In the case of Chapter Five, there is some overlap with
material in my 'Causes as Necessary Conditions: Aristotle, Alexander of
Aphrodisias, and J. J. Mackie,' Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supple
mentary Volume X (1984), pp. 157-189.
It remains for me to express some regrets and acknowledge some
debts. The regrets first. During the last ten to fifteen years there has been
a happy renascence of interest in Hellenistic philosophy. The result has
been impressive, with significant work in the area appearing quite
regularly both in monographs and in classics and philosophy journals.
Particularly in view of this fact, I am morally certain that I have entirely
overlooked some significant and relevant contributions. There also are