Free Will and Causation
Free Will and Causation
Post by Grant C. Sterling to the International Stoic Forum, August 18, 2021, thread “Free Will and Causation.” Reply to Steve Marquis, who had raised whether the individual rational agent’s power of assent is a source of uncaused causation within the Logos. Preserved by Dave Kelly, 2026. Layer: Theoretical Core — Philosophical Commitments. Attribution: Sterling.
Theoretical foundations: Grant C. Sterling (Eastern Illinois University). Analysis and synthesis: Dave Kelly. Prose rendering: Claude (Anthropic). 2026.
Editorial Note — Dave Kelly
This is Sterling’s single most substantial archived statement on libertarian free will, and it proceeds by way of a direct rejection of Chrysippus’s compatibilism. Sterling’s argument is that Chrysippean “freedom” — an action is “up to us” because it is caused, at least in part, by our own character — is not freedom in any sense worth having, because the character that does the causing was itself never up to us. Using the example of three judges who differ in what bribe would move them, Sterling traces the causal chain back to an initial character that was never chosen, making every subsequent choice and every subsequent modification of character an inevitable consequence of a starting condition wholly outside the agent’s control — a chain that on Chrysippus’s own account applies with equal force to Zeus. Sterling then proposes his own solution: physical causation (PC) operates by ceteris paribus laws that hold only when no other force intervenes, and Acts of Reason (AR) are precisely such an intervening force, genuinely mental and genuinely causal, not derived from or reducible to physical process. The physical world was never a causally closed system; AR is not an inexplicable imposition on an otherwise complete physical order but a full partner in the causal structure of reality, and one Sterling holds we understand more directly than we understand most physical causation. This is the primary-source ground for C2 as a commitment distinct from mere compatibilism: origination of assent, not the compatibilist redescription of determined character-caused action as “free.”
Message: Sterling on Chrysippus, Acts of Reason, and the Causal Nexus
Grant C. Sterling to the International Stoic Forum, August 18, 2021. Responding to Steve Marquis’s August 8, 2021 post, which had asked whether an individual rational agent’s power to assent or withhold assent constitutes a source of uncaused causation within the Logos, comparable to the cosmos’s own first cause.
Marquis had written, in part: “We have in our power the ability to assent or withhold assent. Is this, like a global first cause, a source of uncaused causation or not? The older Chrysippuean view is one of the little dog tethered to the cart — our power of choice is limited to going along calmly or resisting and causing ourselves unnecessary stress. But even this stringent view of Compatibilism has an uncaused component — our vicious choice to assent to false impressions tightens the tether. … If this manifests in the causal nexus as a consequence of an uncaused cause in any way in the slightest then we essentially have individual rational agents as part of the Logos in an ongoing act of creation.”
All: I think much of the problem stems from a certain way of thinking about what you call ‘the causal nexus’.
For Chrysippus himself, there is nothing whatsoever that looks like what I think is the ordinary notion of free will. For him, actions are “free”, or “up to us”, only in the sense that they are caused (at least in part) by our own character. For people like me, this doesn’t look like “freedom” in the least.
So, for example, suppose Able, Baker, and Charlie are judges. It is a simple fact, on this view, that if Able is offered a bribe of $1,411+ to find an obviously guilty defendant innocent, he will accept it. But Baker won’t — it will take at least $7,465 to get him to agree. Charlie, on the other hand, won’t accept any monetary bribe whatsoever, but will find someone innocent if offered an evening of sexual adventure with Mary-Kate Olsen (but not Ashley). If Able is offered a bribe of $2,000, and he accepts, then Chrysippus will say that this was “up to him”, since it was his character that caused him to take the bribe — after all, Baker or Charlie would have refused. The problem, for people like me, is that Able’s character is not up to him in any robust sense. He was born with a certain initial character (and that was not up to him in any sense at all), and his first choice (whatever it was) was dictated by that initial character. That initial choice may have created a modification of his character, which led to another choice, etc. So since his initial character was totally and completely out of his control (even in Chrysippus’ sense), and since every action and every modification of character follows necessarily from that initial state, that (it seems to me) makes everything out of his control.
(Or, to put it another way, Chrysippus wants to make a distinction between externals, which are not in our control, and internals, which are. But there doesn’t seem to be any relevant difference, on his view, between the process that leads to my assenting to impression X and the process that leads to rain in Spain falling (mainly) on the plain. Given the state of the universe 3,000,000 years ago, each was inevitable.)
Notice, by the way, that the same is true with Zeus. Following the last Conflagration, He had a certain character, which caused necessarily His first act, etc. So, to me, that means that nothing whatsoever is really in the control, even of the very gods. The Stoics want to make acts of Reason (especially divine acts of Reason) to be something different from other acts in some important way. (Even if they conceive those acts as somehow “Physical” acts of “Pneuma”.) But I see nothing in Chrysippus’ views that justifies any distinction at all.
As you suggest, Steve, it isn’t just the determinism itself that causes the problem (although that’s a sufficient problem for me). Even if we introduce quantum indeterminacy into the system, it doesn’t really matter. Chrysippus shows us no interesting metaphysical distinction between acts caused by our character (or by our “Reason”) and other things — there’s no real difference between my being caused to assent to an impression by my character and the food in my stomach being caused to dissolve by my digestive juices, or the atmospheric conditions in Spain causing rain to fall (mainly) in the plain.
So, enough of Chrysippus.
Later Greek Stoics retain much of the language of Chry., but appear to back away from his explicit determinism. By the time of the Roman Stoics, even much of the language disappears. Epictetus doesn’t spend time discussing fiery Pneuma or defending the essential “physicalness” of all things in the universe, he doesn’t try to defend compatibilism against the sorts of attacks I suggested above, etc. Perhaps he believed in those things — I don’t know. But he sees that those discussions have the effect of derailing the Stoic ethical project.
I’ll offer a proposed solution. I don’t claim that it is a Stoic solution, in the sense that I don’t claim to have derived it from Stoic texts. But I don’t think there’s anything in it that a Stoic (other than Chrysippeans) would object to.
We have an ordinary understanding of normal, physical causation (PC). (Let’s leave quantum indeterminacy out of this — I don’t think it changes anything of philosophical import.) There are certain fixed laws of nature, there are definable physical states, and those two together dictate the next set of physical states. We also have an ordinary understanding of choices, which I will call “Acts of Reason” (AR). I think about some alternatives, and I choose one of them to act on. On this ordinary understanding, there are no fixed laws of human behavior, and the choice is guided by our character, by our preferences, etc., but not dictated by those things (except perhaps in cases where we have strong reasons to do X and virtually no reason to do anything else).
If we mix these two together, we get chaos. PC tells us that if we could only figure out the precise location and character of the physical components of our brains, plus the laws of nature, we could say with certainty exactly what anyone will do next. AR tells us that (except in unusual situations), we can’t. PC says that the laws of nature do not mention any mental states, and that the universe is causally closed under those laws — hence, “thoughts” cannot cause anything whatsoever to happen (even other thoughts). AR tells us that our thoughts cause things to happen all the time — indeed, that we have a much clearer understanding of how my dislike of Aunt Wilma’s cooking leads me (not “causes me”) to choose to offer to take everyone out to a restaurant for dinner, than we have of how adding Mentos causes Diet Coke to explode. (I.e., we can see how the one is logically connected to the other in the first case, but not the second.)
So philosophers for millennia have sought to bridge this gap. Many, like Chrysippus, have done so by subjecting AR to PC. (There is a wide variety of ways to fill in the details of this, which we need not consider here.) Some have shrouded it in mystery. (For example, the non-Chrysippean Greek Stoics held that Pneuma was physical… and, at the same time, they held that it didn’t operate quite like the other elements operated.) A few have subjected PC to AR — for example, Malebranche held that God (i.e., Divine Reason) dictates the state of the physical world at time t, and then dictates its state at t1. There is no such thing as physical causation — the appearance of such causation is the result of God’s orderly nature, as He chooses to create a new world at t1 that bears a patterned resemblance to the world of t. Berkeley held that “physical object” is the name of a class of mental concepts, and so all causation is mental. (He, too, held that most of this causation is divine.)
I think the best hope for a coherent view is to observe that all laws of nature include a clause that they hold only if no other forces operate on the system. If I strike the cue ball at a specific angle and with a specific amount of force, it will roll in a specific way (based on the characteristics of the pool table, the location of other balls, etc.) But if, at the instant I strike it, someone punches one of the players and he lands backwards in the middle of the table, the trajectory of the cue ball that would have occurred may be radically upset. If the physical world (permit me to use that term in a way that excludes both God and mental processes) is a closed system, then this clause doesn’t operate — no ‘new’ forces can ever operate on the system as a whole. Some scientists talk as if we must assume this for science to make any sense at all, but I see no reason why we should believe that to be true. Some people (scientists and non-scientists alike) talk as though we have substantial reason to believe that this is in fact true, but they are wrong — we have no substantial evidence in favor of this idea.
So suppose that we reject it. Suppose we hold that the physical world is not causally closed. Then we are free to think that some results are caused by AR, either divine or human (or alien, or animal, if you think those beings exist and have this particular sort of Reason).
Don’t get me wrong — I am NOT suggesting that we picture a physical world that runs along doing it’s own thing and then suddenly a super-natural event overrides the normal, natural outcome. That’s the way that scientific determinists characterize the opposing view, precisely in order to make it appear irrational. I am not suggesting that causally-closed physical processes are the natural order of things, and free will (human or divine) is an inexplicable imposition on this order. I am suggesting that the physical world is not and never was a closed system, and that physical causation is only a part of the causal structure of the world. It is not the biggest part or the most important part, only the easiest part to mathematize. As I said before, we have a much more coherent understanding of how our ideas are related to our choices than we have of how most physical events occur — if anything, it is AR which is normal, natural, and comprehensible. If, as you believe, Mind or Logos (or Reason) is necessary to prevent pure entropy, then Mind is shaping the course of the Universe all the time, not just in occasional dramatic incidents of alleged divine intervention.
Now what happens downstream of our own choices? Clearly, since the vast majority of the time our bodies execute the things that our Reason dictates (though seldom with the ultimate consequences we sought), our Acts of Reason have bearing on what happens outside our minds. That’s by no means to deny that Divine Reason shapes and coordinates these results. If it conflicted with the Divine Story for me to punch my Chair in the nose, then of course God could and would prevent it — but ordinarily NOT by having my body suddenly not carry out my will.
Maybe that’s the best analogy — God (Logos, etc.) as a divine storyteller. That’s appropriate, because Reason operates by coordinating and making sense out of otherwise disparate thoughts. God guides the whole thing along, physical and mental, while allowing us to be our own storytellers within the framework of the greater story.
Enough poetry — it’s not my natural milieu. If physical causation is a system of ceteris paribus rules, and if Reason (divine and human) can make ceteris not paribus, then there is no conflict between causation and free will, they are both parts of a larger nexus (or story).
Regards, GCS
Corpus Note — Dave Kelly
This message establishes the four load-bearing claims Sterling makes about libertarian free will as a philosophical commitment, and it does so specifically by rejecting the Chrysippean compatibilist alternative rather than by ignoring it.
First: Chrysippean compatibilism — an act is “up to us” because it is caused by our own character — does not secure genuine freedom, because the character doing the causing was itself never up to the agent. Sterling traces this regress back to an initial character the agent did not choose, making the entire subsequent chain of choices and character-modifications an inevitable unfolding of a starting condition wholly outside the agent’s control. This is the argument from unchosen origin: compatibilism relocates the causal story without ever reaching a point where the agent is the genuine first cause of anything.
Second: the argument applies with equal force to Zeus. If divine acts of Reason follow necessarily from an initial divine character fixed at the last Conflagration, then nothing is in the control even of the gods, and Chrysippus has given no principled reason why Reason’s acts should count as different in kind from any other caused event, including rain falling on a plain.
Third: the positive solution rests on distinguishing physical causation (PC) from Acts of Reason (AR) as two genuinely distinct forms of causal power operating within the same world, neither reducible to the other. Physical laws hold only ceteris paribus — only when no other force intervenes — and AR is a real, intervening force, not a redescription of physical process. The physical world was never a causally closed system in the first place; Sterling holds this is an unproven and unevidenced assumption smuggled in by scientific determinists, not an established fact science requires.
Fourth: AR is not the more mysterious or less comprehensible of the two forms of causation. Sterling holds that we understand the logical connection between a reason and a choice — why dislike of a dinner leads to an offer of a restaurant — more directly and more clearly than we understand many ordinary physical causal chains. This reverses the usual presumption that physical causation is the default, well-understood case and mental causation is the puzzle requiring special defense.
Source: International Stoic Forum. “Free Will and Causation,” August 18, 2021, replying to Steve Marquis’s post of August 8, 2021. Author: Grant C. Sterling. Preserved by Dave Kelly, 2026.
Theoretical foundations: Grant C. Sterling (Eastern Illinois University). Analysis and synthesis: Dave Kelly. Prose rendering: Claude (Anthropic). 2026.