Principium quoddam, quod fati foedera rumpat,Įx infinito ne causam causa sequatur, 255 libera per terras unde haec animantibus exstat, Lucretius describes the need for some indeterminism, and more strongly than Epicurus, locates the swerving first-beginnings in the mind:Īgain, if all motion is always one long chain, and new motion arises out of the old in order invariable, and if the first-beginnings do not make by swerving a beginning of motion such as to break the decrees of fate, that cause may not follow cause from infinity, whence comes this free will in living creatures all over the earth, whence I say is this will wrested from the fates by which we proceed whither pleasure leads each, swerving also our motions not at fixed times and fixed places, but just where our mind has taken us? For undoubtedly it is his own will in each that begins these things, and from the will movements go rippling through the limbs. But the Stoics (notably Chrysippus, and even the Academic Cicero) destroyed Epicurus' reputation, and it has not recovered to this day. He explicitly cited necessity (ἀνάγκη) and chance (τύχη) as two kinds of causes, but (following Aristotle) he maintained that our autonomous agency is a third kind (a tertium quid) of cause that is " up to us" (παρ’ ῆμᾶς), obviously meaning it is neither of the first two. If we are determined, we are not free, if we are random, we do not control our will.īut Epicurus surely was not thinking our choices and decisions are random, since he hoped to ensure moral responsibility. So Epicurus' assumption does indeed break the causal chain of determinism.īut how exactly does chance enter into the mind and its decisions? Critics of Epicurus, Cicero and Chrysippus, for example, charged that our decisions would be random if chance were the direct cause of our actions.ĭeterminism and indeterminism then become the two horns of a dilemma in the standard argument against free will. We now know that atoms are "swerving" (with unpredictable motions) whenever they come near other atoms.
To break the causal chain of determinism implicit in Democritus' cosmology of atoms in a void, Epicurus postulated an occasional "swerve" of the atoms from their determined paths. Lucretius is our most direct source for Epicurus' ideas.
Lucretius is best known for his long poem On the Nature of Things (De Rerum Natura), which is principally a defense of the ideas of Epicurus, especially the idea of free will, based on Epicurus's introduction of some chance into the universe.
Henry Quastler Adolphe Quételet Pasco Rakic Lord Rayleigh Jürgen Renn Emil Roduner Juan Roederer Jerome Rothstein David Ruelle Tilman Sauerīiosemiotics Free Will Mental Causation James Symposium
0 kommentar(er)
