Abstract
In this chapter we shall examine further the criticism of Stoic cosmology — in particular, the criticism of the Stoic conception of fate — by Alexander of Aphrodisias. We shall also consider what Alexander claims to be “the opinion of the Peripatetic school” concerning fate, as well as several peculiar modal principles evidently accepted by Alexander. I shall suggest that underlying the complex and often obscure disagreement concerning fate between Alexander and the Stoics are two very different conceptions of causal/temporal sequences. While the Stoics developed a conception of causal sequences in which temporally antecedent causes necessitate temporally posterior effect, a conception which is in many ways strikingly “modern,” such a temporal/causal sequence is not the paradigm of a causal sequence for the Peripatetics. Peripatetics such as Alexander ascribe characteristics to such sequences that complicate their anti-Stoic polemics concerning the nature and extent of fate. Nonetheless, I shall suggest, Alexander does have a sort of “empiricist” rejoinder to the Stoic postulation of universal causal necessitation. The Stoic doctrines of “obscure” (adēla) causal factors and of eternal recurrence can be thought of as “metaphysical” responses to such “empiricist” worries about the justifiability of a principle of universal causal necessitation.
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References
A. A. Long, ‘Freedom and Determinism in the Stoic Theory of Human Action’, in Problems in Stoicism(London, 1971), p. 178.
Cicero, De divinatione 1.55.126.
Alexander, De fato 8, SA 2/2, 173.16–19.
Ibid., 4.169.2–3. Alexander, however, also (as at 3.167.12–16 and 5.168.24–26) seems to regard fate as a species of efficient or “productive” (poiētikē) cause, viz., an efficient cause that also has the property of being “for the sake of” something.
Ibid., 5.169.13–18.
Ibid., 169.18–19.
Ibid., 169.25–26.
Ibid., 169.28–170.2.
Ibid., 22.192.22–24. Cf. Ibid., 15.185.8–9.
In Section E, ‘Aristotle and Determinism’.
The suggestion, which I will not here attempt to support, is that the Newtonian restriction of the notion of a cause to “efficient cause” and the consequent development in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of a very narrow (and, in many ways, un-Aristotelian) conception of efficient causation yielded this result as a corollary. Cf. G. E. M. Anscombe, ‘Causality and Determination’, reprinted in Causation and Conditionals, ed. E. Sosa (Oxford, 1975), pp. 63–81.
M. A. E. Dummett, ‘Can an Effect Precede its Cause?’, reprinted in Truth and Other Enigmas(Cambridge, Mass., 1978), pp. 320–322.
Ibid., p. 322.
Duns Scotus, Opus Oxoniense, I, Dist. II, Q. 1, in Duns Scotus: Philosophical Writings, ed. A. Wolter (Edinburgh, 1962), pp. 40–41.
Ibid.
Cf. Patterson Brown, ‘Infinite Causal Regression’, in Aquinas: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. A. Kenny (Garden City, N.Y., 1969), pp. 214–236.
Ibid., pp. 231–236.
An. post. 2.16.98b 1–2.
Ibid., 2.12.95a10–15.
Phys. 7.1.242a57–62.
Phys. 8.10.266b28–30.
Ibid., 267a2–7.
Ibid., 267a9-10: “it comes to an end when the former no longer makes [the latter] to function as a mover (kinoun), but only to be moved (kinoumenon).”
Why, for example, must the ratio between the “motive action” (kinoun) and the “mobile passion” (kinoumenon) reach zero in a finite number of “links” in such a per accidens-ordered causal chain?
An. post. 2.12.95a27–28.
Ibid., 95a30–31.
For example, cf. An. post. 1.4–8 and 2.16–17.
Ibid., 2.12.95b 1–12. Aristotle’s argument for this claim (which, I think, will strike the contemporary reader as rather unintuitive) is obscure; it apparently depends on Aristotle’s understanding of the Greek system of verb aspect. What came-about (to genomenon — aorist aspect) cannot be next to what came-about because to genomenon is considered by A. to be a punctual “accomplishment,” and two points cannot be contiguous. Nor can what has-come-about (to gegenēmenon or to gegenos — perfect aspect, “achieved state”) be next to what is-coming-about (to ginomenon — imperfective, “present” aspect, ongoing process) because the former achieved state supervenes “at a temporal point” but the latter process has no “first” or initiating temporal point (cf. Phys. 6.5.236al0ff.) See also the commentary of J. Barnes: Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, translated with notes by Jonathan Barnes (Oxford, 1975), pp. 225–227.
An. post. 2.12.95a34–35.
By an “a fronte conditional,” I mean a conditional in which (the event/state of affairs signified by) the antecedent is temporally posterior to (the event/state of affairs signified by) the consequent.
An. post. 2.12.95b35–37.
I quite realize, of course, that the relatively crude semantic mechanism of tense logic can scarcely capture all the semantic subtlety of natural language tense and aspect, particularly in the case of a language such as ancient Greek, in which aspect, rather than tense, dominates with respect to the temporal features of verbs. For more on the doctrines of An. post 2.12, see my ‘Causes as Necessary Conditions: Aristotle, Alexander of Aphrodisias, and J. L. Mackie’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy: Supplementary Volume X (1984), pp. 157–189.
J. L. Mackie, The Cement of the Universe: A Study of Causation (Oxford, 1974), p. 37.
Ibid., p. 31.
Ibid., pp. 37ff.
Ibid., p. 53. Mackie there mentions that it is not necessary to conceive of the “laws of working” as “strictly deterministic ones.”
Thus, according to the Stalnaker-Thomason semantic analysis of subjunctive conditionals, the conditional “If X had not occurred, Y would not have occurred” would be false at this (“actual”) world (R. Stalnaker and R. Thomason, ‘A Semantic Analysis of Conditional Logic’, Theoria 36 [1970], pp. 23–42). The objection can also be formulated in the alternative semantics for subjunctive conditionals of David Lewis. For more on this type of objection to the analysis of causation in terms of subjunctive or “counterfactual” conditionals, see my “Causes as Necessary Condition,” pp. 182ff.
There is an underlying point that is crucial to this argument. It can be put in two, roughly equivalent ways. (1) There does not seem to be any compelling independent reason for defining the “similarity” relation on possible worlds in such a way that it satisfies the following condition: for all worlds W and for all events/states of affairs X and Y, if X causes Y in W, then if there is a world W′ not containing X but containing some alternative cause X′ of Y (and thus containing Y), there is a world W″ more similar to W than is W′ that does not contain either X, an alternative cause of Y, or Y. (2) Suppose that in world W, X caused Y; the fact that the most similar world to W not containing X contains some alternative cause of Y does not intuitively seem to constitute a sufficient reason for concluding that the claim that in world W, X caused Y mistaken, i.e., is not true.
Mackie, p. 265.
R. W. Sharples,‘ “If What is Earlier, then of Necessity What is Later?”: Some Ancient Discussions of Aristotle De Generatione et Corruptione 2.11’, BICS 26 (1979), pp. 27–44.
Alexander, Quaestio 3.5, SA 2/2, 88.28–29.
Chapter Four, Section C. Cf. Sorabji, NC&B, p. 86.
Alexander, De fato 14, SA 2/2, 183.9–10.
Ibid., 184.24–185.1.
Chapter Two, Section E, Subsection 3.
Cf., for example, Mackie, p. 31, 265–267.
He seems to have this in mind when he first introduces the qualification at p. 31.
For more on this interpretation and the difficulties with it, see White, ‘Causes as Necessary Conditions’, pp. 185ff.
De fato 24, 193.31–194.2.
Ibid., 194.12–15.
Ibid., 194.8–12.
Mackie, pp. 40ff.
I do not mean to suggest that Aristotle (or later Peripatetics such as Alexander) explicitly conceived of time as backwards-linear and forwards-branching. Rather, such structures serve as the most natural semantic models in tense logic for a conception of time as past-determinate and future-indeterminate. See, for example, Prior, Past, Present and Future, Ch. VII, pp. 113–136; Rescher and Urquhart, Temporal Logic, Ch. VII, pp. 68–97; Richmond H. Thomason, ‘Indeterminist Time and Truth-Value Gaps’, Theoria 3 (1970), pp$1264–281; M. J. White, ‘Necessity and Unactualized Possibilities in Aristotle’, Philosophical Studies 38 (1980), pp. 287–298.
McTaggart’s A-series conception of time is a conception formulated in terms of the “indexical” tense concepts of “present” or “now,” “past,” and “future”; his B-series conception is formulated in terms of the temporal relations of “at the same time as” or “simultaneous with,” “before,” and “after.” It is usually assumed that propositions formulated in terms of the A-series concepts are not “temporally stable”: e.g., it is, at some times, true that the battle of Waterloo has, in the past, occurred, but not true at other times (“before the fact”). It is usually assumed, however, that relations derived from the B-series concepts are temporally stable, that is, that if it is ever true that the battle of Waterloo temporally precedes (“is before”) the battle of Vicksburg, it is always (or, alternatively, atemporally) true that this relation obtains. This latter assumption can be consistently denied. Its denial will be further explored in the next chapter, section C.
Sharples,‘“If What is Earlier,...,”’p. 27.
This is the sort of Stoic view described in section C of the preceding chapter. In general, I subscribe to the view of Sharples, who in discussing J. M. Rist’s account of the Stoic conception of hiemarmenē, comments as follows: “His claim [Stoic Philosophy, pp. 121f.] that fate for the Stoics is to be identified not with what is necessarily going to happen, but only with what will happen, is unacceptable if it is taken as a claim that the Stoics asserted only the logical truism that what will be will be [i.e. the necessitas consequentiae of the conditional “if it will be the case that X, then it will be the case that X”]; for it is clear that the Stoic doctrine of fate did involve the assertion of a deterministic nexus of physical causation” (Sharples, ‘Necessity in the Stoic Doctrine of Fate’, p. 82).
Sharples, ‘“If What is Earlier,...,”’ p. 27.
Cf. Alexander, Quaestiones 2.22 and 3.5, SA 2/2, 71–72 and 87–89, respectively; Philoponus, In Aristotelis de generatione et corruptione, CIAG 14/2,308.3–25. See the discussion of these passages (and translation of the relevant sections of Alexander’s Quaestiones) in Sharples, ‘ “If What is Earlier,...,”’
Another possibility would be Y’s continuously-being-true after the instantiation of X. But where “Y” represents a “coming-to-be” rather than a “being” (i.e., an event or developmental process rather than a “static” state of affairs), this does not seem to be a conceptually possible alternative.
Aristotle, De caelo 1.12.283a7–11.
I have in mind the various set-theoretic concepts that figure in the contemporary, Cantorian analysis of infinity, e.g., the distinction between being properly contained in or a proper subset of and having a smaller cardinality. This is not to say that Cantor’s conception is superior to Aristotle’s (as developed, principally, in Phys. 3.4–8), however. In fact, Aristotle’s conception (in contrast to Cantor’s) has recommended itself to a number of contemporary mathematicians, perhaps most notably to “intuitionists” such as L. E. J. Brouwer.
Quaestio 3.5, 88.12–15, as translated by Sharples in ‘“If What is Earlier,...,”’ p. 30.
In other words, their temporal relation is “built into” the conceptions of the cause and effect.
Dummett, ‘Can an Effect Precede its Cause?’, p. 320.
For more on this issue, see Ch. VII, Section B. It is, I suspect, a mistake to think of a Peripatetic “final” cause as operating “backwards” in time; it is not clear that temporal relations enter into the Aristotelian notion of final causation in any very significant manner.
Sharples, ‘Aristotelian and Stoic Conceptions of Necessity in the De fato of Alexander of Aphrodisias’, Phronesis 20 (1975), p. 252.
Alexander, De fato 22, 192.22–24.
Sharples, ‘Aristotelian and Stoic Conceptions of Necessity’, p. 260.
Aristotle, Meta., 5.30; Alexander, De fato 8.
Alexander, De fato 8, 173.15–16.
De fato 8,174.2ff.
Ibid. 9,175.13–16.
Cf. C. S. Pierce, ‘The Doctrine of Necessity Examined’, The Monist 2/3 (1892), pp. 321–337. Reprinted in Philosophical Writings of Peirce, ed. J. Buchler (New York 1955), pp. 324–338.
M. Beliş, ‘On the Causal Structure of Random Processes’, in Logic, Language, and Probability, ed. R. J. Bogdan and I. Niiniluoto (Dordrecht, 1973), p. 66.
Ibid., p. 70.
Ibid., pp. 70–71.
Ibid., p. 71. This conclusion depends at least on Bernoulli’s Theorem (see Ch. One). Some would maintain, however, that Bernoulli’s Theorem is a “purely mathematical” theorem not directly applicable to empirical matters. “Von Mises thus concludes that the arithmetical theorem has no bearing on the truth or falsity of Poisson’s proposition which he also called the Law of Large Numbers. That is the empirical proposition whose content is roughly that the relative frequencies of certain empirical events tend towards limiting values as the sequence is extended. This ‘Law of Large Numbers’ is not and cannot be proved mathematically. Rather it is the first postulate of von Mises’s probability theory” (R. Weatherford, Philosophical Foundations of Probability Theory [London, 1982], p. 63).
The schools define time as the “extension” (diastēma) and “measure” of process or motion (kinēsis), respectively; and kinēsis requires some sort of change. For more on this, see the next chapter (Ch. Six).
That is, they will at least differ with respect to the property of occurring at the times at which they, in fact, occur. Whether this need constitute a “real” difference is a complex issue that will be dealt with in greater detail in the next chapter.
This, for example, is the assumption of von Wright, who additionally claims that “the question of whether cause-effect relations hold primarily between events, i.e. changes, or between states, must be answered in favor of the first alternative” (G. H. von Wright, Causality and Determinism [New York and London, 1974 ], p. 79).
The Aristotelian view of causation bears some resemblance to the contemporary attempt to specify a conception of causation “between” the “Humean” (empirical regularity) account and an account in terms of entailment. According to such a conception, causation is to be analyzed in terms of the actualization of the “powers, capacities, and natures of substances” (E. H. Madden, ‘A Third View of Causality’, reprinted in Philosophical Problems of Causation, ed. T. L. Beauchamp [Encino and Belmont, California, 1974], p. 186). And between the “nature” of a substance and its powers and capacities is a relation of nonlogical, causal, or natural necessity. See also E. H. Madden and J. Humber, “Non-logical Necessity and C. J. Ducasse,” ibid., pp. 163–178; R. Harre, Principles of Scientific Thinking (Chicago, 1970); R. Harre and E. H. Madden, Causal Powers (Totoaw, N.J., 1975).
M. Frede, ‘The Original Notion of Cause’, in Doubt and Dogmatism: Studies in Hellenistic Epistemology, ed. M. Schofield, M. Burnyeat, J. Barnes (Oxford, 1980), pp. 217–218.
Ibid., p. 218.
J. H. Randall, Jr., The Career of Philosophy, Vol. 1, p. 607.
Alexander, De fato 3, SA 2/2,167.12–16.
Ibid., 5, 169.2–3. The implication of Defato 3–5 seems to be that “final” causes — or at least some final causes, e.g. fate — are a species of “efficient” (poiētikon) cause. Sharples is not particularly concerned by this, commenting that “Alexander’s concentration on the efficient cause in what follows seems acceptable, in spite of Pack’s complaint (420); that fate is purposive is recognized at V 168.27ff., and though Stoic fate is in some ways analogous to the Aristotelian formal cause ... it is as an active, ‘efficient’ principle that it is so” (R. W. Sharples, Alexander of Aphrodisias On Fate, p. 126).
In general, I think the nunc fluens conception of time is the older view, while the static (or atemporal) relation view is a later development. An exception seems to be the Megarian-Eristic-Dialectical diadochē conception of time — perhaps influenced by earlier Eleatic ideas — which seems to be static-relational. See Chapter Two.
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White, M.J. (1985). Peripatetic Polemics. In: White, M.J. (eds) Agency and Integrality. Philosophical Studies Series in Philosophy, vol 32. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5339-0_5
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