CLAS 196/PHIL196
Stoicism
Prof. Bailly

Based on Brennan Chapter 17

The Will, Bodies and Minds, Autonomy

• A hoodlum steals, and we blame her.
• because she could have done otherwise.
  
• A kleptomaniac steals, and we are apt to think the kleptomania makes her less responsible for stealing.
• Her pathology (kleptomania) compelled her to steal
• She could not control her desire to steal.
• But what's the real difference?
• The hoodlum had a desire that, coupled with the other components of her personality/mind MADE her do it.
• How is that really different from a kleptomaniac?
• More importantly, how do we draw a clear and distinct line between when an agent is responsible for the agent's actions and when the agent is not?
• As we understand more and more psychologically, neuroscientifically, medically about agents, we are slowly stripping things away from the agent and fewer and fewer things are held to be controllable by agents.
  
• New pathologies are discovered (ADHD, Dyslexia, etc., etc., etc.)
• Once we assign a name to a pathology, it is no longer part of the agent, but rather something that is happening to the agent.
• Various social theories tend to do the same thing in a less "scientific" way:
• "Society" makes the criminal
• So it's not the criminal's fault
• We should address the source, not the symptoms, etc.
  
• New drugs are found that can alter people:
• Prozac alters your moods (I think)
• Does it reveal, mask, alter, or displace the real person?
• What is the logical conclusion of all of this modern progress?
• Will we eventually figure out so many of the factors that provide input into who we are that there is very little left of "us" to provide input into?
• What if we really are "just" a bunch of neurological programs that can be tinkered with, and we discover all of them?
• What if our consciousness is just some emergent quality, some sort of virtual machine that is running on our underlying animal brain, and can be tinkered with?
• It seems possible that "we" as independent agents will disappear: we will certainly shrink.
• We will become a much smaller self with attached systems that have numerous pathologies.
• When our systems are functional and not pathological, "we" will be "normal" or maybe "optimized"?
  
• Once we understand everything about ourselves, then we won't hold individuals responsible
• "That's not her fault: Her rage module needs adjustment"
• "Oh, yeah, but he wouldn't do that if it weren't for his _____. His long term memory dump is in need of a tune-up"
• "Whoah, Bessie. She's messed up. But that's not up to her. Get her to be Mind Shop for an overhaul"
• Comprendre, c'est tout pardonner
  
• What will be left after we label each system within us and set it aside as a system that is not us?
• Is there some little agent within us that is really in control and will we still be able to be called responsible for what we do? (think of the aliens in Starship Troopers or the Daleks inside of their machines)
  
• Moral assessment will be a bit pointless.
• Maybe that's just fine, the right way to go.
  
• In its place will be psychological and medical assessment. It will all be done by professionals in the fields of psychology, medicine, etc.
  
• Personally, I'm thinking that no, there is no little agent within us: we simply are all those systems and the emergent qualities and programs that are running through them. Some are more essential, some are more prone to malfunction, some are more amenable to correction (some via drugs, some via therapy, some via friends), some are very easily changed. That's what an agent is.
  
• And moral assessment can still make sense.
• Perhaps just a pious hope or feeble effort to hold on to ideas of the past.
  
• There is still a problem of saying where one agent ends and the world or another agent begins, but I'd like it to be roughly where my brain stops and the world begins.
  

• Ancient ethical theories don't often discuss things like pathologies, addictions, etc.
• Rather, they ask:
• Did the agent do it knowingly?
• Did the agent do it unknowingly?
  
• Or did something else do it?
• If the agent did it knowingly, then the agent is responsible.
• If the agent did it unknowingly, then the agent may still be responsible:
• Should/could the agent have known?
• If yes, then the agent is still responsible.
• If no, then the agent is not responsible, but should learn from it, because next time, the agent may be held responsible.
  
• If something else did it, then the agent is not responsible.
• In other words, they are concerned with autonomy
• From auto self + nomy regulation
• We too are often concerned with autonomy, but psychological explanation can push it out of the picture.
  

• Let's say that there are two sorts of qualities an action can have:
1. It can have a psychological aspect that says what about the agent made it the case that the agent would do that action and no other.
• Whether the agent is morally responsible is irrelevant for this assessment.
• This assessment is not concerned with autonomy.
• It is concerned with finding the cause inside the agent.
• Such causes are very worth finding and working on.
  
2. It can have a moral aspect that says that the agent did it and is morally assessible for the action or that the agent did not do it or did not do it knowingly and so is not morally assessible for the action.
• Whether the agent's psychological makeup made it impossible for the agent not to do the action is irrelevant to this assessment.
• Whether the agent could, given factors external to the agent, have done otherwise, is highly relevant to this assessment.
  
• This assessment is very concerned with autonomy.

• Modern moral assessments tend to draw the boundary between an agent and external factors in a way that continues to make the agent shrink as new factors are discovered and things that used to be held to be "up to" the agent are re-ascribed to something external to the agent (pathologies, addictions, social factors).
• Some modern theories even put the agent's desires outside of the sphere of the agent, because they are not something the agent controls: they are something that happens to the agent. They also say that desires are the most essential basic component of action: you need a desire to initiate action.
  
• This leads to the self of the agent being very small indeed
• How does it make sense to say that the agent is subject to desires that are the only thing that motivate the agent AND that the desires are not part of the agent?
  
• Ancient moral assessments tend to include much more inside of the agent.
• Stoicism in particular wants to make 'desires' subject to reason. Reason is basic to our agency, and desires are, or can be, under its control, because desires require an assent, and rational agents can withhold assent.
  

• A review of the Stoic position: autonomy
  
• In all of the following passages, we have an agent with a faculty of assent that is faced with an impression. Given the sort of thing that faculty of assent is, it cannot do anything but assent to whatever the agent is disposed to think is true, useful, advantageous, etc.
• Thus the faculty of assent is not radically free from hindrance.
• Rather, it is free from hindrance which originates outside of agent.
• Dispositions which are internal to the agent could be said to "hinder" it, if you want to call it that, but really, that is part of the self dictating what the faculty of assent should do (assent or withhold assent).
• The agent-shifting test shows that the agent is free in the Stoic sense of free: some other agents in that agent's shoes would make a different choice.
• The sources which reflect Chrysippus emphasize that the impression itself, which comes from outside, does not compel assent.
• Epictetus emphasizes that nothing external can prevent the agent from assenting.
  
• Epictetus Discourses 1.17
• “Man,” he says, “you have a will free by nature from hindrance and compulsion; this is written here in the viscera. I will show you this first in the matter of assent. Can any man hinder you from assenting to the truth? No man can. Can any man compel you to receive what is false? No man can. You see that in this matter you have the faculty of the will free from hindrance, free from compulsion, unimpeded.” Well, then, in the matter of desire and pursuit of an object, is it otherwise? And what can overcome pursuit except another pursuit? And what can overcome desire and aversion except another desire and aversion? But, you object: “If you place before me the fear of death, you do compel me.” No, it is not what is placed before you that compels, but your opinion that it is better to do so-and-so than to die. In this matter, then, it is your opinion that compelled you: that is, will compelled will.
  
• Epictetus Discourses 3.7
• For as it is impossible to assent to that which appears false, and to turn away from that which is true, so it is impossible to abstain from that which appears good.
• Epictetus Discourses 1.28
• What is the cause of assenting to anything? The fact that it appears to be true. It is not possible then to assent to that which appears not to be true. Why? Because this is the nature of the understanding, to incline to the true, to be dissatisfied with the false, and in matters uncertain to withhold assent. What is the proof of this? “Imagine, if you can, that it is now night.” It is not possible. “Take away your persuasion that it is day.” It is not possible. “Persuade yourself or take away your persuasion that the stars are even in number.” It is impossible. When, then, any man assents to that which is false, be assured that he did not intend to assent to it as false, for every soul is unwillingly deprived of the truth, as Plato says; but the falsity seemed to him to be true. Well, in acts what have we of the like kind as we have here truth or falsehood? We have the fit and the not fit, the profitable and the unprofitable, that which is suitable to a person and that which is not, and whatever is like these. Can, then, a man think that a thing is useful to him and not choose it? He cannot.
  

• A wrong idea about Stoicism (that was nonetheless influential historically)
• first, to see what seems to be the best option for Stoics, given all else they claim: Epictetus, fragment 23
  "Nature is an extraordinary thing, and 'a lover of animals,' as Xenophon said. At any rate, we cherish and take care of our bodies, the most disgusting and filthy things of all--for we couldn't bear to take care of our neighbor's body, even for a mere five days. Just think what it's like--getting up at dawn to wash someone else's teeth, and after he has done his business you have to give him a  wipe down there. What is really extraordinary is the fact that we love such a thing, given how much upkeep it requires each day. I stuff my paunch. Then I empty it. What could be more tedious? But I must serve God. That's why I wait, and put up with washing this wretched little body, and giving it fodder, and sheltering it.
  (translation from Brennan, P. 130)
• From this text, we see that Stoics held that the body is external to the self.
  
• Occasionally, we see passages that seem to imply that our desires tempt us as well, and that we need to fight them as well as impressions.
  
• This seems to imply that there are forces inside of the agent that conflict with the faculty of assent.
• And so our desires are external to our real self.
  
• But the faculty of assent is the most essential things that is the agent, our self.
  
• And thus it seems that some things apparently inside of an agent are nonetheless external to the agent.
  
• That is not, however, an accurate picture of the Stoic view.
• The body is external, according to Stoics.
• But there are not desires that an agent has that are external to the agent's self.
  
• Desires, for a Stoic, are usually vicious: perhaps all of them are. But they are part of the self: they are assents to impressions that some indifferent is truly good.
  
• The Stoic sage can have something analogous to desire: she can select an indifferent (i.e. we assent to an impression that we should pursue it on the ground that is has some value that is not goodness, but rather something like utility or a simple preference that is not based on a conviction about the good).
• But that is part of her overall disposition.
  
• It is not external to her.