How Stoics Reconcile Determinism & Free Will | Cornell's Tad Brennan
(Announcing $1M in Philosophy x AI Grants)
Hey all,
As most of you who have been listening to my latest videos know, I’ve joined Cosmos as part of the founding team: we are building an Academy for philosopher-builders to enhance human flourishing in the age of AI. More to come on this soon …
In the meantime, excited to share that we alongside FIRE are announcing $1 million in grants toward backing AI projects that widen the marketplace of ideas. TLDR these are $1k - 10k fast grants for early-stage projects that advance truth-seeking with AI.
You can learn more about why this is important in this op-ed.
There are two central tenets of stoicism that seem to contradict each other. On one hand, the stoics believe in fate, their world is fully deterministic. Yet on the other hand, the stoics tell you that your actions, emotions, beliefs are up to you. But how can that be? If the world truly is deterministic all the way down, where does my agency come from?
My guest today is the legendary stoic scholar Tad Brennan, who will help us resolve this puzzle. We are first going to investigate the stoic notion of fate, and then their conception of freedom, before reconciling these two positions.
This is not just a theoretical discussion but one with dire practical consequences: how should we live in a fated world, what does moral responsibility mean if everything is deterministic, and what parts of our lives are actually up to us?
Topics we cover:
01:41 Why Everything is Predetermined
07:56 How the Stoics Justified Fate
12:51 Why Stoicism Needs Religion
17:21 The One Thing That Is In Your Control
24:04 How Stoicism Contradicts Itself
35:52 The Argument That Stoics Never Refuted
41:29 How Do Stoics Decide What to Do?
43:57 How Stoic Ideas Influenced Western Thought
50:02 The Developmental Gap In Stoic Philosophy
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