PHYSICS understood not simply truth-functionally, but also as supporting the corresponding counterfactuals (3) If I called the doctor, I would recover (4) If I did not call the doctor, I would recover But a Stoic has no reason to accept (4).5 Determinism and Freedom More serious was the argument that if determinism is true, human responsibility for action evaporates, and praise and blame become pointless This argument was mounted both by Epicureans and by Academics Necessity is accountable to no one, Epicurus said, and what depends on us, what attracts blame and its converse, must be free of the overlordship of fate (LS 20a) To reconcile this freedom with their own atomistic system, Epicureans hypothesized that atoms engaged in unpredictable swerves Thus Lucretius: Lest mind should suVer from compulsive force And helpless trace a predetermined course A travelling atom deviates a space And swerves at no Wxed time and no Wxed place (2 290) Neither in antiquity nor in modern times has it been clear how such a random quantum jerk would be a suYcient condition for human freedom; and not only Stoics, but Academics too, considered the swerve not only insuYcient but unnecessary Carneades, Cicero tells us, showed that the Epicureans could defend their case without this Wctitious swerve They taught that some voluntary motion of the mind was possible, and a defence of this doctrine was better than the introduction of the swerve, especially as they could assign no cause to it By defending it they had an answer to Chrysippus: they could agree that no motion lacks a cause without conceding that everything that happens is a result of antecedent causes For there are no external antecedent causes of the operation of our will (Fat 33) The Lazy Argument appears across the centuries in many diVerent contexts, e.g in John Milton’s de Doctrina Christiana in an argument against Calvinist predestination 196