bd-from-kg

Kenny:

1. On sanity, rejection of God, and culpability

In response to my argument that a person must necessarily be insane to reject God, and therefore cannot be morally culpable for such a choice, you said:

Actually (unlike most nontheists) I agree with the first statement in the sense that given enough knowledge and understanding it is always irrational not to choose the good. But that proviso “given enough K&U” covers a lot of ground. First, it’s possible to “know” that an act is “wrong” without really understanding what it means to say that an act is wrong. Second, a wrong act may well appear to further some legitimate purpose one cares deeply about, such as the welfare of a loved one. In that case the wrongness of the act consists only in giving this goal undue weight, which is not ordinarily irrational to the point of being insane. But in Smith’s case you are suggesting that (in some possible worlds) he will rebel against God in pursuit of purposes which he knows cannot be achieved by this rebellion. This is insane, in just the same way and for the same reasons that it is insane to rush to the train station to catch the three o’clock train even though you are well aware that the three o’clock train doesn’t run on that day. The insanity involved is on such a fundamental level that Smith cannot be regarded as a moral agent.

[Note: Hopefully this answers jpbrooks’s argument that even if insane, the person who rejects God might still be morally responsible for his choice.]

Yes, it certainly is possible for humans to engage in self-deception. But self-deception is impossible if one has enough knowledge and understanding. Either Smith is incapable of the requisite K&U or he will have it in some possible world. In the former case Smith is unable to really understand that what he is doing is wrong. In the latter, in some possible world Smith will not be deceiving himself about the true nature of his choice or about its consequences, yet will still reject God.

2. On innate natures and moral responsibility
In explaining your own understanding of the principle that no one is responsible for an act unless it was possible for him to do otherwise, you said:
This tallies with what your earlier comment:

To illustrate the problem with this, let’s go back for a moment to the imaginary beings that I described in an earlier post, whose nature is such that they suffer unimaginably for all eternity from the moment they are created. Now change this example slightly so that these creatures’ nature is such that as soon as one comes into existence, he has an irresistible impulse to hit himself on the head with a hammer, and that his subsequent unimaginable suffering is a direct result of this act. Is this just? Well, let’s see. The suffering is a direct result of his own action, which in turn was the product of his essential nature. Nothing outside of him compelled him to act as he did; there was no causal agent that held some power over him. And what could be more just than that the negative consequences of his actions are experienced by the agent himself? Yessir, by your standard this is one of the most perfectly just situations imaginable. In fact, it would plainly be unjust for God to arbitrarily limit this creature’s suffering to a mere few trillion years or so.

(Actually, although this example may seem rather silly and contrived at first glance, on reflection the parallels with our old friend Smith are striking. Neither of them hurts anyone but himself by his action. {God cannot be harmed in the least by anything one of His creatures does.} In both cases the only significant consequence of the act in question is eternal suffering for the agent. And Smith’s life on earth is but an instant compared to eternity, so rejecting God in this life was the same thing, to all intents and purposes, as hitting himself on the head with a hammer the moment he was created. For all practical purposes Smith is the unfortunate creature I just described.)

Now let’s consider whether how your notion that an agent is responsible for an action iff that action springs from his innate nature squares with most people’s conception of justice.

First, almost everyone agrees that, for an agent to be responsible for an act, it must in some sense “originate from within the agent” and not be “coerced by factors external to that agent”. But it need not originate from the agent’s innate nature by any means. For example, say Baker gets drunk and injures someone in an accident while returning home. We would ordinarily blame Baker even though it might be quite unusual for him to get drunk at all, much less to drive while drunk. In other words, he is responsible even though his actions did not spring from his essential nature, but were the product of “accidental” (that is , contingent) circumstances that induced him to do these things on that particular day. Presumably he might have acted differently, even under these circumstances, if there were stronger laws against drunk driving, or even stronger social disapproval of it.

In fact, in many cases we would be less inclined to blame Baker to the extent that it was clear that the act in question really did spring from his innate nature. For example, if he were to steal a large sum of money from his employer, we might at first be inclined to blame him severely. But now suppose that we learned that he did it because his wife and children were being held at gunpoint at the time, and would have been killed in a gruesome fashion if he hadn’t done it. Now you might call this “coercion”, but he was certainly not being “compelled” by a “causal force that holds some sort of power over the agent”. On the contrary, the actual situation was that his innate nature is such that he would inevitably have acted to save his family under these circumstances, no matter what punishment he might have been faced with. And this is considered to be a mitigating factor, or even a circumstance that absolves him of all responsibility, rather than the factor that convinces us that he is certainly culpable for his act. And this is so even if he knew that if the culprits got their hands on the money they would very likely use it to do things much worse (from an objective standpoint) than merely killing his family. And it is also true even though we can easily imagine a man who, because of a different inner nature, would have acted differently.

Now this is a complicated subject, and it is by no means always true that a person should be excused for an otherwise culpable act because a person’s innate nature made it inevitable that he would act the way he did under the given circumstances. But it is sometimes true, and that in itself is enough to show that your account of when a person is morally responsible for an act is incomplete and inadequate, to say the least.

In the context of the current discussion, the most important failing of your account of moral responsibility is that it simply does not square with the idea, with which nearly everyone agrees, that a person is not responsible for an act if he would have done it, not only regardless of the current circumstances, but regardless of any choices that he made in the past. Thus we might blame a man for drinking to excess even though it is obvious that he is a hopeless alcoholic and could no more stop drinking that a goldfish could stop swimming, because we believe that he became that way as a result of past choices. But if someone were born with an irresistible urge to drink alcohol, who could not resist drinking every bit of alcohol within reach and organizing his life in a way calculated to give him access to as much alcohol as possible, we would not blame him for his condition because he would in no sense be responsible for it. In fact, there are people whose attraction to the bottle does appear to be genetic, and we are inclined to blame such people much less for becoming alcoholics than those who have no such genetic disposition. Note that this relative lack of responsibility is based on the fact that a strong attraction to alcohol is part of such people’s innate nature.

This works in reverse, too. If someone refrains from seducing other men’s wives because his genetic makeup is such that he has no interest in sex, and in fact a powerful aversion to it, we are not inclined to praise him for his restraint. He is not considered to be “responsible” for a tendency that would normally be considered quite virtuous because it springs from his innate nature; he could not have acted otherwise.

Here’s another example. It now appears that some men become rapists because they have a strong genetic disposition in that direction. Thus it’s not too hard to imagine a man whose genetic makeup is such that he has an irresistible impulse to rape women. I submit that such a person should not (and would not, by most people) be considered to be responsible for his acts. On the contrary, society would be considered to be to blame for failing to identify such individuals before they became adults. If they could not be treated with drugs (and assuming that we wouldn’t be willing to “fix” them like dogs or cats) we might have to lock them up. But this would not be considered “punishment” any more than caging a man-eating tiger would be. It would simply be a practical measure to ensure our own safety. Once again we see that the existence of an irresistible, inborn tendency to act in a certain way is considered to absolve a person of moral responsibility for the resulting acts.

Which brings us around once again to the cases (described in an earlier post) of Terminator and the unfortunate people who were victims of the Mule’s mental powers. One might say of the latter that the Mule changed their innate natures, making them different people than they were before. Are they to be blamed for their subsequent actions? According to your criterion, apparently so: their actions derive from their (new) innate natures. But doesn’t this strike you as a teensy bit unjust? Most people would consider them victims of the Mule. Apparently you would treat them as collaborators.

Samhain

I must also apologize for my late posts. Work and income take precedence over theological discussions, so excuse my tardiness at replying to messages during the week also, it becomes difficult to do it at all except for the weekend.

Yes, I agree totally, I suppose that I should have emphasized that EVERY action would be based on God's will, even thinking, for even our thoughts cannot be outside of the realm of an omniscient being. With an omnimax God, even what I write, or what I think about writing is controlled by God, since he has the capability to know everything and also has the capability to control everything, these being the benefits of being omniscient and omnipotent.
No, with a God of this type, we are nothing more than the fingers of his hands, so to speak. I apologize if I lead you to believe that I thought that consciousness was something that people held seperate from God, I did not mean to imply that.

I will tend to disagree with you on this point. Yes, moral knowledge is a fact of reality, but with a deterministic life based upon God's omnimax will, moral responsibility is not possible. We may have the illusion of both free-choice and of moral responsibilty for our actions, but that does not make it reality in this kind of situation.


The great dilemma of God, then, perhaps. This probably should not be considered in this discussion, but can a God be omniscient and omnipotent at the same time?
You make a good point with this. With this being said is it truly possible for God to change his mind? Just curious.

See ReasonableDoubt's reply to this statement.

See above. It seems that our perceptions of what the original argument was have been diverted. I hope that I have clarified it for you.

[Message edited to reword some statements for less confusion]
[ March 18, 2002: Message edited by: Samhain ]

[ March 18, 2002: Message edited by: Samhain ]</p>

Kenny

Hi all,

I would like to respond to Bd’s post as soon as I can (as I believe there is a lot that needs to be clarified on my part and, due to my own failure to communicate, no doubt, I do not believe I have been fully understood in some places), but I am very busy with school right now (last week afforded more time to write because it was Spring break). In addition, yesterday, I proposed to my girlfriend and she said yes Needless to say, abstract discussions about the actualization of possible persons, the preexistence of natures, and the distinction between essential and accidental properties seem a little remote to me at the moment. But, I do plan to respond, so watch for it. It just may take a week or two. Until then...

God Bless,
Kenny.

[ March 18, 2002: Message edited by: Kenny ]</p>

Samhain

Congratulations on the proposal, Kenny

bd-from-kg

Kenny:

I second Samhain's motion!

As a fairly newly married man myself (18 months), I should warn you that things will get really complicated for a time, and your life will be turned upside down. But (with any luck) it will be worth it.

Ender

I third that motion- Congratulations, Kenny!

One question- is she a christian as well?

~WiGGiN~

Malaclypse the Younger

Congratulations, Kenny! I wish you nothing but happiness.

Not to be cynical or anything, but there is a just a touch of irony of Kenny's making this announcement in this particular thread.

[ March 18, 2002: Message edited by: Malaclypse the Younger ]</p>

Bill Snedden

Hey, that's great!

Now you'll learn all about "tormenting of the soul" first hand...

Just kidding! Every one of the 14 years of my marriage has been great. I hope that yours are even better.

Bill

Darwin's Finch

Kenny: I'm closing in on nine years with my wife, and they have all been extraordinary. I hope the same for you and your lady. Congratulations!

Kenny

Yes