theophilus

Does this mean you like him better than me?

bd-from-kg

Kenny:

I notice that you passed over a critical part of my argument:

This principle is often cited by Chistians themselves in many contexts. For example, they explain God's "hiddenness" or the fact that the evidence for Christianity is far fron conclusive by saying that God had to make it possible for us to choose to reject Him, and if we were certain that He existed and that the only way to avoid Hell and attain eternal bliss is to acept Jesus as our Savior, we would have no real choice in the matter and thus would not have free will, with regard to this particular choice at least.

The idea here of couse is that being able to act otherwise is a necessary condition for having free will, and that having free will is a necessary condition of being a moral agent. But this of course implies that Smith, in rejecting God, was not acting freely, and so was not a moral agent, and so was not responsible for his act.

The principle involved is also accepted by virtually all enlightened people in the context of human justice. Thus, if a man has Tourette's Syndrome, he is not blamed for spouting obscenities even in situations where this is wildly inappropriate and an ordinary person would be severely chastized for doing so. There are also many situations in which a person is excused for doing something that would ordinarily be strongly condemned because the circumstances are such that "anyone would do the same thing", meaning of course that we believe that person probably could not have done otherwise than as he did.

Thus it seems to be widely accepted that a person cannot reasonably be blamed or punished for an act if he could not have acted otherwise. Yet you seem to be saying the exact opposite: that a person is most deserving of blame and punishment when it is certain that he could not have acted otherwise.

Do you really reject the principle that one is not responsible for an act if one could not have acted otherwise? Is your notion of justice diametrically opposed to that of most enlightened people, including most Christians?

Kenny

bd-from-kg

No, I do not reject the principle you cite. I do believe, however, that the sense in which “could not have acted otherwise” is to be understood in this context needs to be clarified.

I would define an action on the part of a personal agent as free iff that action is voluntarily chosen by the agent in such a way that it originates from within the agent herself without being coerced by factors external to that agent. In other words, in order for an agent’s act to be free and for that agent to be morally culpable for that act, she must have been able to act otherwise in the sense that there is nothing external to herself compelling her to choose a particular course of action

Now, I would also argue that since a free action stems from the agent herself, there is a sense in which that agent could not have chosen differently in the particular set of circumstances in which she made her choice. I would contend that since the agent is, in fact, the cause of her actions, and because I would hold it as a metaphysical principle that identical causes in identical situations produce identical effects (else I can hardly see how the notion of causality would be meaningful), it is not possible that any other action could have resulted from that agent. However, this is a different sort of “could not” than the one above. We could say, in this case, that the agent could not, not because she was being compelled by some sort of outside force, but because she would not.

I don’t see how the notion of freewill and moral responsibility is meaningful any other way, in fact. If there are some possible worlds where the agent chooses differently in the exact same circumstances, then it would seem that her choices are a function of random chance rather than something which flow out of the agent herself. If she is wholly compelled by her environment, however, she is also not culpable. Only if she herself is the direct causal force behind here choices and actions can she be held responsible for them.

God Bless,
Kenny

[ March 15, 2002: Message edited by: Kenny ]</p>

not a theist

I just wanted to thank both bd-from-kg and Kenny for one of the most interesting discussions I've seen on this board in quite a while. Thank you both.

[ March 15, 2002: Message edited by: not a theist ]</p>

HRG

Addressing just one point:

Individuals do not come with tags around their necks ("I am Smith"); we call them "Smith" or "Miller" etc. Every individual exists exactly in one world - unless you can define non-arbitrary mappings between the set of all individuals of world X to the set of all individuals in world Y, and do this for all possible X and Y.

I don't think you can, and I'd like to see you try.

If you say that an individual I in X is the same as the individual J in Y if I has the same essential properties as J, then your definition is circular (to show this is left as an easy exercise ).

So why did God have to create a "Hitler" if the "moral" choices which sparked the Holocaust were part of the essential properties of a "Hitler" ?

BTW, I think that the concept of "essence" is an inherited disease of philosophy, and I'm hoping for a final cure

Regards,
HRG.

hologos

Greetings,

Is this the forum where the blind men are considering what an elephant might be?

Just a few observations to throw into this pool of objective conundrums:

Looking at the disparity between the world population and the sustenance available to maintain this seething brood of physically fit mutating survivors, (hang on--we are going for a 25+ word sentence)one can see why many of us should continue sitting on our "duffs" and contemplating our navels; and then blaming our creator for having made us thus and such.

Hey, guys, that ain't fair--I have to work for
a living. I do not have much time to spend on Mars Hill, but will certainly try to use this opportunity wisely.

"Is God Just with Divine Punishment?" is the question before this astute conclave of revolving, I mean evolving, " homo-nits."

Answer: NO, "indeedy". Not to the Stoics, Epicureans, Agnostics, Atheists, and all other subspecies of unbelievers.

Hey Bubba, the man with the plan made the "football", he owns the football and he made the rules, and he can do as he wills. Such is not without human example: what does it take to get into MENSA? You know--that frat that meets on Mt. Olympus. Is that fair? I can not help it if my IQ has not evolved as fast as that select group.

Let us consider some possible examples of the apparent injustice of "Divinity".


In the "Book of the Beginning", commonly called Genesis, long before the Primordial Ooze, Divinity makes this statement: " In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."

Sorry to have to gloss over this, but if that statement be true, whatever came after that must be perfectly justified--it's his ballgame.

How much warning was given prior to the flood?
How much warning was given before Sodom and Gommorrah were burned to the ground?

Consider this: What if God is? What if you are wrong? This is not a game folks. Our eternal destiny is at stake here.

SELAH

HelenM

Hi hologos

So, rather than defend God's character your choice is to tell the readers here, "He's in charge so shut up and put up!"

I wonder which end of the elephant you were feeling?!

love
Helen

(p.s. I usually sign off that way)

Kenny

HRG,

Obviously, individuals do not come with tags around their necks, but that does not mean that the labels we assign do not have real referents. The individual named “Smith” in world alpha may very well be named “Miller” in world beta, but the “Miller” in beta still refers to the same referent as the “Smith” in alpha. To say that every individual exists in exactly one world, IMHO, is intuitively non-sensical. In fact, to say such a thing destroys the entire point of modal logic which is to talk about what things logically could have been. If I want to talk about what my life could have been like, for example, I have to be able to locate my self in other possible worlds (i.e. I have to have some sort of identity across possible worlds). If not, then discussions about what might have happened to me, (like what would have happened if I had gone to that college instead of this one) become entirely meaningless. But, such discussions do not seem to be meaningless.

An “easy exercise” if you assume that there are no such things as essential properties perhaps. Considering that a number of brilliant philosophers and mathematicians (both past and present) take the notion of essences seriously, I find it implausible that you have discovered some “easy exorcise” to disprove the whole notion that they have all missed.

I don’t know. Nor would I attempt to give an explanation. I’m not God. I do know that Hitler is morally culpable for his actions and has to answer for them, that dying in the arms of his lover is not the final act for him.

Funny, I feel the same way about nominalism.

God Bless,
Kenny

[ March 16, 2002: Message edited by: Kenny ]</p>

jpbrooks

I'm entering this thread rather late. So, I'll just address a few of the points above that were not answered. I hope my comments here are not considered off topic.

Blu,

I agree. It is "behavior" that should be punished by society; not beliefs, even if those beliefs could lead to bad behavior.


Bill Snedden,

This is an excellent point, Bill. But the presuppositionalist may be able to answer it by pointing out that there is simply no higher moral standard, within theism, to which to appeal in determining whether its "divine lawgiver" has the "right" or the authority to determine justice for sentient beings. And since the same objection that you raised against theism's "divine lawgiver" could be raised against the provider of this "Extra-divine" standard, an infinite regress is inevitable.

bd-from-kg,

You are right about the issue raised by Samhain and Rimstalker not being relevant to the topic of this thread.
However, in what forum, other than the "Existence Of God" forum, would a discussion of the issue be appropriate?
I personally have difficulty reconciling the idea that the "Gods" were created to have certain specific psychological effects on people with the idea that they are supposed to be, at basis, irrational. But such considerations seem out of place in any other forum.
This is just a suggestion, (and I realize that forum design changes are handled by the Administrators), but perhaps the S & S forum can be divided up into forums for the physical and social sciences, where the latter division could include topics about the psychology of religion.

[ March 16, 2002: Message edited by: jpbrooks ]</p>

HRG

Just one question.

Yes, within one world.
How do you know that "Miller" in one world is the same as "Smith" in another world? Only if you knew the mapping I was talking about; but perhaps it maps "Miller" into a giant pumpkin ?

Anyway, our difference may be partly, semantic, because I regard the world where you went to a different college as the same as ours, but with a different time evolution.


BTW, if modal logic can be used to resurrect the Ontological Proof, perhaps it should be scrapped.