Philip Osborne

I would be interested to see how the best formulations of the free will defense require libertarian free will.

I'm not saying that the best versions of the free will defense require liberatarian free will. For instance, Alexander Pruss has developed a version of the free will defense that is consistent with compatibalism. However, most versions of this argument which come intuitively to most theists require it. For instance, it seems on the surface to be true that if compatibalism were true, then God's giving everyone a moral character which is such that they cannot make immoral judgements is consistent with everyone acting freely, so freedom does not require the possibility of doing evil actions. Since God is not required to allow everyone to do evil in order for them to have free will, giving man free will does not justify allowing them to have the possibility of taking an evil action. I'm not saying this is true, but the surface plausibility of it would seem to be an obstacle to the widespread acceptance of compatibalism among theists.

-Philip

Kenny

I think the way around this is to appeal to a Platonic view of essences in which the essence of an individual precedes its instantiation by virtue of its existing eternally as part of the foreknowledge of God and then to maintain that the character of a personal agent at any given point in time, without undue tampering with that agent’s free choices, is a function of that agent’s essence and life circumstances so that the range of characters any particular personal agent might have is constrained by that agent’s essence. If such were the case, then God would not be able to assign just any character arbitrarily to a particular personal agent that He wishes to instantiate, but would be somewhat constrained by His foreknowledge in the range of possible characters He could instantiate for that agent. Thus, for certain possible personal agents, those that suffer from transworld depravity, it may be impossible for God to instantiate them without having those agents making at least one evil choice in every possible set of life circumstances.

God Bless,
Kenny

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Philip Osborne :

"For instance, it seems on the surface to be true that if compatibalism were true, then God's giving everyone a moral character which is such that they cannot make immoral judgements is consistent with everyone acting freely, so freedom does not require the possibility of doing evil actions."

I see. I believe this is the best way to make the case, but God's altering our moral character still may seem in some way to be a violation of free will. In my opinion, the theist would do well to abandon both the free will defense and libertarian free will. What do you see to be the major problems with the free will defense, if any?

Philip Osborne

The biggest problem with the free will defense is the traditional one: What is so good about moral freedom? For instance, it is said that to have free will, one must be capable of doing evil. Since free will is so valuable, it is justified to grant it to creatures even though it means they will most likely commit at least some evil acts. But God is said to be incapable of evil, and presumably, God is not lacking in any power or virtue. It seems that either He lacks free will, which violates the thesis of His perfection, or free will does not require the ability to do evil, in which case, there is no reason to allow that humans have the capability to do evil.

Alexander R. Pruss attempts to solve this problem in "A New Free Will Defense," based on the thesis that all contingent beings in the actual world are created beings (based on traditional theistic doctrine). If a human being, for instance, is incapable of doing wrong, there is a plausible sense in which it is not he who is responsible but the antecedent causal factors which are responsible for making his nature the way it is. So according to this argument, our human would not truly be responsible for his actions. On the other hand, there are no causal factors antecedent to God (indeed, there cannot be any such factors), so He takes the credit for His inability to do evil. Note however, that this argument must suppose that natures cannot be causes in the relevant sense. For if they are, then the opponent of this argument could say that it is God's nature responsible, rather than God Himself. It seems to me anyway, that Morriston's critique of divine simplicity (the doctrine that God is identical with His nature) to make that a viable solution. Since we are referring to antecedent causal factors rather than natures being responsible for an inability to do evil, however, this argument seems to sidestep Morriston's other criticisms.

One problem that could be raised with this argument is that it doesn't seem to cohere with compatibalism. According to compatibalism, for me to be responsible for an action, it must be the result of the combination of circumstances I am in and my character. Compatibalism does not place any import on what forces are responsible for the nature of that character; it only requires that the person's character be one of the causes that brought the agent's act about. But Pruss' argument does place import on the antecedent causal factors, and so there seems to be a contradiction between the two positions.

-Philip

mattbballman

Tom,

This is in response to your original post, which started the thread.

First, I deny the Leibnizian account that there exists a best possible world (a feature you dispense with right away). I don't hold this view since no matter how great a world we can conceive of, we can always imagine one more member of the population being added. This leads to an infinite regression. Secondly, as other philosophers have pointed out, this objection confuses metaphysical necessity with logical necessity. The necessity envisaged (e.g., God must create the "best possible world") is contingent on God's nature as an all-good being. If God were not all-good, then this necessity to create the "best possible world" vanishes. Hence, we are dealing with the metaphysical necessity of God's nature, not the logical necessity that God must create some certain state of affairs. Thirdly, the only thing required of a maximally perfect being is that, on balance, there exists more good in the world than evil. Any proper subset of possible worlds contains such worlds. Fourthly, God is not obligated to create anything at all and is certainly not obligated to even create an animated world (i.e. a world where no creatures exist) since inanimate worlds can contain greatness as well (greatness that exceeds the greatness of animate worlds). As Christian philosopher at Notre Dame University Thomas V. Morris points out in his marvelous book Anselmnian Explorations that creation is not a property of God. Instead, creation is a relationship to God such that sans creation nothing exists apart from God and at creation God is now related to it. Since the presence or lack of a relationship to creation in no wise compromises the nature of God, there is no necessity to create at all much less create a "best possible world." Therefore, God's libertarian free will can rightly be sustained by the classical theist.

matt

mattbballman

Dear Phillip,

(i) I have my own philosophy on this subject that I have not found others suggesting (or making it known). God's inability to perform evil is not a result of a logical disposition but, rather, the result of other attributes working in conjunction with His omnipotence. So, what keeps God from doing evil is not a logical constraint on His omnipotence but a metaphysical constraint by a conjoined attribute of being all-good. Hence, the illustration used in another post: Suppose there exists an omnipotent poison with respect to its ability to kill any living being. However, it curiously has another attribute: It immediately evaporates into an inert gas upon ingestion by any being. This latter attribute does not entail that the first attribute is no longer present since, logically, it can still kill any living being. But the attribute of quick evaporation prevents the poison from ever carrying out its mission. Similarly, logically prior to God's goodness, God can logically perform evil. However, God's attribute of being all-good forever perturbs Him from being able to carry that out. So the limitation on God is via another metaphysical presence in God's ontology, not a deficit in his libertarian freedom.

(ii) I do not know anything about Alexander Pruss's presentation of the Free Will Defense, but I do not disagree with what was noted. Where I think you err in your review, however, is that you make the dichotomy between "God's nature" and "God." I am not sure if there is warrant for this. In this paradigm it should be right to say, "I didn't steal the money, my nature did!" Clearly an awkward saying. But if by "nature" you mean "causes antecedent to the being" then it begs the question for I would consider such antecedent causes to be causes of the being's nature (e.g., a rough childhood makes the thief prone to theft), not the nature itself. A thief's nature may be to steal, but I would not say that stealing is the antecedent cause of the thief. Instead, the antecedent cause would be something like a rough childhood. It makes more sense to me to suppose that one's nature is who that being is, but I could be wrong.

matt

Philip Osborne

Sorry I haven't gotten around to responding in a while...

I do not know anything about Alexander Pruss's presentation of the Free Will Defense, but I do not disagree with what was noted. Where I think you err in your review, however, is that you make the dichotomy between "God's nature" and "God." I am not sure if there is warrant for...

There are two understandings of nature that I am aware of. Both are in terms of essences. The first would be the sense that Kenny mentioned, in which essences pre-exist their instantiation by virtue of them necessarily existing as Platonic entities (or thoughts in the mind of God, if you prefer). On this construal, if God were identical to His nature, He would pre-exist His own instantiation; this doesn't seem to make any sense. The other sense of nature I know of is in terms of the actual instantiation of that essence. That is, the nature of being X consists of the instantiation of all the properties of X which are essential. It seems on the surface plausible to suppose that a nature itself would be a property; this would not be directly inferred from the fact that it consists of a collection of properties, but how else could we classify it? Under this interpretation, saying God is identical to His nature seems to lead to the consequence Alvin Plantinga warned of, that God is a property (or a set of properties). Neither of these conclusions seem desirable.

-Philip

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by mattbballman :

"Hence, we are dealing with the metaphysical necessity of God's nature, not the logical necessity that God must create some certain state of affairs."

Metaphysical necessity constrains libertarian free will, I'd say.

"Thirdly, the only thing required of a maximally perfect being is that, on balance, there exists more good in the world than evil."

Maximal perfection means there's no possible (per se) more perfect being, no better being. There must be no possible universe with more good than the current universe. Yet if there is an infinity of possible universes, there's always a possible universe with more good. So I don't see how you can think the only thing required for maximal perfection is a balance of goodness.

"Since the presence or lack of a relationship to creation in no wise compromises the nature of God, there is no necessity to create at all much less create a 'best possible world.'"

Complete lack of a universe is a possible world, but there must be better possible worlds, and this prevents the possibility of maximal perfection. So of course God isn't obligated to create, unless creation is better than no universe. I don't see how this engages the main argument in the least, if you've argued that there is no best possible world.

mattbballman

phillip,

I agree more with your second analysis of "nature" that you brought up. The first is unacceptable. The second, though crude, may be sufficient. And the best way to avoid controversy is to not think of God as only a collection of properties but, rather, as a being who necessarily has those properties. So, it is not "God = p1, p2, . . . pn" but "God = X(p1), X(p2), . . . X(pn)" where X refers to an identity. Maybe the confusion surrounds what one means by "God's nature." I take it to mean who God is, but it might also refer to a set of properties God has. Hmm. I might have to think about this in more detail. But I am not sure if "God" cannot also be construed of as a property. Think of the _expression "Jesus is God." This would be meaningless if "God" did not have the connotation of predication. Perhaps you could point me to Plantinga's information on the subject, I would be interested in checking that out.

matt

Wiploc

I don't see the conflict. We call him free because he *can* be less than perfect; and we call him perfect because he chooses not to.

crc