Bob: “Free will” remains a myterious connundrum to me. Both classic alternatives seem to retain difficulties.
Tom: There’s mystery all around, yes! Libertarians don’t have an airtight system. We have ‘issues’ to answer which (as far as I can tell) even the best minds have at best only made plausible. Certainly nothing obviously convincing. In the end I think LFW is a bit less mysterious, or is a bit more tolerable I’d say, than the alternatives.
Here’s an interesting piece by van Inwagen (a libertarian). I enjoy his arguments for LFW but I also enjoy the honest way he admits his limitations and doubts. ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/dfwvanInwagen1.htm
Bob: You agree “there are no rational reasons to reject” truth, yet say “rational grounds” to do precisely that must be provided.
Tom: I mean if all the truth be told, that is, if we were in possession of absolute certainty regarding the truth, we couldn’t rationally misrelate to it. Rational choice is a function (in part) of reason, and that means the contents of one’s reason, what one knows, or believes one knows, or thinks is plausible, have to be less than omniscient if one is to make wrong choices.
Take God as an extreme example on the positive side. God is omniscient. He knows all truths, perceives all reality infallibly, perfectly. God (I’ll claim) is impeccable, or incapable of rationally choosing to misrelate (or to do evil). How is that so? For me God’s moral perfection is just a function of an infallible knowledge/perception. Consequently, to be able to rationally choose what is evil, one would have to be less than omniscient, i.e., one would have to have room, cognitive wiggle room, to defend to one’s self some reason for which one chooses.
Bob: But then one can say, I embrace (an actually incorrect) belief, because I seem to be able to see good grounds to warrant it. Yet this is what we’d ordinarily consider: not seeing the valid “rational reasons,” but remaining deceived about “all the truth” which you insist can’t “be told” anyway. And instead of agreeing that they met your criterion of being ‘sufficiently’ informed, we’d ordinarly characterize them as insufficiently informed.
Tom: Sufficient for what? That’s the question. If moral development requires a certain freedom to self-determine (going with that intuition for the moment), the knowledge levels would have to be sufficient for such free agency, not sufficient to preclude such agency. We’d have to know enough to rationally choose between right and wrong, not to preclude our doing the wrong and guarantee our doing the right. But if the purpose is to preclude the possibility of choosing wrongly, then what would count as sufficient knowledge would be more. One would have to be incapable of construing life in any possible terms that would make choosing wrongly rational (as Eve does, for example). So that’s why I say that if we’re to be libertarianly free—free to rationally and responsibly determine ourselves with respect to a good that God commands—our knowledge and perceptions have to be sufficient for both alternative choices.
So, in order to act on the belief that the fruit will satisfy them in ways the Serpent asks Eve to suppose God has kept hidden from them, Eve had to have less than absolute certitude regarding God’s word. She has to be capable of holding the belief in question (namely, that God’s hidding something and so is not entirely trustworthy). And that’s essentially what she did: she ‘doubted’ God. How could she do that unless her knowledge and perceptions of reality permitted such doubting? She ‘considered’ the Serpent’s words and related his offer to God’s words, and the natural appeal of the fruit played its part, and so she doubted God. Of course, in order to hold her accountable for choosing wrongly we have to admit that her knowledge was sufficient to ground the “ought” of trusting God and the “ought not” of giving into the Serpent. My point is, she had ‘room’ to do this, and she only had room to do it because of ‘epistemic distance’, that is, she had less than absolute certitude regarding God’s word. She was capable of defending the wrong choice to herself on some minimal level sufficient to render her ‘rational’ and thus “owned” by her (as opposed to being merely a victim).
Bob: For this would seem to represent the kind of ‘blindness’ or ‘delusion’ that the Bible wants (ultimately) to get rid of, rather than to justify it as vital to maintain.
Tom: We eventually mature into being compatibilistically free with respect to good and evil. That is, we become solidified in the good (similar to God). But as finite, created beings we can’t start there. We’re not self-sufficient beings who exist necessarily or possess our characters necessarily. We have to ‘become’ what God intends. So in my view, LFW is only necessary because of this. Over time as our characters solidify we become increasingly less free with respect to some behaviors. Mother Teresa may have been capable of abusing the poor for her own benefit at some point when she was a young person. That seems reasonable. But then in later years she ‘became’ quite incapable of such actions. Her choices over time shaped her character, then her character shaped her choices. Compatibilism is, I agree, a higher form of freedom. The problem is our moral development toward such fullness of being requires (libertarians think) the free participation of the person. We have to ‘become’ compatibilistically free, but what are we in the meantime?
Bob: You say Eve has to spin, or ‘fabricate’ a reason to eat. I’d say the reasons she gave seemed to be right in front of her face. To her (although we know it was deceptive) it appeared eating would bring deep good. So then, it seems to me that what she needs is (not maintaining a “rational basis” to continue to be able to err, but) enough experience and consequences so that the true nature of reality acutally does become very “bright” and increasingly unmistakeable.
Tom: Yes! You’re describing epistemic distance. By “spin” I just meant what you describe. She “saw that the fruit was good for…etc.” and ate. My point is that in order for her to have rationally and responsibly doubted God, SOME basis for doubting has to offer itself. And that’s what the Serpent did. And you’re right too when you say that what she needs in order to avoid sinning is to perceive the truth about the nature of her reality. Moral development and sanctification proceed on precisely this basis—we progressively perceive and experience the truth of things (God’s love, God as the ground of our being, the experience of God as the goal of our being, God as the summum bonum the highest good any created thing can aspire to, etc.). Over time we become more settled in this perspective and it defines and shapes our identity. And as I’m sure you agree, it is one’s identity (or lack of it) which in turn motivates choice.
This kind of development requires us (or so libertarians think) to freely resolve ourselves relative to the options. Increasingly settled accurate perceptions of reality are the road to moral development. The more you choose rightly, the more accurately you perceive and the more settled those perceptions become. But if God were to flood the mind with truth from the get-go, we’d essentially be compatibilistically free (unable to choose wrongly) and so unable to ‘develop’ morally.
I think we ought to offer all the reasons we can to people for believing and loving God, for surely whatever reasons an unglorified mind CAN perceive are fair game. That is, nothing an unglorified mind can perceive (through rational thought and debate, through meditating, through the work of the Spirit and the image of God in us) will close the epistemic distance to zero. You and I can offer good reasons for why someone should believe, but we cannot close the cognitive gap to absolute zero and download absolute certitude into their minds and so PRECLUDE the possibility of unbelief. That would be essentially to make the choice for them. That’s not a problem for determinists (it IS determinism), but we libertarians believe that God’s purposes can’t be achieved that way.
Bob: By contrast you say Jesus was not free in the libertarian sense. Does that then mean that by definition, he is the only one who is not ‘rational’ or ‘responsible’?
Tom: Well, Mother Teresa’s incapacity to abuse the poor and needy was ‘rational’ even though compatibilistic because she freely choose her way via moral development into such a state. It wasn’t determined for her. So compatibilistic love can be rational for finite creatures if it’s the result of a developed and responsible journey from LFW to compatibilism. Jesus, I think, is different. He was impeccable because for me there’s only ONE personal subject determining the choices of Jesus, that of the eternal Logos, the Son of God. And I take the divine persons to be impeccable (unable to sin).
Bob: If seeing the actual truth works for him, should we not see that the ideal for us would be to grow toward the place where we too recognize the truth, and then no longer ‘enjoy’ such libertarian choices?
Tom: Absolutely! That’s all I’m saying. But we have to “grow toward” no longer needing LFW. Totally agree.
Bob: You acknowledge only some are ‘constrained’ by a “sufficiently Informed” basis, while others die without it. I.e. even as you define it, you don’t think God provides the same opportunity of ‘choice’ to all?
Tom: Infants and the mentally handicapped who die would count as insufficiently informed. I’m open as to whether the unevangelized are insufficiently informed. Paul seems to think that the light of fully developed reason and conscience are enough to render folks ‘responsible’ on some level (Rm 1-3). But where persons leave this world insufficiently informed to resolve themselves relative to God’s commands and the offer of the gospel, I have to suppose that God will make this up to them post-mortem.
Bob: Your sense (and mine) that post-mortem epistemic distance may be more “optimal” seems like a recognition that the human situation cries out for the truth to be more obvious than what we get disciplined for as we stumble over it. Why insist that what is “optimal” would be ruinous to real freedom?
Tom: I love this board! Wish I could spend more time here!
I don’t think LFW is the truest, realist form of human freedom. I think it’s only necessary for the sort of development that defines how human beings become what they’re intended to be—fully realized and at home with God in Christ. I think ‘real’ freedom, the freedom that God intends our existence should be forever characterized by, is compatibilism! And about post-mortem optimizing, I don’t think God collapses epistemic distance to zero. That would equate to his just determining our choices. So some room is left creatures to have to ‘trust’ God in the afterlife.
Tom
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I’ve got a lot to catch up on in this thread first, though…