Flip’s wife was named Eve?
Kidding, just kidding… 
Tom,
Thanks, my 8:24 response came before seeing your 7:47 (yet I remain unsure about disinguishing ‘bondage’ vs. when our ‘ability’ to act ‘freely’ is intact). I do apologize for twice misrepresenting your full thought, since I cited the only words that I saw as germane to my questions about human ability to act “contrary to our understanding” (Like you, I already recognized having rational knowledge of what is best was necessary).
My conclusion is reinforced by your further clarification. I.e. my minor quibble may involve semantics: What does it mean to “act contrary to our understanding” or “knowingly”? You perceive that we do that. And I agree that we often sense that we made a bad choice when we ‘knew’ better, and that Paul seems to describe this experience. I’m just not sure that our ‘understanding’ is either-or, but flawed by degrees. I find even when we think that we grasp such realities, that we may retain unclarity, uncertainty & confusion. Thus, it seems that it’s possible that in situations where we ‘knowingly’ make a destructive choice, at that moment we do not really ‘understand’ or grasp what is best in all its’ ramifications. Perhaps Paul’s conclusion that we need to be freed, and our darkened minds illuminated, implies that our understanding is still inadequate.
I was about to suggest that addicts who fatally overdose may well understand that heroin is deadly, and not what will lead to the best life. Yet in the moment that leads to their last breath, I doubt that they proceeded really knowing what the actual consequences would be. Of course, I see you agree that such foolishness may reveal that I “deceive myself,” and am “too irrational to qualify as a free moral agent.” Yet you appear to assume that such decisions are not representative of human choices which are often freely made. You illustrate with Leary’s reasonably believing it was best to experiment with LSD. But this need not exemplify a freely contrary or even a culpable sinful choice. It appears to me to just illustrate my own impression that we do consistently act in line with our understanding of what is best at the time.
My impression is that (deceptively) the addict really thinks in that moment that the best thing would be relief from his present pain and craving. But it’s less clear to me that this extreme is not paralleled in how messed up our thinking commonly is. Indeed, you affirm that for “all of us” our grasp of what is best is deficient. So may the difference between our choices, and that of the irrationally ‘deceived,’ often not be that different?
All the best to you,
Bob
Thanks, Bob
I think your thoughts on the nature of our choices is quite similar to my own. This particularly resonated with me:
I’m looking forward to Tom’s thoughts on your comments/questions.
No confusion here, Bob. You have just raised an excellent and important question, one that philosophers have debated for centuries. After reading your first paragraph above, moreover, it struck me like the proverbial thunderbolt that my own words in my quick reply to Chris were terribly confusing, so much so that they indirectly confused even me in this sense: I seem to have missed the whole point of your initial response to them. I wish I had read the above post before I wrote my own previous post. But I’m guessing that the two posts passed each other in cyberspace.
Anyway, here is what I wrote in my reply to Chris:
The final sentence in this paragraph shifts unartfully from one topic to another–from a case where one freely succumbs to temptation and acts against one’s own better judgment, as I still think possible, to a case where “the inability to do what we think best” eliminates the power of contrary choice entirely. My explanation (which is no excuse) for why I conflated these two very different cases is that I was focused not on the difference between them, but on combatting the idea that the will is sort of like a homunculus in us that makes our decisions for us.
But I think I now understand what your concern has been all along. You ask: “Why not think there is a form of bondage any time that a person rejects an action that he has reasonably recognized as best?” And for my own part, I cannot even imagine thinking of it in any other way. For if, as I believe, the very condition of ambiguity, ignorance, misperception, and even indeterminism in which we first emerge and begin making choices is already a kind of bondage; and if, as I also believe, we are freest when sin is no longer a psychological possibility for us, then the very existence of that psychological possibility already seems to imply some degree of bondage. In fact, I have consistently argued over the years that a fully informed decision to reject God is logically impossible and that sin would likewise be impossible in a context of full clarity. Not surprisingly, therefore, I agree with most of what you say in your beautifully expressed post of 12:08 p.m. yesterday. I especially (and wholeheartedly) agree with your implied answer to the following question: “So may the difference between our choices, and that of the irrationally ‘deceived,’ often not be that different?” We both agree, I’m sure, that this difference is not nearly as great as some might think, since we are all subject to deception of one kind or another.
Still, there does remain in your most recent post one possible source of disagreement (more like a slightly different take on things) that probably amounts to very little. Whereas your “impression [is] that we do consistently act in line with our understanding of what is best at the time,” mine is that we often act freely against our own better judgment. And I would offer two considerations in support of my own impression here. First, our most reasonable judgments concerning what is best, precisely because they are reasonable, tend to be relatively stable in that they do not typically change in content from second to second as we deliberate about what to do, and second, the process of deliberation itself can sometimes include, I suspect, a good deal of indeterminism and even random chance.
Suppose, by way of illustration, that I have a reason to do A (my intense desire for revenge, let us say) and a reason to refrain from A (my reasonable judgment that doing A would be morally wrong and would likewise harm me in some specifiable way). Suppose further that I go through a brief period of deliberation, wavering this way and that, as the intensity of my desires ebb and flow throughout the process of deciding what to do. If each step in the process of deliberation is fully determined, then the determined weight of the reasons will in effect decide the final outcome for me. But if the process of deliberation is not fully determined–if it includes a good deal of indeterminism and even elements of random chance, as I believe it sometimes does–then in making up my mind I will thereby decide the weight of the reasons. So in that case, it seems, the final outcome could presumably go either way. For consider this. If we can imagine my intense anger and desire for revenge being so strong that it simply overpowers my better judgment in a compulsive way, why can’t we also imagine it lessening in intensity (without disappearing altogether) just to the point where the two options before me are both psychologically possible? That, at any rate, seems to accord with my own introspective data–which by itself, I admit, is hardly a reliable source of evidence.
The issue here is sometimes called the weakness of will problem, which philosophers have debated for centuries. But however that issue is finally resolved, I want to thank you for finally getting it through my thick skull what your real concern here has been all along.
-Tom
Hi Tom,
I was reading your post to Bob and realized there may be some confusion (at least for me) regarding terminology which I hadn’t picked up on before but might be worth clarifying.
You said:
So… my question is what does the “best course of action”*** mean***. My suspicion is that, in your description, this means the “most moral course of action”–given the competing “desire for revenge you mentioned”, which is (I suspect we agree) not in line with most ideas of morality. So, I’ve argued elsewhere that we always decide on the choice that the balance of our desires leads to with our moral intuition ( conscience, or however you wish to describe it) weighing in as one part of our desires. In my scenario, we pick the choice which will satisfy the largest number of our desires and dis-satisfy( ?) the fewest based on both number and strength. If our "moral intuition and its influence is especially strong, then it will frequently out-weigh a desire for pleasure or desire to avoid pain, but it still is just one of many “desires” in the equation.
My perception is that what you are saying above seems to imply that the “best course of action” is the most moral course of action in “our own (fallible) judgment” based on our moral intuition and reason, perhaps? If something like this is close to what you’re saying, perhaps more discussion of our moral intuition, conscience or whatever is necessary.
I hope I’m not being completely out of line here. 
The whole thing can be summed up by asking why it is we sometimes do things we know are wrong. I don’t think it’s merely because our judgment is faulty. That puts the cart before the horse and implies that we really didn’t know the act was wrong when we did it. But we do know that such and such is wrong to do. We “see” that much. But we do it anyway. In short, we are not simply bad reasoners, we are guilty sinners. To say our sin is due to ignorance is to say that we don’t know an act is wrong when we do it.
Tom seems to indicate in his most recent post that the reasons for our acts can be traced back to our strongest desires. Whichever one “wins” will determine our choice. But again, if this were so, we must ultimately arrive at the conclusion that God created rational beings with desires to do evil. And why would he do that?
It seems there is lacking an emphasis on what we actively do. All these things - desires, environment, genetics - are things that happen to us. What I don’t see accounted for is what we do; that is, how we respond and act amidst all these things.
Of course, if one were to admit libertarian syngery…but there I go again! 
Well, perhaps God created rational beings with desires that can be corrupted and result in evil. Imputing the creation of evil desires to the good God we adore is not, I believe, a conclusion we must ultimately come to.
Am I making any sense?
Corrupted by who though Dave? Where do the evil desires come from if the entire universe has what it has because God has made it like that?
I’m all ears, Chris! 
But that is a mystery that noone has yet answered satisfactorily; we’re still asking it thousands of years after Job.
I still think we’re in process, Chris. We are rising from the ranks of the beasts to become creatures made (or being made?) into the image of God. That is where the evil desires come from (in my own little thought world at least. ) They are residual selfishness, inherent in beings who have evolved to put above all else our own personal interests (and secondarily those of our own “tribe”) and the passing on of our genetic material. At some point, the selfish desires of the flesh must give way to the self-sacrificing desires of the spirit. It’s God’s spirit dwelling in us, to will and to do His good pleasure, who causes us to want to obey those desires of the Spirit. So we have this battle, and it is our spirits we want to come out on top, if our goal is to follow Jesus. So often though, we end up succumbing to the desires of the flesh. That is the bondage, I think.
But I’ve said that before here, probably. My point in replying is to say that the evil desires come from the flesh – from our inherited beast nature – and must be dealt with if we are to become the mature sons and daughters of God, representatives of the house of Yahweh, that he intends for us all to become.
It seems to me the desires present in the first innocent rational creature were not in and of themselves evil. It was the acting on or, more accurately, the privileging of those desires that gave rise to evil and all its painful consequences. Even the desire for self is not wicked if it is correctly subordinated. All this requires true libertarian freedom in my view though.
Well imo you’ve done a great job of presenting that view on this thread; I’ve got a much better idea of what LFW is, now., and I thank you for that.
I would agree with much of this Chris, but you seem to imply that two individual with the same desires, environmental influence and genetics could make different choices—one choosing “evil” and the other “good” when presented with the same decision.
My question (if this accurately describes your views) is why does this happen? Why does one individual “privilege” their desires and the other doesn’t? Is there something “better” about the one individual that leads to choosing good? If so, was this something random in their creation? Or, are the choices for good or bad in this scenario, the “privileging” or not of desires just “random”? In neither situation (created difference or randomness of choice) can I see where blame or honor for the choice would apply, but there must be something more to it than I’m describing… 
Hi Steve,
You wrote: “My perception is that what you are saying above seems to imply that the ‘best course of action’ is the most moral course of action in ‘our own (fallible) judgment’ based on our moral intuition and reason, perhaps?”
When I speak of “a reasonable judgment concerning the best course of action” in a given situation, this typically means “the best course of action, all things considered.” So in that sense I am not restricting myself to moral considerations. “All things considered” will include moral considerations, considerations of self-interest, and anything else that the agent in question regards as important. Depending upon the agent and the situation, it might not even include moral considerations. What may have been confusing here is that the example I gave did indeed include moral considerations. But even here I spoke of “a reason to refrain from A (my reasonable judgment that doing A would be morally wrong and would likewise harm me in some specifiable way). So here I was also including a consideration of self-interest.
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to clarify this point.
-Tom
Thanks, Tom.
That was very helpful!
For one, I’m not sure it possible for two different people to have all those things exactly the same. But, even so, I think the only thing that in fact “chooses” evil is the soul - the choosing part, that which determines and is not itself determined (though it may be influenced to the nth.)
It happens because the soul chooses one thing, rather than the other. It seems to me that you’re having difficulty understanding this because you’re assuming determinism is true. You’re assuming that every explanation of a person’s acts can be accounted for by what “happens” to that person (i.e. their desires, genes, environment.) But this leaves unaccounted for the libertarian freedom of the soul to be itself a cause, a non-determined originator of events. To ask what caused the free choice of a over b is to implicitly assume that the act was determined. If, however, the act itself cannot be fully accounted for by everything outside the choice itself, then it is wrong to think that answer can be had by a mere enumeration of things like genes, desires, environment, etc.
Hi Chris:
You wrote: “Tom seems to indicate in his most recent post that the reasons for our acts can be traced back to our strongest desires. Whichever one ‘wins’ will determine our choice.”
Actually Chris, my own view is just the opposite of that. Indeed, my example was intended to illustrate a basically libertarian perspective. I thus wrote: “But if the process of deliberation is not fully determined–if it includes a good deal of indeterminism and even elements of random chance, as I believe it sometimes does–then in making up my mind I will thereby decide * the weight of the reasons. So in that case, it seems, the final outcome could presumably go either way.” My point with such an example, then, was not that the weight the reasons, of necessity, determines my decision; it was instead that the process of making up my mind and coming to decision is precisely what determines the weight of the reasons.
Thanks,
-Tom*
Thanks so much for clarifying my intuition that our differences indeed seem to be largely semantic. We appear to see the functioning of human will very similarly. And I’m reminded that I have long thought your reasoning is brilliant, because it agrees with how I think as well
While you argue (what most of us indeed experience) that “one can freely act against one’s better judgment,” you affirm that we do that amid “a kind of bondage” wherein we lack “full clarity.” You support having such ‘freedom’ by sensing that our “desires” (such as for revenge) could so “lessen in intensity to the point where the two options are both psychologically possible.” And then it appears that we we’d have the ability to choose the option where we can “act freely against our better judgment.” I was a pysch major, but am not sure what “psychological possibility” means (perhaps that our choice is not determined by the weight of our desires and perceptions?). In any event, how often are our desires lessened such that we truly are at “just the point” of such tipping that you describe?
I find that we do need to grow and be held accountable for violating what we recognize during the times we are most reasonable and stable. Yet again my impression is that the moments where I violate those are not mostly explained by an autonomous compass within me that can operate independently of the desires and perceptions that impact me in those moments. Rather, it seems that the realities that we both see of the deception that our lack of full clarity allows, lets our judgment change in that moment to the irrational perception (‘understanding’) that violating what we’ve previously assumed is presently what is best to address our need. And my sense is that when I come to better choose to faithfully act on what I understand is truly good, it is not explained so much by my ‘will’ somehow simply exercising itself in a more virtuous way, but by God’s gracious enablement during my journey, that enables a growth in my ability to learn and grasp the truth with greater clarity.
But I suspect all I’m doing amid the experience that we both recognize is emphasizing a different component of it than you have pointed to here.
-Bob
One more point Steve.
As I believe Dave has pointed out in the past - all of these free choices take place amidst elements that are determined. Although many things do determinately influence me, not all of them determine what my precise choice will be. Of special note also is that my former free choices have themselves a determinate influence on me. No act, therefore, can be totally explained without - to be accurate - an entire explanation of all the past influences and choices I’ve ever made. But again, such a “total history” would not itself be a sufficient explanation of any act, it would need to include the present free choice. Such, I believe, is the synergy always going on between man and God. Nothing that “happens” in the universe can ultimately be explained by appealing to either only God or only man. Of course God does do certain things alone - like give us grace - and man responds himself alone, but the “product”, if you will, is always a combination of both. Both God and Man’s acts are “blended” as best as can be at the moment, given how the creation’s freedom is being expressed.
CS Lewis has a beautiful line in letters to Malcolm, talking about the “two way junction” between created being and creating being. “Which drop comes together to form the rain streak on the window pane” he asks. Or again, St. Paul captures the paradox perfectly: work out your own salvation in fear and trembling – for it is God who works in you.
If we suppose that God has created the universe in order to “help it” become ITSELF perfect – that is, by it growing and coming into and eventually being Godlike – then the entire God-universe relation is such that he is always acting as perfectly as he can, constantly influencing the best way he can. But this influence is such that it cannot destroy the choosing ability because that would undermine the very goal God set for himself. The acts of creation would then be really God doing such and such. I’m not even sure if the “creature” could properly be said to exist or be distinct from God, if such occurred.
Thanks Chris, I understand better now. The choice itself is undetermined (and perhaps even random.) So, would you agree then that though we may hate the bad choices and applaud the good choices, there still seems no room for blame or honor in this?
I do think I can agree with you and Tom that there is at least some indeterminism in the process of making a choice, especially where the weight of desires for or against a course of action are closely balanced.
Edit: Just saw your post above…