The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Libertarian Freewill and the Existence of God

Theology Philosophical
#31

O.K I’m sorry. I am of no use to you. I hope you find the answers you’re looking for, though I doubt you’ll find them on an internet forum.

Why the snarkiness? You seem to have adopted an adversarial tone in this post - is this how you want our discussion to progress? I will try my best.

I thought I had. Why the snarkiness?

Is that a ‘yes’ you think probabilistic causal relations are possibe, or a ‘no’? I’ll take it as a ‘no’. Based on your choice of questions you’ve gone with: A4) No, because all causal relations are deterministic.

Quantum theory *would *be the way I view probabilistic causal relations as possible - I can see no other way. Note, this regards probabilisitc relations - I firmly hold to the choice of agents which is also non-deterministic but not proabilisitic.

I mostly still think they made choices as they lived, they just ascribed them to God’s will/foreknowledge. Some might have believed that God was making choices through them in time, but I suspect that view is rare. Eitherway, I still stick with ‘universal’ giving the vanishing rarity of other viewpoints.

The legal framework of the Allies has nothing to do with Hitler’s moral guilt. If Hitler was totally insane in the sense that he had no informed free choices at all, or if at no time he had made free choices that had contributed significantly towards his insanity, then he would not be guilty of sin. I have no idea as to what extent psycopaths are guilty of sin - I leave that kind of judgement to God. But I hold that someone with profound mental difficulties would be incapable of making an informed and free choice, things I see as prerequisites for true moral culpability.

So ethically suspect action X prevents clearly ethically wrong action Y. If X was suspect or wrong then no, the courts wouldn’t be obligated to impose it. But lets say, for the sake of argument, that morally neutral action X prevents Y - in that case, yes, human governments would be under an obligation to impose that. I should say that there is no ‘real’ counterpart to this thought experiment, and that even if I choose not to commit murder because of fear, I am still acting in a morally reprehensible manner by wanting to and thinking about it.

This doesn’t follow. You’ve moved from prevention (a pragmatic consideration) to moral accountability. I can implement X to prevent an action regardless of morality. If I had absolutely *no choice *in thinking about murder, desiring it and acting upon that thought, then God *would not *hold me morally accountable for that. Without freedom there can be no fair judgement.

So God uses X (which is what exctly - the entire life history of the universe and all its events?) to slowly, painfully create characters which will end up as Y. Couldn’t God have chosen an alternative method? If there was any other less horrific method or universe that would have achieved this end then God is a moral monster - for choosing the way of more suffering for no good reason. Thus one is committed to saying that this is the best of all possible worlds.

How does that work for animals, foetuses, babies and the profoundly handicapped? How is God molding them? How is that the best of all possible worlds? How is God not a monster?

I’m not sure that I would hold a dog morally culpable for any act, and I certainly wouldn’t hold it morally guilty for doing something like that prior to being informed and trained otherwise. Are you comparing an informed, normal adult’s moral choices as equivalent to an untrained dog? Are you saying that humans have no moral accountability? How does this square with the universal sense of objective moral values and the strong biblical emphasis upon moral accountability and judgement (sin and righteousness)?

I’m not convinced that this makes sense. Being X has no freedom to make any choices - all his thoughts and actions are determined. In what sense could he be considered a saint or monster? In what sense does he learn? He is robot; a puppet; a zombie. It wouldn’t be like a person learning the difference between right and wrong and then making better and more informed choices and building a more virtuous character under the guidance of a wise teacher - it’d be like an engineer trying to get his robot to do exactly what he wanted through adjusting the mechanics. This view of humanity is not only degrading, it has nothing to do with morality.

So are you saying that God is not free and yet is still perfect? Could you explain that view as it seems counter-intuitive.

That, to my mind, is no explanation at all.

This is the Calvinist line of predetermined means for predetermined ends. But why does God have to use those means? Couldn’t He have chosen other means? And aren’t these means misleading in that they seem to emphasise the importance of freedom? And how do you deal with those biblical passages that show God changing His mind or plans in response to human prayer, action, repentance, argument etc?

Why the snarkiness?

O.K - so are you saying that what I pray now would have already been taken into account in the past because God knew that I would pray X now and so would have adjusted things in the past?

So in what way would my prayers for say the prevention of the holocaust have any effect? Are you saying that God knew that I wouldn’t pray for that now? But I just did - so why isn’t God honouring that prayer?

What explanation is there for why God doesn’t answer any prayer regardig the past that is as simple and convincing as that God doesn’t alter the past? Can you give me one example of where a prayer now has made something in the past happen? If I pray now for something I already know to have happened should I take credit for being instrumental in bringing about a state of affairs that I already know to have happened? This way madness lies …

Are you saying the ends always justify the means? Because God seems to use some pretty foul means - just consider the number of babies who have died in massive suffering. God not only knew that would happen, but He instanstiated a deterministic universe where this was guaranteed to happen (thus He willed for it to happen). That seems a remarkably bad plan! Couldn’t God have created a better world that still resulted in an end of incomparable good? If I can think of a way - freewill + universalism, how come God couldn’t?

You seem to know quite well, judging by your previous answers, but don’t like the implications. If God has no freedom then 1) He is not really God as He is not maximally pefect (I can imagine a better being easily), 2) Everything follows from God’s uncaused existence as matter of course - everything, including God, is just a cosmic puppet show. This a bleak view of the universe. 3) It goes against that common-sense intuition and logic you otherwise prefer - it is clear that situation X could have been slightly different - it is clear that X might have been Y - contingency is everywhere in the universe. Are you really wanting to say that everything had to be exactly the way it was and that nothing could ever have been even slightly different and that there is no freedom for any being now or ever in eternity?

Why the snarkiness?

But that isn’t the same as experiential knowledge, as far as I can see. He doesn’t know what it is for Godself to experience novelty and pleasant suprises - in the same way that He doesn’t know what it is for Godself to commit sin. I can imagine that God is devoid of some evil, but why should He deny Himself some good?

Why? If God knew exactly the end point (universalism?) when He created the universe, why couldn’t God create the end point - exactly what has been gained by running through a puppet show jam-packed full of gratuitous suffering and misery just to arrive at a point He could have got to by a click of His fingers? Without positing freedom or without utilising the free will defense theodicy I can see no reason at all why God couldn’t just make happy puppets at the start - why make His puppets suffer first? This ‘God’ is a monster and not worthy of worship.

I’ve stubbed my toe. It would have been better if I hadn’t.

If He had no freedom He couldn’t. If He had freedom then He would have to instantiate the best of all possible worlds to keep in accordance with His character - which makes His freedom pointless and means that neither God nor us have true libertarian freedom, an you have the massive problem of evil and suffering. Or you say that there was more than one equally good possible world - but then you get the donkey scenario and the problem of God making an impossible arbitrary choice but knowing the outcome of such a choice - making it not arbitrary.

Or you say, with me, that God creates the best universe (in keeping with His character) but doesn’t know the future and that this good/best universe is one which has a mixture of deterministic and probilisitc laws (this far will your waves go and no further) and, most importantly, truely free willed creatures who’s choices God does not know, predetermine or dictate. Seems the best way to go! :slight_smile:

Ok

Why the snarkiness?

No; we use the methods of reason to discover that our common-sense has its limitations and that reality doesn’t confrom perfectly to our sense of logic. We then use the methods of reason to re-build a better logic and a better understanding of the universe rather than sticking to a form of logic that might be flawed.

Why the snarkiness?

#32

Not if the only way finite creatures can learn is thru experience.

Maybe He’s using them to mold us (and maybe in some future age their handicaps will be removed, and He’l get around to molding them.)

And what would you call rubbing a dog’s nose in the mess he made on the carpet?

He might not be “morally culpable” in the sense you’re using the words, but there’s certainly a sense in which he’s held accountable by his trainer in the training process (and oddly enough, most dogs seem to understand this and learn from their mistakes, almost as if they were “morally culpable.”)

Maybe that practical learning is the only real purpose of moral culpability.

By what he does.

In the same sense a house broken dog learns not to soil the carpet.

No.

He’s a work in progress.

At the start he a selfish, destructive monster, and when finished he thinks of the effects his actions will have on others.

That sounds a lot like human pride (and I believe pride is considered one of the seven deadly sins.)

The ultra-Calvinist universalists I’ve known always said that it was the pride of wanting to take some credit for their own salvation that made most people resist the idea of predestination (and most of universalists I’ve known have been ultra-Calvinists.)

Those same ultra-Calvinists would say that you’d never know it was better not to stub your toe, if you’d never stubbed your toe, and maybe they’re right.

No.

I would say that God is free of ignorance, fear, hatred and irrationality.

It doesn’t seem counter intuitive to me at all.

Heinrick Himmler was largely responsible for the Nazi death camps, yet he only inspected one, and he couldn’t stop vomiting.

For most of his mortal life, he was able to close his eyes to the horrors of what he did.

God is perfect because His eyes are perfectly open to all that He does.

Again, not if experience is the only way finite creatures can learn.

I don’t know.

But wasn’t the modern state of Israel created by the U.N. in the aftermath of the holocaust (even though the U.N. seems to be doing all it can to uncreate it now)?

Maybe God did take your prayers regarding the holocaust into consideration, but also took other things to take into consideration.

Theologians generally view those passages as anthropomorphic.

Because you don’t really seem to be addressing the questions I’m asking.

In answer to you question about animals, foetuses, babies and the profoundly handicapped, I said that maybe God’s “using them to mold us (and maybe in some future age their handicaps will be removed, and He’l get around to molding them),” but that leaves the question of “why us now, and them later”?

My question is whether contingency (things that obviously need not be as they are) is evidence against the existence of a rational, personal God?

I quoted (Acts 27:21-24, 30-31.)
**
But after long abstinence Paul stood forth in the midst of them, and said, Sirs, ye should have hearkened unto me, and not have loosed from Crete, and to have gained this harm and loss. And now I exhort you to be of good cheer: for there shall be no loss of any man’s life among you, but of the ship. For there stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I am, and whom I serve, Saying, Fear not, Paul; thou must be brought before Caesar: and, lo, God hath given thee all them that sail with thee. And as the shipmen were about to flee out of the ship, when they had let down the boat into the sea, under colour as though they would have cast anchors out of the foreship, Paul said to the centurion and to the soldiers, Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved. Then the soldiers cut off the ropes of the boat, and let her fall off.**

And I have no problem with the Calvinist understanding that it was foreordained that no life would be lost with all hands on board the ship.

What I have a problem with questions like why would it be foreordained that they drop four anchors (verse 29.)

If everything would have turned out the same if they had dropped two or five anchors, why four?

A better example would probably be if a ten, or nine, or eight, or five, or seven planet solar system would have served God’s purpose just as well as a 9 (or eight) planet solar system–what reason (or reasons) could a timeless God (who sees all the possibilities at once, whose thoughts don’t proceed in a linear sequence, and who couldn’t just pick the “first” model that came to mind) have for choosing to create this solar system?

That’s the question I’d like some thoughts on (and you keep wanting to talk about quantum physics, or Calvinism vs. Arminianism.)

You seem to have a good mind, and I assume you’re not laboring under the burdens I am, so could you please give me your thoughts?

I see you’ve read “Candide,” by Voltaire.

So did I, in Philosophy 101-where the Professor told us we wouldn’t get any answers, but would be able to ask better questions.

I never liked the book, and I didn’t think it was particularly well written, but I would like help (from anyone) with the questions I’m asking.

As food for thought:

I don’t find quantum theory all that helpful, and I don’t really get what terms like “self-actualizing” are supposed to mean, but the idea of God limiting Himself makes some sense to me.

What I don’t understand is how God’s limiting (or withdrawing) Himself would result in the unexpected happening, as opposed to nothing happening?

Doesn’t it stand to reason that without God, there’s no substance, no being, no movement, no action, nothing?

#33

Philopsophy is always quite combative I guess - and it’s often hard to agree on the scope of the topic under discussion (especially with people who come from different traditions of philosophy/theology or whatever). But take the white heat out of it at Christmas :laughing: (I think it virtuous to have a CHristmas truce and play football in No Man’s Land together - as it were - whenever and wherever possible :slight_smile: ).

So my suggestion is to save the ‘philosophising with a canon’ for the New Year. Keep things a bit more tentative and exploratory for now

Blessings

Dick :slight_smile:

#34

I appreciate your attempt at peacemaking, Sobornost :slight_smile:
I will try to put away my canon …

Have a good new year.

#35

I am not a determinist, Michael, as it leads to too many problems. Without freewill I cannot see how one can have true morality or judgement. Without freewill I cannot see how God can be anything but a monster when He wills suffering on such a huge scale and without consent and without reasnoble justification. Without freewill I cannot understand the bible or Christ. Without freewill I cannot understand the origin or power of evil. I don’t want a tyrannical God; I don’t want to be a puppet; I don’t want suffering of innocent children to make me a better person or mould my character. I don’t my prayers and actions made almost irrelevant. I reject hyper-calvinism and determinism with a passion - they are, to my mind, abhorrent doctrines that only buy a small degree of peace of mind at too high a price. Determinism doesn’t seem to match the best philosophy, theology or science, nor does it match the overwhelmingly convincing argument of my own subjective experience of my own free will. There is no philosophical argument that I can even concieve of that will persuade me that my experience of freedom is an illusion more than my experience of freewill will convince me that it is real.

That’s a very big if. What exactly am I learning by watching children die?

That seems a somewhat grotesque view. How does the suffering of an animal that existed long before any humans were there to even observe it, let alone learn from it, benefit anyone? I’m sure you know of all the arguments against a Hick-style vale of soul making theodicy - I won’t reherse them here. I reject any notion that babies die to make me a better person.

I’d call it irrelevant in a discussion concerning morality. Would you consider training a learning-computer / robot moral education? Is the robot’s character being formed? Morality presupposes moral awareness and informed decision making. I am not a dog.

In other words, he’s not morally culpable. He might be trainable, I might be able to produce some Pavlovian automated behaviour in him, but he’s not acting morally.

Learning to fear a beating or covet a reward is not moral development.

Even though they had no choice about what they did? If behaviour alone is enough to determine one’s virtue then a robot or zombie could be supremely morally virtous. And a puppet controlled and willed by God from before the creation of the universe to sin is not a sinner - it is a victim of a capricious and cruel tyrant.

Like an unfinished machine. I reject such a low view of beings made in the image of God. I see people: other beings with value and dignity and moral awareness and worthy of my respect and sympathy. I don’t see the outworking of God’s will expressed in freedomless puppets.

There is no ‘he’ - there is only God working through Him. There is only a schizoid God - God sinning then judging Himself.

No, it sounds a lot like the cry of human dignity and freedom in the face of unwanted and unrequested dictatorial control by someone who’s only right to be worshipped or loved seems based on His power.

But He can’t make choices - and His freedom from negative emotions like those you listed is not meritorious as He could not be otherwise. Can He love? Can He laugh? Can He sing? He sounds like a stone more than a person.

We have very different intuitions.

I’d rather judge a person’s worth by their goodness of character demonstrated in good deeds.

Explain to me how it is that creatures made my a God who decides their limits, in a world where God designs the laws of nature, could not have been made differently by an omnipotent being. Why not just make us think we had those experiences - why do they have to be real? Why not just make us in the matrix - where all the suffering is really only acting by computer generated figures. Why does anyone ever have to really suffer at all? Would not make illusory pain and pretend suffering - we’d never know? This way lies solipsism of the most infantile variety …

A cop-out. God never answers any prayers regarding what we know happened in the past, does He? Why? What possible reason could you provide that is as strong or as convincing as the more obvious one that God doesn’t change the past?

How convienient for their theory. That smacks of the worst kind of eisegesis. If the biblical writers were using the literary technique of anthropomorphism in order to reveal something to us that couldn’t be revealed by plain speech, what is it that their anthropomorphism is revealing? Moses talks to God, God changes His mind. What is the anthropomorphism elucidating in that verse? If the biblical writers wanted to show us that God changes His mind, could they really have made it much clearer? I sense that if one’s Calvinism is firmly in place then one can make any passage mean the opposite of what it appears to mean.

Really? In all my long posts on this thread do you not consider that I have at least tried my best to answer, sympathetically and clearly, your many difficult queries? You are wrong.

No, it isn’t. It’s evidence that determinism is wrongheaded. It’s evidence that hyper-Calvinism is wrong. It is evidence that God has limited Himself. It’s evidence that there is freedom and possibly even randomness in the universe, and it might be evidence that there’s a devil.

The obvious answer is that some things (at least) aren’t foreordained. This is the right way to go.

sigh I keep wanting to … ??? I respond to you; you have been directing our little chat. And if the answer to your question should involve those things …?

Not in the way you mean. God is the first cause - the rest can follow without His foreknowledge or direct interference.

I think I’m going to leave this discussion - it is pointless. :frowning:

#36

In fairness, libertarian freewill may be a valuable concept that’s well worth talking about.

But some of us have a problem understanding it.

[Is compatibilism campatible with the existence of God?)

And I’m sure you know that Sigmund Freud was a determinist, as are the majority of materialist philosophers, psychologists, psychiatrists, and sociologists, all of whom see libertarian freewill as (at best) a useful myth (that allows courts to function.)

When you add the ultra-Calvinists (many of whom are universalists) it would seem that there are a lot of people whose intuition isn’t as clear on this as yours.

And I think this blog articulates the problems we have with the concept.

Nevertheless, I think you could have some point on this topic we’re all missing–so perhaps it’s not the total distraction I believe all the talk about quantum theory is.

BTW: Here’s a

[quote]
(http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c1a3.htm) I think you and Paidion might like.

The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes. There is no true freedom except in the service of what is good and just. The choice to disobey and do evil is an abuse of freedom and leads to “the slavery of sin.”

The problem with saying that is that you’re talking about God, not a human manufacturer of casino gambling equipment.

I could design and manufacture a pair of dice with built in “probabilistic” possibilities, put them in a cup, shake them up and turn them lose on a table, and the rest would follow without my foreknowledge or direct interference–but only because external factors not of my making, not under my control, and not fully understood by me act upon the dice when they’re out of the cup.

If those external factors were not there, acting upon the dice, there would be zero probability they’d come up seven, eleven, snake eyes, little joe, or any other combination.

Instead of being unpredictable, the outcome would be certain–without external factors (like gravity and friction) nothing would happen.

With those external factors acting on the dice, they leave the cup, land on the table, roll, and come to rest (in positions unpredictable to me precisely because I’m not God, and there are physical laws operating that I didn’t make, don’t control, and don’t understand.)

The premise that God can just close His eyes and let things happen seems to imply that there’s some quantum reality that God didn’t create, doesn’t control, and can’t understand.

Furthermore, (unless that’s what you mean to imply) neither you or any source you’ve quoted has explained how anything could happen, anywhere, on any level of existence if God just took hands off–that’s the question you keep avoiding in these long posts.

Part of the problem I’ve had in seeing how God could make arbitrary choices (as temporal, finite creatures sometimes do, by just “picking one,” once we realize there are a lot of perfectly good options), is in the idea of a timeless God seeing all the equally good choices at once (and without any “first” or “last,” or any sequence at all.)

In that regard, I found the thoughts of Padgett and DeWeese (as discussed here) interesting (because if God is omnitemporal, it might answer some of my questions.)

I’ll quote a little.

#37

Hmmm - I’m uneasy with this Michael – so here’s some thought.

I’m not a follower of Marx or Freud – but

Was Freud a determinist? Well he believed that human actions were, in a sense, determined by the forces of the unconscious and the interplay of ego, id and superego. However, as Eric Fromm pointed out there is a paradox in Freud because he also believed that through understanding the forces that determine us – through the process of Freudian psychoanalysis – we can come to understand the mechanisms that determine us and make less destructive choices.
Likewise with the sociological Marxist tradition – Marx thought that those thing we take as freely chosen – out ideas, beliefs, our patterns of associating – are actually determined by the economic base structure of society. However, with the tools of Marxist analysis – according to him and his followers – we are able to free ourselves from the deterministic chains of oppression and create a just world.

Actually the situation with Marx is a bit more complex. Some Marxists are humanists emphasising human agency – others are anti humanists emphasising historical determinism in the class struggle for ownership of the means of production (I understand that Marx’s earlier writings are more humanist, while his later writings are more anti-humanist). The story of the most prominent anti-humanist Marxist Louis Althusser has always given me pause for thought. He argued with persuasive dialectic for complete determinism from a Marxist perspective – and was a big influence on radicalism in the 1960s. Then one day he killed his wife. Althusser was also a Catholic (he managed to square this with his determinism and his politics in some way) – and in the aftermath of the murder he set about writing a confessional autobiography. In this he analyses all the causative factors that may or may not have lead to the murder of his wife in huge details – tracing everything back to psychoanalytic reflections on his childhood. And in the course of these Mr Spock like reflections’ Louis Althusser as a responsible human agent, and as a human person disappears. It’s really quite chilling and absurd reading.

Regarding psychology – well there are different schools of psychology – broadly speaking Behaviourist, Cognitive and Humanistic (the first being rigidly deterministic, the last being libertarian and the middle one somewhere in between. The psychologist I have met combine insights from the three different schools to accommodate the paradox of human beings as both somehow determined and also somehow free. Certainly the absolute determinism of Skinner undiluted leads to some strange watering holes – as in his ‘Beyond Freedom of Dignity’ which is a manifesto for social engineering for the ‘happy’ society;

Blessings

Dick :slight_smile:

#38

Duplicate deleted

#39

And as an atheist (unlike Jung) he would have believed that the forces of the unconscious (ego, id, and superego) were the products of a mindless evolution, over which the individual had no control, would he not?

Same for Marx.

The Marxist/Leninists didn’t execute Czar Nicolas, his wife, and children because they considered them libertarian free will agents morally culpable of crimes that deserved punishment.

They were all executed (including the children) because they were likely to inspire efforts to put the monarchy back in power as long as one of them remained alive (i.e. the justification was political expediency, not libertarian free will or culpability.)

But from an atheistic pov, he never was more than a product of mindless evolution, and his actions were predetermined by nature and nurture (which, without God, wouldn’t even be directed towards any good ends.)

Could that be because of your background, training, and education?

(BTW: If you say “yes” you’re a compatibilist.)

If they were honest, I think most of them would admit they don’t really believe in anything like what Pog means by libertarian free will (but probably consider it a useful legal concept.)

P.S. Why the double post?

#40

Good post Michael, will reply later Michael -

It’s easy to do a double post by accident - it’s not a rheorical device for angry emphasis :laughing:

Here’s a limerick -

There was a young man who said; ‘’Damn!
I’ve just realised what I am
A creature that moves in determinate grooves
In fact not a bus but a tram.’’

:slight_smile:

#41

Thank you.

I didn’t think it was a rhetorical device, but would you mind deleting the double post?

Someone reading along might have something helpful to say, if not distracted by double posts that have even less to do with the op than quantum theory.

The limerick was clever, and I look forward to any more you might have to say.

Thank you.

#42

Hi Michael –

It’s the first time I’ve ever deleted a post – I didn’t know it was possible!

Indeed this is so – and that shows to me that there is a paradox in Freud that he never resolved because of his through-going materialism. Freudian psychoanalysis has the hidden assumption that we can become more free, more in control, have greater agency etc. (and I don’t think Freud examined this hidden assumption - his rationalism had made it hidden from him I guess). IF Freud had been true to his determinist assumptions he would have thought the process of psychoanalysis to be futile – as case of one tape recorder (the analyst) not communicating with another tape recorder (the person being analysed).

This is true – and Stalin another Marxist determinist – saw it fitting to liquidate whole groups of people for expediency yes – but also because they were on the wrong side of the deterministic mechanism of history and had to be sacrificed to ‘history’. Marxist humanists rejected this determinism, came out of denial over the legacy of Stalin, and embraced democracy.

Agreed: so the major difference between deterministic materialism and hyper Calvinist determinism – just in this sense – is that the end of history and of each human life is directed towards good ends? Is this so?

I’m sure that’s so and I’m open to being described as some sort of compatibilist – although my view of determinism is ‘soft’ and paradoxical allowing for a limited but important measure of freedom.

I don’t know the open theism literature so it’s difficult for me to say about Pog. Regarding freedom as a useful legal concept – I understand that most determinists are consequentialist/utilitarian in their ethics. They are not interested in ethics from the point of view of the individual (since the individual cannot be seen to be a free ethical agent). Therefore their view of say criminal punishment is constructed from the standpoint of the good effects of punishment for society (they focus on deterrence arguments). However, some schools of utilitarianism make a concession that in a free society wherever a consequentialist ruling goes against moral intuitions (like punishing an innocent person to deter a riot) then other criteria should be used – because in a free society the truth will out eventually and punishment of the innocent will bring the law into disrepute). I’m never sure what the implications of a deterministic theology would be for crime and punishment in this life.

Ok I have done an excursus here – but the excursus did arise from examples you gave to Pog. I’ve given some hints above that you can question me further on/pull me up on regarding the topic and get me focussed. Pick them up and I’m happy to go a couple of rounds with you.

All the best

Dick

#43

I don’t think Freud would agree that psychoanalysis has any hidden assumptions that we can have greater agency.

I think he’d see his theories as a natural development arising out of his time and place, and I think he believed that those hereditarilly, socially, and economically able to benefit from the long (and sometimes expensive) process of psychoanalysis would benefit from it (and I’m sure he saw it all as predetermined by evolution, biology, history, and individual circumstances, though he may not have always found it expedient to emphasize that pov.)

I’m not looking to win any debates, I’m just looking to understand certain things.

Thank you.

You did say one thing that interests me.

That’s always been my position, but positing a God with libertarian free will sometimes seems the only way to answer some of the questions I have.

Questions like why God would choose the third planet in this solar system to be the only one with intelligent biological life (or why this planet, in this solar system to be the center of salvation history, and the place of His son’s incarnation, if there’s life on more than one planet)?

Contingency does seem to exist, and the simplest way to explain it would seem to be that God made certain choices for no particular rational reason.

So the questions I would have for you are:

1.) What is “libertarian free will”?

2.) Can we even define what it means?

(An agnostic on another forum suggested that each libertarian free will would be “a little random decision generator as far as God knows,” but when I try to think about that, I have the same problem I have with the self tossing, rolling, stopping dice.)

3.) Does it exist?

4.) Can God create and instill this quality in a derivative being?

(If we accept the agnostic’s definition of libertarian free will, can God create “little random decision generators”?)

5.) Does compatibilism make more sense (and if so, does that mean that even God has no “libertarian” free will, and how do we explain contingency)?

P.S. This is from a blog I quoted in my last post to pog.

philochristos.blogspot.com/2006/01/does-god-have-free-will.html

#44

Hi Michael –

Sorry about the quip concerning doing a couple of rounds with you – I was echoing Alex’s merry quip on another thread about being beaten up by philosophers :blush: .

If I could begin by making an observation about the post you quote above. There is something I’d like to clarify which I think will help our discussion-The poster states that -

Actually the poster is mistaken here – and this means in my view they need to rethink what they are sketching out in the rest of the post. The poster is not describing compatibilism but rather John Stuart Mill’s argument against libertarianism. Mill argues that when we seem to choose between two different intentions, desires or motivation it seems in memory that we made a choice. However, all that really happened was that the strongest desire, intention, motivation won out (and therefore what seemed like our choice did not involve our ‘agency’).

Determinists argue that all our mental states and acts, including choices and decisions, and all our actions are necessitated by preceding causes. Thus our futures are in fact fixed and unalterable in much the same way that the past is. In theological traditions of determinism that which necessitates our actions is either/or both/and Gods’ omniscient foreknowledge; God’s omnipotent sovereign majesty (that will not allow secondary causes); and, in Universalist Determinism – I guess – God’s omni-benevolence to bring all things to the good. In modern philosophy – determinism is based in the materialist, mechanistic world picture of the contemporary physical sciences. When we use terms like ‘compatibilism’ and ‘incompatibilism’ I think we need to be careful. There may be equivalents in theological discourse, but these terms actually come from discussion about mechanistic materialism and its practical implications for ethics. In secular ethical philosophy these terms are used thus (with thanks for the Oxford Companion to Philosophy for clarification)

Some philosophers, incompatibilists, believe that freedom and determinism are incompatible

Some argue that determinism if true destroys moral responsibility undermines interpersonal relations, and destroys our life hopes by making all actions un-free (these philosophers may be almost convinced by the objectivist account of determinism no one level – but remain agnostic about the completeness of its description of things because of its inability to account for the ‘subjectivity’ that makes us human)

There are also incompatibilists that believe that determinism is false, and hence that our actions are morally responsible (often called libertarians)

In addition there are incompatibilists who believe that determinism is true, and moral responsibility is therefore an illusion. These are often called ‘hard determinists’ (the term was coined by William James).

Other philosophers- compatibilists – deny that determinism has any such effect on moral responsibility and argue that freedom and determinism are compatible. They argue that the sense of ‘free’ in which actions must be free in order to be morally responsible is not in terms of being uncaused acts of independent origination, but in terms of being not coerced – a gun to the head, a hellfire sermon, blackmail etc. This position was set out coherently by G.E. Moore – and it relies on the everyday common sense use of the word ‘free’ rather than its objective and ‘scientific usage. But incompatibilists argue this is a trick with words –because actions that are not externally compelled are still part of a chain of causation in the determinist account

So I wonder where you might stand according to these definitions? (I’ve treble checked the definitions with other sources rather than just depending on memory or a single source). And I wonder how you think your chosen position might be compatible with your theology?

Hope this is useful old chum – it might open up the discussion fruitfully (but I already have more to say)

All the best

Dick :slight_smile:

#45

Michael I’ve just read a post from another thread by you. We are the same age and some of our circumstances are quite similar. I pray for you and hope we can have a chat that will be of help to you.

Bless you brother

Dick :slight_smile:

#46

I don’t have a chosen position, I’m trying to understand “free will.”

And if libertarian free will means the “freedom” to do things for no real reason, it makes no sense to me.

That sounds more like being a slave to the random fluctuations of your own mind than “free” in any sense of the word that seems meaningful to me, and I don’t see how I can “chose” to believe in a position that makes no sense to me.

I still remember a long telephone conversation I had with Jim Coram (who was president of the Concordant Publishing Concern back when I subscribed to “Unsearchable Riches,” and who I think still is) in which he did most of the talking, and in which he argued that indeterminism was impossible in any universe, with or without a Supreme Being.

I think you’d have to classify him as more of a Theologian than a secular Philosopher (and he was in perfect agreement with John Stuart Mill’s argument against libertarianism), so the terms “compatibilism” and “incompatibilism” seem to apply to both Theological and Philosophical points of view (and if that causes some confusion, I see no way to avoid it.)

What I see as relevant here are questions like what we mean when we speak of human “free will,” or “agency”?

Do we mean humans are made with some built-in “random decision generator”?

If so, many would argue (as I think pog would) that the randomness is based on some connection between the human mind (or brain) and quantum flux, but I see that as irrelevant.

Without or without quantum theory, the difficulty I have with the idea of “random decision generators” is that I can’t see how they could be truly undetermined, random, or unpredictable in relation to God.

I can set something in motion, close my eyes, take hands off, and be surprised by what happens because I’m not God, but how does anything happen if God takes hands off?

An agnostic on another forum suggested (quit sarcastically) that once you invoke the supernatural you can explain anything.

God (he said) could just say “let there be a little black box, and let random particles just come out of it,” but could He?

How could He create “random decision generators”?

Now here’s the problem I have with compatibilism (or whatever it is that you’d like to call John Stuart Mill’s position.)

If the acts of the will are always determined by the strongest motivation, how do you explain contingency?

How could God chose between two or more perfectly good alternatives, and produce a solar system with 9 planets, a milky way with how ever many stars it has, etc. etc.

I still don’t understand what we mean by “libertarian free will,” but it almost seems as though God (at least) would have to have such a faculty to create a universe where so many things seem arbitrary and contingent.

This is why I say I don’t have a chosen position here.

I’m trying to understand things, and if you (or anyone else) can help me, I thank you.

Please do.

#47

Will have a think Michael -

Give me a while to ponder. Happy New Year; I wasn’t being pedantic about the definition of compatibilism’ - I just needed to clarify things for myself. Now I know that it is John Stuart Mills argument about the choice of our wills being an illusion - when actually it is imsply the strongest desire in us that makes us seem to chose - it helps me to focus.

The trouble with philosophy Michael is that so much of it seems to be about refining the questions rather than producing the answers (but that’s the nature of the beast).

I hope and pray you learn to rest more easy with questions of intellect - we are limited creatures and our intellectual grasp of ‘things entire’ will always remain partial and divided in my view.

All the best

Dick

#48

Michael, I have given a definition of “libertarian free will.” Can you accept it? I have stated (perhaps not in these exact words) that one has exercised free will when he has performed some act A, such that he could have refrained from performing that act. I have also stated that the free will agent is himself the cause of his chosen acts, and we need not look for other causes.

As I see it, “compatibilist free will” is not free will at all. It’s definition of “free will” is that a person exercises free will if he performs an act for which there is no external contraint to his performing that act. But the compatibilist, like the determinist affirms that if an agent has performed some act A, he couldn’t have done otherwise.

“Libertarian free will” does NOT imply that the agent performs an act for no reason. Nevertheless that reason, whatever it is, does not FORCE the agent to perform that act. He could have refrained from performing that act.

Of course you can always say that if the agent had refrained from performing the act, there must have been another reason for his doing so, and that THIS was the cause of his act. This kind of reasoning begs the question. It assumes in advance, that the agent does not have free will. For a person who thinks this way, no definition of free will is possible since free will is presumed in advance not to exist.

#49

I don’t know.

I mentioned a telephone conversation I once had with Jim Coram (President of the Concordant Publishing Concern, and Editor of “Unsearchable Riches” magazine), and the thing that impressed me most about him was that he seemed much smarter than I was, and the power of contrary choice (or what he called “categorical could-have-done-otherwiseness”) is precisely what he said was “impossible in any universe, with or without a Supreme Being.”

This was years ago, it was all academic then, and I can’t remember the conversation word for word.

But I did find something he wrote on the subject, and I’d like to compare some of the things you say to some of the things he says.

You:

Jim Coram:

groups.yahoo.com/group/determinism/message/3259

You:

Jim Coram:

groups.yahoo.com/group/determinism/message/3259

You:

Jim Coram:

groups.yahoo.com/group/determinism/message/3259

You:

Jim Coram:

groups.yahoo.com/group/determinism/message/3259

pog:

Jim Coram:

groups.yahoo.com/group/determinism/message/3259

If what Mr. Coram is saying is true, and “categorical could-have-done-otherwiseness” is impossible, I don’t see how even God could have free will, or make arbitrary choices, or how we could have contingency in the universe.

But I can’t say I really see the flaws in his logic either.

If you, or Dick, or Pog (or anyone else) can point them out to me, I’d be truly grateful.

Thank you.

#50

Thank you.

I’m trying to think it through too, and I appreciate any help you can give me.

Whatever you call the view expressed by John Stuart Mills, Jim Coram holds much the same view.

groups.yahoo.com/group/determinism/message/3259

(Please see my reply to Paidion.)

Please do.

I stopped celebrating all holidays over two years ago, but thanks for the thought, and happy new year to you.

Thank you again.

I’m trying to think this thru too, and I appreciate any help you can offer.