Last year, in the pages of journal Faith and Philosophy, (April 2008, vol 25, no. 2, pp. 123-140) Marilyn McCord Adams has leveled a series of criticism on Plantinga's latest answer to the problem of evil. In passing I should mentioned that Adams sees Plantinga moving from a simple defense (what van Inwagen calls a Just-so Story) to a theodicy (or an explanation for why God should permit evil). Rightly or wrongly, I'm still treating Plantinga's latest offering as a defense that serves as only a possible account, but an account that draws on upon a specific Christian tradition that was not itself designed as an explanation to a philosophic problem but instead was directed to God in praise for what was seen as the wonder of his grace.

Allow me to reflect on only four of Adam's criticisms. Let me also say that the relative weight I give these are my own.

• Despite Plantinga's attempt to distance himself, his analysis appears to have God suffering from Munchausen by Proxy syndrome.
• As Plantinga presents the felix culpa defense, it would seem that we not only earned the horrors we inflict on each other, but need them for our own good.
• Plantinga's new defense suffers from same critical problem as the free will defense, it treats only the good of world as a whole and not the good for any given individual.
• Plantinga does not give enough attention to the difference between the Atonement and the Incarnation

Munchausen syndrome is where one places oneself in grave or extravagant situations for the sole purpose of winning glory by overcoming them—winning glory or attention for their own sake. Munchausen by Proxy is placing someone else in such a situations for the purpose of getting attention for oneself. In the case of God, this would be his showing the depth of divine love placing us in grave danger and then rescuing us by extravagant means. Plantinga addressed this in his original article. Plantinga stated that God doesn't owe us anything either now and certainly not before creating us. Moreover, God doesn't need our praise or gratitude and so would not be motivated to act to win it. Adams would agree with this, but then comes back and asks who is this extravagance for.¹

This leads to the next two criticisms. Lets say that God allowed us to fall for our sakes. In this case the horrors we endure are for our own good and we are such creatures who are so constituted so as to require the horrors we visit upon ourselves. Now Plantinga could affirm that now being in a world plagued with evil, some what we suffer may well be for our good as a way to ween ourselves from the passing nature of the world and some evils are suffered because good people oppose evil and pay the consequence. Yet these beg the question. This world has a perverse way inflicting evils indiscriminately on those who simply accept it for what it is, but takes pains to make life all the more miserable for those who oppose its order. Yet either these evils seem either not to serve any good or the good the serve is only a consequence of their initial existence.

The reason for this is that Plantinga's argument depends on on any good for any given individual but that the Atonement in this argument functions as a great good in itself. The Atonement is a global good or a good that makes the world as a whole better, but does address individuals per se.

The above two criticisms are a direct result of Adam's own take on the problem of evil and should one not accept her larger project, these arguments would not hold that much water. I hope to address this in more detail later, but right now I would like to pursue the forth criticism on this list. Plantinga does appear to treat the Atonement and the Incarnation as the same thing. Granted, that within Christian theology, given our sinful state, the two go hand-in-hand, but they are not the same thing. Unless the fall was necessary to some end in itself, one could have the great good of the Incarnation without the Atonement. If all the Atonement does is cancel out the Fall, then the great good of the Incarnation without either Fall or Atonement would make for a world a good as this one which has both the Fall and its canceling Atonement.

Here I dare say the fault lies not with the sentiment “O felix culpa quae talem et tantum meruit habere redemptorem,” but that Plantinga's argument hasn't fully captured the notion that this fall and this redemption will lead to better things for us (as opposed to simply a better balance of good and evil in the world in general) than had neither occurred.

1I should note that part of Adam's larger project is explanations for evil are ultimately counterproductive (for reasons that I may get to later). What Adams offers from the Christian tradition instead is that in Christ God did not simply compensate for evil but overcame it, making it null and void.

Counterparts, Providence, and Recalcitrance

Allow me to recap the last blog. Middle Knowledge faces an ontological difficulty; it cannot stand on its own but must be seen as a special case of either Natural or Free Knowledge. If Natural, then there aren't any relevant possible worlds where you or I act other than we do in the actual world. If Free, then God can only know (at best, given a so-called B¹ view of time) upon strongly actualizing or perhaps only after we've actualized states of affairs. At this stage one could simply concede the point and admit that God only knows what we could do. The deity's knowledge of what we would do is only to a very high probability. In an earlier series of raves I discounted this option and shan't repeat my objections here. So where does that leave us in terms of human freedom? In a later installment of same rave on subjective counterfactuals, I had presented some alternatives that I should like to recast here. Even so, one may ask whether such a recasting of human freedom is of any use to the Free Will Defense or if some other line of inquiry presents itself.

If God's knowing what we would do if he decided to actualize a certain state of affairs², in what sense can we say that we could have acted otherwise? Perhaps one place to start would be with David Lewis' Counterpart Theory. Lewis held that notion of actuality was simply indexical, that all possible worlds were as real as this one and that this world had the privilege of being “actual” by virtue that we inhabit it. That's not the interesting part, however. What caught my attention was one could locate a counterfactual instance in this world by comparing it to a very similar world. Let us say that in this world I am playing a hand of poker but am not sure whether to call or fold. In the end I fold only to discover that the one opponent I was most worried about was bluffing and had I called, I would have won the hand. On Lewis' conception, there is a counterpart to me in some world who is identical to me in every way, save that he called the bluff. On that basis, Lewis would say that I could have won the hand because my counterpart did. All this assumes, of course, that we are not physically, psychologically, or sociologically determined. One does not need to assume that all possible worlds are realized, however. One can still talk about counterparts in other possible (but unactualized) worlds. In an earlier rave I made a distinction between what are normally seen as interchangeable terms: quiddities (whatnesses) and haeccetities (thatnesses). Basically I took quiddities to be a sort of generic version of an individual and her counterparts, call it a smallest common denominator indexed off of an actual individual.³ Of course, generics don't get actualized, real and substantial beings do. As such generics can't do anything at all. This leads to the objection that while there might not be anything external that compels one action, that under this view one cannot determine one's essence and that one's essence entails one's action in a given state of affairs. The somewhat Leibnizian reply (which I've been known to give) that such bifurcation between self and essence is an artificial result of self reflection and that to wish for a different essence is to wish for someone else in one's place falls on deaf ears. I see the point and indeed there may be at least trivial (or not so trivial) points where we ourselves could have acted differently, but how to square that with God necessarily knowing what we would do?

Perhaps then God does not know what we would do by necessity at all, or at least some free actions are not known by necessity. They are in fact part of God's free knowledge. Early on William Hasker presented three possibilities for who brings about the truth of a counterfactual of freedom (subjective counterfactual) (i) God (ii) the subject, or (iii) no one. Hasker rejected (i) out of hand, I accepted his critique of (ii) and tentatively rejected his critique of (iii). As it turns out, I had to turn right around and accept (iii) as well since my criticism was based on Middle Knowledge being a special case of Natural Knowledge and Hasker was working on the assumption that it was a species of Free Knowledge. Perhaps (i) deserves another look.

As I had stated in dealing with subjective counterfactuals, what follows is rooted in my understanding of John Duns Scotus. Let us assume that for some person P and action A in state of affairs S, that there really are worlds W and W* that include S and that in W P performs A and in W* P refrains from A. Now, given what has gone before, if God cannot strongly actualize W or W*, he cannot know which world would in fact be actualized until it is actualized. So, the alternative is that God does strongly actualize one world or the other.

Does this mean that God causes P to take the action she does? That very much depends one one's view of causality. In a vaguely Aristotelian or Thomistic sense, yes God does cause P to act. On a counterfactual view one might also say as much, but this is of some dispute. Note, however, that under this view (excluding God choosing one possible world over another) all the antecedents to S are identical but the consequences are different. So we cannot say that the antecedents (physical, psychological, social, etc.) cause P's action. It may be a sort of theological determinism, but it seems to be one that is compatible with human freedom.⁴ As I mentioned before, Hasker's objection to God causing a subjective conterfactual being true was under the assumption that God subtly alters the antecedents.

Yet is this any use to the Free Will Defense? Not in itself. Mackie's entire objection is that God could actualize a world that includes a great deal of significant good and no evil. If God can indeed strongly actualize any possible world, then it would seem that Mackie is right. Or maybe not. It assumes that that what I have styled the Scotian analysis of subjective counterfactuals is exhaustive. It may well be that the counterpart theory accounts for at least some subjective counterfactuals. It also assumes that we are correct in our judgments that for any action that we could have done the right thing that we in fact failed to do. Just because it may be possible that for any given situation we do the right thing does not mean that for every situation we can. Or we could put it more conservatively, that for any world that adequately reflects the plenitude of Being (this comes very early in the current rave) would be one that includes some evil (recall, for instance van Inwagen's Extended Free Will Defense in this context). Finite being would seem to be either recalcitrant or unable fully comprehend Being as Being.

Granted, the above needs fleshing out. Perhaps next time I'll take a shot at that.

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Excursus on Free Will

I have been trying to formulate my thoughts in an on and off manner, but yesterday our Senior Warden brought up the topic. It is a thing he is wont to do, no matter how tangential it seems to the original theological topic, but we haven't had many opportunities to stray into such things lately. So, it seemed a good time (perhaps even providential) to reflect on free will now.

Had I thought things through, I might have brought this out earlier. After all, the basic line that William Hasker, Robert M. Hasker, and David Griffin have made is that libertarian free will is incompatible with middle knowledge (Peter van Inwagen also argues along these lines, but in fairness I haven't commented on his argument). On the other hand, the topic of free will can be a real mare's nest, one that I would have rather avoided. No such luck. I am about to offer my opinion on middle knowledge (rather than my opinion on the judgments of my betters), and I can almost hear someone say “But we have free will so . . .” or “You are not taking free will seriously.” Now, all I need to hear is “You're wrong about free will.” Wrong I can handle. Finally, if I started with freewill, I might not have had the chance to make hash of some of the other issues.

Now for some terminology:

1. Freedom of spontaneity
2. Freedom of indifference

While this division is not always accepted, I find it useful. (A) simply means that a person is free if she is acting on her own volition (that is without compulsion). The second notion (B) is that while causes may influence one's volitional attitudes, they do no determine those attitudes. Lets take it for granted that (b) is a stronger view of free will than (a). Here are some more terms:

3. Incompatiblism
4. Compatiblism
5. Determinism

Incompatiblism can be used for either determinism or libertarianism. That is, freewill and determinism are incompatible. Determinists would state that freewill and determinism are incompatible and since determinism is true freewill is illusionary. The libertarian would turn this on its head. However, since libertarianism is also a political philosophy and some political libertarians are either compatiblists or determinists regarding freewill, for purposes of this discussion, I will limit (c) to those who hold that freedom is real and that free will is not compatible with determinism. That leaves us with (d). Compatiblists hold that freewill and determinism are compatible with each other. (There are also “Hard” and “Soft” determinists, but these labels are either moving targets or the fixed definitions are just to subtle for me to grasp). One term:

6. Causal Determinism

Causal determinists would hold that causal explanations are sufficient for all phenomena. Not all determinist would hold that all determinist explanations are causal in nature. Part of this distinction depends on how far one is willing to extend the term “cause.”

Now, at first (f) would seem to be redundant, but “cause” and “determine” are not synonymous. For instance, I am looking out the window and make the determination that the corkscrew willow is about 45 five feet away, while incorrect does not cause the willow to be any distance than what it was before I made my judgment. This sort of use of “determine” has more of an epistemic connotation. Of course, “determine” is also used as a shorthand for “causally determined,” and sometimes it mixed meaning. Governors can be said to determine that a state of emergency exists and that determination actually invokes a state of emergency.

The notion of causality itself is not quite as straight forward as it might seem. Without going into more detail than I can dig myself out of, one might ask what line of causal explanation is there when I decide to write this line and my fingers move to write it (and for the most part, my fingers cooperated). There is a certainly a causal line that one could draw between muscles, ligaments, nerve impulses, synapses, etc. (not to mention the lines from the keyboard, the the computer the monitor) and another between my wish to write something, composing it, evaluating it (currently I think this could be going better), and editing it (or not editing it enough). The link between fingers, muscles, nerve endings (physical explanations) on one hand and intentions, plans, evaluations (mental explanations) is convoluted in itself known as the mind body problem (you can find a brief summary of it in an earlier rave). Lets just say that it is not at all clear that the connection is causal. Of course, if relation of mind to body can be seen as at causal, it might not be the same as the causal relationship between billiard balls or quarks. By extension, it is not entirely clear that a divine determination is either causal or causal in a sense that would imping on human freedom.

I haven't yet tipped my hand on the matter of freewill and determinism (though you can find an approximation of my position elsewhere). I am not, however, convinced of the various arguments put up.

An argument in favor an incompatiblist solution is that moral judgment requires it. The argument basically runs that one is not culpable for those things that are outside one's control, if determinism is true, no actions are within our control, therefore no one can be held morally responsible for one's actions. At first blush this argument would seem to be one par with concluding that one owns a clothes dryer because all one's clothes are dry. If someone were to prove that all actions are the result of physical causes, we would find some grounds for making moral judgments simply because moral judgments are necessary in a society where beings make a deliberate ordering of means to ends and take on or are born into social obligations. Moreover, it seems that while there are many things that under my control to actualize or not, not everything that is relevant to whether I take or decline some action is under my control. It would seem that I cannot change my essence without changing (and so terminating) identity. If an essence determines an action, one could argue that while one's actions may not be determined by any physical or mental cause (and so free) it is still in some sense determined.

On the other hand, arguments that an agents actions are causally determined have a sort of post hoc feel to them. Either one has to not only reduce mental events to physical events or one has to argue that non-physical phenomena (one's character, inclinations, motives, etc.) are themselves determinative. It isn't clear to me that physical events cause mental events (or if they do whether such causes are determinative), nor is it all together clear that nonphysical conditions, such as inclinations, determine anything at all. Lets say that as a habit, I wear solid shirts but today I wear a plaid shirt. Habit would suggest that I am more strongly inclined to solids. Now, that I decide to where plaid may be an indication that I can act against inclination or at the moment some stronger inclination interposed itself that made me choose plaid. One can see how this will play out. If one's inclinations determine one's actions, one's actions are evidence of what's inclinations are but only if one already accepts that one acts in accordance with one's strongest inclination.

Just looking at my own actions, it would appear that it least in some cases I could have acted otherwise. It just feels as if I could. On the other hand, I'm not sure which are cases where I could have acted differently and which are cases where it just seems so.

Next time I would like to tip my hand and look at van Inwagen's argument against middle knowledge and why he right about Middle Knowledge but perhaps not about foreknowledge.