Sunday, 20 April 2008

• Currently Listening The Mozart Variations see related

  Rave Concerning Subjective Counterfactuals (pt. 6)

  In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that while I calling the below the Thomist and Scotist responses to the problem of subjective counterfactuals, it has been many years since I’ve actually read St. Thomas directly on the relevant material and I’ve never read Scotus on this point at all.  What I have is secondary.
  
  Where I left things off was with the contention that the Molinist account just doesn’t deliver.  Despite claims to the contrary, Molinism simply doesn’t offer possible worlds where actual individuals act differently in a given state of affairs than in the actual world.  For a more through treatment of this sort of critique, feel free to root about the work of Peter van Inwagen.  On the other hand, Dr. van Inwagen would disagree with the position outlined below.
  
  Some interpreters of St. Thomas take that he advocated a view we would now call over-causation.  For instance, say you and I are in a car with power door locks.  We both depress the door lock buttons by our doors—either one of which is enough to lock the door—at the same time.  So, which one of us caused the doors to lock?  I am more inclined to think St. Thomas was employing the distinction he made between essential and accidental causation.  As in the case one billiard ball striking a second, an accidental cause need not remain to sustain its cause.  Essential causes, on the other hand, are more like the classic example of the hand moving the pen.  If the hand stops, so does the pen.  The hand’s motion is essential to that of the pen.  If the hand moves differently, so does the pen.
  
  Here one might immediately object that unlike the passive pen—doing only what the hand directs—we are active agents.  At this juncture I confess that I don’t quite understand St. Thomas’ position.  He might also be relying on general psychology where the human intellect moves the will and so God in moving the intellect is moving the will.  This, however does not seem to me to move us much beyond Molinism because worlds where P does A and where P refrains from A have slightly different states of affairs appealing to a common agent intellect.  If, however, Thomas is saying that God causes the intellect to find some action appealing and so moves the will, then subjective counterfactuals are rescued at the price the will being free.
  
  As I understand things, Scotus takes the second of these options with an important twist.  He does not see the will simply following the intellect.  For Scotus the will has two objects when it approaches some action--that of one’s best [perceived] good (as presented by the intellect)--and justice (the divine law), the later may be perceived as working against the latter.  Although this view may seem a bit odd at first, it is due to at least two considerations.  First, Scotus denied that moral law follows strictly from the nature of human beings.  Duties toward God (the first three commandants as Protestants number the Ten Commandments, the first four as ordered by Roman Catholics) are necessary because their object is.  The commandments on the so-called second tablet are our duties to each other.  However, we are contingent beings and so good can be arrived at by different paths.  On the other hand, it is necessary that some moral order or another be established.  As such, the intellect cannot fully inform the will.  A second consideration for Scotus is that for an agent to be free relative to some action, it must be free simultaneous with that action.  If the will simply follows the intellect, then an agent’s freedom ends when the intellect presents the action to the will, i.e., prior to the will acting.  As will be evident from what follows, libertarians have mixed feelings about John Duns Scotus.  As far as they are concerned, he takes with one hand what he gives with the other.
  
  OK, that’s the twist, so where is the agreement?  Scotus seems to have held that for worlds W and W* that include a person P, state of affairs S and action A where P does A in W and refrains from A in W* that God can choose to actualize either W or W* with no distinction between strongly or weakly actualized states of affairs or need for some state of affairs T (the total state of affairs God can strongly actualize in W or W*).  The distinction between accidental and essentially ordered causes outlined earlier by St. Thomas (and before that Aristotle) is maintained, the will is still free because it is not determined by the intellect and P really could take action A or refrain from it because either W or W* could be actualized.
  
  One might immediately object that P is not free because God determined either W or W*.  Scotus seems to have two replies.  First, since P is an active agent that is not determined either by a series of accidental or secondary essential causes (as evidenced that A and ~A could be actualized) P is free.  Second, since God freely actualized either W or W*, P freely does A or ~A.  As far as I can see, the second defense makes sense only if the first does.  This is because while P’s action under Scotus’ analysis couldn’t be free if God’s is not, it isn’t immediately obvious God freely performing an act makes any subsequent action among God’s creatures free.  However, Scotus’ first point seems sounds.
  
  A more important objection, however, is that it would seem that God could then actualize any possible world, including those where we creatures freely do no wrong.  If so, the sort of defense given by people such as Alvin Plantinga is undercut.  I will wait to take a stab at possible replies until next time.
  
  

  • 8:43 PM
  • 124 Views
  • 2 eProps
  • 2 Comments