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A Rave Concerning Good, Evil, and Freedom: Part the Twenty-first

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 01:13:56 GMT

Ends

Very early in this rave I used a sort of from-nothing-nothing-comes argument to suggest that the existence of evil is not only a problem for theist but for anyone who treats evil as real. In those early phases I stop short in one very important regard. I allowed that because it was logically possible that a world exist with evil that it was possible that such a world simply exist that way by chance. To introduce intentionality in Being qua being would be to give away the store as it were. That is to say that Being that included intentionality was no different than the traditional notion of God. The effect would be that either my entire analysis would be rejected out of hand, or some of the alternatives to the reality of evil that I outlined would be embraced.

I should like to amend that conclusion. If Being by nature includes function, purpose, or ends, then the existence of evil would seem to a problem again. Since we live in a world that included a meeting of means to ends, purpose seem to be a constituent of Being.¹ The only reason I can see not to reach this conclusion is that purpose is incompatible with Being qua being. There are three such objections that I can think of,

Making purpose an aspect of Being qua being is a composition fallacy, attributing to the whole what is true of individual members,
Admitting purpose to Being leads to certain absurdities,
There are many existing things that don't display purpose, so purpose cannot be fundamental enough to be a proper aspect of Being.

Fallacy of Composition

Imagine a stack of red cubes. Now, if I were to ask whether the stack is red because the cubes are, the answer would be yes. However, it is not the case that just because every member of the stack is a cube, that the stack is a cube. One would have to right number of cubes for this to be possible (8,27,96, etc) and for the cubes to arranged just so. However, as things stand, it is not immediately apparent that I've committed the fallacy of composition. Is the relationship of purpose to Being more like the redness of the stack or cubeness? One would have to do more than assert the fallacy. It would also be good to remember not to argue for the fallacy of composition by way of the fallacy of division.² I am not arguing that rocks trees, the universe, or even cosmic landscape³ has intentions. I'm referring specifically to Being, whatever it is that stands behind all of these and embodies all possibilities.

Absurdities

The fallacy from composition does have an argument in its favor, however. If one were to admit purpose as an aspect of Being qua being, then why not a host of other things, such as redness, tallness, or roundness. If Being were red, then there is no reason for it not to be green and then both red and green. Since the property of greenness excludes the property of redness, one would conclude that neither are an aspect of Being as being. The same then can be said for purpose. In reply, I should say that Being as being is infinite and so particular colors, or shapes or sizes are by nature finite and so are not proper Being. Unless one can find a reason why purpose is not proper to Infinite Being, I see no reason not to admit it as proper to Being as being.⁴ One argument against purpose as a proper aspect of Being is that intentions involve choices that entail deliberations and deliberations entail a limit in knowledge. I should think that the obvious response is to deny the connection between choosing and deliberating. People make thoughtless choices all the time, and these involve no deliberation. These might not be rational choices, but they are choices nonetheless. So on the negative end there is no necessary connection between purpose and deliberation. If one can make a choice without deliberating over available information, then one can choose when all possible outcomes are known. The latter, however, would be both rational and would not involve any sort of deliberation. What we can say then is that Being purposes without deliberation.

What is the purpose of the Grand Canyon?

I think the above was from a blog entry of Godlessliberal and attributed to and attributed to Richard Dawkins. Someone please correct me if I am wrong. The question is aimed squarely at William Paley's teleological argument but could be applied here. Although teleological language infects our analysis of human behavior, human artiface and a fair bit of biology, one is hard pressed to talk about purpose for more fundamental sciences such as chemistry and physics. If purpose isn't proper to more fundamental aspects of being, it can't be proper to Being in general. There seem to be three possible responses to this challenge.

If I may be a bit flippant, the purpose of the Grand Canyon is to contain the Colorado River. A more serious response along the same line is that just as other qualities (such as goodness) of Being arise in finite individuals only after a certain level of complexity, purpose becomes only more apparent with the complexity and nature of the object in question. In most cases, purpose shows itself only in one object taking account of the existence of the the other.

This leads to the second reply, that the Grand Canyon argument relies on the fallacy of division. Just because purpose is not evident in the constituents does not mean purpose is not evident to the whole or to that that underlies the whole. It also seems to me a mistake assume that nature broken down to its smallest constituents is the same as discovering being at its most fundamental.

There is third intriguing, if somewhat controversial, suggestion made by Peter van Inwagen. One cannot say that there is a proper purpose to the Grand Canyon because there is no Grand Canyon. Or to be more precise, the Grand Canyon is not a proper object. What the Grand Canyon is, is an assemblage. The only purpose it may have is one that proper objects find for it. Humans have found many purposes for the Grand Canyon (as well as a number of other animals), but if those proper object did not exist, neither would the Grand Canyon. Think of it another way. Let us say you own a bicycle. The purpose of the bicycle is to transport a person from one point to another. Let us say that human beings suddenly disappear without a trace save for a few bicycles and some other intelligent creatures take our place. These creature's physiology is in no way like our own but a few of their scientist come across the only thing humans leave behind. Would these things be bicycles? The scientists might recognize wheels, sprockets and the like, but not the entire assemblage. The former bicycles cannot fulfill their function and so cease to exist as bicycles.⁵

Please note then that proper objects have purposes of their own. One mistake of Paley's argument is to treat all objects (proper or otherwise) the same way we would treat works of human manufacture. Artifacts have the purposes intended by some designer. However, proper object have purposes or proper ends of their own by virtue of what they are. As a result, one should expect a level of "self-assembly" in the universe. By extension, it is a further mistake to attempt to see what (if any) purpose these object have for human beings. The members of the universe have their own agendas.⁶

So as best as I can see, purpose is proper to Being qua being.

Limits of the Argument

Before anyone gets too excited, please note that anyone but a complete nihilist could likely accept such a notion of Being without a great deal of discomfort. While one can say the teleology has a proper place in Being, I haven't made any argument for Providence. Being may have intended that the world be created, those intention could be entirely self-centered (not unlike Aristotle's unmoved mover). It says nothing about a God who would care or even pay any sort of attention to us. As such, it is consistent with a divinity that could be safely ignored. As for the problem of evil, there are still the free will defense and van Ingwan's modified free will defense. On the other hand, it seems fully consistent with a more robust version of theism (such as Christianity) and so defenses, such as those offered by Marilyn McCord Adams would seem to find a place. At any rate, the existence of evil does not seem to be quite as inimical to the existence of God as would at first appear.

The good news is that I this rave has only one or two more installments left. Then I will have to think of something else.

__________________________________________

¹Yes this is a teleological argument, but be patient, please. It is not an analogical teleological argument in line with Paley. It is also sufficiently modest as not to run afoul David Hume's argument. As I will show, however, this modesty also displays this argument's limitation.

²Win, after all these years, I can keep these two straight.

³I'm fudging with the cosmic landscape a bit. It isn't really real, but the manifold that string theory posits that controls the various universal constants would be. But I don't know a snappy name for that.

⁴Anyone familiar with the ontological arguments of Leibniz or Dun Scotus will recognize this move.

⁵I have to admit a far bit jealousy here. In 1987 I argued in my master's thesis that object such as vases, boats and bicycles do not display transworld identity (that is to say they exist in only one logically possible world) and that the only reason we say they exist in others is how they function counterfactually with objects that do. On the other hand, it also means that I am predisposed to van Inwagen's argument.

⁶Of course, should our ends and those of other objects converge, one might attribute it to Providence, but that extends what this line of argumentation will support.

A Rave Concerning Good, Evil, and Freedom: Part the Twentieth

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 01:05:59 GMT

So Why Bother?

Ideally one could argue that this installment should have come in toward the start of this entire rave. In my defense, I can only say that when I began this rave I really hadn't thought to include a number of topics. My initial outline has long been reduced to an optimistic fiction and as I wrote (and read) new ideas presented themselves.

Still, after all this time, one might wonder if the effort of exploring the problem of evil has really yielded anything or serves any purpose. Recall that Tulley found the entire notion of a theodicy to do more harm than good. He did, however, grant that something like a free-will defense did have merit. The presumed advantage is the more modest claims of a defense. After all, a defense doesn't attempt to present why God allows evil to exist, or even why God might allow evil to exist, but only that it is possible that God could allow evil to exist. There are a couple of problems here, however. For a defense to work (especially with a very generic idea of God) it really should very little or no consequences for the more robust notions of God found in particular religious traditions. To do so would imply that the more specific traditions are at variance with the more generic notion which one presumes all such traditions draw upon. It leaves one with a sort of wag-the-dog experience. Yet there is a fair bit of evidence that the free-will tail has been wagging the theological dog. The reason--particularly with Plantinga's free will defense--is that it really isn't nearly as generic as advertised. Plantinga's argument depends not only some pretty impressive feats of logic, but a very specific insight from within one religious tradition. That insight was that of Luis de Molina and despite his attempts to argue his views went back to the early Church Fathers, the introduction of middle knowledge really was an innovation on his part. The more troubling part of the very modest form of a defense is that it is frankly too modest. So what if it is logically possible God and evil can co-exist. Lots of things are logically possible, that doesn't mean one isn't crackers in believing them. It is logically possible that it is a quasi-librarian writing these words but the Prince of Wales. So, one must then have somewhat less modest aspirations. Peter van Inwagen's defense would be a case in point. However, once one starts treating a defense as a sort of "just-so stories" or a plausible reason why God might allow for evil, the distinction between a defense and a theodicy starts to fade.

It has been fashionable to characterize a defense as some sort of way to make the existence of God consistent with that of evil while a theodicy is seen as an attempt to explain why God should allow evil to exist. It is a distinction that is less sharp that one might think. I should, however, wish to draw what might be a artificial, but perhaps useful distinction from a completely different direction. In Alvin Plantinga's earlier works (God and Other Minds, God Freedom and Evil, and The Nature of Necessity) he was dealing (in part) with something characterized as a negative apologetic. He wasn't giving reasons why folks should believe God exists but attempting to dismantle objections. One might characterize this as a sort of epistemological project.

Lets say that you know Smith and find Smith to be a generally upstanding individual. You hear from Jones, however, that Smith has been dealing in some shady business dealings. Now Jones is generally reliable, but you raise objections. You may say that Jones is referring to a different Smith. Jones that brings out a newspaper article showing that it is the same Smith. You may continue citing the relative unreliability of bias of the newpaper or the paucity of evidence it brings to bear. This can continue for sometime. What you are faced with is a belief (Smith is a generally upstanding individual) with a defeater to that belief (Jone's report). You can accept that your belief is defeated or block the defeater (in this case question the reliability of the evidence of an otherwise reliable source). The free-will defense in engaged in such an project. Instead of believing in Smith, let us say that you believe in God. But terrible, horrible things happen. This would seem to defeat your belief. Then comes the freewill defense that blocks the defeating affect of the terrible horrible things. In this case, evil is treated simply as a problem to be isolated in one's notetic landscape. Defenses are a particular type epistemological project.

I'll admit, that in graduate school that is how I treated the question of why there is so much evil in the world. Moreover, I won't deny that it is a worthwhile project. It just doesn't happen to be the one in which I am interested. Rather I am more interested in the apparent absurdity of evil. Lets say that Jones convinces you that Smith really did do the shady things reported in the newspapers. Still, all your encounters with Smith assure you that Smith is a person of integrity. You are then left with how to reconcile these two facts, that somehow what Smith did wasn't so shady as it would seem or Smith was left with no option. The defeater/blocker nature of the epistemological project is not absent, but it plays a supporting role to understanding Smith and the reported misdeeds. This project is more metaphysical. So, I propose we go back to the beginning of this rave and pick up a thread I deliberately (and perhaps unfortunately) dropped early on.

A Rave Concerning Good, Evil, and Freedom: Part the Nineteenth

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 23:36:58 GMT

A Discussion not Strictly Needed

Last time I gave a bare-bones overview of Marylin McCord Adams' contribution to the current discussion of the problem of evil. One consequence of here argument would appear to be that in the end God redeems everyone (also known as Universalism). Now many traditional, orthodox, or conservative Christians (the descriptor is at the reader's discretion) would reject Universalism out of hand and so reject Adams project without further discussion. If you have no problem with Universalism, you can just skip this rave, unless you just want to pick at my logic. If you're going to pick though, please drop me a line and set me straight.

I do want one thing clear from the outset. I am not arguing against Universalism. For the time being, I am taking that as an exegetical question even more beyond my competency to answer thoughtfully than whether the existence of evil is compatible with the view of God advocated by Christians and theists in general. All I am attempting to suggest is that Universalism isn't a necessary consequence of Adam's project, as I have roughly sketched it.

Although I am sure she has presented a formal argument, I haven't come across it, so I am forced to cast one based on the indirect evidence of those works of hers I have read. I'd welcome it if someone has something more specific. Allow me to summarize as follows:

Human beings were created for beatitude (that is, perfect communion with God).
Evil dehumanizes human beings.
So, human beings are currently and unnaturally incapable of beatitude.
As long as human beings are incapable of beatitude, evil exists
In Christ, God overcomes or cancels evil
Therefore human beings are (or will be) capable of beatitude.

Line (5) is central to McCord's treatment of evil as discussed in the previous installment of this rave. Since the purpose this installment is to show McCord's treatment of evil does not entail Universalism, I don't intend to challenge it here. The premise in line (2) also seems tragically safe. Line (3) doesn't quite follow from (1) and (2) unless one assumed either something like total depravity or that our dehumanization is primarily between us and the divine. McCord at the very least argues for the latter, so while what I've outlined is defective, it wouldn't take much to fix. So then, (4) does seem to follow from (2) and (3) and (6) from (1), (4), and (5). That leaves us with (1), and (1) is somewhat ambiguous. One could read it as either,

Human beings have (or should have) a natural capacity for beatitude,

God's intent is that (at least some) human beings enjoy beatitude.

If one were to substitute (7) for (1), (6) follows, but what follows with the same procedure with (8)? Not much of consequence, save that God would restore whatever is natural to human beings as human beings. Perhaps that is a view of hell not all that different from some of the musings of Richard Swinburne or C. S. Lewis, or extinction, or any number of other notions. Exactly what is our natural intended state is somewhat difficult, perhaps impossible, in our present state to say. What (7) assumes that (8) does not is that beatitude is natural to the human condition. On the other hand, it may be that while knowledge or communion with God is part and parcel with human reason (for instance following Karl Rahner or Thomas Aquinas) that does not come to the level of beatitude, which may not be natural to any created being, let alone humans.

(Please forgive me if I get a bit medieval in what follows.) So, is there any reason within the Christian tradition (recall that part of McCord's program is to offer a response that can be framed as being drawn from a religious tradition that is not itself designed to address the problem of evil) to prefer either (7) or (8)?

In favor of (7) we have:

In the first chapter of Genesis we read that God created human beings in God's image. Now, image implies likeness and since God has perfect communion with himself, those that bears God's likeness should likewise enjoy such perfect communion. So, it would seem that beatitude is part of what it is to be human.
St. Augustine writes that we were made for God and will not rest until we find our rest in God. In saying this, Augustine seems to be reaffirming the interpretation just suggested for Genesis 1. After all, why say we are restless unless we find our rest in God if the mark of our restlessness is not some sort of alienation. So, it would seem that beatitude is part of what it is to be human.
Finally, St. Thomas Aquinas argues that immortality is natural to the human condition because we naturally look forward to it. By extension, human beings naturally desire communion with some ultimate reason, or meaning, or being. So, it would seem that beatitude is part of what it is to be human.

On the other hand:

St. Paul writes "that this mortality must put on immortality," and "that which is sown as a carnal body shall be raised as a spiritual body." Clearly, the nature of the later is not natural to the former or St. Paul would have no need to make the distinction. Therefore, it would seem that beatitude is not part of human nature but something granted or added to human beings beyond what is proper to their natures.

What should be first noted is that I am not required to argue whether (7) or (8) better fits the tradition, let alone which is correct. All that is really required is that the passages used in support of (7) either do not or can reasonably interpreted in such a way as to be consistent with (8).

Since (8) is the weaker assumption--since it carries fewer presumptions--it would seems to be the preferred premise. However, an advocate for (7) might object even in the Pauline passages it would appear that human beings have the potential for beatitude. If not, we would have no potential to receive a spiritual body. So then, in some sense beatitude is the natural state for human beings. In reply, I should point out that this is a rather expansive sense of "potential." It is no longer dealing with the potential of human beings as a species but of individuals who just happen to be human beings. By this standard, everything from a zebra to an amoeba have the potential for beatitude. The entire point of the Pauline passages is that the elect will receive a new nature, the current one being incapable of being truly spiritual.

As regards the first chapter of Genesis, there have been a range of interpretations of what the passage means by being made in God's image. Some have related it to the immediate context, that human beings are in some sense responsible for governance of the world and so to that extent (like God) are capable of practical reason or teleological thinking. Some have related the divine image to human reason or more particularly the human capacity for us to relate to the infinite. Yet even in this case the infinite exists as a sort of vanishing point and not a thing we can grasp. The passage in Gensis give no warrant that human nature qua human nature doesn't seem extend beyond this tentative relationship to the divine.

Likewise, the oft quoted passage from St. Augustine suggests either we are at least dimly aware God's intentions generally or aware that our current state is out of harmony. It does not speak to the specific question of whether beatitude is a proper part of human nature.

Finally, one might argue that St. Thomas' observation was simply wrong. It may be that the expectation for immortality is only natural to the extent that it seems to be a realistic option. There are a number of religious traditions that have no exception of eternal rebirth or an afterlife and there are a fair number of thinkers with no religious conviction that have no such expectations. However, even if St. Thomas is correct, that there is a natural expectation for eternal life that have somehow been diverted or repressed, it cannot be used in support of (7). The best it can support is everlasting life, not eternity as Boethius described as the fullness of life all at once (which if it isn't the same thing as creaturely beatitude) let alone the beatific vision.

So then, I would say that (7) stands as a fair interpretation of the Christian tradition and can be used in Marilyn McCord Adams' treatment of the problem of evil without the consequence of universalism.

A Rave Concerning Good, Evil, and Freedom: Part the Eighteenth

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 00:14:43 GMT

Horrendous Evils

I forget who used this illustration (William Rowe comes to mind, but I'm not sure why, and besides, I'm not using it the way the author originally intended) but imagine a possible world where the only sentient creatures were rabbits who suffered terribly. Would God create such a world, even if the balance of good to evil were favorable?

Such a question illustrates a number of things. First, if one's intuition is that there is something inconsistent in God creating such a world, then the balance between good and evil is not the only thing that constitutes what makes for a good world. There simply seems to be something overridingly wrong with vicarious evil. The other thing to note that the fixation on the quantity of evil in a given world is not determinative. One should imagine that a world of pathetic rabbits still contains less evil than this one.

I say this because I have made a point of not invoking such modern tragedies as the Killing Fields, the Holocaust, any of Stalin's purges or the Russian famine. To employ these simply to make a philosophical point is trivialize these events. They are evil that are a part of the course of human events that were so large that those involved were simply swept up as if in a tsunami.

Instead, I would like to look at a single event (wish I pray I don't reduce to a mere illustration) I heard about not month ago and invite you to magnify it as you may. A local court magistrate drowned not too long ago. He died in an attempt to rescue his teenage son. He managed, but at the cost of his own life. Imagine that he had not been with his son. The son himself would have drowned. The family would have grieved, perhaps terribly, but any parent will recall friends of their youth who held all the joy and promise of life and then were taken. No parent is prepared for such a thing but most who have lived through such a blow come through bent but not broken. Yet this is not what happened. Instead the son must live with the guilt of living. (On the other hand, had the father judged that he would have been unable to save his son, he would have been justified in failing to attempt the rescue but at the guilty cost of wondering whether he was in fact responsible for his child's death.) One can feel guilt for that which is not one's fault. The son is faced not only with the loss but a feeling of responsibility for the tragedy of his loss and the grief of his family, even if he were simply caught in a freak event. Turns such as these can break a person. They have the potential of blunting or utterly ruining one's very humanity and such wreckage tends eat away not only one ones self but everyone involved. Feel free to come up with larger or more graphic stories, provided that they are not so large that you can no longer fill pain of your own soul being emptied into a hollow shell. I think this captures what Marilyn McCord Adams calls the horrors and horrendous evil.

In a nutshell, Adam's response to the problem of evil is not to treat it as a riddle to be solved. Like Tully (whom a may be able to treat in more depth later) “solutions” have a tendency to miss, perpetuate or justify evils per se. Like Tully, Adams is critical of any defense that relies on a favorable balance between good and evil that does not account for the dehumanizing affects of evil.

Instead, while she provides grounds for why evil may be possible--relying on the infinite distance between human beings and God in a fashion that would remind some of Rheinholdt Niebuhr--she goes on to argue that the specific contribution Christianity brings is the teaching that Christ bore these horrors in himself and triumphed over them and as such we who are incorporated in Christ also shall have these evils not merely compensated for, but destroyed. I should hasten to add that for Adams, human being were created for beatitude and that anything short of universal beatitude fall short of the vision of evil being destroyed. Before I go on, I would like take a slight detour on this point.

A Rave Concerning Good, Evil, and Freedom: Part the Seventeenth

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 01:03:02 GMT

Getting Some Perspective

Before submitting this very brief entry, I'd like to make a book recommendation (occupational hazard of a librarian): On Divine Foreknowledge: Part IV of the Concordia by Luis de Molina, translated by Alfred J. Freddoso. Yes this is the Molina and is the fountainhead of the theory of middle knowledge. As a bonus is Freddoso's excellent introduction (“excellent” and “introduction” are rarely in close proximity, but it applies here), and at 81 pages could stand alone. The introduction provides an excellent summary the subtleties and controversies regarding the theory of Middle Knowledge. You'll even become find some of the vary contemporary philosophers featured in this particular rave. The introduction is very accessible (if you can make sense of my writing, Freddoso will be a piece of cake). While my grasp of Latin is minimal, people who have reviewed Freddoso's translation say it is quite faithful and again accessible. Here, “accessible” is relative to how familiar one is with Scholastic philosophy and style. There are ample footnotes for the perplexed, however. I had read On Divine Foreknowledge maybe twelve years ago (on Interlibrary Loan), but recently have picked it up again (one of my colleagues in the Philosophy Department ordered a copy for the Library). I was pleased to rediscover that my recollection that what I have been calling “modified Molinism” is in some ways closer to what Molina had in mind than current Arminian-Molinist analysis that tends to dominate the discussion. I also was reminded that the view that I seen as a an outgrowth of the thought of John Duns Scotus was first developed by the Dominican Friar and contemporary of Molina, Domingo Bañez.

In one sense I would just like to push on and discuss in more detail the contributions made by Marilyn McCord Adams and Terrence Tilley. However, it has been almost a year since I started on this rave and in looking at my original outline, it is clear that I've let this thing get out of control (which I was afraid of to start with). Bryan Goodrich had suggested I pause with some sort of summary, and while I not prepared to do exactly that, I would like to stand back and note some common challenges to both Plantinga's freewill defense and his use of felix culpa.

Recall that the Free-will defense stipulates that human freedom is a great good, that on balance worlds that include significant human freedom (e.g., freedom of the libertarian variety) are better than worlds that don't . Plantinga goes on to argue that while there are possible worlds that include free persons who do no evil, it may well be that God cannot actualize any of these worlds. After surveying some of the notable criticisms, I concluded that the problem with Plantinga's Defense is that either so called Middle Knowledge is a special case of Natural Knowledge (in which case there really aren't possible worlds of any significant value where we don't sin) and so a denial of libertarian freedom¹ (and also leaves open the question of just why we are so disposed) or a special case of Free Knowledge (in which case God, for some reason, chooses that we freely act wrongly). In either case, we have to look at something besides freedom. I had offered something like van Inwagen's extended free-will defense, but even then stated that I wasn't altogether happy.

In felix culpa (happy fault) Plantinga offered a possible reason, namely that the Atonement is a great good, but that for there to be an Atonement, there need be a fall. I won't go over the critiques of Plantinga's presentation here because they are in the past two raves. Instead, I would like to look at two problems both seem to share.

The first problem is that both seem justify evil based on the current state of things. In one case it is Freedom and the other the Atonement. One can look at the way things currently are and say with David Griffin, “thanks but no thanks.” I will grant that this criticism can be countered in a couple of ways. One could (as I have done in the case of Freedom) make some great goods non-negotiable. That is to say, in the case of freedom, that free-will simply comes with being a deliberate being. In general, I think more has to say more about the limits of finite being and the relationship beings to infinite being to make sense of the ground of evil. One can also argue that there is a future that we can hardly imagine but strive to embody that is well worth the cost of our present state. This is sort of that Hick's “vale soul making” theodicy is about. As is, the freewill and felix culpa defenses run the risk of justifying the status quo.

A more important problem is the global nature of these defenses (at least as stated). Here I am reminded of something I read many years ago by Norman Geisler² that he borrowed from Leibniz³. Imagine the most dynamic and engaging and beautiful painting you can image. Now imagine that there is some spot in it that is dark, ugly and something you would rather not look at. Now imagine the painting without this ugly patch. It would not be the same painting and very likely would not be as good. My marginal note said, in effect “all well and good, unless you're the one in dark ugly patch.” In short, a favorable balance between good and evil across the entire cosmos can only be appreciated by someone with a truly cosmic perspective—namely God. The rest of us are are either either stuck in dark ugly patches or are “blissfully” ignorant of the true state of things. At any rate, a global justification would seem benefit the one being who needs no benefit at all.⁴ That may make a good segue to Adams and Tilley.

1I think part of the trouble here is that when Molina was talking about one's quiddity, he was talking about the sort of Form/Matter compound common in Thomistic thought and that what Molina thought God supercomprehended was more basic than this synthesis. The rational appetite of the Form/Matter synthesis could act other than it did, and so is not compelled by nature. The object God supercomprehends cannot act other than it does or it would be other than what it is. As best as I can tell, Plantinga applied to “personal essences” what Molina would cast as one's quiddity, where it really belongs to the essence that God supercomprehends.

2I don't recall the title of book, but I remember not being very impressed. I do remember noting my dissatisfaction in the margins but don't recall bringing this up with my professor (and now friend) because he had otherwise made a great impression on me and Norm Geisler had been his professor. If you are reading this, Win, for what it worth, my opinion of Geisler has improved considerably over the years, but my opinion on this matter has not changed.

3I generally like Leibniz, but on this point I am appalled.

4I had argued elsewhere in conjunction with the doctrine of election that if one argues that somehow those who are consigned to the “darker patches” do so for sake of those in brighter precinct that one does so at the risk of denying Christ alone suffered for our atonement. I think one can generalize from this specific theological consideration.

A Rave Concerning Good, Evil, and Freedom: Part the Sixteenth

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 01:44:02 GMT

O Felix Culpa: A Response

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.

A Rave Concerning Good, Evil, and Freedom: Part the Fifteenth

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 00:36:15 GMT

O Felix Culpa

At the risk of repeating a point to oblivion, Middle Knowledge—or at least a view of Middle Knowledge that assumes incompatiblist or libertarian freedom—does not answer the challenge that evil presents. One could embrace a robust view of human freedom and argue it is impossible for God or anyone else to know beyond a certain degree of probability what a free creature might do and so God created aiming for the best, but we are responsible for any outcome. I have voiced objections to this view in the past. I should only wish now to point out that first that however appealing divine risk-taking may be to a people who relish the entrepreneur spirit, it provides little guidance on how to judge such risk-taking behavior. Would God be a conservative investor or a speculator? Just how much good would God have been aiming for compared to what God got? Since God would seem to be stuck with the cosmos forever and so always open to reversals,¹ could God ever know that he made a good bet? Moreover, on such a view, we are the ones taking these risks on God's behalf. One might well ask why God just doesn't fold and start all over. It isn't as if we would notice if God cut his losses and started again. If God throws the cosmic dice enough times we would all freely do what is right.

Alternatively, one could take a modified Molinist position and hold that there just aren't any possible worlds that meet with the principle of plenitude and contain no evil. Just as Libertarian view would seem to trade off omniscience, this view by holding that there are definite limits on essences would set a sort of limit on omnipotence. I should hasten to point out that on the one hand, limiting knowledge itself effectively limits power (if God doesn't know the future, it is not in God's power to bring about a given future) and that stating that essences have limited possibilities simply follows from their inherit finitude.² Still, there may have been some things that each of us really could have done but chose not to. In that case, it is fair to say that God also choice that we would freely do what we have in fact done. If so, then there must be something necessary about this present evil state to secure a far better state that could not have come about otherwise.

It may simply be that a generic notion of God or at least a generic notion of God and God's relation to creation is just not up to the task. Such a generic notion leaves it up to the imagination just what it is that a deity may intend and just what real limits there are in the relation between the deity and the deity's creation. I should like to look at some responses drawn from Western Christianity (which would cover Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism, and Protestant denominations). I don't know enough about Eastern Orthodoxy and would certainly not presume know what resources Judaism or Islam have to bring to bear. Mind you, what follows is a survey of theories Christians have used to deal with the problem of evil. Such a survey would either be circular because it would simply be an amplification of the generic idea that we've already seen to be insufficient or ad hoc because it would a doctrine that was imported to support a shaky position. Rather I wish to look doctrines and practices that have developed quite apart from this question that might in turn shed some light on the subject.

One thought, recently exploited afresh by Alvin Plantinga³, goes back to the Exultet of the Easter Vigil "O happy fault that merited such and so great a Redeemer."⁴ The general notion here is that the Incarnation and the subsequent Atonement and redemption of humanity are inherently good things, but these good things require a fallen creation. No Fall, no Atonement, and a great good is then lost. Note that felix culpa is a preexisting liturgical practice designed to show the believer the extravagant vastness of God grace, not as a sort of explanation. It is, however, something that we would not have known, experienced, or felt in the core of our being save that we first fell from grace. Something very important about our relationship with God would have been missing. What is also interesting is that it allows Plantinga to back track a bit on his Free Will Defense. Felix Culpa does not require transworld depravity. There could be some worlds where everyone freely does what is right, but none of these would as good as this one that includes the Atonement. Note also that while felix cupla doesn't help with issues of libertarian freedom, it make either the modified Molinst or Scotian positions a bit stronger. On the one hand, freed from transworld depravity, a modified Molinist can not admit that there are possible worlds where you are I could have always done the right thing, but that God providentially ordered events so that would happen. The Scotian position is strengthened because now we are given some sort of reason why God might have willed that we would fall.

There are important ambiguities in the above presentation. However, they will have to wait.

1On the other hand, if cosmos is not going be to around forever, it is a pretty safe bet that it will at the very least become less interesting and less good.

2This is an obvious tautology, so let me put it this way. God is the only infinite being, therefore there are only a finite number of things any actualized essence can express, therefore any world that God would create presents itself with only finite (or at least not an actual infinite) possibilities.

3Plantinga, Alvin “Supralapsarianism, or 'O felix culpa'” in Christian Faith and the Problem of Evil, edited by Peter van Inwagen, W. B Eerdman's, Grand Rapids, 2004, p. 1-25.

4 O felix culpa quae talem et tantum meruit habere redemptorem

A Rave Concerning Good, Evil, and Freedom: Part the Fourteenth

Sat, 09 May 2009 13:44:54 GMT

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.

_______________________________

1Contemporary philosophers divide between two views of time, one that sees time as past, present, and future (the A series) where the past is fixed, the present is actual and the future is potential and the other that sees time as before, now, and after (the B series) where all times are actual and “now” serves a simple indexical. So, if counterfactuals are part of God's free knowledge, he would only know after he created. On the B theory, God would know what we in fact do the instant he creates, on the A theory, only after we act.

2Even though I've presented a conditional statement, the statement as a whole would still be necessarily true.

3This construction may not be altogether different from Molina's notion of supercomprehension. What we comprehend is the quiddity of a thing but God comprehends beyond the quiddity to one's haecceity. Or one may turn things around and say that a haecceity is like Saurez's habitio (and so removing the opaqueness of what it means to supercomprehend.

4Here I correct my analysis in my rave on Subjective Conterfactuals where I stated that God absolutely does not cause one's free action.

A Rave Concerning Good, Evil, and Freedom: Part the Thirteenth

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 02:01:36 GMT

A Coin Toss

Imagine the toss of a fair coin. Now imagine one hundred such tosses and again a thousand. In one hundred fair tosses, one would expect about fifty to come up heads and fifty tails, with one thousand one would expect about five-hundred each. In fact, the more one tossed the coin the closer one would see a 50/50 break. As such, if one always called a side consistently (say always calling heads), one would be right about half the time. Now, of course these are probabilities. If one knew the initial conditions for each toss, one could predict the outcomes every time. Now imagine that the initial conditions were the same for each toss and those conditions did not determine the outcome. Let us exclude the possibility that the coin will come up edgewise. The coin must land heads or tail, but there is nothing that determines which side side the coin will land, only that it must land on one side or the other. The best one can now do is predict the outcome half the time (assuming one always chooses the same side for each toss). Now ask how it is that God's position is vis a vis possible worlds and free agents. For Peter van Igwagen there isn't. The above analogy is his and it is for this line of reasoning that he rejects Middle Knowledge. In embracing an incompatiblist view of freedom over possible worlds, van Inwagen holds that God (at least prior to creation) can only know what we would do with a certain amount of probability.

To shift the analogy to possible world talk, let us grant that there is some state of affairs T consistent with some person P and worlds W and W*. Now in W worlds , P performs some actions A and in W* P refrains. In saying this, P's action regarding A is indifferent to T. Now let us assume that there are as many worlds W as W*. God actualizes T and P performs A and actualizes W. God isn't happy with W. Lets say God chucks W and actualizes T again and again and again. Sooner or later W* should turn up. (If you don't like the idea of God destroying worlds and starting over again, imagine that God actualizes T over and over again—universes don't have to interact with each other). If God actualizes T an infinite number of times and W* never turns up, one should be justified in saying P really does not have it in her power to refrain from A. Van Inwagen holds that P can refrain from A, so Middle Knowledge is impossible.

What makes van Inwagen's argument that modern Molinism is flawed goes beyond a good analogy. The principle difficulty with Middle Knowledge is that it is a derivative notion. It is either a special case of natural knowledge or of free knowledge. In a modal scheme, God's knowledge breaks between what God knows of necessity and what God knows contingently, that is contingently on what God in fact does. Following the “movement” Molina describes, all possible worlds are part of God's natural (necessary) knowledge and suppose that God knows that if he actualizes some state of affairs T, the result will be W. That is,

If T is actualized, so is W.

However, what is true in one world is true in all, so (1) is a necessary truth. On the other hand, (1) is clearly part of God's Middle Knowledge, so Middle Knowledge is just a species of God's Natural Knowledge. Now, turn it around, lets say that (1) isn't true in all possible worlds until after God decides to actualize T. Now it is part of God's free knowledge. However, as Robert M. Adams points out, by this time it is too late. God couldn't have used (1) to determine whether to create W, because could not have known that W* and not W would not have resulted from his actualizing T. In retrospect, would seem that Adams and Hasker were critiquing Middle Knowledge under the assumption that it is a special case of Free Knowledge.

As the saying goes, one philosopher's modus pones is another's modus tollens. Let us assume that before God decided to create the world he did know what we would have done. What alternatives does that leave us and do these alternative mean that God could have created a significantly good world that did not include evil? Perhaps next time.

A Rave Concerning Good, Evil, and Freedom: Part the Twelfth

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 00:17:27 GMT

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:

Freedom of spontaneity
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:

Incompatiblism
Compatiblism
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:

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.