Mormon Free Will Redux

Very well put, Clark. Just for the record, I should reemphasize that I do not believe the universe to be fully deterministic. Rather I believe that what indeterminacy there is hinders rather than helps the existence of things such as responsibility, freewill, etc. This point makes your post more relevant to me and the discussion over at New Cool Thang.

I just don’t see the plausibility of your argument Clark. If there is LFW of the agent causal sort, then God knows that we have these powers of ultimate causality at t1 just by knowing that something occurs and it wasn’t caused and it isn’t explained by the causal state of the world prior to t1. Moreover, God knows whether we are morally responsible (since he holds us accountable) and knows that such accountability requires LFW.

Clark — You lost me right about here…

I think it pretty clear that God doesn’t know whether there is Libertarian Free Will (LFW) if he doesn’t create the universe ex nihilo

How could that possibly be “pretty clear”? Why shouldn’t we assume that God comprehends some method to reliably test and discern which beings/agents possess LFW and which don’t? Mormonism gives an easy A/B testing possibility with Lehi’s “things that act and things that are acted upon” after all. Why shouldn’t we assume that means causally determined things/beings vs. agents with LFW? And why shouldn’t we further assume God is smart enough to discern the difference between randomness and LFW choices?

If we are going to be theists why not at least believe in an intelligent and competent God?

Clark: You just ignored the difference that I pointed out altogether. The difference is that God knows that there are not sufficient causal data at t1 to determine the outcome of a choice A at t2 and that when the agent does act A the agent’s act of will is the cause that finally determines the event A. God knows that, and it is sufficient for God to know that we have LFW without knowing beforehand how it will be exercised. Your view presupposes a strong version of the principle of sufficient reason which I have already addressed at some length and rejected in vol. 1 of Exploring Mormon Thought. Your view presupposes that either God knows the sufficient conditions beforehand and these conditions then change, or there is no explanation because the circumstances in which the agent acts lacks contrastive explanation. However, the act of the agent in LFW is itself the contrastive explanation. Indeed, that is what agent causation is all about.

Further, the action isn’t random. The fact that an agent’s action is not sufficiently explained by prior causes or circumstances doesn’t entail that an agent doesn’t act for reasons and that with the agent’s reasons created in the moment of creative synthesis the act is fully explained though not as in the strong version of the principle of sufficient reason. Determinists think of reasons as causes. In a sense they are, but they are not prior causes. Rather, the reasons themselves are created in a creative synthesis of prior data and reasoning itself is an act free in a libertarian sense. Reasoning must be creative — otherwise, our reasons are fully explained by the a-rational causes of neural actions which would entail that reasoning itself is a-rational and based on laws of cause and effect at the neural level rather than ratiocination at the personal level.

So there is an interaction where LFW makes a difference — the agent’s choices and creative reasons created in the moment of choice are the difference. If the act is explained fully by prior circumstances beyond the agent’s control, then the act isn’t up to the agent and the agent isn’t morally responsible. That is a large difference.

So why don’t you think that these differences are differences? I believe it is because you have a physicalist assumption: the only differences must be differences in causes of events prior to the vent itself. That is what you mean by a “difference in the universe,” and I reject that assumption. What if the difference is in the very creativity of the agent in the act of choosing and how the agent creatively synthesizes the data of the prior moment without a sufficient explanation in those prior data? That is the explanation of process thought and you just assume it cannot be a difference.

Further, your claim that we would act the same way if we found that what people do is really not up to them is false — as experimental psychology has demonstrated. You appear to adopt the Strawsonian view that moral responsibility consists of nothing more than our cultural practices of holding each other responsible. First, Strawson is wrong — based on experimental data — that people do in fact refuse to hold others responsible when they find out there are circumstances over which they have no control lead to their acts. Indeed, our entire criminal system requiring certain rational control and mens rea demand it. Second, Strawson doesn’t really believe in moral responsibility, but only in cultural practices. However, he misses that these practices follow from a belief that persons are really morally responsible and are not merely constitutive of morality per se.

Finally, as you know I don’t believe that semi-compatiblism is really workable or captures our sense of moral responsibility. You really believe that in any given circumstances you literally couldn’t have done otherwise? I believe that there is an origination of action condition (captured by certain views of agent causation, tho not necessarily substance causation) that is necessary for moral responsibility and that this very condition logically entails ability to to will otherwise. That is why our intuitions about ability to do otherwise are so closely connected with moral responsibility. Now it is important to note that ability to do otherwise is not sufficient for LFW or real moral accountability, but it is a necessary condition.

Michael, in case it’s not clear, I don’t in the least think LFW is necessary for Mormonism to be true. Indeed lots if not most Mormons accept a robust sense of foreknowledge such that LFW is false. Blake and others present reasons for why responsibility and accountability demand LFW and argue fairly persuasively that responsibility and accountability are necessary for Christianity to make sense. Many people are persuaded. But I don’t think it follows that they are necessary. That is if it turned out we have revisionist accounts of responsibility and accountability I don’t think we’d care that much.

I’m saying that for God to discern a difference between two things (any things) there must be an actual difference in the universe. This is the distinction between a difference in name from a difference in being. (For the record, this was actually a rather big deal in scholastic philosophy – although Duns Scotus introduces a third difference called the formal difference)

Thus far Blake has established a difference in name but not a difference in being. The whole argument rests on there being no difference in being between random chance and LFW. The difference is that in one there is a “real choice” while in the other this is not. Yet they are identical in the state of affairs in the actual universe and identical in all possible universes.

What’s being compared isn’t determinism and LFW but a universe with randomness and LFW. That is the problem is distinguishing between non-determinism as LFW and non-determinism as chance.

The issue isn’t simply not knowing how God knows something in the particulars rather it is the argument that knowledge of necessity demands actual differences in the universe. As I said it’s easy to work out differences in the universe between determinism and non-determinism but impossible, as I see it, between types of non-determinism.

What supports this mere assertion Clark? Of course God can know it. What do you mean by “mediated way” for God to know it?

Blake, merely saying, “of course God can know it” isn’t much of an argument. That of course makes a ton of sense given creation ex nihilo but very little if one rejects it. It seems to me that you are the one making the mere assertion.

It’s fine to say God experiences all things. Please explain the difference in experience between the world with free will and the world without because I don’t see it.

Further, your own position is contradictory. If God knows that the action is undetermined by prior data, but there is a determination at the time a person acts, then of course he knows it was due to an act of will that it was finally determined.

Blake, a random event is as much a determination as is the LFW choice. Unless you are equivocating over your use of “determined.”

Let’s put it this way. God knows all the states at t1 and knows that in connection with law that this does not uniquely determined states at t2. At t2 there is a new set of states. Now that could be determined by LFW or chance but God can’t tell because there’s nothing in that gap that can be experienced.

Is that clear enough?

I don’t really think this is a difficult point. As I said to Geoff we’re comparing two kinds of indeterminism and not LFW with determinism. Perhaps you think I’m arguing something I’m not?

There is also the very act of willing that renders the choice determinate that God also knows.

But that’s begging the question. What is the act of willing if not something in the universe? That’s the whole point!

Either this act of willing is something at t1 or t2 or it isn’t. If it isn’t then it’s essentially unknowable and merely stating it must be knowable doesn’t make it so. If it is something at t1 or t2 then it makes a difference in the universe. All I ask is what that difference is.

Put simply again, how do we tell the difference between chance and choice? What is there in experience that makes it a difference? Merely talking about the words we label it with is beside the point.

Blake: What supports this mere assertion Clark? Of course God can know it.

Amen Blake. That was my point but since no one was agreeing I was beginning to wonder if I was missing something here.

Clark: “It seems to me like you are applying a double standard. You would say God can’t know the future because it doesn’t exist and it doesn’t exist because its existence is incompatible with LFW.”

No, the future cannot be known because it doesn’t exist to be known. Free acts exist to be known — in fact, it is precisely because they exist as actual features of the universe that they are known.

Clark: I posted a long response to your post but it doesn’t appear. Only my second post, written after the response appears. Do you know why? Please recover it because I explain at length how the act of creative synthesis which constitutes a free choice constitutes a distinctive change in the universe that is a free act by its very nature, is a result of our synthesis of the prior data as a non-random event or series of events and thus can be known to God because he knows he knows the quality of these acts as such as a free act that is not determined by prior data but is a non-random power to organized prior data into a choice. All of that is necessarily known by God and is the basis of his knowledge.

Blake I don’t know what happened to your comment as it’s not in the spam filter. Perhaps you lost internet connection while submitting?

Regarding your 21 saying that a creative synthesis makes a distinctive change doesn’t mean it does. That is consider the state S1 before the event of choice and then S2 after the choice. There must be something in S1 and S2 that is different from the random choice that makes what you say possible. But if it is possible for S2 to arise randomly (and it seems hard to assert that something is possible physically but unable to be arrived at randomly) then I don’t see how you can say the creative choice leads to physical differences.

The problem is that a random even also forms choices that can’t be explain by prior data. To say that the difference in the universe is that one has free agents and one doesn’t is unhelpful unless we can first establish that “free agent” maps out a real difference and not just a difference in name.

So it seems to me that you’re just engaging in circular logic. There is a real difference because there are free agents. And free agents aren’t just a name difference because there is a real difference. That’s about as circular as an argument can possibly get.

Well, I’m an outsider to the frame of this debate and its particular stakes. But I’ll take a crack at it from a different angle. It seems to me the question of agency, as to whether it exists and is attributable as a real phenomenon, is bound up in the question of what it means to follow a rule. In order for an entity or organism to be following a rule, it must be capable of following that rule differently or following a different rule, (the difference between the two being somewhat indeterminate). To be clear, I’m not thinking of fixed computational rules, which more-or-less mechanically result in a predetermined outcome, (which would be similar to the operation of an instinctually fixed or chained behavior), but a behavioral rule that requires a determination of its relevant conditions of application. {Of course, there is no such thing as following just one rule; if there is a rule involved, then there are already other cross-secting rules “in play”). Hence, agency is not a matter that can be determined in terms of a single causal event, but requires variability and flexibility over ranges of events and consideration of the follow-through across sequences of events. (Kant’s account, for whom a lawless will was simply a contradiction in terms, and thus to act voluntarily was to determine the will in accordance with a maxim, might be a distant echo here). Mind, I’m not claiming that rule-following or application is tantamount to agency, but rather that it is the primitive rudiment by which to approach the issue through its layers of complexity, (since I would see some “higher” animals as have some rule-following behaviors without attributing any “free” agency to them). Attribution of agency, (which, er, would occur on the part of the rule-governed understanding of another such rule-governed agent, since, I think, understanding too finds its primitive roots in rule-following), would involve both constancy and continuity in the ordering of events and variability and indeterminacy over that ordering of events. The detectable real difference, then, would involve reorderings of the probabilites ordering the distribution of events, the probability of the improbable, to the point of extreme discrimination, whereby “random” contingencies of single events, (since, again, we’re dealing with probabilistic distributions over extended orders of events), become themselves vanishingly improbable. (But then I’m probably ignorantly entangling myself in vexing issues over the interpretation of mathematical probability theory and statistics). At any rate, I don’t think that we are instantaneously and unconditionally “free” in terms of neuro-physiological causal processes, but that’s just the wrong way to put the issue, since those processes are themselves selective in their operations, and the issue of our agency, as presupposing and emerging from them, concerns its embeddedness in “the stream of life” and its follow-throughs. All that would be required for a minimal accounting for and attribution of agency would be a causal under-determination in terms of its physical basis, not any denial of its causal conditions.

Another angle on the way this debate is structured. It seems to take place on the basis of the contrast between the first- and third-person perspectives. Levinas claimed that the notion of “freedom” and agency has always been framed in Western philosophy, at least implicitly, by measuring it against causality and the mastery thereof. The second-person perspective, that of the relation to the other qua other, is overlooked and occluded. Yet it is precisely that dimension of the relation to the other qua other, (who can not be converted in to an object of knowledge on the part of a subject, “objectified”, since that would be precisely to short-circuit and occlude that relation and the otherness of the other, which rather must be held open and allowed for), that opens up the very possibility of agency and its attributions, (both my own and the other’s, which are reciprocally, if asymmetrically cross-implicated in their existence). That for Levinas my responsibility “precedes” my freedom sounds like, and partly is, such an outrage, precisely because it seems to “throw” my agency into causal conditions, which it can’t be “properly” accountable for, (which is to restate the measurement of agency by causality and the definition of its freedom in terms of “autonomy”, causal self-determination), but then Levinas is “measuring” the issue not in terms of causality, but in terms of the (modal) relation to the other, which is not a matter of knowledge, but upon which my own existence as an individuated agent in some sense depends. One of the basic aims of Levinas’ philosophy, AFAICT, is to recuperate the sense of human agency from without its multiple dissolutions in modern naturalisms, without thereby denying the relative validities of those naturalisms.

Lastly, a remark on Whitehead. I don’t think he construes the universe as entirely comprised of “drops of experience”, or, at least, such an account sounds too idealistic, as against his professed “critical realist” intentions. I understand his account of “actual occasions of organic experience” as a kind of revised monadology, with the monads no longer “pregnant and windowless” and dependent on “pre-established harmony”. “Prehensions” are basically his word for causality and the “concresences” of actual occasions emerge at and through the conjunction and conciliation of prehensions, which are generalized as “experiences” in a very extended sense to emphasize the way that they are at once constituted and effected through the forces of the various “prehensions”, (which can be positive or negative}, which relate them to their surrounding context in the universe. At any rate, his account of “eternal objects”, i.e. the formal or structural properties of “things”, which are “conceptually prehended” and “ingressed” into the concretions of actual occasions, is rather similar to the “Scholastic realism” you attribute to Peirce. The main proposal of his account, of course, is to replace the traditional notion of substance with an analysis of process, which is not only a fairly radical revision of traditional metaphysics, but inspired and aimed at supporting the rationality of the then new physics, by taking the opportunity to strip away all the epistemological/metaphysical accretions that had grown up around the old Newtonian physics. The main thrust is a realist account of an emergently evolving natural universe which in some sense remains open and creative, which we humans too are encompassed by, but also open to and capable of participating in its creation. “Experience” is referenced and attributed precisely as something that transcends our perspectives and yet as the source of framing an understanding of that perspective-transcendent universe. What account Whitehead would hold of human agency, other than a “neutral monist” one, is not clear, but likely some sort of compatibilist one is implied. Likewise, I’m not comfortable with that Analytic triad of determinist, compatibilist, and libertarian alternatives, since I think human agency, “freedom”, is a real, but constitutively quite limited phenomenon, when situated at its relevant emergent level, (and not made to do metaphysical work its clearly unsuitable for), but, if forced to choose, I guess I’d be a semi-compatibilist, just to fudge the issue.

Clark,

Interesting conversation. I have some observations.

Your primary point seems to be that there is no discernible difference between a world where LFW is true and a world where chance is true/the world unfolds in an indeterminate manner.

But why does it seem that your claim implies that, if there’s no discernible difference between an act of chance and an act of LFW, LFW must be sacrificed and randomness upheld? Why not sacrifice chance and argue LFW (or something extremely close to that) must be upheld? I understand your response may be ‘well, we’re not sacrificing either – we’re just recognizing that there’s no distinguishing observational difference between a LFW world and chance world’. But if that tact is taken, it strikes me as a reason to regard claims of a will-free chance-laden world with suspicion for a number of reasons, but one in particular: We at least have a powerful intuition that we ARE, in fact, free. Even those who take the incompatiblist position seem universally willing to cede that much.

Think of it coming from the perspective of LFW proponent A approaching person B advancing the chance argument.

“We don’t really make choices,” says B. “That’s just random chance playing out.”

A replies, “What you call random chance is actually LFW.”

“No, it’s chance,” B counters. “I admit that determinism is false. I admit that when you’re presented with choices 1 2 and 3, you’re not deterministically bound to pick any of those numbers. But no matter what you pick, ‘you’ didn’t pick anything. Your choice was an event of chance.”

A replies, “I deliberate between 1 2 and 3. I experience my considering and pondering the choices. I’m not operating under duress. I make a decision, and you recognize that I could have chosen otherwise. Everything I experienced here indicates my will being in operation, and the best evidence you could offer against this – determinism – is something you innately reject. Why should I regard the core factor of my choice to not be ‘my choice’, but ‘random chance’?”

I don’t see what B could reasonably reply here, since B’s assertion is not only that the choice A makes is random chance, but that random chance feels entirely like LFW and always will in such a context. And if B takes the tact that a LFW world is indistinguishable from a chance world, it seems that reason would strongly suggest regarding chance as a superfluous explanation, not LFW. Even if the LFW proponent can’t provide an exhaustive explanation of how he’s freely arriving at his choices, he’s still in a better position than the chance proponent – ‘chance’ in this context has to be asserted as a brute fact of the world, one that goes against common mental intuition.

Or maybe I’m missing something here. For me,

Clark: You haven’t really responded to what I said. I argued that we have a basic power to organize data based into a novel and new synthesis of that data into a meaningful choice. Because it is a basic power to organize data into a rational consciousness, the “more” than the mere sum of the parts of the past data is the synthetic unity of the data to create our very experience and reasons. A world with free will has agents who have this basic power. A world without LFW doesn’t. The action is non-random because this power is itself the ability to organize data into rational patterns of thought. Because the power to organize data into meaningful patterns of conscious thought gives rise to reason and reasoning and reasons for action, it isn’t chance.

So what am I missing here? It seems to me that you just refuse to see what is a rather clear difference in a universe with agents free in a libertarian sense and one without it. The very act of organizing these data and the organization that results are known immediately to God as part of his own experience. Thus, our thoughts and thought processes and our exercise of free will are immediately known to God. Thus, your argument has been answered. There is a difference known to God because the free acts in their very process of non-randomly organizing data into a determinate decision from an undetermined prior data is a part of God’s own experience — the data of our decisions is the data of his experience. This is all consistent with Whithehead and Hartshorne (I prefer Harthsorne’s take on process thought BTW) and it is a clear response to your argument.

I’ve concluded either I’m missing something that seems obvious to you or you’re just being stubborn. So to make some headway — define “chance” and distinguish it from action based on reasons or for teleological purposes which I believe all will agree is not mere chance but calculated and rational choice. If you mean by “chance” that it happens for no sufficient reason, then you adopted a version of the PSR that I reject and rightly so. If you suggest that non-chance or non-random means that we act for purposes teleologically, then you’ll have to explain how what I have explained doesn’t constitute teleological reasoning or is somehow incompatible with it.

However, I think that the nub of the problem is in this statement that you make: “free acts don’t exist in the normal sense. Acts exist. Acts can have the property of being free or they can have the property of being not-free.”

This statement is just false from my perspective — and in a process perspective. If the world is wholly deterministic you are correct; but it will hardly do to assume determinism as a basic assumption about an event ontology as the basis for discussion the view of those who adopt LFW. What you assert is that there are mere acts or events, and there is some property that supervenes on them that makes them free. Since there isn’t such a supervening property, either everything is deterministic or there are just acts. Yet that is just what an agent causal libertarian rejects! Free acts are an intrinsic exercise of a basic power that are free by their very nature — these acts just are acts of creative synthesis and it is this very intrinsic nature of the act and power exercised in so acting that makes it free and non-random and not merely a chance event. So the “freedom” of an act isn’t some property of the act that supervenes on an act; rather, the freedom to act consists in the very nature of the power exercised — the power of creative synthesis of data into a new choice in each new moment of consciousness.

You haven’t really responded to what I said. I argued that we have a basic power to organize data based into a novel and new synthesis of that data into a meaningful choice. Because it is a basic power to organize data into a rational consciousness, the “more” than the mere sum of the parts of the past data is the synthetic unity of the data to create our very experience and reasons.

I did respond. You just don’t appear to understand my response. My response is that this ‘unity’ can come via LFW or chance. Your basic argument is that it can only come in actuality from LFW. But since that’s the matter being disputed we can’t assume that. That’s why I keep telling you your argument is circular.

My point is what in experience (or states of affairs, or whatever that we can discern) makes the difference? You say creativity but this only works if we have a way to distinguish in experience what is or isn’t creative. (Call it what you will) What you want to say clearly is that experiencing something as creative entails it is creative. That is that we must have an inerrant sense of what is in experience. But I just don’t accept that in the least.

The person who says luck generates our experience would say we have some phenomenal experience of creativity. But what I’m saying is that we can’t say what is behind this as we move from one phenomenal moment to the next.

Your next move is to simply say, “well process thought says…” But that avoids the central epistemological challenge. Can we discern whether process thought is true in this matter? This returns us to the point about whether the experience of creativity entail the ontological reality of a certain theory about the ontology of creativity. If you say (as I you clearly do) that this isn’t circular then you have to show how, in experience, we can tell whether process thought is correct.

Put an other way, all you’ve really done is say, “I like process thought, therefore process thought is correct, and the burden of proof is on anyone who presents an alternative system to prove it to me.” But my change of tactic was to leave metaphysics as much behind as possible and turn to epistemology. In effect I’m saying, “there are multiple metaphysical ways to describe this event with no possible way of distinguishing them.”

This statement is just false from my perspective — and in a process perspective. If the world is wholly deterministic you are correct; but it will hardly do to assume determinism as a basic assumption about an event ontology as the basis for discussion the view of those who adopt LFW.

It seems to me that this statement doesn’t depend in the least upon determinism. (And note once again that determinism isn’t assumed anywhere in my discussion – the comparison is luck vs. LFW and not determinism vs. LFW. You keep invoking determinism which seems an odd strawman since it isn’t being discussed.) Now it is true that you’re arguing from a process thought perspective. As I said though that begs the question. I’m asking how, in this particular, if there is a way – even a weak way – to distinguish perspectives. Since you’re answer comes down to appealing to “a process perspective” I’m assuming not.

Clark: No you didn’t respond. You say that the unity of reason and decision can be by chance or by free decision. You haven’t defined what you mean by chance. If the synthetic unity of experience is a choice per se, or if it is a reason per se, then it isn’t by chance. You don’t have any clear sense of what constitutes chance as distinguished from what just happens to happen, and for that reason you miss my point altogether. How could a reason or free choice come by chance?

My argument certainly isn’t as it you have caricatured it. I don’t say anything like what you attribute to me. What I have said is that creativity in the act of bringing data under a synthetic unity of experience is a form of reason — and I ask how is that chance? You just don’t respond.

I don’t see anything to suggest that the very act of free choice itself cannot be known as an act that just is an act of choice that can be known to God. So now it is up to you to give some sense to what you mean by “chance” as opposed to a free choice. I have asked at least four times — and still nothing. Without such clarify, your argument is vacuous as far as I can see.

Interesting discussion.

Clark,

It seems to me that under the epistemological framework you are using here, God has no way of knowing whether or not he is just a brain in a vat, or whether he is the only mind in the universe. Would you agree? If so, what sort of conclusions can/should we draw from that?

Geoff, I’m definitely not taking all of Blake’s arguments (which fit together as you outline) at once. And I think the argument is more than “I can’t figure out.” Rather I think it is logically impossible and thus God can’t know. So I don’t think it a weak argument in the least. If it holds though it significantly undercut’s Blake’s overall argument since we can ask from what basis God asserts LFW providing reason to accept a revisionist account of responsibility.

If the synthetic unity of experience is a choice per se, or if it is a reason per se, then it isn’t by chance.

Yes, I think I see what you’re arguing. You are saying experience intrinsically is free. To which I can but say, “why say that?” That is, if you end up appealing to Whitehead, does he give a strong argument for that premise?

I’d love to discuss that with you if only because I don’t understand Whitehead well despite many attempts. So if you can provide some arguments for it I’d be very interesting. Honestly I just don’t think it right.

The question about chance is worthwhile, but as I mentioned in the other post, as I’m using it I mean only indeterminism which in the move from one moment to the next is ontologically different from what happens in LFW moves from one moment to the next. Put simply it’s simply a foil that asks if we can have indeterminism without LFW at an ontological level. (As opposed to higher levels where some of the other properties of LFW come into play)

Clark,

Although that’s mainly due to arguments from error. That is I think any simulation will have errors reality won’t.

I am surprised you find such an argument persuasive and it still leaves the question of solipsism, but let’s just leave that problem aside for one moment and assume hypothetically that such questions are epistemologically irresolvable even for God. Would it follow that it does not matter whether or not we are the only mind in the universe?

Clark: Geoff, I can but say that one can talk about choice and responsibility quite well without ascribing an ontological theory to them.

Wha…? Is that your response to my question about what “a revisionist account of responsibility” means? If so it sounds more like a dodge or double talk than an answer to me.

In Mormon theology real moral responsibility is essential. It has been very persuasively argued that there is no real moral responsibility if people are entirely causally determined. The same arguments would apply if choices are purely random. Do you have a non-word-salad alternative to LFW that can provide real moral responsibility or not. (I am pretty sure I already know the answer to this question but I wanted to give you another shot at it.)

Geoff, I have a post half-written on that. I hoped to have it up yesterday but unfortunately I caught my wife’s flu which did in most of my weekend plans. So I’m not avoiding it, but I think one has to avoid the scattershot approach of too many tangents.

So I was just outlining the approach I take and why.

As for the general category of revisionist accounts I’d check out Vargas’ “The Revisionist Guide to Responsibility.” That’s a very general paper though.

If I understand your argument it is roughly Mormonism entails responsibility which entails LFW. Mormonism is true. Therefore LFW accounts of responsibility and freedom are true. If claim’s about God’s knowledge contradict that then they are wrong. I just can’t buy that reasoning. But I’ll hold off saying more.

CEF, almost. I’ve not discussed determinism really at all. For two reasons. One, I think it highly unlikely physical law is deterministic. (The only remaining hold out for a classic view is Bohm’s interpretation of QM but it has problems in many ways – especially when applied to GUTs) Two, I don’t believe in causal determinism so it’s hard for me to argue for it.

To me all the action is in indeterministic accounts of space-time. But there are a slew of options in that. Roughly my argument is how to tell the indeterminism entailed by LFW apart from non-LFW indeterminism. (There are ways to tell apart some of the alternatives within the non-LFW camp but I’ll leave that alone for now)

I don’t think Blake is saying God can bring about what he wants 100% of the time. Indeed I’m fairly certain Blake doesn’t believe that in the least. I think one implication of God being in and alongside the universe rather than its ontological creator is that he is limited in what he can do.

So roughly you’re saying that God’s existence demands classical omnipotence. At which point I think you end up needing to embrace something very much like creation ex nihilo. That’s fine if you want that. And there are a few Mormon thinkers who move towards embracing the classic views of omnipotence. However I think the problems with classic omnipotence are legion. (Especially whether such a view could actually even be logical compatible with LFW – there are several arguments for why it couldn’t)

CEF, you’re conflating two things. One is the question of whether we can actualize our intents. So if I walk to the door I’ve realized an intent. Clearly it’s not random that I walked to the door. However if my intentions are ontologically indeterminate and my intents are reducible and not irreducible then we can say that these purposeful acts are emergent out of something random.

So the question ultimately isn’t about what happens in the regular world of common sense experience. Everyone largely agrees there. The question is what happens down at a fundamental level. You could see the question as what should judge: our regular world common sense intuitions or physics? To me that’s really what the choice is. Whether the thinking we use in our regular world applies equally outside of it.

Clark: What do you mean by “chance”?

Christopher: I am confused as to why you say that God cannot know if we have free will. If he cannot, then he doesn’t know whether holding us morally responsible is morally justified.

Further, I don’t say that God knows that we have free will, ergo we have free will (as you seem to take me to say). Rather, I say that if we have LFW of the sort that I propose, then God can know that because he knows the distinctive organization of data that constitutes a particular free choice and he knows the creativity inherent in the choice. Ergo, God knows that we have LFW if we in fact have LFW.

However, even I wouldn’t support a God so woefully lacking in knowledge as you suppose — God doesn’t know other minds on your view and doesn’t know if the external world is even real. That is just too finite.

I should also clarify, in light of your last paragraph, that the limitation I assert of God’s knowledge of other minds as well as the existence of LFW is that his knowledge is not infallible. I believe that God knows that we are other minds and that we have LFW far better than I do, but the logical possibility exists that he (and we) could be mistaken about these.

Blake, as I said, by random, luck or chance I’m being as general as possible. I’m including any indeterministic process which can’t ontologically be equated to LFW.

As to when you say,

…he knows the distinctive organization of data that constitutes a particular free choice…

it seems like more of the going around in circles. It seems to beg the question that there is an organization that results from chance that isn’t the same as LFW. The whole point is that organization (the conclusion of the process) only provides itself. It can’t tell us if it were random or not. At best it can do is be a conclusion where the thought is included that it is free. In other words I don’t see how your argument doesn’t just reduce to claiming mental states are indubitable.

In other words your claim rests on the organization from LFW being unique. That chance can’t organize the same way. Why do you think that? It leads once again to the obvious question: what is different?

t you

Clark, I am interested in your thoughts on my suggestion that, given that we cannot distinguish between LFW and randomness, the ethical choice is to believe that LFW obtains. Do you disagree?

I am sure I will conflate many things here, but I have confidence that everyone here can disentangle it all and help put me on the right path to better understanding this issue. :)

It seems that a determined world has to have laws that are the same everywhere at all times. And therefore, it can be shown, base on those laws, what will happen in the future. One cannot chose to do differently than what those preexisting laws require. Hence no free will. If God did not create the universe, then He cannot know but what He Himself is only acting the way those laws require Him to act. Have I gotten this part correct?

Can we say, God did not create the universe, but say He did create/organize this world we live in? We are told scripturally, that God’s laws are not our laws. So He lives by a different set of laws than we do. So what holds there, would not need to hold here.

It would seem reasonable to assume that God did create the laws, or at the very least, understands the laws we live by here. Why would God not be able to understand his own creation, the way He created/organized it? As such, if He wanted to offer man free will, so man can be judged by his own actions, could He not do so?

And last but not least, can God give something to man that He Himself does not have?

Clark – I have still been thinking about this question most of my idle time. It is not that I can not accept something that does not have an answer, like where did God came from, but I think this question should have an answer. Here is what I have come up with.

The very definition of God, something that is maximally powerfully and maximally knowledgeable, would (by definition) have the kind of knowledge that is required to know if He was doing something or if it was due to some other phenomenon.

I see how far we have come in our understanding of the universe in the last 100 years and how close we are to better understanding how everything works, and I am left wondering why God could not, given enough time, (time is on His side) be able to figure out the universe better than we can?

So given we did not create the universe and we are, (given enough time) going to figure it all out, what is there to make us think God could not do the same thing? What do I have wrong here? :)

To add, I’m not sure your logic follows. If God is maximally powerful (instead of all powerful in an absolutist sense of logic) then it may simply be something is not doable by God due to the nature of the universe but God is still maximally powerful. So your statement is logically invalid.

Put simply, there may be some physical limits on what is knowable and doable such that even a maximally powerful being can’t do or know them.

Seems to me that this whole argument is related to solipsism as Jacob mentioned. You are basically going down the skeptics path and saying “since God didn’t create us ex nihilo he can’t know for sure if we have LFW”. But that is not much different than saying God can’t really know there are actually other minds. Or that can’t can’t really know if he is actually a character in The Matrix or a brain in a vat with a vivid imagination or whatever.

But even if God could and did create us all ex nihilo most of these charges still hold. You could still say he could not know if he was actually in The Matrix or a brain in a vat or if anything he created were real beyond his imagination. Seems to me that this is a rather fruitless exercise. In practice we have faith that God is sufficiently competent to be worthy of our worship. Further, until a even remotely decent alternative to LFW is offered that explains moral responsibility I would say that because of we Mormons ought to accept LFW. I know you really really want to fight that but so far you have procrastinated trying to provide a reasonable alternative to LFW. I suspect it is because there is none.

Geoff, the issue isn’t that at all. The issue is that if God knows via interactions then his knowledge is limited. It seems to me that if one rejects the idea that God knows via interactions (which is what Blake’s position appears to be headed) then we’re just back to the idea that God can do anything we can imagine. Which is fine if you want to go that way. But then one could just say God could know the LFW future if we’re not going to place any limits on God.

Clark – I should just say “yea, what Geoff said”, and turn loose of this, but I tend to look for agreement too much for that.

I freely admit that I am *way* over my head in this conversation, so if I say/claim something that is just not true, it is only done out of ignorance, not malice. So with that in mind – When you said, “That is revisionist accounts of free will or responsibility are false and our language is an ontological guide for the meaning of scriptural terms.” Is this the sticking point for you? Thinking back to the conversation about “trump cards,” would this “ontological guide for the meaning of scriptural terms” be a trump card that you think could/would be used to put an end to inquiry that you reject/think would be wrong?

Just because God may not know how to get lost, does not, to me, entail that He does not understand how the mechanics of the universe works. Again, given how much we have learned in the past 100 years, and how much more we are sure to learn in the next 50-100 years, why would we not think, that if we are given enough time, we will not eventually progress to a point of being gods ourselves.

I think the hardest part is not learning how to harness the elements, I think that is a given. But learning how to love one another instead of trying to wipe the “other” of the face of the earth, is what makes one a god, worthy of worship.

I think I understand the argument you are making with the above, how do we know God/we did it and not something else? I think if we take out the part of the brain in the vat thing, which has already been said that no one really believes, then where am I going wrong?

CEF, I’m not cutting off inquiry. I’m earnestly seeking to understand. I’m more than willing to put forth arguments and see them falsified. Merely saying God is such and such independent of any argument tends to be what I see as the problem. If the argument is from the scriptures then of course I can just turn to passages where God knows the future and say that’s my basis. Blake and Geoff reject such scriptures or radically reinterpret them, which is fine. But they do so on the basis of their western linguistic use of ‘free will’ being privileged.

Recognize I’m far too skeptical about the strength of most philosophical argument to establish much. So I really don’t have much of a horse in this race beyond thinking that more possibilities are acceptable than Blake.

Blake is right Clark. As a theist and a Christian it is not a stretch to assert that God knows all that is presently exists. As Blake mentioned, there are plenty of scriptures to back this assertion. Blake’s argument that the future cannot exist if there is LFW is logically very sound. And you have yet to make a dent in the argument that moral responsibility can exist in the absence of LFW. All you have is the assertion that God doesn’t or can’t know something that presently exists (LFW or not).

I think your only defense on such a position is to fall back into some variation on solipsism as I mentioned in #61.

Geoff, as I said I think ex nihilo explains how that is possible. Once you make God into a being then everything changes.

Blake you can’t simultaneously appeal to tradition which presupposes foreknowledge to justify omniscience entailing all present entities and any predicable property.

For the rest I’ll leave for a separate post.