The Cosmological Argument and Free Will

[Michael]

Pickup,

Bill Craig's Molinist position is that God has chosen to actuate a world where people's free choices are compatible with the outcomes that God wants to achieve. So the Molinist seeks to find a balance between man's free will and God's sovereign determinacy. It's a form of compatiblism. But in terms of causation, the will is the cause of the action. Usual Christian thinking is that the cause of the will to do evil is something that has gone awry with us back in the mists of time, something often known as the 'fall'. It was debated early on in Christianity with Nestorius arguing that we might have the potential within us to avoid evil. He was condemned by the Western, but not by the Eastern Church. The Western Church, especially under the influence of Augustine, took a bleaker view of humanity than the Eastern Church. This state of 'fallenness' is something many of us find though; that though on one level we may 'will' to be and do good, on another level we, at the moment of decision, act in a way that is contrary to our stated intention. In Freudian language it is the battle between the id and the super-ego, with the ego, bruised, stuck between the battling two. But Freud was describing conflicts that have long been known about, as Paul wrote in his letter the Romans, 'For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate'.

Personally I find free will a challenge both theologically and scientifically. I find it enough to say that we have 'agency', that we are the agents of our actions (unless coerced), and so we are the ones accountable for our actions. I think we have to accept that, if only with a certain amount of 'faith', certainly as the general norm, in order for society to function. Abandon the notion of personal agency and accountability and I think we'd end up in a very strange and disordered place.

What about you - how do you see 'free will', 'agency' or 'accountability'?

[Mudhammam]

@Pickup, I already posted a link to the big bounce.

Ah, good looks. I overlooked that.

Pickup,

Bill Craig's Molinist position is that God has chosen to actuate a world where people's free choices are compatible with the outcomes that God wants to achieve. So the Molinist seeks to find a balance between man's free will and God's sovereign determinacy. It's a form of compatiblism. But in terms of causation, the will is the cause of the action. Usual Christian thinking is that the cause of the will to do evil is something that has gone awry with us back in the mists of time, something often known as the 'fall'. It was debated early on in Christianity with Nestorius arguing that we might have the potential within us to avoid evil. He was condemned by the Western, but not by the Eastern Church. The Western Church, especially under the influence of Augustine, took a bleaker view of humanity than the Eastern Church. This state of 'fallenness' is something many of us find though; that though on one level we may 'will' to be and do good, on another level we, at the moment of decision, act in a way that is contrary to our stated intention. In Freudian language it is the battle between the id and the super-ego, with the ego, bruised, stuck between the battling two. But Freud was describing conflicts that have long been known about, as Paul wrote in his letter the Romans, 'For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate'.

Personally I find free will a challenge both theologically and scientifically. I find it enough to say that we have 'agency', that we are the agents of our actions (unless coerced), and so we are the ones accountable for our actions. I think we have to accept that, if only with a certain amount of 'faith', certainly as the general norm, in order for society to function. Abandon the notion of personal agency and accountability and I think we'd end up in a very strange and disordered place.

What about you - how do you see 'free will', 'agency' or 'accountability'?

Thanks for the additional info, Mike. I always enjoy reading your thoughtful remarks. I'm pretty much with you on your personal views, and would probably ascribe to compatibalism myself, though we are often rightly accused of redefining "free will" (William James calls it something to the effect of a "quagmire of evasion"). I think compatibalism is correct to point out 1) the unintelligibility of free will as in a will disconnected from all prior causal relations and 2) the problems that arise, even if solely practical, in the belief that no freedom exists.

I view agency, if we're talking about "personal agency," as a manyness-in-oneness of sorts, the oneness being our conception of self and the manyness being the breakdown into the various agents that comprise the self, namely, all the genetic and environmental causes. Each factor that precedes the present moment, that contributes to this self, is an agent of causation in the foregoing chain of events. I think this eradicates any possibility of "ultimate responsibility" but I think you'd agree that's also the case within the context of a "Fall" or "Original Sin," which none of us can be held ultimately responsible for.

So, for me, free will is basically the freedom to act, even if the source of those actions are not ultimately found within ourselves, so long as no causal forces external to those that can be properly said to compose our "self" interfere with our actions. Another way I look at it is that I like to think of each person as a collection of forces (genetic and environmental). We don't choose our, say, "impersonal-personal forces"* (we don't choose our "self") but the effects of those forces are our own, and we must claim them, unless another collection of forces (another being) directly intervenes. All that being said, it does make me more sympathetic to those who act in ways I could never fathom, especially when certain of those "personal forces" seem to exhibit an unusual amount of influence over the others (as when some action is traceable to say, a brain tumor, or something of that sort, which, admittedly, is not in principle different from other "impersonal-personal forces")

*Impersonal because those forces are not themselves personal, but personal because we must own them--they define us, and our wills.

[The Grand Nudger]

Abandon the notion of personal agency and accountability and I think we'd end up in a very strange and disordered place.

Oh IDK, I don;t think that we'd have to change much in our current system to be able to handle the negation of both conceptually. We might have to paint new signs on prisons.... as places we keep people -precisely because we know they cant be held accountable (rather than using them as "punishment" for what we do hold a person accountable for). I'm sure there are places where the negation would have drastic effects, I just don't think it would be all that many places. New signs on old buildings, an odd new owner here and there but mostly the same faces.

Don;t we often find that we can abstract one thing in principle and make it work under a different framework? Isn't that sort of the essence of declaring two things to be compatible, for example?

[Angrboda]

On redrawing the map, I don't think it would be hard to do.

My thoughts from a previous discussion:

I've made the argument before, but to my mind, punishment serves one of 5 possible goals: (I just added one)

1. Insuring the safety of innocents by isolating offenders from the community and depriving them of the opportunity to re-offend;
2. Deterrence;
3. Rehabilitation;
4. Compensation - the redistributing of the fruits of the offender's resources to compensate society;
5. Retribution - making someone "pay" for what they have done because they are morally deserving of punishment.

As noted, deterrence is generally not regarded as effective. And retribution is probably, from a moral and practical standpoint, one of the least compelling justifications for punishment. I'm not going to elaborate further where this suggests we head with criminal punishment except to point out two key points.

In Michel Foucault's landmark study of the history of punishment, Discipline and Punish, he points out how, with the reforms in punishment that have occurred in Europe since the 16th century, the focus of punishment has shifted away from punishing the individual for an act to one in which we largely punish and attempt to correct the person as someone who has a mind capable of committing such acts. Thus we allow insanity as a defense, because the person's inclination to commit crime is not amenable to the treatment, punishment. We adjust the punishment dependent on the goal of fixing the criminality of the mind, not on addressing the severity of the crime; three strikes and you're out is aimed at minds that can't be fixed, not crimes that have been committed. Child molesters can be given chemical or surgical castration in exchange for reduction of sentence and leniency. Prisoners are monitored for progress and paroled earlier if they "show signs of good character" — it's not the crime that determines punishment anymore, it's the predisposition to offend which is the focus of punishment. Retribution, perhaps, is a return to focus on the crime rather than on fixing the criminal mind, but I'd be hesitant to take that step without serious consideration as to whether doing so serves any legitimate purpose.

The second point is, that as a hard determinist, I don't believe in free will. The moral justification for using punishment as retribution for a crime is that the person is morally deserving of the punishment, and that requires moral culpability which doesn't exist in the required sense if free will doesn't exist. The other four aims of punishment — deterrence, isolation from society, compensation, and rehabilitation — all can be justified without recourse to the assumption of free will; retribution alone cannot. Now I recognize that relative to my peers, I hold an extreme view with regard to free will, yet I think many of us realize that, regardless of where on the continuum regarding the existence of free will you stand, most of us recognize that most crimes and criminal behavior is a consequence of both factors within the individual's control, as well as a large measure of factors totally outside their control, ranging from social class, education, intelligence, all the way to things like being born in a society or culture that encouraged certain values and not others, to being genetically fated to the development of temperament which leaves one at increased risk of criminal or violent behavior. As a personal matter, I try to remove free will from any justification for punishment; but even someone more moderate could well be persuaded to minimize the impact that situational factors such as being born black, being poor, and such have on the fairness and equity with which we address criminal behavior; I think, arguably, retribution results in unfairness because it treats moral culpability and the resources to act morally as evenly distributed resources, and they are not.

[Michael]

Pickup.

Thanks for sharing your perspective.

I like the quote from James that free will is quagmire of evasion :-)

[Whateverist]

There is no certainly that the universe had a beginning. It may be that the universe we perceive is the latest in a series of iterations, each one collapsing and 'bouncing' to cause the next.

While there is of course no certainty in science, doesn't the current Big Bang model theorize that all space-time and matter-energy had a beginning? If we're still holding out that this was merely an "event horizon," how can we, based on the current evidence, call this broader dimension a "material" Universe?

Or rule it out, for that matter.

[Little lunch]

Abandon the notion of personal agency and accountability and I think we'd end up in a very strange and disordered place.

Oh IDK, I don;t think that we'd have to change much in our current system to be able to handle the negation of both conceptually. We might have to paint new signs on prisons.... as places we keep people -precisely because we know they cant be held accountable (rather than using them as "punishment" for what we do hold a person accountable for). I'm sure there are places where the negation would have drastic effects, I just don't think it would be all that many places. New signs on old buildings, an odd new owner here and there but mostly the same faces.

Don;t we often find that we can abstract one thing in principle and make it work under a different framework? Isn't that sort of the essence of declaring two things to be compatible, for example?

Those prisons that had new signs painted on them would have to be big enough to fit anyone who has ever committed the slightest offence.
Everyone actually.

[Mudhammam]

Pickup.

Thanks for sharing your perspective.

I like the quote from James that free will is quagmire of evasion :-)

James believed in free will, or as he calls it "novelty." What he calls a quagmire of evasion is my position, that "free will" (a refined definition of it) and determinism can be reconciled. Obviously, I disagree with him on that. :-)

[The Grand Nudger]

Those prisons that had new signs painted on them would have to be big enough to fit anyone who has ever committed the slightest offence.
Everyone actually.

Why?

[Little lunch]

Because once you go in you never come out.
Lack of free will is incurable.
Eventually the only people left outside would be the ones who never did anything wrong, which is nobody.
Maybe there are people as perfect as that.
If I went to prison for the accumulation of illegal things I've done and not been caught for, I'd die there. :-)

You know, some of us know we don't fit into society. We are all in hiding, trying to blend in.
But if the consequences for being ourselves was indefinite imprisonment, we would take society apart, I think.