Post Edited (Similtude) : 12/27/2009 10:59:06 AM (GMT-6)

Hey Jeff,

On another site I got into a discussion with somebody re: libertarian free will. They offered the standard (Strawsonian) argument that libertarian free will is incoherent. Since a so-called libertarian choice isn’t ‘caused’ by antecedent states, it’s not caused at all. It’s the standard ‘randomness’ objection. And random choices can’t secure the kind of moral responsibility that libertarians are after and why they reject determinism. This particular guy wasn’t your standard determinist because he also held to UR. Everything is utterly determined, and God will ultimately determine that all know him. Whence evil? We can’t know. The reasons why God went this particular route are hidden in the counsel of his will.

For those Christians who don’t posit a necessary God-world relationship and who think God’s choice to create the world was free and not necessitated by his own nature BUT who also think libertarian free will is incoherent (and so deny it to us), I also ask whether or not they think such freedom is incoherent in God’s case, as it seems to be the very notion of freedom they ascribe to God in creating the world. If God’s choice is what creates the world, and if the world comes into being, then so must God’s choice come into being. But if God didn’t come into being, then SOMETHING very like libertarian free will must be coherent. At this point determinists either cave in and admit LFW is coherent or the dig in and affirm that God’s choice to create is as necessary as God’s own existence. But they still want to posit the contingency of the world. Doesn’t work, so they play the mystery card.

Anyhow, this guy (he might be lurking around here!) admitted (rather consistently, I congratulate him on that) that God does in fact relate to some non-God creation necessarily. God’s always creating, necessarily. And in fact, all God’s choices, all of them, are also determined. No free will for God in anything either. He thinks necessary benevolence entails this (which it doesn’t), but anyhow.

I mention all this to say a) it was interesting to find somebody who took the Process path of positing a necessary God-world relation but who unlike Process denied all libertarian freedom. All is determined, including God’s choice to create, and b) I don’t see how this denies ‘teleology’. How do you think it denies teleology? One can observe teleological becoming in a determined chain of events as well as a libertarianly determined chain of events.

Thoughts?

Tom

Tom: b) I don’t see how this denies ‘teleology’. How do you think it denies teleology? One can observe teleological becoming in a determined chain of events as well as a libertarianly determined chain of events.

Jeff: It seems to me that humans mean by teleology something that entails finality. Pure determinism has no finality to it. It is infinite into the past. Moreover, what we would mean by "means to an end" in the one instance is NOT what we would mean by it in the other. For determinism, it would have merely temporal signification. For libertarianism, it would imply intelligent directedness. Thus, teleology can not mean fully for determinism what it means for libertarianism.