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JET
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2002
Total Posts : 397
| Posted 3/1/2003 4:44 AM (GMT -6) |   | I’ve been arguing in the Molinism thread that the debate between Molinism and the OV requires that we understand the distinction between “libertarian freedom” (LF) and “self-determining freedom” (SDF).
When I say SDF, I am talking about the type of freedom that is described and defended by Doc in “Satan and the Problem of Evil”:
quote:
Self-determination means that the self gives determinateness to its actions. In other words, regarding any genuinely free act, free agents themselves ultimately transition a range of possible acts into one actual act. By definition, they define (render determinate) what was previously undefined (that is, indeterminate possibilities). They are the ultimate cause and explanation for the move from “possibly this or possibly that” to “certainly this and certainly not that.” (P. 375)
And:
self-determining freedom. The ability of an agent to determine his or her own actions. The agent renders indefinite possibilities (“maybe this” and “maybe that”) into definite realities (“certainly this” or “certainly that”). Antecedent and external factors influence the agent but cannot determine the agent insofar as the agent is self-determining. (P. 428)
When I say LF, I am talking about the bare-bones definition of LF used by Boyd and Craig (and Alan):
quote:
Agents can be said to possess libertarian freedom if it lies within their power to do otherwise given the exact same set of antecedent conditions.
The problem with the “bare bones” definition of LF is that “power to do otherwise” is ambiguous. We need to put some meat on it.
There are two possible meanings of “power to do otherwise”:
(1) There is nothing (physical or metaphysical) that is preventing me from doing otherwise.
Or:
(2) I have the power to determine whether or not I do otherwise (i.e., I have SDF).
Based on the grounding objection, the Molinist cannot mean “power to do otherwise” in the sense of (2). Therefore, the Molinist must mean “power to do otherwise” in the sense of (1), above.
So the Molinist affirmation of LF simply means that agent A has the power to otherwise, meaning there is nothing (physical or metaphysical) preventing the agent from doing otherwise.
Now we might argue that God’s middle knowledge (as understood by the Molinist) is the very thing that “prevents” A from doing otherwise.
But Craig gets around this by saying that God’s middle knowledge is a “soft fact”.
So to argue against Craig’s Molinism, you can’t just say that God’s middle knowledge prevents A from doing otherwise. You have to show that God’s knowledge is a “hard fact”.
Make sense?
Thanks,
Earl
Edited by - JET on 03/01/2003 09:55:04 AM | | Back to Top | | |
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JET
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2002
Total Posts : 397
| Posted 3/1/2003 5:14 AM (GMT -6) | | I want to clarify this statement:
quote:
There are two possible meanings of “power to do otherwise”:
(1) There is nothing (physical or metaphysical) that is preventing me from doing otherwise.
Or:
(2) I have the power to determine whether or not I do otherwise (i.e., I have SDF).
Based on the grounding objection, the Molinist cannot mean “power to do otherwise” in the sense of (2).
When I say: “Based on the grounding objection, the Molinist cannot mean “power to do otherwise” in the sense of (2)”, what I mean is:
quote:
But how then can we meaningfully say that agents could have done otherwise if all they shall ever do, and all they would have done in any possible world, is an unalterable fact an eternity before they even exist? Stated otherwise, how can agents be said to be self-determining when they don’t ground the facticity of what they do and ever would have done in different circumstances? The facticity eternally precedes them, created by nothing. If agents possess self-determining or libertarian freedom, they must be the ones who resolve possibilities into facts.
SATPOE, P. 126
Thanks,
Earl
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JET
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2002
Total Posts : 397
| Posted 3/13/2003 3:58 AM (GMT -6) | | http://www.nd.edu/~afreddos/papers/godtime.htm
I think this article by Alfred J. Freddeso confirms my intuitions that Molinists generally have a qualitatively different idea of freedom than the idea of “Self-Determining Freedom” on which Doc’s thesis is based.
Freddeso discusses the distinction between hard and soft facts (the Ockhamist solution):
quote:
As the Ockhamists see it, God's past beliefs about future contingents are soft facts; and so even if God has always and infallibly believed that, say, Peter will refrain from watching the fifth game of the NBA Finals tonight, Peter still has the power to watch the game and with it the power to bring it about that God has never believed that he will refrain from watching it.
Fredesso (in contrast to Craig?) concludes that:
quote:
the hard fact/soft fact distinction, though perhaps useful in specifying the causal prerequisites of free action, provides no warrant for denying that every truth about the past is accidentally necessary.
Thus, Freddoso “concedes that God's infallible beliefs about future contingents are part of the accidentally necessary past, but denies that they thereby deprive free agents of the power (in the sense required for freedom) to do otherwise.”
Freddoso argues that Peter is “free to do otherwise” if there are no “causal barriers” to Peter’s watching the game:
quote:
This reply, while not the exclusive property of Molinists, finds a natural home within the theory of middle knowledge. So assume for now that Molinism is true and that God believed from eternity, on the basis of His middle knowledge and free act of will, that Peter will refrain from watching the game tonight. And assume further, as we did above, that there are no causal barriers to Peter's watching the game, so that when he in fact refrains from watching it, he does not do so by natural necessity. Then, says the Molinist, despite God's past belief, Peter has the power (in /103/ the sense required for freedom) to watch the game. However, pace Mavrodes and the Ockhamists, this is not to say that Peter has the power (Power A) to bring it about that God never had the belief in question; after all, God's having had that belief is now accidentally necessary. Rather, what Peter has is the power (Power B) to do something, viz., watch the game, such that if he had been going to do it in the relevant circumstances, then God would have known from eternity, via His middle knowledge, that Peter would freely watch the game if situated in those circumstances. Thus, God's middle knowledge and free knowledge, though not directly brought about by what Peter will freely do, are nonetheless 'counterfactually sensitive' to what he will freely do. So even though God's belief about Peter is now part of the fixed past, still, as long as the causal prerequisites for free action are satisfied, Peter has the power to watch the game; therefore, when he in fact refrains from watching it, he does so freely. And the theory of middle knowledge provides a metaphysical model on which all these claims come out true.
Freddeso then goes on to argue that neither is God’s middle knowledge a “logical barrier” to Peter’s watching the game:
quote:
Nor am I swayed by Hasker's accusation that "a compatibilist such as Molina or Freddoso is claiming that Peter can have the power to [watch the game], even though it is logically impossible that he should exercise that power under the existing circumstances" (p. 141). I admit, of course, that there is no possible world in which God believed from eternity that Peter will not watch the game and in which Peter watches the game nonetheless. No surprise there. But I deny that there is any more interesting sense in which it is impossible for Peter to exercise his power to watch the game. More precisely, Peter's exercising the basic powers required to watch the game is fully compossible with all the other causal activity, including God's, that has ever occurred in the past or is anywhere occurring in the present. This is as much as any strong libertarian could possibly hope for.
However, Freddoso is wrong when he says “this is as much as any strong libertarian could possibly hope for”. To the contrary, we could possibly hope for ‘Self-Determining Freedom” as described by Doc in Satan and the Problem of Evil. While Freddoso’s idea of freedom merely requires the absence of “causal” or “logical” barriers, “Self-Determining Freedom” requires that free agents have the affirmative power to “create” their choices.
Tom? Alan? Doc?
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JET
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2002
Total Posts : 397
| Posted 3/13/2003 12:06 PM (GMT -6) | | http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/grounding.html
In “Middle Knowledge, Truth–Makers, and the "Grounding Objection", Craig argues that the grounding objection “appears to be a certain construal or version of a view of truth as correspondence which has come to be known as the theory of truth–makers”:
quote:
A truth–maker is typically defined as that in virtue of which a sentence and/or a proposition is true. According to Peter Simons, "Truth–maker theory accepts the role of something which makes a proposition true, that is, whose existence suffices for the proposition to be true. But it does not automatically pronounce on the ontological category of the truth–maker." "Indeed," he insists, "anything whatever is a truth–maker." But historically the orthodox view has identified truth–makers with such abstract realities as facts or states of affairs–more often than not, the fact stated as a proposition's truth condition, as disclosed by the disquotation principle. Thus, what makes the statement "Al Plantinga is an avid rock–climber" true is the fact that Al Plantinga is an avid rock–climber or the state of affairs of Al Plantinga's being an avid rock–climber.
Craig does not necessarily agree that CCF’s have “truth-makers”. In fact, he suggests that perhaps CCF’s have no “truth-makers”:
quote:
[T]he grounding objection seems implicitly to reject libertarian freedom, for on a libertarian view there is no further "grounding" to be sought for why there obtains a certain counterfactual state of affairs about how some agent would freely act under certain circumstances. To seek an answer to the question "Why is F a fact?" or "What makes F a fact?" is implicitly to deny libertarian freedom. It is simply a fact that that is how that agent would freely choose to act under those circumstances.
However, to the extent that CCF’s have truth-makers, Craig argues the truth-makers consist of “abstract entities”:
quote:
For my part, I should say that if true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom have truth–makers, then the most obvious and plausible candidates are the facts or states of affairs disclosed by the disquotation principle. Thus, what makes it true that "If I were rich, I would buy a Mercedes," is the fact that if I were rich I would buy a Mercedes. Just as there are tensed facts about the past or future which now exist, even though the objects and events they are about do not, so there are counterfacts which actually exist, even though the objects and events they are about do not. If counterfactuals of creaturely freedom require truth–makers, then it is in virtue of these facts or states of affairs that the corresponding propositions are true. And since these counterfacts are not the result of God's decree, the relevant states of affairs must obtain even logically prior to God's decree to create any concrete objects.
Craig is careful to point out that truth-makers do not necessarily cause counterfactuals to be true:
quote:
Now we immediately see the potentially misleading connotations of the term "truth–maker" for such entities. For making sounds like a causal relation between a truth–bearer and some concrete object, but truth–maker theorists are quite clear that the relation is by no means causal. An entity a makes a proposition p true if and only if that a exists entails that p. That truth–makers are usually conceived to be such abstract entities as facts or states of affairs underlines the point that a causal relation is not at issue here.
Craig further explains:
quote:
The truth–maker theorist would take it as understood that nobody actually causes counterfactuals or any other sort of proposition to be true. The demand for a cause of a proposition's being true is inept, unless the anti–Molinist is presupposing some very special causal theory of truth–makers, in which case he owes us an articulation of that theory and a defense, not merely of its adequacy, but of its superiority to customary truth–maker theories. (JET’s emphasis)
Isn’t this in fact what Doc presupposes and articulates in Satan and The Problem of Evil (i.e., a causal theory of truth-makers for CCF’s)?
quote:
Self-determination means that the self gives determinateness to its actions. In other words, regarding any genuinely free act, free agents themselves ultimately transition a range of possible acts into one actual act. By definition, they define (render determinate) what was previously undefined (that is, indeterminate possibilities). They are the ultimate cause and explanation for the move from “possibly this or possibly that” to “certainly this and certainly not that.”
SATPOE, page 375.
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