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Sean
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 18
| Posted 8/30/2002 5:44 PM (GMT -6) |   | Hello, all. Well, I'd like to pose a question to all our philosophical gurus here, who have more experience in dealing with this question than I do. The main problem I'm having is understanding how metaphysical freedom would work, given the proposition:
C)Everything that begins to exist must have a cause
This seems to be the basic rule of cause and effect, and doesn't seem to be very disputable (if it is, correct me!), and so ultimately everything we do must have a cause. If I understand correctly, people who hold free will to be true do not say that free will is uncaused, but is caused primarily by the agent, and not by God. My main questions are as follows.
1) After psychological states and our environment, what is left to determine for us metaphysical freedom?
If one says that psychological states are indeterminite, that results in a problem, because there might pop in a self-caused psychological state. However, this leads to a statement of the form
a caused a to be the case
my problem is that this seems silly. My depression caused my depression to be the case? However, if psychological states are determinite, then where else do we find room enough for indeterminism?
2) Do any of you think that substance dualism is a help here? If so, how do you talk intelligibly about it? I ask this because a lot of our language relies upon cause and effect, so if something is indeterminite, how do you talk about it?
I hope my questions are worth consideration. I really am looking for answers to these questions. I wish I could research it on my own, but I really don't have any clue as to where to even begin reading. If anyone could offer good reading suggestions, as well as answer me, I would be very grateful.
Sean | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 8/30/2002 8:04 PM (GMT -6) | | I'm not a philosophy guru, but...
Sean: After psychological states and our environment, what is left to determine for us metaphysical freedom?
Tom: The will itself?
Tom
"Every saint has a history and every sinner a future." Oscar Wilde | | Back to Top | | |
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Sean
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 18
| Posted 8/31/2002 4:21 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Tom: The will itself?
I'd simply ask: what is the will? Is it independent of the psychological states of the mind? What kind of connection does it have with the mind? These questions are important for me, because the will as separate from the psychological states makes absolutely no sense in my mind. Further, what motivates one to chose something over something else? If there is no motivation, why is there a choice, and if there is a motivation, how could we go against it; we'd "have no motive". Lots of questions press me, and I feel as if I can't find answers. Of couse, I don't know where to begin to look, except for Doc's "Satan and the Problem of Evil", and even there it is only touched upon lightly. Thanks all.
Your Brother,
Sean | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 8/31/2002 7:12 AM (GMT -6) | | Sean, you write:
quote:
I'd simply ask: what is the will? Is it independent of the psychological states of the mind? What kind of connection does it have with the mind? These questions are important for me, because the will as separate from the psychological states makes absolutely no sense in my mind. Further, what motivates one to chose something over something else? If there is no motivation, why is there a choice, and if there is a motivation, how could we go against it; we'd "have no motive". Lots of questions press me, and I feel as if I can't find answers.
I won't try to give you THE answer. But I'd like to start by pointing out the popularity of the phrase "sheer will." That pictures for us someone doing something over-and-against something else that either limits or argues with that "sheer will." (such as pain) I'll come back to that.
What I think of when I read your question is that I'd like to pull your attention over twards the matter of your nature. A weight on a rope under gravity has a will--it pulls downwards. Your nature includes many, many, many wonderful things. We know that our God-given nature is "very good." So, shouldn't that mean that our will is good too? The answer is YES, and the answer is also NO. While I would argue that our human nature did not change with the fall, and is therefore still "good," SIN is a parasite that rides on that nature, and inflicted "death" on our race. So, we tend to want to exist and survive even at the expense of others. At the same time, we also "naturally" "WILL" to Love and be in communion, and to serve selflessly. We are conflicted. (The Apostle Paul speaks of that confliction.) We want what our "flesh" wants, and also what our nature wants in conjunction with the witness of the Spirit of our Creator and Sustainer.
Back to "sheer will." I'm not a historian of philosophy and culture; so maybe such an idea is as old of the hills -- I can't say (for instance, whether its 18th cent. German...). But isn't there--we should ask--heroicism heeped on doing what sometimes nature seems not to will. I'll not criticize "sheer will." But, personally, I sometimes watch out against putting un-natural things on a pedestal.
I think it is unnatural to try to have the most fun in the least time, with the least effort. Those are all herolded by the culture of the society I live in. And so, I do want to pause and consider whether the "will" in me to try that every now and then is really my TRUE will, or just a lie -- a collaged image constructed from that conflicted experience of life, with just enough truth to be pursuasive.
I think that it is unnatural to expect myself to be a Christian on my own, to decide everything for myself. To have the strength even in my confliected path to be "all that I can be" for the Lord.
I want to direct your attention towards studying "WILL" and "NATURE" together, and to study what the Bible reveals to us about them both. And further, to point you to what the LITURGICAL LIFE of the Church has as a treasure for helping us to live victoriously, to run the race set before us. That race has a finishline. No number of stumbles, tears, agony, pain along the way can EVER deprive us of the Prize.
Romans 8:28
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anewbeginning
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2002
Total Posts : 88
| Posted 8/31/2002 4:23 PM (GMT -6) | | Hi Sean:
I understand your frustration in searching for a viable explanation for libertarian freedom. Most of us, determinists excluded, assume it is possible in all our decisions, but make any attempt to flesh it out and it becomes ethereal. I agree with you that substance dualism is a necessary conclusion if libertarian freedom does truly exist. I think most Christians adhere to "substance dualism" rather than physicalism. We believe man is more than the sum of his parts. Tom's answer may be closer to the truth than you think. Our will (all that good stuff that makes us thinking, rational beings) must be the source of free decisions.
Simple indeterminism is of little help to free will advocates, an indeterminate decision is hardly a meaningful one. Perhaps there is another category of causation besides determinism and indeterminism, I believe some call it self-determinism or agent causation.
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Sean
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 18
| Posted 8/31/2002 5:22 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Tom's answer may be closer to the truth than you think. Our will (all that good stuff that makes us thinking, rational beings) must be the source of free decisions.
I haven't said that I think Tom's answer is off, I actually find it rather right on. I simply have found it too vague for my ability to hold this theory up.
quote:
Simple indeterminism is of little help to free will advocates, an indeterminate decision is hardly a meaningful one. Perhaps there is another category of causation besides determinism and indeterminism, I believe some call it self-determinism or agent causation.
I have heard of that Category before, and I will have to think more on this. I'm actually approaching a sollution for my own purposes, but I could still use some help. For instance, I do have a small problem with the idea of agent causation:
Is the will self causing? Does something other cause it? If something else causes it to be, then we should study that thing, no? If it is self causing, is this possible? Or is there a third option that is escaping my grasp?
All of your help is very much appreciated. Thank you for your patience.
Sean | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 8/31/2002 8:11 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
I have heard of that Category before, and I will have to think more on this. I'm actually approaching a sollution for my own purposes, but I could still use some help.
Sean-
Have you looked at Doc's four philosophical arguements for the incompatibility of EDF and self-determining free will at the end of Satan and the Problem of Evil?
quote:
For instance, I do have a small problem with the idea of agent causation: Is the will self causing?
The will is self-DETERMINING, not exclusively self-CAUSING.
quote:
Does something other cause it?
There may be many causes to our choices. Differentiate between "sufficient" causes and "necessary" causes. In order for me to buy your car, a necessary cause has to be your offering to sell it to me. But even IF you offer to sell it to me, I can still NOT buy it. My "self" ultimately determines. Your offering it is a necessary cause, not a sufficient cause. God's offering us salvation is necessary cause of our salvation, not a sufficient cause.
quote:
If it is self causing, is this possible?
Sure. Why can't the "self" be the determining cause of its choices? Again, this doesn't mean there aren't other influences, necessary causes, etc., acting on the will, some pulling it in one direction and some in another. What "determines" the final exercise of the "will" to resolve these options/influence in one direction as opposed to another? The "self."
Tom
"Every saint has a history and every sinner a future." Oscar Wilde
Edited by - TGB on 09/01/2002 01:14:18 AM | | Back to Top | | |
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GregBoyd
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 1818
| Posted 9/1/2002 2:58 AM (GMT -6) | | Great discussion. Important too. And exceedingly difficult. Several thoughts.
1. To say "x causes y" is NOT necessarily to say "x determines y." Causes can circumscribe more than they affect. In other words, x may have caused y, but it also COULD have caused z.
Consider an artist painting a picture. She puts a quarter moon in the right corner. If asked why she put a moon there, she would undoubtedly appeal to the aesthetic goal of her painting. In this sense, the aesthetic goal "caused" her to put a quarter moon in the right corner. But it's very likely that the moon could have been two inches in any direction and satisfied her aesthetic goal. IT could have been slightly larger or smaller. Indeed, in the light of her aesthetic aim, her painting could have have features x,y,z and omitted features a,b,c. And were this the case, we would STILL appeal to this SAME aim to EXPLAIN WHY just those features are in the painting.
The point is that, to appeal to the SELF as the cause of actions, or even in many cases to appeal to motives as the cause of actions, is NOT to say that those actions are NECESSITATED. It is simply to say that they have a "sufficient reason."
For free acts to be intelligible (not capricious) they must be RETROACTIVELY INTELLIGIBLE. But they need not be FUTURISTICALLY PREDICTABLE.
2. I believe that when dealing with free will, we are dealing with a metaphysical "surd" -- a fundamental reality that is not capable of reductionistic analysis. It is, in this sense, like space, energy, love or sequence. We all experience it phenomenologically, and yet no complete account can be made of it IN TERMS OTHER THAN ITSELF.
The free will is immediately experienced by all who deliberate between options, and is presupposed in our moral assessments. We all assign moral responsibility to acts to the degree, and only to the degree, that the agent could have done otherwise. To the extent that the causes of an agents actions lie outside herself, we do not ascribe moral responsibility. On this basis, we posit free will is a fundmental, non-reducible reality. If it could be reduced to further to antecedent causes, it wouldn't be free. And people would not be morally responsible.
Great Q.
Doc
"In Christ...the ONLY THING that matters is faith energized by love." Galatians 5:6 | | Back to Top | | |
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Alan Rhoda
Registered Member
Date Joined May 2002
Total Posts : 680
| Posted 9/2/2002 1:58 PM (GMT -6) | | Hi Sean,
As a philosopher-in-training I will share what wisdom I have (not much, mind you) on your questions.
quote:
1) After psychological states and our environment, what is left to determine for us metaphysical freedom?
If one says that psychological states are indeterminite, that results in a problem, because there might pop in a self-caused psychological state. However, this leads to a statement of the form
a caused a to be the case
my problem is that this seems silly. My depression caused my depression to be the case? However, if psychological states are determinite, then where else do we find room enough for indeterminism?
Two questions here:
(1) I don't see how the indeterminacy of a psychological state could lead to self-caused psychological states "popping in". Can you clarify this? Just how would indeterminacy lead to the problem of self-caused states?
(2) Your posing of the problem seems to assume that psychological states have to be either fully determinate or fully indeterminate. I don't think that is so. It seems to me that all of our psychological states are at least partly determinate (just try to think about something that is completely indeterminate--can't be done). But it also seems to me that at least some of our psychological states are partly indeterminate and therefore leave room for further determination. For example, imagine a plain mathematical cube. Got it? Now imagine the same cube to be solid red and 4-feet long on each side. Or imagine a generic dog and then imagine a St. Bernard. What have you done? Starting from a partly determinate conception you have made it more determinate--and done so "at will". I submit for your consideration that metaphysical freedom does not consist in moving from a state of complete indeterminacy to one of complete determinacy, but rather of moving from a state of partial determinacy and partial indeterminacy to a state of complete determinacy. This doesn't resolve all the problems, but it is a first step in the direction of a coherent account of libertarian freedom.
quote:
2) Do any of you think that substance dualism is a help here? If so, how do you talk intelligibly about it? I ask this because a lot of our language relies upon cause and effect, so if something is indeterminite, how do you talk about it?
I'm not a specialist in the philosophy of mind, so I'll recommend a book. It's called "Body and Soul" and it's written by J.P. Moreland and Scott Rae (InterVarsity Press). The book contains a clear articulation and defense of a version of substance dualism and agent causation from a Christian perspective.
You imply here that there is a problem talking intelligibly about substance dualism because "if something is indeterminate, how do you talk about it?" What exactly is indeterminate about substance dualism such that we would not be able to talk intelligibly about it? You need to clarify your point here. I'll grant that one can't talk intelligibly about something that is completely indeterminate, but it is not true that something must be completely determinate before we can talk about it. In fact, almost all of our concepts admit of further determination. The concept "dog", for example, admits of determination with respect to breed, size, color, age, personality, type of fur, shape of tail and ears, etc. Nevertheless, I don't have to render the concept fully determinate before I can effectively use it to communicate. Indeed, its very usefulness for communication depends on the fact that it is not fully determinate (otherwise how could we talk about dogs-in-general?).
Hope that helps.
Alan
Edited by - Alan Rhoda on 09/03/2002 4:00:33 PM | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 9/2/2002 3:19 PM (GMT -6) | | | Tom, and Greg, and Alan, YOU guys explain things very well. Good going! | | Back to Top | | |
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