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Date Joined Jun 2001
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| Posted 6/28/2001 10:20 AM (GMT -6) |   | ModesofThought
02/09/01 4:18 PM
To Mephi, with continual reference to the "Dogmatism..." thread
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This post is also in the "Dogmatism..." thread but it bothers me to be the 50 somethingth post in a thread. Time for a clean slate which can still make reference to other conversations as needed. My hope is that this post will bring some clarity and focus to the discussion...
Modes
to Meph,
Long time no talk. Or should I say, long time since I talked. You however have let up not in the least. I will pick up below with the "tweaks" discussion. That seems the most clear point of entry since it is where I left off and I don’t have the time nor the stomach to read the volumes of mostly monologue you have cast out recently. Accuse me of ad hominum, you would be correct… I am irritated and disappointed…nevertheless, I will press on here…Mostly for the sake of the readers who may feel that you have gained an upperhand by virtue of the sheer size of your contribution.
From "On Tweaking the Tweaks…"
Please note along the way the shifting from one form of authority to another without warning…(remembering of course the four of Wesley's quadrilateral: Scripture, reason, experience, tradition). My suspicion is that we are all guilty of this, it is unavoidable at certain points. To make an argument is to utilize reason, whether one should bother to make it depends upon the other criteria…While recognizing this, we should make some attempt to keep the criterion at issue in mind and stick with it!!!
2nd paragraph, Mephi's first response to me, Meph says: "If human agency does NOT necessitate libertarian free will, then this has big implications. First of all it means that human agency is NOT incompatible with at least SOME type of determinism. Next this would open human agency to be allowable within the realm of predestination." [emphasis Mephi's]
This piece with regard to reason:
Human agency need not necessitate libertarian free will. Any historian of thought could easily verify this. What is your point here? We are not working backward from some abstract conception of the necessary meaning of "human agency" rather we are starting with what most of the world recognizes as an immediate experience of free will. OH BOY!!! I can just hear the super-sigh coming my way LOL!!! Meph, you tag "free will" language with "experience" as though that is not a legitimate criterion listed in our quadrilateral!!! The fact that we have such an experience is precisely what we seek to have you explain!! Not the reverse! That you cannot get to it logically from where you stand!
Your division of our experience as sensed from our reasoning with that presupposition is interesting but not finally important unless you can show that there is A BETTER EXPLANATION OF THIS OBVIOUS SENSE OF FREEDOM!!! Here is an excellent example of Mephi's failure to distinguish what criterion is at stake. I am not (YET!) arguing about the reasonableness of free will as such but rather the fact that it is universally EXPERIENCED. That pesky E word again. Let us remember the fact that we experience free will is a serious and important step forward for the argument for its plausibility. Meph would seem to have you consider experience as a negative criterion rather than positive, but that is not the arrangement here…it only amounts to confusing rhetoric.
Having said all of that, let us assess the very same issue from the Biblical standpoint:
As we know, there is not much abstract philosophizing about free will in the Bible, much like the fact that there is not much with regard to creatio ex nihilo or even the Trinity. Some related concepts to our discussion are most obviously "responsibility" and less obviously but perhaps more importantly "divine love, mercy and grace".
…Meph, please explain the BIBLICAL concepts of responsibility, love, mercy, grace, and other concepts which very clearly TRANSCEND the determinist's version of natural law imposed upon all of our criteria (granted you would ground this deterministic presupposition in your assessment of "REASONableness"). Many Open Theists are quite confident that God's love, mercy and grace in particular are works of God which go against the logical conclusions which should be drawn from various circumstances in Creation (sin, etc…). I hope this challenge is sufficiently clear: I am asserting that the concepts of human (or divine, for that matter) responsibility, love, mercy and grace (even the more vague but perhaps MOST important concept of creativity) all presuppose a WILLingness to forgo the natural "results" in favor of developments which require a moment of newness, a transcending of the seemingly "inevitable". These are key biblical concepts which makes this a very important discussion. An all-pervasive determinism effectively undoes such concepts which thereby threatens to undo the gospel itself. The gospel is not an extension of a deterministic system but would rather amount to an invasion of such a system. Meph, please read on before reacting too quickly…
Continuing with the biblical, there is language about freedom and choices which is more than "allowable" for employment by free will theists. Rather it is encouragement to think in those categories.
Oh yes, back to the criterion of reason and our paragraph above:
1. I have again raised the issue of dealing with the value of "free will" seriously (rather than dismissively) because it is a pervasive experience for at least much of the population. This is not a syllogistic argument but rather one from Experience which is one of our recognized criteria and is not to be disparaged for that reason.
2. A logical next step for Meph, in dealing with this issue within the realm of experience is to explain for us why we experience free will though it is in fact a logical impossibility "in his mind". (Notice: your saying that it is a logical impossibility is not enough to trump our experience of it.) This is akin to revealing the trick behind the magician's apparent "magic". This you might lay out most effectively in psychological language (how else would you prove to someone that they have EXPERIENCED a MENTAL trick? Perhaps imposed divinely? LOL!). Again, your saying that you cannot get to "free will" logically from your understanding of "human agency" is quite irrelevant to our experience of free will. What is needed is not a dismissal of our experience but rather a counter-explanation of it that is more persuasive than our current conception.
3. Meph states that if he is correct, "human agency is NOT incompatible with at least SOME type of determinism. Next this would open human agency to be allowable within the realm of predestination." Again this is not an argument about whether human agency is "allowable" (by this Meph surely means logically permissible) within a deterministic system. Of course that is the case. I could swing Meph's body like a bat and whack a ball out of the park and call Meph a human agent and still maintain that the whole event is predetermined. This would be arguing the wrong point from the wrong corner, however, and ignoring the question at hand, how then DO we explain the experience of freedom without accepting its plausibility?
As per tradition:
Do you suppose it is possible to do better in this debate than has been done for the last couple dozen centuries? People, please realize that the debate about freedom/determinism has been waging for literally thousands of years!!! Why think we will solve it definitively this time? No, rather we must work to improve the quality of our arguments while learning the lesson of HUMILITY from history that MUCH BETTER minds than ours have fought this out for many centuries…I am not saying give it up, I am saying get over the idea that you have it all figured out on the one hand…and on the other… that if you can expose an error in our thinking you have somehow proven the debate over in your favor. Please recognize the complexity of four criteria and the necessary humility discussed in our previous threads on epistemology. Meph, you do not regularly (especially as of late) speak with such humility, if I may say so.
Moving to Meph's second responsive paragraph in the same post:
Here again Meph wants to take the problem of free will and transport it out of experience into his top-down logical system which presupposes determinism. As should be expected, when he does the math according to determinism, it doesn't fit well there and so it gets treated dismissively again…
Meph writes: "How could anyone make a deliberate choice WITHOUT cognitive reflection of some type?"
We could ask in return: "How does one happen to fall into cognitive reflection WITHOUT making a concerted effort to do so?"
Sound circular? Yep, I agree, it is. But through this unavoidably circular motion of choice/self-reflection/choice/self-reflection…one begins to get better at it and hopefully make some progress. Hey! Let's argue about chickens and eggs! This is simply the necessary rhythm of thinking.
More specifically, I do not yield to Mephi's tweak because I am not metaphysically required to reflect upon said options, I could choose to read a book instead…
Of course, to make a deliberate decision it is first necessary to review the options and reflect on the possibilities…but it is also necessary that even prior to these one must engage oneself in the act of doing such reflection, as I said before, it is hard work, it doesn't just happen to us…
Meph, I am quite sure that you will persist in you assertions that I am misunderstanding you, but consider this, perhaps I understand and simply disagree. While we agree that there is unity in truth, I do not think that you are its possessor in all these matters.
This response so far should suffice as an interaction with what I read in your "This may help inform our discussion!" post. Perhaps my adding that I am not a realist, but a nominalist, will clarify some things for you. Dr. Boyd is a passionate realist, however, so some of what you say might be more interesting/relevant to him than it was to me. As above, I am not yet ready to throughout one of our four criteria for truth, speaking here of experience which you seem to so thoroughly disparage in this latter post. Do you not remember our previous epistemological discussions about the direct vs. indirect communication? All knowledge comes to us through some sort of experience… Unless you have some DIRECT/UNMEDIATED access to propositional knowledge about God and reality that you have forgotten to mention to us? Sorry if my tone is beginning to sour, I am a bit disgusted with your over-confidence…I will press on for now, but my hope is that this will become more amiable again…Is it possible that you are not noticing what others on this board are noticing?
Under your "Note to doc…"
You make this claim: "if libertarian free will cannot be maintained as logically consistent or coherent as a viable outlet of human freedom, then it cannot be used as a presupposition for Christian theologizing."
Meph! Are you serious? If I understand you correctly it seems that we should not be orthodox Christians at all.
Let me explain: if understanding Jesus Christ as fully God and fully human cannot be maintained as logically consistent or coherent as a viable demonstration of God's presence in the world, then it cannot be used as a presupposition for Christian theologizing.
Dude, I know you see the point. We as Christians have much to commend belief in Jesus Christ as fully God and fully human but it does not amount to demonstration that this is so. Likewise with most any thought or commitment one might hold. The principle authority we lean on in the case of Christ is Scripture, from there we hope for confirmation in tradition and history and what finally sets us firmly within the church is our experience of Christ as contemporaneous in personal encounter, "a conversion experience," so to speak.
So it is with free will but the order of the criteria differs. We have a very strong sense of the experience of freedom, we see that the biblical writers shared in this sense, we see that God shares in this sense. We have some difficulty "demonstrating" the logical necessity of "free will" as such, but there is much thinking which is aided by it as a concept. Finally the concept has a very prominent place in the thinking of othrodox Christian faith throughout the last 2000 years.
Contiuing on in the same post…
You give us the ole' 1, 2, 3. Here's some feedback:
1. Agreeable but not optimum in its wording or intent.
2. Completely wrong insofar as your use of "direct" violates the entire thrust of our previous discussions on epistemology and indirect communication as well as violating the more general consensus arrived at through the dreaded anthropomorphic thread. What gives? To say that x reveals something about y is not to say that you have direct access to y! You should know better than this.
3. Under your nature of love you will have to deal with myself and Dr. Boyd on different wavelengths. He is a realist--I am a nominalist. I will not be found holding God and more particularly, God's will under the power of some abstract principle which thereby governs exhaustively God's activity. Furthermore, I will not be found to be judging God according to metaphysical standards that I have created. When I say that God is good, I point to the history (criterion of "tradition") of God's faithfulness, to the cross in particular ("Scripture"), and lastly but not unimportantly, to my "experience" (also a criterion) of the goodness and faithfulness of God. The logical ("reason") extension of God's goodness is derivative from these three, not from speculative philosophy or ethics.
Two more notes regarding this post:
You make another sweeping claim that warrants the accusation of absurdity:
"Let me make this plain. For open view theism to work, I believe that ALL the suppositions noted here MUST be in place. If but ONE of these suppositions is shown to be logically contradictory or flat out false then, the ENTIRE system is defunct. (Just like any good scientific theory. ALL the links must work not just most of them.)"
LOL!!
After you reread the Christological parallel above, let us return to the work of theology. Even if we grant you this last criteria, which is not reasonable, we would be free and clear because I could simply challenge you to bring forth the scientific theory which satisfies this claim!!!
Is light a particle or a wave? Are the foundations of the general theory of relativity correct or those of quanum theory? Are you really thinking that science has transcended the ambiguities of knowledge, extension, movement, fractals, butterflies, dead/living cats in boxes, etc…?
You are actually trying to hold us to a much higher standard than the scientific fields hold themselves to. Scientific fact has to do with repeatability not comprehensive and exhaustive explanation of all facets of a system and the clear elucidation of each relation involved in said system!!! Let us be reasonable indeed…
As G-D-G once asked, how do we measure your system? We cannot seem to understand how God's aseity could be defended without an appeal to God's free choice to not create the world. A choice which prior to creating was a very real possibility and existed as a real possibility before God. Is this perhaps a logical flaw that undoes the entirety of your system?
Or how about the flaw involved in affirming God's infintude. How does one then deny pantheism? Perhaps this little flaw will be the end of the system…as you know there are many difficulties which persist but they do not condemn us to reject the faith but rather to improve our presentation and organization of it.
Under your "summing up" heading you speak as though a seeker. Is this really accurate? It seems more likely that you intend to undo the underpinnings of many who hold high the values put forward in this view called the openness of God. If one were so inclined, do you not realize that such a deconstruction is just as possible in your own system? Let us seek to build and improve, rather than destroy. I hope that you will soon acknowledge that we are committedto our values with good reason, tradition, experience and Scripture.
Lastly, I know that I have been harsh. I believe that you (Mephi) can handle it and that progress depends to some extent upon some sort of change in the conversation so this is my best shot right now. I have read your initial post in the thread "Correct the Open View Convert" and the bits on Epistemology and Proof and find these little more than a mockery of open theists. I am at a loss of what to say. I must either find you to be as arrogant as you sound to me or else be largely implicated by your mockery (assuming I take you seriously, and I do owe you that much) or both. Your (presumably intentional) over-extension of the various values and positions of Open Theists does not reflect the expectation that it is to be taken seriously. Any attempt to describe an opponent's view ought to avoid false sentimentality and use of infinitives if it is not to be recognizably distorted. More could be said but need not be.
My hope is that this interaction will facilitate continuity with what I thought was fruitful conversation had some weeks ago. I am sorry for my neglect, but life keeps me too busy to visit here as often as I'd like…I am here proposing that we move forward by having you address what I have said here with regard to this old thread. Are you still game?
p.s. Meph, we go back a long way (maybe my longest electronic relationship!), as a friend, I'd like to suggest that you not leave the conversation, but that you work toward dealing with one issue at a time (perhaps with each person you are in conversation with), and that you refrain from dominating the conversations both in terms of length and frequency. You are a very valuable and valued contributor, but as with any contribution, brevity and clarity are worth more than gold when time is of the essense, as it is in this context for many of us.
Posted Originally From: Christus Victor Ministries
ModesofThought
02/10/01 10:27 AM
Apology to Meph...
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I glanced over my recent post to Meph and realized that I was more caustic than I think is justifiable. Mephi I apologize for my harsh words.
Sorry,
ModesofThoughtlessness
Posted Originally From: Christus Victor Ministries
BBBCanada
02/10/01 11:24 AM
RE: To Mephi, with continual reference to the "Dogmatism..." thread
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Modes,
Thank you sooo much for your example of humility to me in this post. The tone. The direct admonitions for epistomological humility. I myself have been some what of an arrogant poster especially with regard to my last post called, "Meph's Suppositions Behind His Suppositions" where I feel I have made some sort of slam dunk concerning the faulty thinking of Meph. There are so many thoughts in this post. Thank you for helping me see in an introductory way the difference between freewill and agency, experience, etc. I'm printing this one off to ponder. Thank you Modes.
In Christian Brotherly love to you and the wife
Brandon
Posted Originally From: Christus Victor Ministries
ModesofThought
02/11/01 7:18 PM
RE: RE: To Mephi, with continual reference to the "Dogmatism..." thread
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Hey Brandon, good to hear from you. I appreciate the feedback. I was beginning to wonder if anyone was bothering to reading these big long posts. Let's hope that LL and Meph come back and play some more in the reasonably near future...I was thinking of tackling Meph's 2nd Installment but if he's not even around to defend it i probably won't bother...
Blessings brother...
Modes
Posted Originally From: Christus Victor Ministries
Mephi2K
02/12/01 10:59 AM
Well, How About That...
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Dang! I never would have imagined! I got an email and decided to come check out the board. Just to see what's going on. (Broke my promise to self..ah, well) Whoa. First of all, these posts DO stack up, now don't they? Sheesh.. Both Doc and Modes are back. Man, I always miss the good stuff. Second, I was feeling some MAJOR love from lots of you folks in the room. Thanks, y'all. All of you. This really helped me out. You have no idea, peeps. I figured we'd almost had some irreconcilable things going on back there. Glad to see otherwise. Anyways, my wife and I discussed stuff when I left and I'm still taking a break of about a week or two. Figure it'd be good to get some perspective and what not. Again, thanks for all the love, erybody. It meant a lot, for real. Take it easy. See you...later!
Forever Your Brother in Christ,
Mephistopheles 2K
PS:
To Modes: Good to finally hear from you, my friend. I thought you fell off the face of the earth or something. Apology accepted, man. No biggie. You mentioned interacting with my 2nd installment. Deal with any of my material as you will and feel free to take your time. Look to the future, bud. The band has to take five and regroup, but the dance will continue. Do you tango or waltz? hehe...
Posted Originally From: Christus Victor Ministries
BBBCanada
02/12/01 5:17 PM
To Mephi, with continual reference to the "Dogmatism..." thread
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Modes or should I call you...aaaahhhhh forget!
I usually don't read the long posts. I usually just skim them. But alas, as of late I have been following a bit closer and am therefore able to make a concerted effort to respond to the tome of material the Meph Man put out. His screen name ought to be, "TOME."Anyhoo, can you link or point me toward the "Tweaks" post and the posts on direct vs. indirect communication? And can you also link or point me to the posts on the thoughts you had about creativity, love and grace, etc. I will try a search, but I could end up looking all day. Thanks man.
Brandon
Posted Originally From: Christus Victor Ministries
ModesofThought
02/12/01 5:46 PM
RE: To Mephi, with continual reference to the "Dogmatism..." thread
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I think pretty much all of what you are after is in the thread entitled "Dobmatism, Pragmatism..." I would view it by thread so that you can see the logical progression of the conversation. The "Tweaks" ones are evident by the titles but go one earlier to see Mephi's first shot at tweaking my proposal. The creativity/love/grace bit is in my most recent post (excluding my apology) in that thread, I believe it is 2/9 and should be close after the other stuff when viewed by thread.
Hope that helps! WAY too much stuff on this site to keep it all straight!
Blessings.
Posted Originally From: Christus Victor Ministries
BBBCanada
02/14/01 3:15 PM
How do you like this title?
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This is off the top of my head.
“Treaties of Calvinistic Affections: The Hermeneutics of Silence”
Meph Man, thanks for your discourse on Calvinism, Freewill, and Human Agency. Ok, here goes nut’n honey. I think you are presupposing your presuppositions, aaaaagain. Sorry GDG, though you are more “circular minded” than analytical, you bring up some poignant questions. But I think we could go further. Aside from commenting on *some* of Installment #1, allow me to make a few preliminary comments with regard to it.
1. Where is the *BIBLICAL* language??? See Meph Man? I don’t see it *anywhere*! I understand in some instances we don’t employ it with terms such as Trinity, Incarnation, hypostatic union, etc. Yet. Yet! When we seek to understand such historic doctrines, the church has employed it thoroughly. Things can get pretty skewed if we don’t. I would submit that whether it comes to “freewill” or “soft determinism” that we employ the biblical language as thoroughly as possible, as well. Modes referred to this when he talks about *biblical concepts* such as love, mercy grace, etc. Seeing as Scripture is primary in our quadrilateral, even biblical language can be a determining factor. Meph Man. You seem to move from one authority to another (philosophical [language]/biblical [language]) “without warning” as Modes says.
2. I am starting to think/feel aaaagain, that our whole discussion on this topic is misplaced. It’s like, if the Bible doesn’t philosophize about or abstractly talk about it, then why should we? Not to say this should never be done, but I wonder if whole theological systems such as Calvinism should hinge on human agency *theory* or “soft-determinism” to survive. In fact, they do. It seems to me that after all of the biblical/cultural/historical evidence pours in, we *then* move to the philosophy and abstract. Not the other way around.
Note: I didn’t include freewill because I read all over the scriptures of human agents (notice I don’t have problems with the *term* per se), deliberating, choosing, etc.
On to my thoughts
“Soft determinism” is not really soft, but hard core all the way. God is to be held wholly responsible for evil and not the human agent. Meph is fond of making distinctions within human agents. The human agent himself/herself, the will, etc. Fine, fine. By the way, was that in Mephi 3:16? Read what Dr. John Jefferson Davis says concerning the human agent (Man as Animated Flesh),
http://members.aol.com/CPLBO/AbortionandtheXian.Chap4.html
Meph, these are philosophical categories that you posit that do not do justice to the biblical language, nor to the Jewish culture in which the language comes from. Categories that are super-imposed thereon to the text. I hate when you do that!
Meph then says, that there is not only external causes but also internal causes that “bear upon” (interpreted “crashed upon” IMHO, in a affirming determinism) the human agent. Things like biological, psychological, historical, emotional, etc, to the point of determining (forcing? Coercing?) Meph said:
“Agency theory allows for a self-determining being to exist, BUT this being would be COMPLETELY influenced to the point of determination by the combination of BOTH internal and external factors. Why do I say this? Because at the heart of the matter, the agent is nothing more than a sentient self with the power of will. Modern psychology tells us that there IS no self outside of the internal and external factors that compose that self.”
But one has to ask a couple of questions.
1. Why do you distinguish between the internal and the external? The “ontological state of the person” has external antecedent causes which are prior to the individual, (the will, human agent, etc), which all find their rest in God. It all comes back to Him. The will, the agent, etc. all eventually find their place formed in God. This is not “soft?” This is hard. Again, in Jewish thinking, there is no distinguishing between the will, the self, and internal, external causes. So why the big doo daa about it? This was something that GDG complained about.
2. As for an answer to number 3 in your first installment, this might be possible if I accept your language. But I don’t. In there you posit that freewill is contradictory. Basically you say:
1. The human agent controls his will.
Question: Does the human agent will to control his own will?
2. But if the will is it’s own self, that is, autonomous, then,
3. The self can never determine itself.
4. The will rules and not the self.
Again, I don’t accept your philosophical categories which I think you impose on human agents, beings, individuals, Bible, etc in order to not make God look guilty for what he is ultimately responsible for!
You say that Greg conceives of “libertarian freewill” in terms of “voluntarism.” Voluntarism is where the will is *more predominant* than the intellect, i.e. will is completely independent of all factors that bear upon it. But how does this show that the *components* of the self are *distinct* from the will and libertarianism as a whole? We just say that between two or more competing options and given all the influences we could do otherwise.
Meph says that Greg and libertarianism draw distinctions between the self and will, etc. Meph and Modes are in agreement when they say that human agency need not *necessitate* freewill. And this would be true, as Modes uses the analogy of using Meph as a baseball bat (was that a shot in the ribs?), yet he could still maintain the whole event was predetermined. So, it doesn’t necessitate it. Problem is, I don’t see how human agency disqualifies it.
In the end, it is all determined, by God. It isn’t “soft.” It’s hard. The parameters see. Anyhoo, that is my piece. Hope it makes sense.
Brandon
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