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rossfadeinout
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 428
| Posted 9/17/2004 2:23 PM (GMT -6) |   | Hey all,
I just got "Predestination and Free Will: Four Views" in the mail at the first of the week. The book was written in 1986 and seems to me to be one of the first somewhat significant dialogues about the "Open View."
The reason that I'm posting is that I want to get some comments from people about Bruce Reichenbach's response to Clark Pinnock's essay. Now I'm a big fan of Richenbach. He wrote a chapter in "The Grace of God and the Will of Man" that nails down the argument that we must possess libertarian freedom if moral responsibility is to make sense and if God is not to be the author of sin.
That being said i want to address his critique of the open view presented on page 176 of the book.
He summarizes Pinnock's argument like this
1)Future free actions are events which have not yet occurred and which do not follow necessarily from prior causal conditions or natural laws.
2) All events which which have not yet occurred and which do not follow necessarily from prior causal conditions or natural laws cannot be known in advance.
3) Therefore future free actions cannot be known in advance.
Here is Reichenbach's reply
Reichenbach "Unfortulately, premise (2) is false. For example, the fact that I chose to have breakfast at home this morning does not follow necessarily from prior causal conditions or from a set of physical or natural laws, yet I could still know yesterday that this would occur, based on the evidence of my past behavioral patterns. These behavioral patterns, however, do not cause me to have breakfast at home nor provide a natural law regarding my choice of an eating place, though they provide justification for my true belief that I would eat breakfast at home."
I know Reichenbach to be a smart man (he's got a PhD) but I find this paragraph to be plain wrong and not very well thought out. Here's why.
From the example if someone says that there going to have breakfast tomorrow at home, the person is normally implying that she will probably have breakfast at home tomorrow. But if the decision has not yet been made, then by definition of a libertarian free choice you would never say that you know what you are going to choose before you choose. The only way that a agent could say that "I know that I am going to eat breakfast at home tomorrow" is if he has already made the choice. In that case, while the event of eating breakfast hasn't occurred, the decision has been made and the agents decision is the basis of the justified belief.
Am I missing something here?
looking forward to the feedback...
Ross
"Let us remember how common the folly is of going from one faulty extreme into the opposite." -Thomas Reid | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 9/17/2004 6:16 PM (GMT -6) | | Hey Ross,
Pinnock’s three points seem sound to me.
I don’t think Reichenbach’s breakfast example proves what he thinks it does. As I read him here, all he does is assert. But there’s no argument. How is it that past behavior makes it certain that I’ll choose to have breakfast at home tomorrow while still being possible that I won’t? See this is where the logic of indeterminacy helps. The hexagon shows it, but if you only had the square of opposition you could still demonstrate it:
(A) Tom will eat at home tomorrow (E) Tom will not eat at home tomorrow
(I) Tom might eat at home tomorrow (O) Tom might not eat at home tomorrow
A and O are contradictories, as are I and E
A and E are contrary (can both be false but can’t both be true)
I and O are subcontraries (can both be true but can’t both be false)
OK, so a libertarian choice is, by definition, one which I might perform and which I might not perform (conjointly true “might and might not”). If it’s true that “I will” then it must be false that “I might not” since these are contradictory.
Thus, for Reichenbach to say that my eating breakfast at home tomorrow is a libertarian choice is to say “Tom might and might not eat breakfast at home tomorrow” is true (i.e., both subcontraries are true). But for him then to say that it can also be true of the same choice that “I will eat tomorrow” is contradictory since “will” contradicts “might not.” Both can’t BOTH be true in spite of Reichenbach’s believing they can.
quote:
Ross: From the example if someone says that there going to have breakfast tomorrow at home, the person is normally implying that she will probably have breakfast at home tomorrow.
Good point. Our everyday use of language is not semantically precise. We often use “will” when we believe the probability of something's occuring is either 1 (viz., inevitable and determinate) or nearly 1. We just don’t take the time to specify “might and might not” when that is what’s strictly the case. We’ll even use “will not” when we know the probability is either 0 (viz., inevitably NOT and determinately NOT) or nearly 0. So we’re just not as exact in our everyday speech as we should be and this should be kept in mind when we move over to logical arguments about determinacy and indeterminacy.
quote:
Ross: But if the decision has not yet been made, then by definition of a libertarian free choice you would never say that you know what you are going to choose before you choose. The only way that an agent could say that "I know that I am going to eat breakfast at home tomorrow" is if he has already made the choice. In that case, while the event of eating breakfast hasn't occurred, the decision has been made and the agents decision is the basis of the justified belief.
Yeah, in everyday speech we’ll use “will” when WE believe it’s unquestionably certain. We’re just expressing OUR intention, OUR commitment to follow through on something. But we’re not God, who might know that it’s less than certain, or certain that you “will not” follow through.
This distinction between “epistemological” realities (what we believe or think we know to be the case) and “ontological” realities (what is in fact the case) is crucial. Ignoring it is where lots of folks go wrong. These two don’t always perfectly agree for us, but they do for God. God’s beliefs about what is the case (his epistemology) perfectly reflect what is in fact the case (ontologically speaking). The whole discussion about foreknowledge and the open view concerns God’s point of view and God’s beliefs and that's why we cannot argue from our imprecise use of “Tom will eat at home tomorrow” to express what is in fact a future libertarian, viz. indeterminate, choice.
Reichenbach makes two mistakes. First, he confuses ontological and epistemological categories; that is, he reasons that since we express what are in fact libertarian choices (i.e., a true “might and might not” ontologically speaking) using “will” in everyday speech (i.e., epistemologically speaking) to express our sense of certainty that something will happen, this must mean God does the same thing. To demonstrate this, just nail people down when they say “I will pick you up at 10 AM tomorrow morning.” Ask them, “Now, do you believe that there is ANY possibility whatsoever that you won’t be there at 10 AM?” When pressed to think about the realities of determinacy and indeterminacy, most people (that is, not determinists since they believe there are no true “might and might not” propositions) will say, “Well, yeah, of course. I could be in a car accident, or I might get a flat, or a million other things might happen.” This shows that most of the time we use “will” we’re expressing our epistemological sense of certainty given our intentions and the circumstances. But when pressed to think it through most admit that what they really mean is precisely what “might and might not” is where the probability that it occurs is believed to be very nearly 1.
Reichenbach’s second mistake? He hasn’t read the paper on indeterminacy that Alan, Greg, and I wrote! 
Tom | | Back to Top | | |
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