Free Will and Sovereignty: Responding to a Facebook Analogy

A friend of mine on Facebook posted a conundrum that had been shared with him (note: he disagreed with what the original poster was trying to imply, but was interested in my opinion too).  The post was simple: 

There are no tracks. There are no people. There is no trolley.

The Conductor lays the tracks, builds the trolley, and creates six androids.

He ties five of the androids to one track and one to other.

He drives the trolley and runs over the five.

He unties to sixth and says "I saved you from being run over!"

The sixth one is grateful, as he was programmed to be.

(Calvinist trolley problem)

Of course, my first reaction to this was “Great, another tired puppet metaphor dragged out by those who don’t understand anything about Calvinism.”  And it’s true.  Calvinists have been hearing variations of this for centuries.  It’s nothing but an analogy absent an argument, all intended to make you ignore what the Bible has actually said.

Furthermore, the above analogy does not represent Calvinist beliefs at all.  Calvinism does not argue that men are puppets, robots, androids, or marionettes, because the Bible does not say that.  Calvinists do say that God is sovereign over all things, because the Bible does say that.  Calvinists also typically are compatibilists (I know I am, as are most Calvinists I dialogue with), which means that we stipulate that there is compatibility between sovereignty and free will—again, because that’s what the Bible says.

Now it would be trivially easy to respond to the Arminian with another analogy.  Just take the fact that Colossians 1:16 - 17 tells us that “all things were created through” Christ, and furthermore that in Him “all things hold together.”  With that in mind: 

There are no tracks.  There are no people.  There is no trolley.

The Conductor lays the tracks, builds the trolley, and creates the people, giving them Libertarian Free Will.

One person the Conductor is holding together gets onto the trolley that the Conductor is holding together and runs it over the rails that the Conductor is holding together and runs over the other five that the Conductor is...um...no longer holding together.

The sixth one is happy that his will was not challenged.

(Arminian trolley problem)

So much for the persuasive power of analogies.  But again, that would just be an analogy minus an argument and I would never leave it at that.

The fact of the matter is that if we can show just one occurrence of God overriding the freedom of an individual without there being any moral qualms, then Libertarian Free Will has no leg to stand on.  So let me show two just from the book of Genesis. 

Look at Genesis 20, specifically verses 3-6, when Abraham lied about Sarah saying she wasn’t his wife but his sister so Abimelech took her to be his wife: 

But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said to him, “Behold, you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is a man's wife.” Now Abimelech had not approached her. So he said, “Lord, will you kill an innocent people? Did he not himself say to me, ‘She is my sister’? And she herself said, ‘He is my brother.’ In the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands I have done this.” Then God said to him in the dream, “Yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your heart, and it was I who kept you from sinning against me. Therefore I did not let you touch her.”

Notice that Abimelech’s actions are described as being from “the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands.”  And furthermore, God concurred by saying “Yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your heart.”  This is Abimelech’s genuine mental disposition, his genuine decision—this is what he chose to do.  And yet: “It was I who kept you from sinning against me” says the LORD.  “Therefore I did not let you touch her.”

God did not let Abimelech touch Sarah.  Yet Abimelech also says he did not touch her from his own integrity, and God agreed with that assessment.  Libertarian Free Will can make no sense of this statement without concluding God is simply lying.

And what of the second illustration? Later on we read Joseph’s own declaration that he was sold into slavery because of the evil of his brothers, and yet also because God intended it.  “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Genesis 50:20).

Even as clear as that statement is, there is a lot packed into it that may be unobserved.  Consider what “it” was in the statement “God meant it for good.”  This is Joseph’s being sold into slavery.  Why did the brothers hate Joseph enough to sell him into slavery?  Genesis 37 tells us that too.  Joseph had a dream that his father and brothers would bow down to him, and Genesis 37:19 tells us what they had in mind: “Here comes this dreamer.”

And we know the rest of the story: The brothers sold him into slavery, and he was brought to Egypt.  Joseph worked for Potipher.  His wife then claimed Joseph had attacked her, and Joseph was thrown into jail.  And then, Joseph interpreted the dreams for two criminals, one who was killed and the other who was restored.  Then Pharaoh had dreams and the cup-bearer who was restored told him about Joseph.  And Joseph interpreted those dreams, such that when the famine came they had plenty of food, so that Joseph’s father and brothers were forced to visit Egypt and, seeing Joseph but not recognizing him, they bowed down to him exactly as Joseph’s original dream had foretold.

But wait, there’s even more.  Why was the famine coming?  When Pharaoh had his dream, he had two dreams.  Joseph interprets it by saying: “God has revealed to Pharaoh what he is about to do. … God has shown to Pharaoh what he is about to do. …And the doubling of Pharaoh’s dream means that the thing is fixed by God, and God will shortly bring it about” (Genesis 41:25, 28, 32).

The famine itself is something that God did.  It is not a random famine that came out of nowhere.  It was God’s intention to bring about a famine.

One could obviously ask the question, then: if God sent it, then He was in control the whole time. He could decide who it would affect, when, and why. So, why did God go through the rather convoluted process of giving Joseph dreams that would cause his brothers to hate him so much that they would sell him into slavery where he would then be falsely accused of attempted rape and thrown in jail, so that he would be in the place where two officials of Egypt would be sent in order for Joseph to interpret their dreams, so that years later when Pharaoh had a dream Joseph would be brought out of prison, become the second in command of Egypt, save countless people, and finally to have his brothers and father bow down to him just as his dream had predicted at the very beginning?  I mean, have you thought about this yet?  If any single one of those items doesn't go exactly as it did, the whole thing collapses.

Yet even given all that, Joseph concludes that while his brothers meant it for evil, God meant it for good.  His brothers still intended evil—they chose to do evil.  And they knew it.  For instance, before this we read:

Then they said to one another, “In truth we are guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the distress of his soul, when he begged us and we did not listen. That is why this distress has come upon us.” And Reuben answered them, “Did I not tell you not to sin against the boy? But you did not listen. So now there comes a reckoning for his blood.” They did not know that Joseph understood them, for there was an interpreter between them (Genesis 42:21-23).

They admit they are guilty of what they did, and Reuben goes so far as to acknowledge what they did was a sin.  They knew they were responsible for all they had done and yet Joseph would still say: 

And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are yet five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God. He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt (Genesis 45:5-8).

What they did in sending Joseph to Egypt was evil; yet God sent him to Egypt.  “It was not you who sent me here, but God.”  How is this possible if Libertarian Free Will is correct?  But it makes perfect sense if one is a compatibilist and recognizes that men are morally responsible for their choices even when God is sovereign over them.

The passages could be increased exponentially throughout the rest of the Bible too, from the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart to God’s actions during the trials of Job, to the statements of Paul outright saying in Romans 9:16 “So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy” illustrating that with the previously mentioned example of Pharaoh too.  The Bible is consistent and clear throughout that God is sovereign and does as He pleases even in circumstances where those who God uses for His own good purposes face moral judgment for the evil they have committed.

You might not like that that’s what the Bible says, but you’re not going to overturn those clear passages with a simplistic, inaccurate analogy.

Freedom of choice

Freewill theists typically claim that genuine freedom requires freedom to choose between two (or more) alternatives. Suppose a mandatory evacuation has been ordered for my area due to a storm system that's forecast to produce catastrophic flooding. Before the road is submerged, I drive to friend's house to evacuate him. But he's extremely reluctant to leave. Yet it's highly likely that if he refuses to leave, he will drown.  I'm very athletic. I can easily overpower him if he forces the issue. Suppose we have the following exchange:

Me: Would you like to come with me?

Friend: What if I wouldn't like to come with you?

Me: I believe in freedom of choice. So you can either come willingly or else you can come against your will!

Puppy love

Freewill theists typically say that true love must be "freely" given and "freely" received, meaning lover and beloved must both be able to withhold love. With that in mind, how many freewill theists are dog owners? Do they think their pet dogs express true love for their human family? Dogs descend from social animals (wolves). On top of that, dogs are bred to be even more beholden to humans. So both by nature and selective breeding, dogs have been programmed to bond with their human family. According to freewill theism, their psychological conditioning makes them furry robots or hairy puppets. 

Determined to Come Most Freely

https://www.proginosko.com/2019/07/determined-to-come-most-freely/

Does God know the future?

Peter van Inwagen is one of the most brilliant philosophical theologians of his generation. I'd say he's the equal of Alvin Plantinga. He's a freewill theist, and here he concedes that libertarian freedom is incompatible with knowing the future:

https://www.closertotruth.com/series/does-gods-knowledge-quash-free-will#video-48360

The disconnect problem

There is a certain well-known problem facing libertarians–the so-called "luck problem." If an event is undetermined, then it is random, and random events are not within anyone's control. A tad more carefully, if an event is undetermined then it is not determined by the agent's reasons, and this disconnection has the consequence that it is just luck when an undetermined event appropriately corresponds to the agent's reasons. That, in turn, seems to have the consequence that the undetermined event is not something that the agent controls or for which the agent is responsible. There is a standard response to this problem–an agent can control her actions by virtue of her reasons "influencing without determining" her decisions. I will propose that if some influencing is good, then a little more influencing is always better. I will further propose that that leaves the libertarian with no explanation for why influencing is good but determining is bad. 

The disconnect problem can be stated thus: if an event E is undetermined, then it is not sufficiently connected to A's reasons to qualify as being within her control, up to her, or something she has a choice about. 

Her resulting behavior would look just like what she should have done on her own, but it would not be in her control because it was coming from "without". It is this externality to the self that is carried over through Case 7. If the start of a chain leading to a volition is disconnected from Agent A's character, then moving that start inside the head will not stop it from being disconnected. 

We need to distinguish different ways in which one might lack free will–different ways in which it might not be possible for one to perform an act. The difference I have in mind has to do with the counterfactual effectiveness of my deliberation…If I were to believe that I lacked free will with respect to which door to exit through on the grounds that I believe that one of the doors is locked, then I would not and should not deliberate about which door to exit through. The deliberation would be pointless. Regardless of the outcome of the deliberation, my exit would be through the unlocked door.

…The determinist chain that produces that action produces it by way of the deliberation. Determinism is not fatalism. If I were to deliberate to a different outcome or fail to deliberate at all, my action would be different. As long as deliberation makes a difference it is not pointless. Mark Heller, "The Disconnect Problem and the Influence Strategy," John. Keller, ed. Being, Freedom, and Method: Themes from the Philosophy of Peter Van Inwagen (Oxford 2017), chap. 5. 

Boilerplate anti-Calvinism

Justin Brierley recently published this article:

https://www.premierchristianity.com/Past-Issues/2018/November-2018/Why-both-atheists-and-Christians-need-to-believe-in-free-will

I'm not sure if this is worth commenting on because it's such well-trodden ground. Justin is a great guy who's doing great work for the kingdom. Given that Christianity is nearly in eclipse in England, Justin's work at Unbelievable represents a necessary and commendable Christian insurgent movement. 

I'll comment on his article because he commands a wide hearing. That said, I wonder who's the target audience. Is this supposed to change minds? On the one hand, there are readers who will nod their head because they're already on that side. So they come out of it the way they went into it. On the other hand, informed Calvinists will experience déjà vu. Many Calvinists have prepared answers. So what's the point of his article? 

Freewill theism and induction

A natural law theodicy is a standard theodicy in freewill theism. According to that theodicy, moral agents require a stable environment for their deliberations and choices to have predictable consequences. Absent that, they can't be held responsible for their actions. 

I'd mention in passing that Calvinism can use that theodicy, too. Calvinism has a doctrine of ordinary providence. And there's value in having a world where actions generally have predictable choices. That's not unique to freewill theism.

If true, a natural law theodicy has the fringe benefit of grounding induction. On this view, God made a world in which, all things being equal (ceteris paribus proviso), the future resembles the past. That makes it possible to justifiably extrapolate from the past to the future. 

But here's a snag: a standard definition of libertarian freedom is leeway freedom: an agent can opt for two or more courses of action under the exact same circumstances. So there are ever so many different and divergent ways to complete the future. Given the same past, and billions of free agents, there are countless ways the future might turn out. Moreover, the choices of multiple free agents interact with each other or counteract each other. In addition, this impacts natural events inasmuch as humans often manipulate natural process to yield desired results. 

On the face of it, this renders the future utterly unpredictable, and destroys any basis for induction. Anything that's naturally possible could happen. 

In Calvinism, by contrast, although God had the freedom to choose between alternate timelines, yet having settled on a particular outcome (predestination), the outcome is fixed. By virtue of the decree, there's only one pathway from past to future. 

What makes something or someone blameworthy?

The political illustration notwithstanding, this is a philosophical analysis that's relevant to debates over freewill theism and Calvinism. What makes a person or action blameworthy?

https://arcdigital.media/blaming-trump-5ed516a56e53?sk=da255c69876c9e200d0dc50a0dd1afe8

A Thought Experiment

A few years ago, I remember reading a proponent of Libertarian Free Will (LFW) argue that LFW should be the default position because, in as near of a quote as I can remember: “Even determinists still act like their choices are real.”  Setting aside the question-begging that the only choices that could be “real” are LFW choices, the argument seemed to be:

A - LFW implies that you could have chosen other than you did (the LFW definition of a free choice).

B - People who hold to determinism feel as if they could have chosen otherwise (taken as a given).

C - Therefore, the default way we think of choice presupposes LFW. 

(To be fair, the person who was saying this was not attempting to argue that this proved LFW correct, but rather that it proved LFW was the “natural” way to understand choice.)

Now recently I’ve been reading through Excusing Sinners and Blaming God by Guillaume Bignon, which has resulted in me thinking more about free will and I think I’ve got a thought experiment that addresses the point the LFW proponent made so many years ago.  Nothing of what I am about to say is derived directly from Bignon’s book, so don’t take this as a representation of any of his arguments, but I credit him with getting me thinking on the topic.  (Incidentally, you should definitely read his book.)

Suppose that you wake one morning to find yourself in a strange room.  It’s a square room with four white walls, ceiling, and floor.  No distinguishing markers anywhere.  Each of the walls has a single door set in the midpoint of the wall, and there is a sign in the exact center of the room saying: “Choose a room.”  You check each of the doors and discover that each of them leads to a room that is, to all appearances, identical to the one that you are in right now.

Suppose you pick one of the doors and go through it.  You are presented with the same choice there, so once more you pick another door and go through it (or perhaps you return to the original room).  You can even choose not to pick another room and just sit where you are at.  The question is, after all is said and done and you pick your final room: Is your choice of room a “real” choice?

I would suspect the majority of LFW proponents would say “yes.”  There are five options to pick from each time: you could go through any of the four doors or stay where you are.  And if you define the room you wake up in as the Origin of (0,0), you can supply (x,y) coordinates to even map it out.  Clearly, going forward through the door on your defined x-axis is different from going through a door on the y-axis or in the opposite direction.  So at the end of the day, when you’re done choosing to go through whatever doors you pick, you have indeed selected the room you are in, whether that room is (7,2) or (-4,-301) or anything in between, on the map you have created.

But suppose at this point I tell you that the room you are in is on a rolling platform, such that when you walk forward you are not moving in space but instead the room moves around you.  The walls behind you drop off and loop around to reappear on the other side, so when you go through, say, the North door of the room you are actually re-entering the same room via the South door.  And the same is true for East and West.  Thus, no matter what door you go through, you are always still in the exact same room.  Now if I ask you, "Did you choose what room you are in?" I suspect every LFW proponent will say, “No.”  There were no actual options, so while it felt like you had a choice, you did not actually have a choice.  You are in the same room no matter what door (or no door) you picked.

At this point, suppose I then say, “You are either in a room such as I just described, or you are in a large set of interlinked identical-looking, but actually distinct, rooms like you originally thought.  But I am not going to tell you which one it is.  Did you choose what room you are in?”  I do not believe someone who holds to LFW could give an answer at this point.  He can only say, “Maybe yes, maybe no.  I need more information to tell.”

But if someone takes this path, note that they are saying that whether or not a choice is “real” has nothing to do with the subjective experience that a choice was made, for the subjective experience is the same in all three scenarios.  In this view, the only thing that can differentiate between whether a choice is real or illusory is the objective reality behind the scenes that, in the instance of the third scenario, it is impossible for the chooser to know.

Let me say that again: On this view, whether or not a choice happens is not dependent upon the one choosing, but rather upon objective reality that the chooser may never be aware of.

So let me add yet another scenario.  Suppose that what is really happening is that there is a network of linked rooms, each of which could loop back around so someone would not be able pass through it, or it could be set to allow someone to pass through to another room.  Suppose that if I flip a switch, as you went from (0,0) toward (1,0) you actually would go to (1,0) as you had chosen; but if I had flipped a different switch you would never have left (0,0).  I control the behavior of the rooms, but you don’t know how much of an influence I am.

Perhaps I didn’t put any influence in at all.  I may have kept the switches set so that you could go to any room you want.  Or perhaps any time you sought to increase on the y-axis, I flipped the switch, so that you thought you went to room (4,13), but you are really at (4,0).  You chose the x-axis, but I chose the y-axis.  Or perhaps I made sure you never left (0,0) or that once you got to (3,-2) you would never leave that room.  I can choose when to flip the switches and how to do so, but you don’t know how much of an influence I am making.  You only know that I could be influencing it, if I wanted to.

How real is your choice now?  Again, I’d say a LFW proponent would have to answer, “I don’t know.”  And what this would show is that whether or not your choice of room is “real” doesn’t just not depend on you, it does depend on me.  In this scenario, I have the power to make your choice real or illusory, but you are not able to do so yourself!  And to top it all off, you have no way of knowing how much—if any—influence I have actually put into which room you chose, because your subjective choices feel the same whether I interfere behind the scenes or not.  Given all this, not only can I determine if your choices are “real”, only I can even know if they are “real”.  You cannot tell the difference between real choices and illusory choices.

But there’s one final scenario we can examine, and that’s the scenario where I am able to influence what room you pick exactly the same way as the scenario we just examined...but I never tell you that I am able to do so.  Under this final scenario, you may think that you have gone to room (21,96) because that is the path you took and at no point did you ever consider that anything behind the scenes might be altering what you subjectively experienced.  If I ask you if your choice was real, you would say “Yes” because it never entered into your mind that it could have been anything other than that.  If I ask how you know that you picked the room you are in, you might very well reason: “I could have picked a different room, if I had wanted to do so.  Any of them were a valid option.  Therefore, since I picked this room, then it was my choice.”  You would never question whether or not the alternatives were ever real.

It should be clear now that to assume that the alternatives that you think are there actually are there begs the question.  It is circular reasoning.  The LFW proponent must establish how they can know those alternatives could have been actualized, not just assume they could have, because clearly the subjective feeling that they might have been able to do so is not enough to warrant belief that they really could have done so.  The upshot is that I think if you are an LFW proponent then on LFW grounds it is foolish to ever say a choice is real, because there’s no way to prove whether any alternatives ever could have been actualized.  On LFW grounds, we can only say, “Subjectively, I feel that I made the choice.”

Which, of course, is the same thing said under determinism.

Is determinism unlivable?

I think that you’ve successfully identified a problem with determinism in general, Leif, of which Calvinism is but a specific instance, given the Calvinist’s view that God determines everything that happens.

A determinist cannot live consistently as though everything he thinks and does is causally determined—especially his choice to believe that determinism is true! Thinking that you’re determined to believe that everything you believe is determined produces a kind of vertigo. Nobody can live as though all that he thinks and does is determined by causes outside himself. Even determinists recognize that we have to act “as if” we had free will and so weigh our options and decide on what course of action to take, even though at the end of the day we are determined to take the choices we do. Determinism is thus an unliveable view.

This presents a real problem not just for the Calvinist, but for the naturalist. For insofar as naturalism implies that all our thoughts and actions are determined by natural causes outside ourselves, free will is an illusion. But we cannot escape this illusion and so must go on making choices as though we had free will, even though we don’t. Naturalism is thus an unliveable worldview.

https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/calvinism-and-the-unliveability-of-determinism

i) It's hard to find much of an argument here. Even if libertarian freedom were true, some aspects of human experience are undoubtedly deterministic. For instance, when Craig hit adolescence, he found himself attracted to females. That's naturally caused by hormones. Is it unlivable to be casually determined to find women physically appealing? Empirical evidence would seem to suggest that men have found that pretty easy to live with!

ii) Or consider the role of habit in human behavior. We train our minds to remember certain tasks so that we don't have to consciously think about them. Like learning a foreign language, learning to play a musical instrument, learning to sightread music, learning to play a sport, learning the route from one place to another, learning to read a text. Much of this operates at a subliminal level. We've programmed our minds to do certain things automatically. 

Now, if we had to stop and think about what we were doing, about how to do it, that might have a paralyzing effect–but of course, that defeats the purpose of forming mental habits! The whole point is to delegate that to the unconscious part of your mind so that you don't have to consciously execute every step in the process. 

Is that kind of mental self-programming unlivable? Hardly. To the contrary, it would be unlivable if we couldn't free up our conscious attention span. It works because we don't have to be aware of it. 

iii) How does Craig's argument actually disprove determinism? If determinism is true, then agents do in fact live consistently with that reality. They have no alternative. If determinism is true, then what they feel about it has no impact on the reality of their determinism. Their actions will be determined whether they know it or not. 

If my beliefs and actions are determined, this doesn't imply that I know what the determinants are. I just make up my mind based on the conscious and subconscious factors that feed into belief-formation and decision-making. 

If I knew ahead of time what I was determined to do, then that would introduce a countersuggestive dynamic. But a determined agent doesn't know in advance what he's been determined to do, so abstract belief in determinism has no particular impact on the outcome. And to the extent that belief in determinism affects the outcome, that in itself is just another determinant in the outcome. 

iv) The fact that we consider alternate courses of action doesn't mean those are all viable options. After all, we can imagine many unrealistic courses of action. And their impossibility may not be apparent, if we don't act on them. In some cases their impossibility becomes apparent when we attempt to act on our choice. It turns out our choice was shortsighted and oversimplified the variables. In reality, there were many impenetrable barriers in the way of realizing our chosen pathway. Surely that's a commonplace of human experience. Has Craig never found his plans frustrated by uncooperative factors beyond his control? 

When God comes to a fork in the road

One issue that sometimes crops up in debates over Calvinism is whether God has libertarian freedom. Could God have chosen otherwise, or are his choices determined? 

That debate isn't confined to Calvinism. It goes to larger issues like the principle of sufficient reason. Likewise, whether God can or should be able to change his mind. 

There's disagreement within freewill theism on how to define freedom. There are two basic models: leeway freedom and ultimate sourcehood. 

Leeway freedom is the ability to choose between alternate possibilities, given the same past–up to the moment of choice. In a sense, I'd say mainstream Calvinism affirms God's leeway freedom insofar as God was free to make the world, not make the world, or make a different world. God had many live options at his disposal. 

However, it's misleading to say God has libertarian freedom in that sense, for unlike human agents, God doesn't have to choose between two (or more) alternatives. In principle, he can act on both alternatives. In principle, he can create a multiverse which exemplifies multiple timelines. Perhaps he has. In that respect, God has greater freedom than libertarian freedom. 

If God's choices were determined, they'd be determined by his own reasons, and not by something outside himself. However, there's a hidden assumption behind that way of framing the issue–as if God is confronted with a binary choice: either doing A or doing non-A. But God doesn't face that limitation. It's within his power to opt for both alternatives. In principle, he can create more than one possible world. When God comes to a fork in the road, he can simultaneously go right and left (figuratively speaking). 

Guillaume the Conqueror

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdhKfk47RmA&feature=youtu.be

Between the devil's advocate and the deep blue computer

1. In chapter 4 of Where the Conflict Really Lies, Alvin Plantinga discusses quantum mechanics. Plantinga's aim is twofold: to show that quantum mechanics is compatible with miracles/special providence–as well as human/divine agents who enjoy libertarian freedom. 

Calvinists face a somewhat different challenge, and that is whether quantum mechanics is compatible with "theistic determinism". 

2. Before proceeding, we need to define our terms and draw some distinctions.

i) There's a sense in which Calvinism is deterministic. The reservation I have with that characterization is that "determinism" is an imprecise way to classify Calvinism. That's because an outcome can be determinate without being predeterminate. And there's more than one sense in which that might be the case.

For instance, if an outcome is directly caused, then it's not the end-result of a chain of events leading up to that outcome. In that regard, the outcome is determinate but not predetermined. 

To take a different kind of example, an outcome can be determinate but unintended. It wasn't predetermined in the sense of premeditation. For instance, chemical reactions are determinate but not predeterminate in that sense. 

Calvinism is deterministic is a more specific sense than generic determinism, because Calvinism has a doctrine of predeterminism in particular rather than a doctrine of determinism in general. 

Predestination is a type of premeditation. Everything happens according to God's master plan for the world. In that regard, "determinism" fails to capture the divinely intentional element of Calvinism.  

ii) Calvinism is neutral on physical determinism. Whether or not all physical events are physically determined is a matter of indifference to Calvinism inasmuch as the fundamental determinant in Calvinism is predestination. But predestination isn't synonymous with physical determinism since the locus of predestination is God's immaterial mind and will. God's blueprint for the world as well as God's resolve to implement his plan. 

iii) In Calvinism, there's more than one causal modality by which God's plan eventuates. There's God's timeless creative fiat. There's an order of second causes. And there are miracles which circumvent a chain of second causes. 

3. In addition, there are two different definitions of libertarian freedom:

There seem to be at least two different fundamental notions of what free will is in the contemporary literature. The first of these, which seems to have garnered the most attention in the last century, works under the assumption that for a person to rightly be said to have free will, she must have the ability to do otherwise than what she does, in fact, do. Under this view I could be said to have freely chosen to drive to work only if I also could have freely chosen, for example, to bike to work or to skip work altogether. This approach to free will is referred to as a ‘leeway-based approach’ (cite my book) or an ‘alternative possibilities approach’ (see Sartorio (2016).)

In contrast, a smaller percentage of the extant literature focuses primarily on the issues of ‘source,’ ‘ultimacy,’ and ‘origination’. This second approach doesn’t focus immediately on the presence or absence of alternative possibilities. On this approach, I freely choose to drive to work only if I am the source of my choice and there is nothing outside of me from which the choice is ultimately derived.

In what follows, we refer to the first of these conceptions—the conception that free will is primarily a matter of having alternative possibilities—as the ‘leeway based’ conception. Similarly, we will refer to the second of these conceptions—that free will is primarily a matter of our being the source of our choices in a particular way—as the ‘sourcehood’ conception. (John Fischer and Carolina Sartorio refers to sourcehood views as ‘actual sequence’ views; see Fischer (2006) and Sartorio (2016)).

Both of these notions can be seen in the following passage taken from Robert Kane:

We believe we have free will when we view ourselves as agents capable of influencing the world in various ways. Open alternatives, or alternative possibilities, seem to lie before us. We reason and deliberate among them and choose. We feel (1) it is ‘up to us’ what we choose and how we act; and this means we could have chosen or acted otherwise. As Aristotle noted: when acting is ‘up to us,’ so is not acting. This ‘up-to-us-ness’ also suggests (2) the ultimate control of our actions lies in us and not outside us in factors beyond our control (Kane (2005), 6). Kevin Timpe, Routledge Companion to Free Will. 

4. Apropos (3), we need to disambiguate libertarian freedom (as defined above) from Calvinism. 

i) I'd say that the ultimate sourcehood definition is straightforwardly at odds with Calvinism. Human agents can't be free in that sense.

ii) But the leeway definition is equivocal. We need to distinguish between alternate possibilities in the psychological sense in contrast to alternate possibilities in the metaphysical sense. 

By "psychological", I mean human agents can imagine alternate pathways. And when we make a choice, that often involves mentally comparing and contrasting alternate pathways.

That's consistent with Calvinism. According to Calvinism, God has predestined rational agents to make choices by engaging in that type of deliberation.

Likewise, it's consistent with Calvinism that human agents can and do influence the world in various ways. 

iii) That, however, doesn't entail that there are open alternatives in the metaphysical sense because not everything that's conceivable is feasible. Although we can entertain many apparent possibilities, it doesn't follow that we can act on all of them. Indeed, it's a commonplace of human experience that there's often a disappointing shortfall between imaginary pathways to our goal and realistic pathways to our goal. 

Pathways that seem to lie wide open may in fact have washed out bridges along the way. That's in part because human imagination is very shortsighted. When we contemplate a course of action, there are many intervening steps that fall outside our ken. 

In addition, our pathway may be blocked by other agents. What seems to be an unobstructed pathway in the mind often hits a wall when we attempt to act on our choice. 

iv) Finally, Calvinism affirms that unlike human agents, God does have leeway freedom. God can access alternate possibilities. God does have open alternatives at his disposal. 

5. One of the complications with assessing the relationship between freedom and determinism vis-a-vis quantum mechanics is the absence of an agreed-upon interpretation of quantum mechanics. There are deterministic as well as indeterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics. There's insufficient evidence to ascertain which is correct. At least according to the current state of the evidence, some deterministic and indeterministic interpretations are empirically equivalent. And it may be that even in principle, there can never be sufficient evidence to settle that dispute. It's striking the degree to which debates over the proper interpretation of quantum mechanics resorts to thought-experiments.

6. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that quantum mechanics is actually deterministic. That would amount to physical determinism at a subatomic level. If true, then that doesn't generate even a prima facie tension between predestination and quantum mechanics.

7. But suppose, for the sake of argument, that quantum mechanics is actually indeterministic. If some physical events or outcomes are physically uncaused or indeterminate, is that consistent with universal predestination?

Let's consider an analogy. At present, I believe there are computer chess players that can beat the very best human players. 

Suppose,for discussion purposes, we grant that human chess players have libertarian freedom. Suppose choosing which move to make originates with the player. 

Likewise, there's a sense in which a player has leeway freedom. As he scans the board, the pieces, and their position, many alternate pathways lie open to him. That's not just imaginary. It correspond to objective reality in terms of empty spaces on the board and different ways in which different kinds of pieces can move. There are multiple opportunities for action. In that respect, there's more than one way ahead. 

Ah, but here's the catch. Because the computer is unbeatable, every pathway leads to defeat. Every alternate course of action leads to checkmate.

It follows that a determinate outcome is consistent with indeterminate choices. Although it might seem that determinism and indeterminism are antithetical, they can be combined. Even if every pathway is indeterministic, the denouement is the same in each case. 

8. I'm not suggesting, from a Calvinistic perspective, that chess players have libertarian freedom. Rather, I'm using an a fortiori argument (a maiore ad minus). If even in the greater case, where indeterminate choices are nevertheless consistent with determinate outcomes, then mutatis mutandis, that holds true in the lesser case where leeway freedom (and ultimate sourcehood) is false. And that's an analogy for quantum mechanics, even on indeterministic interpretations, where causal determinism is false at the subatomic level. 

Calvinism and hard determinism

I'm going to comment on an article by self-styled Calvinist Theodore Zachariades

https://www.reformingamericaministries.com/single-post/2017/11/20/Consistent-Theological-Determinism-A-Challenge-to-James-White

I have not met an Arminian that concedes this compatibilist view of freedom. To them only libertarian freedom is real.

Why should Calvinists use Arminian views as the standard of comparison? 

What is the point of using Arminian arguments about supposed freedom to plead for Calvinist conclusions?

Since, by his own admission, Arminians reject compatibilism, appealing to compatibilism is inimical using Arminian arguments about supposed freedom to plead for Calvinist conclusions.

God is a planning Agent.

Free will is thereby an illusion, as our lives have been scripted and planned before by God. 

At the end of the day, we live out a script that God has decreed. He asked no counsel or took anything into consideration but His own will in this eternal decree. Meticulous providence rules out free will. Calvinists that affirm their truncated version of free will do so to maintain human responsibility. But the Bible does not use free will as an explanatory category to sustain human responsibility. We are responsible or accountable because we are created beings. God’s character, as indicated in His prescriptive law for humans, is the standard by which human behavior will be judged. 

If predestination is true, and it cannot be doubted in face of so much evidence, it must follow that free will is false. There is no free will in a universe directed and upheld by the Lord God Almighty. There are those who wish to maintain a semi-Calvinist or hypo-Calvinist view that asserts that free will is compatible with determinism. That still leaves one as a determinist, an inconsistent one, however. I prefer to stress theological hard determinism.4 Take the fall of Adam. Was it a free action or was it determined? I believe you cannot have it both ways. If determined, then was Adam truly free? This problem has a long history. I side with God’s decree including the fall of Adam; indeed, even the fall of Lucifer! Free will in a compatibilist-determinist worldview is only free in name. 

Libertarians, of all stripes, renounce these arguments by compatibilists, and thereby they win the argument by the definition. If free will is compatible with determinism, why not claim that libertarian free will is compatible with determinism? The reason one cannot is that the determinism side weighs too heavily and truly precludes libertarianism or true free will. Compatibilists like to use the language of free will without having the substance.

i) Let's begin with some standard definitions of hard determinism (or theological hard determinism) from the philosophical literature:

Hard determinists (William James’s term) are also incompatibilists, but they accept determinism and deny that we have the sort of free will required for moral responsibility. Derk Pereboom, Living Without Free Will (Cambridge 2003), xiv.

Hard determinists are incompatibilists who take a harder line: since determinism is true, free will does not exist in the sense required for genuine responsibility, accountability, blameworthiness, or desert. Robert Kane, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Free Will (Oxford 2002), 27. 

But another option, typically only hinted at, is to endorse theological hard determinism, according to which theological determinism is true, but as a result we are not morally responsible in the basic desert sense for our actions. Derk Pereboom, "Libertarianism and Theological Determinism," Kevin Timpe & Daniel Speak, eds. Free Will and Theism: Connections, Contingencies, and Concerns (Oxford 2016), 116.

On that definition, Calvinism is antithetical to hard determinism. That humans are morally responsible agents whose actions are potentially blameworthy or liable to just desert is a Reformed essential. Zachariades is operating with an idiosyncratic definition of hard determinism that doesn't correspond to standard usage. He doesn't seem to know what he's talking about. Certainly his claim is uninformed. 

ii) When compatibilists say that human agents are "free" in some respects, what does that mean? The definition of "freedom" in the compatibilist sense depends on the point of contrast. "Free" compared to what? To take one representative example:

We typically make distinctions in the law and in morality between individuals who have been coerced and those who have not. Indeed, we distinguish between agents who have been manipulated (in certain ways), brainwashed, deceived, subject to clandestine subliminal advertising, and so forth, and those who are morally responsible. John Martin Fischer, "Semicompatibilism", Kevin Timpe, Meghan Griffith, & Neil Levy, eds. The Routledge Companion to Free Will (Routledge 2016), 5. 

On that definition, compatibilist freedom means freedom from certain types of manipulation, coercion, deception, brainwashing. So a compatibilist can specify the sense in which determinism is consistent with freedom. Does Zachariades deny that human agents are free in that sense? 

Likewise:

Semicompatibilism is the view that even though some freedoms–for instance, the ability to do otherwise–are incompatible with determinism, moral responsibility is compatible with determinism J. Campbell, Free Will (Polity 2011), 29-30.

Does Zachariades imagine that Calvinism is inconsistent with compatibililism (or semicompatibilism) in that sense? On the face of it, Zachariades appears to be ignorant of what hard determinism and compatibilism (or semicompatibilism) even mean. Yet these are terms of art. These are philosophical concepts. He needs to show some understanding of what they represent before he's in any position to assess them. As it stands, his discussion is incompetent. 

iii) Finally, determinism does not entail premeditation. For instance, the sequence of a randomly shuffled card deck is determinate, but unplanned. If you take a deck of cards, which has a preexisting sequence, bisect the deck, then randomly shuffle the cards so that a card from one half alternates with a card from the other half, the recombined deck has a determinate sequence even though the order of the cards is random rather than planned. 

Determinism is equally consistent with intended and unintended outcomes. Although determinism may be a necessary condition for premeditated events, it's not a sufficient condition. Zachariades needs a more discriminating category than determinism to articulate how everything happens according to a master plan. 

A Quick Argument Against Libertarian Calvinism

http://www.proginosko.com/2017/09/a-quick-argument-against-libertarian-calvinism/

Does Molinism make sense?

On Facebook, some folks attempted to critique my post:

http://triablogue.blogspot.co.nz/2017/06/how-does-god-get-world-he-chose.html

I'm not a Molinist, but neither of these are really problems for them. To the first, this is exactly what middle knowledge is meant to solve.

i) That may be what middle knowledge is meant to solve, but positing that God knows the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom is a stipulation rather than a solution. Big difference.

ii) Moreover, the problem is deeper than sheer assertion. As I discuss, Molinism creates an obstacle to divine knowledge of hypothetical or counterfactual choices. 

To the second, Molinism allows for God to determine everything other than free choices. This is presumably enough, since free choices aren't typically the only things that make up the circumstances of other free choices.

How can God determine circumstances that are contingent on choices that God can't determine?

First, what makes the knowledge middle is not its content (many views agree that God knows these counterfactuals), but its being true contingently and without being determined by God.

Now you're resorting to a semantic quibble. To begin with, "middle knowledge" is just a label. I wasn't discussing why the position is thus designated. And there's more to Molinism than middle knowledge.

However, the content is directly germane to the question of whether God can differentiate between possible worlds, on the basis of circumstances, in order to instantiate a world of his choosing. 

Second, theories by their very nature posit principles in order to account for the phenomena they wish to explain. The Molinist seeks to explain how a God could know the outcome of a libertarian free choice, and proposes a theory about the nature of certain counterfactuals to account for this. Sure, you might find their particular proposal indefensible in the long run, or think some other account does a better job (as I do), but you can hardly fault them for following the standard process.

I fault people for making exaggerated claims about the explanatory power of their theory. Molinism doesn't even attempt to explain how God can know the hypothetical/counterfactual choices of libertarian agents. Rather, it takes that possibility for granted. Yet that's a central issue in dispute. So it begs the question.

By directly determining the parts of those circumstances that are not free choices. To say a circumstance is contingent on free choices is not the same as saying it is contingent on only free choices.

If you have a chain of events where each successive event is contingent on a preceding event, and at each fork in the road it could veer off in two or more directions, how does God instantiate any particular trajectory? The circumstances at T1 don't pick out a particular outcome. Depending on how that goes, we come to T2. But the circumstances at T2 don't pick out a particular outcome. And so on and so forth, like a game of chess.

As to their failure to explain how God can have this knowledge, I think it gets ahead of where we are in the dialectic. You don't need to have an explanation for the explanation, before the latter is worth considering. The Molinist starts with the assumption (shared by almost everyone) that God knows all true propositions and guides free human choices. He then proposes that there a class propositions that if known, would enable God to guide our free choices.

i) To begin with, while we can grant the assumptions of an opposing position for the sake of argument, proponents of the opposing position are not entitled to stipulate that we must grant their assumptions. There are many situations in which it is right and proper to challenge the assumptions of the opposing position.

ii) Moreover, you're taking the extreme position that even granting their assumptions for the sake of argument, we are not allowed to challenge the coherence of their position. We must grant that their position is internally consistent.

Those are arbitrary restrictions. 

If the same circumstance could result in two different outcomes because of free choice, then the Molinist's claim is that it would only result in one.

If an agent can choose more than one course of action under identical circumstances, then the circumstances fail to yield a specific result. In that case, God is shooting blind when he instantiates a possible world. He has a range of possible/feasible worlds from which to choose, but circumstances are insufficient to differentiate one outcome from another. 

The knowledge of the counterfactuals was never under question

That's an issue if God is blindfolded when he chooses which option to instantiate, for circumstances are too indiscriminate to select for the desired outcome.

The ability to chose differently doesn't effect God's knowledge of what said creature would choose given the circumstances. Just like your ability to choose differently doesn't effect God knowing what you will choose.

i) I think you mean affect, not effect. If you're going to be patronizing, at least use the right word. 

ii) Actually, there are freewill theists of the Occamist stripe who say it does affect God's knowledge. Soft facts, backtracking counterfactuals.

Foreknowledge doesn't have any causal power.

Red herring.

For the question to work as an objection one would have to assume it does have a causal power - but that sort of theological determinism is (aside from being logically fallacious) exactly what the Molinist solution finds to be unnecessary. Like I said, if this guy would take the time to step outside of his deterministic assumptions and seek to truly understand the view, he wouldn't need to ask this kind of trivial question.

i) I'm always amused by people whose intellectual confidence is in inverse proportion to their intellectual competence. That's a common malady among internet atheists and internet freewill theists. 

ii) Molinism doesn't have a solution.

iii) My argument doesn't presuppose that foreknowledge has causal power (whatever that means). 

God knows all at once, by virtue of his middle knowledge, all the circumstances - those that would be created by free creatures and those that would not be, and then sovereignly chooses to create that world of free choices and circumstances that suit his ends. Thus all circumstances, no matter how they came to be, were chosen by God - all the while leaving libertarian freedom still possible.

That doesn't begin to engage my argument. Once more, if libertarian freedom is defined as the ability to do more than one thing under the same circumstances, then instantiating a particular set of circumstances won't suffice to instantiate a world with any particular set of choices, inasmuch as the choices are causally independent of the circumstances. A given set of circumstances cannot select for a particular outcome. The outcome is radically underdetermined by the circumstances inasmuch as the circumstances don't produce free choices.

This is also very easy to refute.

Behold the beauty of overconfidence. 

(i) That you could do otherwise in a circumstance does not entail that you would do otherwise.

Misses the point. God can only get the world he wants if a given set of circumstances ensures a corresponding set of choices. If, however, a given set of circumstances leaves the agent with more than one available course of action, in response to said circumstances, then how does actualizing circumstances pick out one outcome rather than another? 

(ii) Easy. If God breaks down a car, for example, He changes the circumstances. Lol.

Was that supposed to be clever? 

It's like a game of chess. The countermove depends on the previous move. Each move and countermove open up a new set of forking paths. If many circumstances are caused by free choices, then how can the choices be isolated from the circumstances that God instantiates?

No, I completely get the point. Except x circumstance will in fact lead to only one outcome: choice y. You can repeat that possible world ad infinitum and that outcome would still arise unless the circumstance changed. The choices are not isolated from the circumstances God instantiates, that's the point.

If the same outcome invariably follows from the same antecedent conditions, how do you distinguish that from determinism? On your view, there's no way to tell the difference between fair dice and loaded dice. Even if you roll the same dice a billion times, and get sixes a billion times in a row, that's consistent with fair dice rather than loaded dice.

So a pair of dice is analogous to personal agency how...?

If the dice are fair, each throw is causally discontinuous with the preceding or succeeding throw. Analogous to the freedom to do otherwise under the same circumstances.

A typical explanation of libertarian freedom involves two possible worlds with a shared past. Everything was the same up to the moment of choice, at which point it forks off in opposing directions. More prosaically, holding antecedent conditions the same, divergent outcomes are equally viable.