One final time: freedom of will does NOT logically lead to evil actions

[Spock]

almost: it’s possible for god to actualize the world up to the point of the free choice of the agent, at which point it is the agent that actualizes the world-segment containing the choice.

see above: god is still not actualizing the world segments containing the free choices of the moral agents in any world.

Precision is always good! So God puts the ball in motion, and the players are the ones who kick the ball into the “right gate” or make an “own-goal”. Nevertheless, it is still God who actualizes the “framework” - so in a very good sense God creates the world. Let’s not forget, if God foresees that at least one agent will make at least one immoral decison, the “startup” process is “aborted” (don’t you just love computer jargon?) and no world is initialized.

well, there’s no forensically precise definition for the idea of modal similarity, but i’m not sure that one is needed. it’s like the idea of “similarly tall”, or “almost as beautiful” - it’s (modal) colloquial, but tolerably clear for all that.

i suggest that you propose your solution and then we’ll see how many of the morally salient features of this world are shared by that world.

Very well. For our purposes we do not have to differentiate between mundane things, like: there is an oak “here”, where we find a pine tree over “there”. (The environment can be similar, or divergent, we don’t care.) The DNA of the moral agents, or the material they are made of is also irrelevant. The moral agents can be humans, humanoids, can be ant-like creatures, or evolved from felines - for all we care.

The only pertinent characteristics is that they are moral agents, who can differentiate between right and wrong, and who are able to make a choice when confronted by a dilemma. Would that be a good foundation?

I would even suggest that the number of the agents and the number of the moral decisons they face is irrelvant, as long, of course, as these values are not zero. (If there are no moral agents, or they never face a moral dilemma, then there is nothing to talk about.)

 

[john_doran]

Precision is always good! So God puts the ball in motion, and the players are the ones who kick the ball into the “right gate” or make an “own-goal”. Nevertheless, it is still God who actualizes the “framework” - so in a very good sense God creates the world. Let’s not forget, if God foresees that at least one agent will make at least one immoral decison, the “startup” process is “aborted” (don’t you just love computer jargon?) and no world is initialized.

sure, that sounds fair enough (at this point, anyway - i will, of course, reserve the right to qualify my position if details become clear that were not initially obvious to me… )

Spock:

Very well. For our purposes we do not have to differentiate between mundane things, like: there is an oak “here”, where we find a pine tree over “there”. (The environment can be similar, or divergent, we don’t care.) The DNA of the moral agents, or the material they are made of is also irrelevant. The moral agents can be humans, humanoids, can be ant-like creatures, or evolved from felines - for all we care.

The only pertinent characteristics is that they are moral agents, who can differentiate between right and wrong, and who are able to make a choice when confronted by a dilemma. Would that be a good foundation?

again, this seems fine.

Spock:

I would even suggest that the number of the agents and the number of the moral decisons they face is irrelvant, as long, of course, as these values are not zero. (If there are no moral agents, or they never face a moral dilemma, then there is nothing to talk about.)

well, this strikes me as problematic…

for one thing, a world, W*, containing radically fewer moral agents in it than is contained in the actual world seems to me to make W* sufficiently dissimilar and to remove it from the modal neighbourhood.

what’s more, it also seems clear to me that the logico-moral complexity of free agency increases in something like an exponential fashion with an increase in the number of interacting moral agents, just as nothing about the nomological simplicity of a world containing 1 million protons can be concluded from the nomological simplicity of 1 million possible worlds containing only one proton each.

 

[Spock]

sure, that sounds fair enough (at this point, anyway - i will, of course, reserve the right to qualify my position if details become clear that were not initially obvious to me… )

Please, always do that. I keep on re-thinking my ideas based upon the (name removed by moderator)ut I receive - and if necessary I will even drastically change them.

well, this strikes me as problematic…

for one thing, a world, W*, containing radically fewer moral agents in it than is contained in the actual world seems to me to make W* sufficiently dissimilar and to remove it from the modal neighbourhood.

what’s more, it also seems clear to me that the logico-moral complexity of free agency increases in something like an exponential fashion with an increase in the number of interacting moral agents, just as nothing about the nomological simplicity of a world containing 1 million protons can be concluded from the nomological simplicity of 1 million possible worlds containing only one proton each.

Yes, indeed. With increasing numbers the complexity of the system grows, and frequently a complex system will develop new characteristics, which do not appear in simple ones. Fortunately the reasoning I am about to apply does not depend on the number of the moral agents and the number of moraaly significant decisions they may face. Having these preliminaries resolved (at least until a good reason pops up to revisit them) I think we can get to details. Let me know, and I will get to them.

 

[john_doran]

Having these preliminaries resolved (at least until a good reason pops up to revisit them) I think we can get to details. Let me know, and I will get to them.

ready when you are…

 

[tdgesq]

Indeed, in any particular world the outcome of the decision is contingent upon the agent’s choice. Now, let’s suppose that in every possible world the agent will make the wrong decision - this is what you propose. According to Plantinga, if a contingent proposition is true in every possible world, then the proposition is necessarily true.

If we knew in advance that every possible agent would make the wrong decision, then of course it would be a necessarily true proposition. But notice, that is also the case with your proposal that some agents will always make the right decision. If we knew that in advance it would also be a necessarily true proposition. The point is that we don’t know, which is why we call these propositions contingent in the first place.

It is true that if all possible agents freely chose to make the wrong decision then God would not have any choice but to create an actual world where agents make the wrong decision. Under your scenario where some possible persons make the right decision, God would have choice to actualize a world with those possible persons. But whether God has a choice or not has nothing to do with the possible agents’ free choice. I think you are conflating the agents’ free choice with God’s when it comes to actualizing possible worlds.

If it is necessarily true that the agent will choose incorrectly in every possible world then what does the agent’s free will mean? Nothing at all. It is exactly the assumption of the agent’s free will that ascertains the possible correct and incorrect outcomes. Therefore it is necessarily true that there is at least one world where the agent will choose correctly.

It is no more necessarily true than your proposition that “some agents choose rightly.” The only way it would be is that in my scenario God has no choice but to instantiate agents that choose wrongly, while in your scenario God has the choice to instantiate agents who choose rightly. That simply has no impact on the free will of the agents though.

On the other hand, using your reasoning, some possible agents must choose rightly. If they don’t, they lack free will. Similarly some possible agents must choose wrongly. If they don’t, they lack free will according to you. So by taking away the choice of these agents to do what is right or to do what is wrong, as the case may be, they are now endowed with free will? That’s a violation of LCC and PAP that you earlier affirmed as a valid measure of free will. This is just another argument that God could necessarily create a world where agents do what is correct if there is no free will. Of course I agree with that, but it doesn’t do anything to advance your argument.

 

[fhansen]

I accept the concept of objective morality - just not the absolute one. We only differ on its nature and origin.

But isn’t this equivocating on the meaning of the terms? I mean, can morality be objective without being absolute? It seems to me this is one fundamental reason for the difference of opinion here. Atheists often deny objective morality but simultaneously end up allowing for all kinds of things they believe to be wrong-such as belief in God, perhaps…or rape, torture, etc.

 

[Spock]

If we knew in advance that every possible agent would make the wrong decision, then of course it would be a necessarily true proposition.

We are still not on the same page. You said that it is possible that there is at least one agent who will always make a morally wrong decison, in every possible world. Our knowledge has nothing to do with this. In such a case the proposition will become necessirily true, and not just contingently true.

But notice, that is also the case with your proposal that some agents will always make the right decision. If we knew that in advance it would also be a necessarily true proposition. The point is that we don’t know, which is why we call these propositions contingent in the first place.

But I did not say that at all. In my scenario the agent can make either morally right or morally wrong decisions. In some possible worlds he will make the right decisions, in others he will make the wrong ones. In this case it is necessarily true that the agent will make “some” decisions. Whether some of those worlds never get initiated or actualized in of no consequence. After all God can only initialize “one” actual world, among the infinitely many possible ones.

 

[Spock]

ready when you are…

All right. Let’s embellish our starting scenario just a bit. The “one agent, one moral decision” can be made a bit more complicated, by stipulating that the agent is confronted with many dilemmas, but all the other ones are morally neutral (like what to eat for dinner). This is not a singificant change. We can also assume that there are many moral agents in the world, it just so happens that none of the others are confronted by moral dilemmas. This is also an insignificant change. The basic situation is the same.

Now, let’s imagine that the world contains two moral dilemmas. It can happen in two different ways: the first agent is confronted by two dilemmas, or another agent is confronted by another dilemma. These two scenarios do not have to be analyzed separately. The reason is that the dilemmas are independent in the sense that the solution of one of them cannot determine the outcome of the other one. Of course it is possible that the decision made for the first one will influence the decison making for the second one. But we assume that the moral decisions are made freely, so strict determinism is out of question. The same applies to any world with any number of agents and any number of decisons. Though the interplay of the decisons made may influence the other decisions, it cannot determine the outcome of them.

If we agree so far, then in the analysis we can concentrate on the number of moral decisions. For all we care, the number of moral agents can be any number, and the number of overall decisions can also be any number. I propose to use the following symbolism: W designates the world with “n” moral dilemmas - where “n” can be any number (one or more). The number of agents is unspecified. The number of overall dilemmas is also unspecified. We already analyzed W(1) - the world with one moral dilemma.

If you don’t like this symbolism, we can use a different one: W(m, k), where “m” would be the number of moral agents, and “k” would be the number of moral decisions made by each agent. This would make the analysis a bit more complicated, but would not add any new insight into the problem.

Let me clarify the word “independent”. It is not the true mathematical independece, like the tossing of two coins. Obviously the tossing of the first coin cannot have any impact on the result of the second coin toss. This is not the case here. The outcome of the first decision can have impact on the outcome of the second one. But it cannot determine it, as long as we are talking about “free decisions”. We may call this “significantly independent”.

Do you agree with me so far? Or is there anything that needs to be clarified or modified?

 

[Spock]

But isn’t this equivocating on the meaning of the terms? I mean, can morality be objective without being absolute?

No. Objective means that it exists independently from what we think. Absolute means that it is static and unchanging.

It seems to me this is one fundamental reason for the difference of opinion here. Atheists often deny objective morality but simultaneously end up allowing for all kinds of things they believe to be wrong-such as belief in God, perhaps…or rape, torture, etc.

Huh???

 

[fhansen]

No. Objective means that it exists independently from what we think. Absolute means that it is static and unchanging.

What would cause a morality that exists independent of ourselves to change- without it being a “relative morality”?

Huh???

My wording wasn’t so great there. I mean that atheists often seem to deny objective morality while in practice behaving as if many things are objectively right or wrong.

 

[Spock]

What would cause a morality that exists independent of ourselves to change- without it being a “relative morality”?

My wording wasn’t so great there. I mean that atheists often seem to deny objective morality while in practice behaving as if many things are objectively right or wrong.

This line of thought does not really belong to this thread. So let’s keep it simple. The opposite of absolute is relative. The opposite of objective is subjective. Something can be both objective and relative. There is no contradiction.

Generally speaking “morality” is the adherence to a certain rule-set (may be wriiten or unwritten, may be codified or may not be). Both theists and atheists agree on this. The difference is where does that rule set come from? How many rule-sets are there? What about conflicting rule sets? These questions are not really simple and should be explored in a different thread.

For the purposes of this thread, we agree that some kind of morality can be defined, and we “pretend” that we agree on “what moral behavior” is. We don’t explore the differences, just have a generic concept.

 

[fhansen]

This line of thought does not really belong to this thread. So let’s keep it simple. The opposite of absolute is relative. The opposite of objective is subjective. Something can be both objective and relative. There is no contradiction.

Generally speaking “morality” is the adherence to a certain rule-set (may be wriiten or unwritten, may be codified or may not be). Both theists and atheists agree on this. The difference is where does that rule set come from? How many rule-sets are there? What about conflicting rule sets? These questions are not really simple and should be explored in a different thread.

For the purposes of this thread, we agree that some kind of morality can be defined, and we “pretend” that we agree on “what moral behavior” is. We don’t explore the differences, just have a generic concept.

The reason I was following this line of thought is that, if we agree that an absolute objective morality exists independent of ourselves-and it would be superfluous, wouldn’t it, for the purposes of this thread, to agree on a morality that isn’t absolute in any case?-then only a being with freewill could determine to bypass said morality and *that *being would be responsible for evil.

 

[Spock]

The reason I was following this line of thought is that, if we agree that an absolute objective morality exists independent of ourselves-and it would be superfluous, wouldn’t it, for the purposes of this thread, to agree on a morality that isn’t absolute in any case?-then only a being with freewill could determine to bypass said morality and *that *being would be responsible for evil.

Again, for the purposes of this thread I am ready to accept the God-ordained, absolute, unchanging morality. It is completely irrelevant for this thread. As long as there is some defined morality, God can “create” a world, where everyone freely follows that standard - at least that is what I about to prove.

 

[john_doran]

Do you agree with me so far? Or is there anything that needs to be clarified or modified?

well, there’s really nothing to “agree” with so far: you’re simply defining your terms. In asmuch as everything you have said seems logically possible, i have no objections to it as a descrioption of some possible state of affairs.

doesn’t sound very much like this world, though…

 

[fhansen]

Again, for the purposes of this thread I am ready to accept the God-ordained, absolute, unchanging morality. It is completely irrelevant for this thread. As long as there is some defined morality, God can “create” a world, where everyone freely follows that standard - at least that is what I about to prove.

Right, but no matter how you look at it, if the world God chose to actualize includes those two terms-free will plus an absolute morality-a moral agent freely breaking the standards set forth by an absolute morality is directly responsible for the evil of that immoral choice. God not actualizing such a world would prevent the evil from occurring but only by virtue of the agent not existing to begin with, not due to the absence of free will per se. Thus, free will is responsible for evil actions.

 

[Alindawyl]

Do you agree with me so far? Or is there anything that needs to be clarified or modified?

Let us look at a coin toss coming up heads or tails. When calculating odds, we take out all other variables or qualifiers. We don’t care what the coin is or how it’s tossed. We don’t care about the environment, or the intent of the tosser. We aren’t examining the details of the process of coin tossing. We’re looking at nothing more than the result completely divorced from the process.

You are not doing that in your scenario. You are not merely looking at the result of a decision as moral or immoral. You are specifying a key detail about how the decision is being made, namely that it is being made with free will rather than as a result of preprogrammed behavior.

Specifying ANY detail about how the moral decisions are made and then claiming that that detail won’t affect the result requires justification. It cannot simply be assumed that the result remains the same in every possible circumstance. If it was specified in the coin toss that the coin was bent a certain way, or tossed up no higher than a specific height, the possible repercussions would have to be taken into account. It can’t be assumed that the results of all coin tosses will remain constant once a detail is added.

You claim free will is a constant in your scenario. Why?

 

[Spock]

well, there’s really nothing to “agree” with so far: you’re simply defining your terms. In asmuch as everything you have said seems logically possible, i have no objections to it as a descrioption of some possible state of affairs.

Thank you. We have now a common foundation to build upon.

doesn’t sound very much like this world, though…

Very ture. So let’s get down to the details.

After having analyzed W(1), we shall analyze W(2). We have a world with unspecified number of moral agents, and 2 moral decisions. The W(1) can be used as the stepping stone - where there was one moral decison - resolved morally. Let’s add another moral dilemma to it.

We have two possibilities: (a) either there is a possible world where the second dilemma is also resolved morally, or (b) there is no such world (the resolution of the second dilemma can only happen in an “unsatisfactory” manner). If the first assumption is true, we are done - we have a world with 2 moral decisions, and both of them are resolved in a moral fashion. Is it possible that first one is impossible? (I wish that I would not have to use the word “possible” so many times in the same sentence ). In that case we can say that the fact, that the first dilemma was resolved morally - necessarily leads to the scenario that the second one can only be resolved immorally (in other words - there is no possible world where the second dilemma is also resolved morally). That leads to the contradiction that the decisions are “significantly independent” - because the result of the first decision **determines **the outcome of the second one. This contradiction ensures that (a) is a possible world.

This concludes the analysis of W(2). Within all the possible worlds containing exactly 2 moral dilemmas there is always one where both dilemmans are resolved morally. God can foresee this, and he can set the “ball” in motion which will result in the actualization of this world. (I would like to abbreviate this prior sentence to: “God can create W(2)” where the word “create” means that God starts the process and the free agents “finish the work”.)

Do you agree with this analysis? Or is there something that needs to be clarified? (Yes, this is still not sufficiently similar to our present world, I know that. But I would rather do this in an incremental fashion.)

 

[Spock]

Right, but no matter how you look at it, if the world God chose to actualize includes those two terms-free will plus an absolute morality-a moral agent freely breaking the standards set forth by an absolute morality is directly responsible for the evil of that immoral choice. God not actualizing such a world would prevent the evil from occurring but only by virtue of the agent not existing to begin with, not due to the absence of free will per se. Thus, free will is responsible for evil actions.

Not exactly. The “existence” of free will not responsible for anything. The usage (improper usage) is resposible. That is the difference.

 

[Spock]

Let us look at a coin toss coming up heads or tails. When calculating odds, we take out all other variables or qualifiers. We don’t care what the coin is or how it’s tossed. We don’t care about the environment, or the intent of the tosser. We aren’t examining the details of the process of coin tossing. We’re looking at nothing more than the result completely divorced from the process.

You are not doing that in your scenario. You are not merely looking at the result of a decision as moral or immoral. You are specifying a key detail about how the decision is being made, namely that it is being made with free will rather than as a result of preprogrammed behavior.

Specifying ANY detail about how the moral decisions are made and then claiming that that detail won’t affect the result requires justification. It cannot simply be assumed that the result remains the same in every possible circumstance. If it was specified in the coin toss that the coin was bent a certain way, or tossed up no higher than a specific height, the possible repercussions would have to be taken into account. It can’t be assumed that the results of all coin tosses will remain constant once a detail is added.

You claim free will is a constant in your scenario. Why?

I have no idea what your objection is. The assumption of free will is a given as a basic assumption. Without it there is no moral responsibility.

 

[fhansen]

Not exactly. The “existence” of free will not responsible for anything. The usage (improper usage) is resposible. That is the difference.

Well, of course, I understand that free will can’t exist without a “willer”. So I’ll rephrase it staying closer in line with your title: Freedom of will is responsible for evil actions.