Questions about divine causation and freedom

[Veritas6]

Hello, what do you think about Aquinas’ ideas of divine causality and free will? There’s this argument that rejects Edward Feser’s argument for divine causality and freedom:

"Feser’s view that humans can have free will given the Aristotelian principle, that whatever is caused or moved is caused or moved by another , is not convincing. Take for example his claim that the AT metaphysic view on human causality is concurrentist, and not occassionalist (like it is in Islam). On occassionalism, god directly causes everything to happen. However, concurentism, as Feser explains in another blog post, involves “secondary causes [that] really have (contra occasionalism) genuine causal power, but in producing their effects still only ever act together with God as a “concurring” cause (contra mere conservationism).” In other words,

God is in this way like the battery that keeps a toy car moving. The car’s motor really does move the wheels even if it cannot do so without the battery continually imparting power to it. It’s not that the battery alone moves the wheels and the motor does nothing.

Think of how absurd this defense of free will is. It would be tantamount to saying a puppet has free will because it hammers a nail in at the same time the puppeteer is causing all the fundamental activity. I mean, I shouldn’t have to explain any further to point out why this is an abysmal defense of free will. It’s self evidently absurd.

Moving on, Feser attempts to make sense of this the best he can:

God’s cooperation with a thing’s action does not change the nature of that action. Impersonal causes act without freedom because they are not rational. Human beings act freely because they are rational. That God cooperates with each sort of action is irrelevant. Suppose, per impossibile , that you and the flame could exist and operate without God’s conserving action. Then there would be no question that whereas the flame does not act freely, you do, because you are rational.

Sorry Feser, but being rational doesn’t make you free . A machine learning AI-driven software program can act rationally, and it certainly isn’t free. Also, being rational is perfectly compatible with a deterministic universe—you would simply just be determined to be rational, and no freedom of the will would exist. The problem here of course is that Feser’s operating definition of free will is inadequate, and this is what almost all disagreements on free will come down to: semantics. He’s technically a compatibilist, who thinks free will is compatible with theistic determinism , of which concurrentism falls under."

(continued…)

 

[Veritas6]

Why did you scroll down the page to read the rest of this article? One answer is: because you freely chose to do so. Another answer is: because God has created a world in which that happens.

If god created a world where you’re determined to scroll down the page as the result of his ultimate causal power, you did not freely do so. You had no choice in the matter and no ability to do otherwise. So these options are indeed in competition. The only way out of this is to define ‘freely choose’ in such a way compatible with this metaphysic, which is undoubtedly theistic determinism. But again, then it’s all just semantics. Feser is simply saying “freely choose” is compatible with god causing you to do everything you ever do.

Feser would, of course, no doubt think otherwise, and he uses a book analogy below, saying:

If such a critic were consistent, then he would also have to say that the gun that the butler used didn’t really fire any bullets, that the bullets are not really what killed the victim, that the judge and jury didn’t really punish the butler, etc. – all on the grounds that it was really the author who did all these things, since, after all, he was the one who wrote the story that way.

This is nonsense of course. All we have to ask are a few questions:

(1) Would it have been impossible for the butler to have done something different when he fired the bullets? Yes or no?
(2) Did the author ultimately cause the butler to fire the shots? Yes or no?
(3) Are the butler’s will and actions ultimately caused by the author? Yes or no?

If the answer is yes to any of these, the butler has no free will. Certainly not libertarian free will. The butler had no more choice or say in the matter than a Westworld robot. He was just the character in the author’s pre-planned drama that the author determined to kill… the characters in the book are all effects of the cause of the writer. Likewise, if we’re all characters in a cosmic drama and god is the author, we are all technically the effect of god’s causal power. We could not have done otherwise and nothing we do is technically controlled by us." (bold mine)

 

[fhansen]

Think of how absurd this defense of free will is. It would be tantamount to saying a puppet has free will because it hammers a nail in at the same time the puppeteer is causing all the fundamental activity. I mean, I shouldn’t have to explain any further to point out why this is an abysmal defense of free will. It’s self evidently absurd.

But that doesn’t follow. A human does not act like a motor or a puppet without will. Yes, God allows and even enables every act. The murderer cannot pull his trigger without God’s concurring help (we don’t even exist let move and have our being without Him) but our freedom consists in the fact that He allows free will to begin with, the freedom to determine whether or not to pull the trigger. That makes us accountable/ responsible/culpable regardless of whether or not God is an indirect cause. Free will is simply impossible without this truth.

 

[Wesrock]

The objector doesn’t understand the difference between substance and artifact, between intrinsic and extrinsic principles, and seems to take a notion that cause A necessarily produces effect B, which Thomist causality rejects. And it doesn’t understand causality in general the way a Thomist does.

Basically, he’s taking everything Feser says and interpreting it through a framework which the Thomist doesn’t hold, which begs the question against all the explanations Thomists do make for their framework.

I may have more time later to speak to specific points.

 

[Wesrock]

Remember also that the skeptic here is responding to blog posts. That is fair, as they’re not above criticism, but he should keep in mind they’re not meant to be exhaustive or comprehensive treatments of any given topic, which Feser points out from time to time.

 

[Latin]

CONSIDER: The best Architect in the world decides, he builds the biggest and most beautiful building in world.

He Designs, Decrees, Foreordains every event down to the minutest details which need to take place from the beginning to the end to complete the building.

He causes every builders to act exactly and according to his Design, Decreed and Foreordained Script.

We wouldn’t have to have much brain to conclude:
If the architect wouldn’t have the power to cause every builder to act according to his Design/ Script and they could act according to their whim, they would build the Tower of Babel.

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THE HUMAN RACE ARE GOD’S BUILDERS AND GOD CAUSES THE HUMAN RACE TO COMPLETE HIS CREATION.

307 God thus enables men to be intelligent and free causes in order to complete the work of creation, … Though often unconscious collaborators with God’s will, … “God’s fellow workers” and co-workers for his kingdom.

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WITHOUT EVEN KNOWING, GOD CONTROLS/ CAUSES OUR WILING AND ACTIONS

Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma by Ludwig Ott;

There is a supernatural intervention of God in the faculties of the soul, which precedes the free act of the will, (De fide).
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Aquinas said, “God changes the will WITHOUT FORCING IT.
But he can change the will from the fact that He himself operates in the will as He does in nature,” De Veritatis 22:9.
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308 The truth that God is at work in all the actions of his creatures is inseparable from faith in God the Creator.
God is the first cause who operates in and through secondary causes:
For God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
Far from diminishing the creature’s dignity, this truth enhances it.
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2022; The divine initiative in the work of grace precedes, prepares, and elicits the free response of man.

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CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA Divine Providence explains.

“His wisdom He so orders all events within the universe that the end for which it was created may be realized.

He directs all, even evil and sin itself, to the final end for which the universe was created.

God preserves the universe in being; He acts in and with every creature in each and all its activities.”
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St. Thomas (C. G., II, xxviii) if God’s purpose were made dependent on the foreseen free act of any creature, God would thereby sacrifice His own freedom, and would submit Himself to His creatures, thus abdicating His essential supremacy–a thing which is, of course, utterly inconceivable.
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The Divine will is cause of all things that happen, as Augustine says (De Trin. iii, 1 seqq.). Therefore all things are subject to fate.

The same is true for events in our lives. Relative to us they often appear to be by chance.
But relative to God, who directs everything according to his divine plan, nothing occurs by chance.

Hence if this divine influence stopped, every operation would stop.
Every operation, therefore, of anything is traced back to Him as its cause. (Summa Contra Gentiles, Book III.)
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God bless

 

[Veritas6]

I heard of a simple analogy that seems to make a lot of sense. This involves billiard balls on a pool table. The billiard balls on the table is equal to say they exist. God is akin to the pool table. If the pool table wasn’t holding the balls up they wouldn’t exist; they would fall out of existence.

When one pool ball hits another into a pocket, we wouldn’t say that the pool table (God) directly caused that ball into the pocket. God’s causality is different from all the interactions of the balls on the table.

 

[Latin]

…

God acts in and with every players in each and all its activities on the pool table.

By God acting in and with every players, God is perfectly and directly controls the balls, and He pics the winner. – Just kidding.

Than again: With God all things are possible.

God bless

 

[Veritas6]

The objector doesn’t understand the difference between substance and artifact, between intrinsic and extrinsic principles, and seems to take a notion that cause A necessarily produces effect B, which Thomist causality rejects. And it doesn’t understand causality in general the way a Thomist does.

Can you provide an argument that causes don’t necessary produce effects? Would you have any links for further information?

 

[Veritas6]

I had a question concerning thermodynamics and God’s action in the world. If we accept the first law of thermodynamics: energy can be neither created nor destroyed; only change form , what do you make of this argument?:

“ the supernatural cannot act ‘through’ the natural world and its physics without violating conservation of energy . Just as the rake wouldn’t move without my adding energy via my bodily motions, so the purely natural interaction of purely natural entities must obey the conservation law. But if the natural universe is left in this way to its own devices, Navarick wants to argue that these purely natural phenomena can never produce the first genuinely living thing. For that to happen, Navarick suggests, the supernatural must interact with the natural. But that will involve the supernatural adding energy (not just changing the form of energy) from outside the natural world …

even if it were possible to imagine a deity not subject to those laws within that God’s own internal nature, the moment that that deity [defined as: ‘a force that operates both through and independently of natural laws.’ & ’standing outside the closed physical world in which physics apply ’] attempts to utilize or work through phenomena in the natural world, energy is being illicitly transported into that world from outside it, and not simply changing form. The conservation law is violated …

But suppose we grant that if a supernatural force violated the first law of thermodynamics when it brought the first living thing into being, that violation would be invisible… Being unable to observe any violation of the conservation law here is a lack of evidence for that violation, and… it is certainly the more rational choice to adhere to an established physical law.” (Emphasis mine)

 

[Beryllos]

I had a question concerning thermodynamics and God’s action in the world. If we accept the first law of thermodynamics: energy can be neither created nor destroyed; only change form , what do you make of this argument?:

“ the supernatural cannot act ‘through’ the natural world and its physics without violating conservation of energy . Just as the rake wouldn’t move without my adding energy via my bodily motions, so the purely natural interaction of purely natural entities must obey the conservation law. But if the natural universe is left in this way to its own devices, Navarick wants to argue that these purely natural phenomena can never produce the first genuinely living thing…

You have just changed the topic, but it’s your thread, so here you go:

The spontaneous emergence of life does not violate any conservation law.

In any case, the argument has been made on the basis of the Second Law, not the First. That’s the one about entropy. It has also been used to argue that evolution from simple to complex life is impossible without God’s fiddling around in the material world.

Those argument are fallacious, however, because plenty of energy is available (mainly from stars, which for us is the sun) to balance the energy and entropy budgets.

 

[MPat]

Think of how absurd this defense of free will is. It would be tantamount to saying a puppet has free will because it hammers a nail in at the same time the puppeteer is causing all the fundamental activity. I mean, I shouldn’t have to explain any further to point out why this is an abysmal defense of free will. It’s self evidently absurd.

That completely misses the point of the analogy. No, in the new analogy the puppet does not have free will. But it is really hammering the nail. And the puppet hammering the nail is analogous to human making a choice.

Sorry Feser, but being rational doesn’t make you free . A machine learning AI-driven software program can act rationally, and it certainly isn’t free.

He obviously doesn’t understand what “rational” is supposed to mean here.

The problem here of course is that Feser’s operating definition of free will is inadequate,

That is completely backwards: it is true that almost all problems start with a silly definition of free will, but it is the definition used by atheists (and the atheist whose argument you quote) that is silly and inadequate.

It can be seen from the fact that the talk goes about determinism, ignoring the subject that would be making the choice. That happens, because materialistic atheism usually leads to “ahumanism”, where one ends up having to deny that humans exist (as opposed to a set of elementary particles, grouped into the “human”). And how can one coherently speak about free will without a subject that would have a will?

And so, “free will” becomes merely “when things are unpredictable”…

 

[Veritas6]

You have just changed the topic, but it’s your thread, so here you go:

It’s all related . I think it’s an interesting argument, but not really strong. The objector assumes God doesn’t already work through the world, such as actualizing potentials. It doesn’t really make sense to talk about violations if the Creator already sustains life at this moment, including the conservation of energy. Thanks for your reply!

 

[Veritas6]

I accept Aquinas’ ideas of concurrentism, that ascribes causal power to human beings, or “secondary causation”. I’m not sure what to think of occasionalism, that God is the only genuine cause:

“it is not possible to find a finite being as a cause
of another finite being in any possible world… a ‘true cause’ is defined in a way that effects logically depend on it… only a being with infinite power can be the true cause. Thus… only an omnipotent being is the true cause of any effect in any possible case…”

If this view, free will exists, but it’s an interesting argument:

“according to… Māturīdite, human choice is a relational state that appears between the inclination and the action. It is not a real fact… assume that I have a desire to drink water. I choose to drink it and then take a glass of water and perform the action. My choice is a relational state between my desire to drink water and the act of drinking it. Choice belongs to me, as a conscious self, but the rest is created by God. Relations are not things that have definite existence. For that reason, they are not genuine objects to which divine power is applicable. In other words, human choice as a relational state does not fall within the scope of divine power, as round squares do not. As a result, it would be a category mistake to say that God could or could not create human choices…

Human freedom consists in choosing between alternatives. Humans do not cause their choices because… causation is inapplicable to the category of relational states that also includes choices. Creation takes place in accordance with human choices, in the large part… because God does not always create what we choose…

[For Islam,] This temporary world is a place where human beings are free to behave in a good or bad way… Who is morally responsible is the person who wants to kill somebody not God. God only realizes the intentions of people and will treat them as morally responsible for their intentions in the other world.” (emphasis mine).

What do you make of this idea?

(PDF) What is Wrong with Concurrentism? | Nazif Muhtaroglu - Academia.edu

 

[Veritas6]

(continued…)

So here’s how one criticism of concurrentism goes from the link above:

“Concurrentism ascribes causal power to human beings as a ground of their free choices and actions. For Rogers, the existence of such a power in human beings is so self-evident that she says ‘I find it almost indubitable that it is I who move my arm when I choose to do so’ (Rogers, 2001: 352). This is a very courageous claim though it is not justified. First, it is not self-evident that we are causing the movement of our arms when we choose to do so. What we experience are certain feelings and the correlated movements of our arms in that process. Our will is correlated with this activity, but we do not observe any causal link between them. Rogers interprets correlation as causation and considers this interpretation to be self-evident. Second, if humans are assumed to cause their bodily movements, why do they not cause the same movements whenever they will? For instance, I cannot even walk when I get terribly sick however much I want to do that…

If we consider human personality to be identical with the Cartesian conscious mind, certainly we do not observe any such power in the mind. Even if we assume that there are such powers, Rogers’ concurrentism cannot even explain why we get sick and lose power because, from this perspective, causal powers are essential to human beings. If human beings lose their causal powers, they are not human beings anymore according to the meaning theory Rogers advocates.“ (emphasis mine).

 

[Veritas6]

Does anyone know anything on concurrentism vs occasionalism (relating to the above argument)? They both seem like interesting topics.

 

[Latin]

The Council of Sens (1140) condemned the idea that free will is sufficient in itself for any good. Donez., 373.

Council of Orange (529)
In canon 20, entitled hat Without God Man Can Do No Good. . . Denz., 193; quoting St. Prosper.

In canon 22, says, “ No one has anything of his own except lying and sin. Denz., 194; quoting St. Prosper.

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Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma by Ludwig Ott;

For every salutary act internal supernatural grace of God (gratia elevans) is absolutely necessary, (De fide).

There is a supernatural intervention of God in the faculties of the soul, which precedes the free act of the will, (De fide).

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St. Thomas teaches that all movements of will and choice must be traced to the divine will: and not to any other cause, because Gad alone is the cause of our willing and choosing. CG, 3.91.
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St. Thomas (C. G., II, xxviii) if God’s purpose were made dependent on the foreseen free act of any creature, God would thereby sacrifice His own freedom, and would submit Himself to His creatures, thus abdicating His essential supremacy–a thing which is, of course, utterly inconceivable.

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The Mystery of Predestination by John Salza. Page 84.
St. Thomas properly explains the chain of causality:

"It is to be observed that where there are several agents in order, the second always acts in virtue of the first: for the agent moves the second to act.

And thus all agents act in virtue of God Himself: and therefore He is the cause of action in every agent. ST, Pt I, Q 105, Art 5.

Because God is the cause of action in every agent, even man’s free will determination to do good comes from God."

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308 The truth that God is at work in all the actions of his creatures is inseparable from faith in God the Creator.
God is the first cause who operates in and through secondary causes:
"For God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure."171
Far from diminishing the creature’s dignity, this truth enhances it.

2022; “The divine initiative in the work of grace precedes, prepares, and elicits the free response of man. Grace responds to the deepest yearnings of human freedom, calls freedom to cooperate with it, and perfects freedom.”

St. Thomas teaches that God effects everything, the willing and the achievement. S. Th.II/II 4, 4 ad 3:

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As we see above, there are two agents God and still our corrupted intellect/ mind.

But only One Agent runs the show, God Almighty the Supreme Ruler of the Universe.

His wisdom He so decreed/ orders from all eternity EVERY event within the universe, He directs all, even evil and sin itself, to the final end for which the universe was created.
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God bless