Prohibitions and Encouragement

This morning in the New York Times, in an article on a new gun law in Florida, some "Chief Timoney said, 'you're encouraging people to possibly use deadly physical force where it shouldn't be used.'" (Here, 8th graf)

The law in question removes prohibitions on shooting an assailant in public. Now, we can argue over whether or not removal of prohibitions causally encourages the action. What I am more interested in is the relation of this argument to sexual laws. Both killing and sex are situations with moral implications. If removing prohibitions on killing encourages that action, then removing prohibitions on sex also encourages that action. Interestingly, usually conservatives and liberals with both oppose this broad stroke. Conservatives will wish to say that removing prohibitions on killing do not encourage it, and liberals will say the same about sexual laws. Perhaps this is a straw man generally, but I have heard both arguments before.

My view is that it is the case that removing the prohibition on an action encourages it. While I definitely prefer to have as few prohibitionary laws as possible, this encouragement factor must be weighed when legislating.

The Problem of Evil and Freedom of the Will

An important reason for believing in incompatibilist free will is that it offers an answer to the problem of evil.

The problem of evil is thus:

1) God exists. God is an omniscient, omnipotent agent.
2) An agent with the power to prevent an evil event has a moral obligation to do so.
3) God has an obligation to prevent all evil events.
4) God does not prevent all evil events.
5) God is not fulfilling all his moral obligations.
6) God is not good.

Any Christian who is serious about the life of the mind must face this problem at some point. Some deny the omniscience and omnipotence of God. Some deny that evil events exist. My view is that God, in granting us incompatibilist free will, voluntarily abrogates his omnipotence.

Calvinism comes under heavy fire from the problem of evil, because the origin and control of one’s character and actions comes from God ultimately. We can imagine a Mr. Rogers world, in which everyone is disposed to do good from birth. Why didn’t God create that world? It seems clearly superior to ours. God’s responsibility in (3) can in part be fulfilled by creating the Mr. Rogers world. It won’t do any good to appeal to the Fall. The Fall is the responsibility of Adam and Eve’s choices. Choices are caused by character and character is caused by God: we are back to square one. We ask God, Why didn’t you create Adam and Eve with different characters? It would have caused us all less pain.

If incompatibilist free will holds, evil initiated by humans is no longer a problem. Because God has restricted his powers by creating us the way we are, the buck stops with humans, and they hold an objective responsibility. The causal chain stops with the person. God cannot intervene in our character formation without violating our autonomy. This does still leave evil events that are causes in the natural world, like tsunamis and earthquakes and poisonous snakes. However, natural evil is clearly very distinct from moral evil, and a different solution must be sought for it.

A Defense of Choosing -- A Second Reply to Aaron Armitage

I would just like to start this post by writing that this unplanned exchange with Aaron has been so far very enjoyable and challenging. His most recent post on the topic can be found here. My goal today is to defend choosing as neither random nor determined. I will do this by appealing to reasons as being enough for an intelligible choice. I have attempted to divide the discussion into a few parts. Each begins with a header and then usually an indented quote from Aaron's post.


Organic vs. Mechanical Metaphors

... the dominant analogy shouldn't be one physical object impacting another and moving it, so it moves another, and so on until we get some final result, like gears moving more gears or a cue ball hitting another billiard ball; instead, it should be a living thing which grows according to its nature.

The dispute over the proper metaphor for determinism is minor. I will continue to nitpick, however. Aaron believes that physical laws are very distinct from biological laws. He wants to use a biological metaphor for determinism as opposed to a physics metaphor. The difference between biology and physics is merely one of size and methods, not of type. Billiard balls follow their nature just as much as do trees. Although Aaron doesn’t come out and say it, he seems to have adopted some flavor of vitalism. Vitalism is, of course, discredited in biology.

The Structure of Choosing

Of course there are such situations, and when it happens a decision still has to get made. How? Or on what basis? Is it something which finally makes one action more appealing? Or is it nothing? If it's something, we're back to determinism. If it's nothing, we're with Bill the robot. Positing "free will" itself won't help because the question is how that free will actually choses in the hard cases. If the free will doesn't choose one over the other because of something, why isn't it random? And if it is random, what does that do to moral responsibility? We can hardly blame someone for something random. This, incidentally, was the crux of the argument I mentioned losing.

If he's restricting his defense of free will to such equally balanced situations, that leaves and awful lot of determinism.

As I understand it, Aaron'’s view of deliberation is this: I sit down and look at my choices. Each choice gets a score on how much it conforms to my character. I then pick the choice with the highest score. Before, I claimed that Aaron’s picture of the soul seemed too simplistic. This is what I mean. The idea of a linear scoring pattern for decisions turns humans into a big computer or automaton. Thus, when Aaron talks about “equally balanced situations,” he is thinking of both choices getting the same score.

My view is admittedly much messier than Aaron’'s. Even if the crude “points” language is removed, his view is very odd. There just seems to be something wrong with this claimed ability to decisively compare choices. I do not want to defend balanced situations; I want to defend incommensurable situations. What exactly are incommensurable choices? Kane defines them this way: they are both desired more than all the other alternatives for different, noncomparable reasons. Although I believe that incommensurable choices face us more than we might think, I am willing to allow a lot of determinism in life. The important point is that in some situations, we can look at our choices, and be free to choose.

This is the intuitive picture of the world that we all have. We believe that we do actually choose. But in Aaron’'s view, we do not choose. For what is choosing if we lack the power to choose the negation?

Choosing for Reasons

...a decision still has to get made. How? Or on what basis? Is it something which finally makes one action more appealing? Or is it nothing? If it's something, we're back to determinism. If it's nothing, we're with Bill the robot. Positing "free will" itself won't help because the question is how that free will actually choses in the hard cases. If the free will doesn't choose one over the other because of something, why isn't it random? And if it is random, what does that do to moral responsibility? We can hardly blame someone for something random.

Aaron continues to offer the dilemma: either we choose based on something, or on nothing. If something, then determinism. If nothing, then we are acting on chance. This is the classic compatibilist argument against libertarian free will. There are interesting aspects lurking below the surface of this story, including the assumption that exercise of free will is an event. However, I will face it head-on and take on one of the horns of the dilemma.

Suppose this general scenario:

1) reason R-1 is sufficient for action A-1 and R-2 is sufficient for A-2
2) R-1 and R-2 cannot be compared in a scoring sense.

When I choose A-1, Aaron claims that I need some reason R-3 that explains why I chose R-1 instead of R-2. If I don’t have R-3, then I am on the same level as Bill the robot. However, this could go on ad infinitum. Why didn’t I choose R-4 as my reason instead of R-3? Is that random, or because of R-5? Determinist or indeterminist, this claim of reasons being necessary for reasons is absurd because of its infinitely regressive nature. The vicious regression poses a problem for both sides. The determinist usually escapes this cycle by passing the buck to outside factors. It is thus disingenuous (to a degree) for Aaron to cite “character” as the reason for action. If his infinite criticism holds, then the ultimate reason for every are not as nice as character or goals, but 1) the initial state of atoms and minds and 2) the causal laws that govern mind and matter.

Take another example of the infinite regression problem: knowledge. Descartes believed that you must always know that you know. In modern epistemology, it is accepted that it is clearly possible to know something without knowing that you know it, or knowing that you know that you know it. Just as it is acceptable to know without knowing you know, it is acceptable to act on a sufficient reason without having a reason for that reason. In many cases, it is better to know that you know, and in the same way, it is better to have reasons for reasons. It just is not required.

My view is this: We do not need reasons for reasons. We only need reasons for choices and actions. The choosing from reasons is properly basic, and need not be explained on a deeper level. (2) entails that I cannot choose the stronger reason, because there is no stronger reason. Aaron believes this to be random. Is it? I believe that as long as an intelligible continuity can be seen along my choices, it is sufficiently non-random. This is ensured by the formation of reasons from within my character. This aspect of creation of the self is important to fend off charges of randomness.

Frankfurt’'s Mistake

Harry Frankfurt wanted to show that we could have moral responsibility even in cases without being able to do otherwise. I have hesitated to post a argument against him, as there are very many, but I am unhappy with various implications of most. I will stake my ground now.

Frankfurt'’s counterexample (and those inspired by him) fail because they still presuppose causal determinism. In the main world, Jones chooses to perform A in accordance with Black’s wishes. In the counterfactual world (which we will deal with), if Jones shows an inkling of choosing not to perform A, then Black “zaps” Jones so that Jones desires to perform A. Black cannot zap Jones after Jones has chosen. For if Black did, it would be a straightforward case of overt coercion, which even compatibilists do not like. The only way for Black to guarantee that his zapping will ensure that A is still chosen is if the zapping is causally determined. If the counterfactual world was not causally determined, then Jones could indeed actually choose A and perform it. Thus, Frankfurt’'s example holds in causally determined worlds only.

This is hard to discuss without access to the original paper, or at least a FSC paper. Fortunately, I found a copy online.

The Role Of Scripture

Being Christians, the problem of scripture must be addressed at some point. I will reiterate what I mentioned in the comments of a previous post. General revelations, both empirical (science, history) and analytical (philosophy), are conceptually antecedent to specific revelation (the Bible). Lyell and Copernicus affected our understandings of Genesis 1 and Joshua 10. To even a greater extent, must philosophy color our understanding of passages in the Bible. Thus, if it can be shown that compatibilism is clearly incoherent, then compatibilism is not an option for interpretation. The debate of free will, then, need not involve scripture at all.

Once again, conceptual antecedence is not chronological antecedence. My view does immobilize believers from reading and learning from the Bible.

In the comments, Robert seems to advocate a Kierkegaardian picture. He sees incompatibilism as rational, and the truth of compatibilism must be revealed through faith. The fideists inspire and challenge me, but I ultimately disagree with them. My view of Christianity is what Victor Reppert terms critically rational. I believe that God is the author of all truth and each truth thus reinforces and supports my faith.

If it is true that salvation is by grace alone (the usual Protestant position), then we cannot and should not be morally responsible. Thus, while I would like the PAP, in some sense, to be satisfied in salvation, it does not severely affect my view if PAP is not fulfilled.

Xon wishes that I discuss the passages. I am hesitant to; lack of knowledge and training may lead me down the wrong paths. With that said, I see no reason why the elect (referred to in Ephesians 1 and Romans 9) cannot refer to the Gentiles as a whole. My reading of the passages then is that God had always planned to save the Gentiles. The snatching out of the hand then refers to those attempting to coerce believers into falling away (through torture or lies). A passage in favor of incompatiblist free will is the Lord's prayer itself. "Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven." (Matt 6:10) Somehow, God's will is not being done on earth right now. If he is controlling everything, then it must be his will that his will is not done. That is like saying, "Never pay attention to anything I say."

Conclusion

There is an intuitive and yet exciting aspect to this theory. We are in control and responsible for our choices. There is some measure of objective worth that is being met. In addition, when we choose between incommensurable alternatives, it is often at hard times in our lives. In a very real sense, we form our souls at those moments, determining many future actions. We have great power and thus great responsibility.

Compatibilism and Christianity - a response to AJ Armitage

Aaron Armitage, of the excellent blog Calvinist Libertarians, has posted a reply to my initial take on free will. He wants to defend compatibilism from my claims. The thrust of his argument is a strong assertion: compatibilism is required for moral responsibility. He also objects to my second post as attacking a straw man. I am afraid that I have not been as clear as I should in either. This is what comes of a lack of planning.

Aaron starts off by attacking my definition of determinism. I'll try to defend it and clear up any misunderstandings that my readers might have gained.

Aaron's new definition of determinism comes from Dictionary.com: "The philosophical doctrine that every state of affairs, including every human event, act, and decision is the inevitable consequence of antecedent states of affairs."

There are two ways in which determinism can be true. Every event can be deterministically caused, or every event can be known before it happens. My two posts were separated so as to distinguish between the two. Christian and naturalist compatibilists alike can argue that causal determinism is true, but Christian compatibilists can bring to bear another mechanism for determinism: God’s knowledge of the future. As Xon noted in a comment below, it is "accidental" determinism, in some sense. One point on which Aaron is very vague is as to the mechanism for his determinism. He does not believe that either the laws of nature or knowledge of the future is the mechanism.

The state of the world alone is not sufficient to explain determinism. Dictionary.com is silent on this issue probably out of recognition that determinism has room to accommodate many different mechanisms. I should note also that I mean mechanism in a technical philosophical sense, and not as specifically machine-like. The job of a biologist is to explain the mechanism of the fruit from the trees.

Now, onto the arguments. Aaron looks repeatedly to agents post-choice, notes that determinism is required, and then concludes that determinism is required pre-choice. His criticisms miss my argument, but it is most likely my fault for not being clear. So, I will go through his argument and show where I part ways with Aaron. I should note first that I have no objection to the world being deterministic post-choice; it is pre-choice that I believe we need to preserve libertarian free will.

Aaron’s first critique: “...an agent's character, desires, goals, knowledge, and so forth are part of the antecedent state of affairs. How can an agent who doesn't act from his own goals, etc., be said to have free will?”

The mere fact that mental states and dispositions are part of the antecedent state of affairs does not make them deterministic. It seems obvious that after I choose, the link between my choice and my action is causally deterministic. It does not seem obvious that, when faced with multiple sufficient causes or incommensurable belief sets, the choice is determined. There are situations in which two different paths of action can both be consistent with one’s character, some desires, some goals, and so on. Aaron's picture of the human soul seems too simplistic. Why must the outcome of deliberation always be determined before we start?

I noted in an earlier post that an agent could have two sufficient reasons to perform A. Just in the same way, an agent could have a sufficient reason to perform A and a sufficient reason to perform B. Prima facie, this looks like a problem for Aaron.

Aaron’s second critique: “Let's take two hypothetical actors. Bill is a robot. He looks just like a person, but he has no intentions or wishes, and no interior experience of any kind. His programming does take input from sensory data, but this interacts with a complicated algorithm that takes most of its inputs from random quantum events before producing a course of action, which means that Bill behaves randomly. Bob is an ordinary person, but he's a little obsessive. Or rather, a lot obsessive. There's one thing he wants more than anything. Say, a woman. Every day he's eaten up with desire for her. He would, literally, die to get her, and he would consider it the best deal he ever got. She's the only thing he wants or can think of wanting. You get the picture. Now suppose she offered herself to one of them. Bill's "choice" of whether to take her up on it would seem to satisfy the PAP more than Bob's.”

I’ll take these characters one at a time. First, Bill. I do not understand what the problem is with Bill. Sure he satisfies PAP. In fact, Robert Kane might say that, from a purely naturalistic standpoint, Bill is what a free agent would look like. On the natural level, all we can observe in the brain are quantum cascades in neurons. However, PAP is not sufficient for freedom of the will. It is only one of several necessary conditions, another being a will.

Now, Bob. At this point, Bob is clearly not free. If he were to do otherwise, he would be acting out of character. Aaron and I are in agreement so far. Let us rewind the tape of Bob’s life back to when he first gained the desire for this woman. At some point, Bob must choose whether or not to will to pursue this woman. He must go from desire to volition. For, Bob has more than desire now. He has an obsession. Thus, once again, Aaron is looking at agents post-choice and demanding that their actions be determined. I have no objection. But this hardly proves anything pre-choice, which is where I am interesting in having an incompatibilist free will.

Aaron wraps up by noting two reasons why he is a determinist. First, he apparently used to be an indeterminist and lost an argument to an atheist. I’m sorry to hear that I lost an ally. I just want to note that although incompatibilism is currently a minority view in philosophical circles, it is highly respected. The reason for compatibilism being favored is that naturalism is favored in academia, and as I noted, naturalism seems to entail determinism. I’'m not saying that Aaron is a closet naturalist. I am noting that if Aaron is correct, naturalism offers moral responsibility, as well. It seems to me that naturalism cannot offer moral responsibility for incompatibilist reasons.

The second reason Aaron cites is that Christianity requires compatibilism. I generally try to stay out of theological debates, as I have found them to be filled with polemics. I will say a few things here. I am a Protestant like Aaron, but I believe that the Bible requires incompatibilism. I believe this because free will is necessary for moral responsibility.

UPDATE (4/21/05 8:40am): Aaron has posted a reply to this post. You may find it here.

God: Author or Chess Grandmaster?

Lars Walker has a pair of fun, thought-provoking posts over at Brandywine Books about Calvinism and predestination. Predestination is another catchword in the debate over free will. Predestination is foreknowledge with the perspective flipped towards us: God foreknows one’s action A iff one is predestined to perform A. I hope that I have atoned for any sin of omission that I committed in my previous post.

In the first post, Lars is drawn to the analogy of God as an author and humanity as the characters in God’s book. He writes:

It occurred to me that when I build characters I’m extremely ruthless with them. If I create a character to be evil, evil he is. And if I bring him to an evil end, I feel no guilt whatever at punishing him for something I caused. Every evil deed of his sprang originally from my own mind, but I punish him anyway. And it feels perfectly right.

The analogy comes close, but ultimately fails because the hypothetical author has causal powers over the actions of the characters. In the question of CC, causation is unimportant. Note that if Tony Blair knows beforehand that I will eat pancakes, Tony Blair does not in any serious sense “cause” my eating of pancakes. I tried to address the problem of causation in my first post. The only addition to the discussion is a implicit premise that omniscient causation is an appropriate power for God to have. The conflation of foreknowledge and causation tends to reoccur in theological discussions. In addition, the difference between punishment and moral desert is also often conflated, as I think Lars does here.

The proper analogy for the predestination claim is that of a reader (not an author) to a book.

I’d like to comment on Lars'’ second post, but my head hurts too much after reading it. I suggest that you read it and see what you think. My only aside is that if this scenario is true, I think the dragon of theodicy rears its head even more strongly than usual. I do not know that even the wisest of Men can slay it.

Amanda Witt reprints a passage by Phil Yancey about the power and knowledge of God. The critical part is this:

Although I had complete freedom to make any move I wished, I soon reached the conclusion that none of my strategies mattered very much. His superior skill guaranteed that my purposes inevitably ended up serving his own. . . . When a Grand Master plays an amateur, victory is assured, no matter how the board may look at any given time.

Yancey, I believe, describes the middle path between open theism and Calvinism much better than I could. Many of our actions are not determined, but our freedoms cannot significantly alter the way history ends. Here, PAP and the sovereignty of God can both be preserved. We walk through the garden of forking paths and are free to choose our route, but all paths will get to the gazebo. (I hope I'm not carrying the metaphor too far.) In this view, God is still omniscient, as well. While he does not know which path we will take, God still sees all the paths. To take a whimsical view, imagine God writing a book of every action on Earth. It would look a lot like a logic book written entirely in conditionals. The final page would be say: "Jesus returns on the white horse and sets up a second heaven and earth. QED." QED of course means quod erat demonstrandum, or what was to be demonstrated. All of history, despite being written in conditionals, ends up with the same conclusion, logically and historically.

Calvinism and Compatibilism

In my previous entry, I assumed that theism entails incompatibilism and naturalism entails determinism. There are some theists that challenge my first assumption. The largest bloc of theists who do so are Calvinists. Calvinists are traditional compatibilists who derive their determinism from the omniscience and foreknowledge of God rather than the causal closure of the physical universe. The traditional name in Calvinist compatibilism is Jonathan Edwards. I have a confession to make at this point. I have yet to read any of Edwards’' works. I therefore cannot in good faith critique his views. I will devote this post instead to some critiquing of a general foreknowledge thesis I mentioned above. Here it is spelled out:

CC (The Calvinist Claim): God foreknows that one will perform action A before one performs it. If one was not to perform A, then one would render God’'s knowledge false. God’'s knowledge can never be rendered false. Therefore, one cannot do otherwise than perform A. God is also omniscient, and so every action falls under the claim above. Thus, the Principle of Alternative Possibilities is false.

This seems to be sufficiently plausible prima facie. To see that it is, substitute Tony Blair for God. If Tony Blair knows, knows that you will eat pancakes tomorrow for breakfast, then there is no way you could eat waffles instead. For if you did eat waffles, Tony was quite mistaken and only thought he knew. Now, attribute omniscience to Tony Blair. This means that he knows in a strong sense everything that will happen in the world tomorrow and every day after that. Every action in the world would be determined. Thus, the conditional of CC seems sound. Now, is it the case that God foreknows every action?

Foreknowledge seems to be entailed by omniscience. If God is omniscient, then he knows all the facts about the world: every fact about the past, present, and future.

At this point, some well-intentioned, serious individuals decide to embrace open theism. Open theism is the view that God does not have the quality of omniscience. This certainly refutes CC. In my view, open theism is simultaneously too cheap and too expensive. We get a quick and easy solution to CC by paying with an attribute of God, an attribute that is part of the essence of the Judeo-Christian God. It may turn out that we do have to pay this price, but let us do some heavy lifting and see if a third way can be found.

Yet, I still believe that CC is mistaken, is built on a foundation of sand. The foundation is the definition of “foreknow”. What is it to foreknow? One necessary condition is that the knower possesses knowledge of the action prior in time to the action.

Foreknow: for super-agent S to foreknow action A, S must know at time t0 that A will occur at time t1, where t0 is the now and t1 is in the future.

Thus, for God to be one of these “super-agents”, he must know some proposition at t0. This is where CC falls apart. God, being “outside” of time, does not know anything at t0, or at t1, or t2, or any moment of time. We are limited by our experience. We are beings bounded by space and time, and our knowledge and language reflect that. To say that God knows everything at all times is to give the best estimation that we can of God’s timeless nature. It might be wise to follow the via negativa in this situation.

Theism vs. Naturalism – Free Will

Apologists defending their views should use two tactics: defend and attack. Defending involves creating a plausible argument for the view and refuting opponents'’ objections. Attacking involves finding the implausibilities and weaknesses in the views of the opponents. These seem to me to be the basic principles behind all good debate. As a theistic apologist, I want to outline the most promising lines of attack in the current debate between naturalists and theists. Today, I will tackle the issue of free will.

We all hope that we have free will, and that the free will that we have is a free will worth wanting. I believe that any free will that naturalism can offer is not worth having. Let's start with a few definitions.

Naturalists are, at minimum, committed to the following beliefs: 1) The natural world is causally and energetically closed. 2) All teleological (purpose) explanations can be reduced to mechanistic causes.
Determinism is this: every event E can be explained as a result of the 1) laws of nature and the 2) state of the natural world immediately prior to E.
Determinism is generally agreed to follow from the two fundamental beliefs of naturalists. Another plausible assumption I will make here is that any story of free will must allow room for moral responsibility.

Thus, theists should have the goal of showing that determinism is incompatible with free will. This would be a huge blow to the plausibility of naturalism. Naturalists would have to give up moral responsibility. Amanda Witt acutely notes the consequences of living without moral responsibility: Humans would “have no reason (and no right) to be angry with an unfaithful spouse, the murderer of their child, or the Republicans who ordered the invasion of Iraq; because... no one is responsible for his actions.” If the reader thinks for a few minutes, I am sure that he can grasp the implications of living in a world without moral responsibility better than I could explain it.

Naturalists are thus forced into a corner: they must show that free will and determinism are compatible. This free will will generally look very different, and naturalists have then a subsequent goal. They want to show that a compatibilist free will is worth having. Incompatibilists often use the tactic of invoking the Principle of Alternative Possibilities as a requirement for free will. The PAP is really pretty simple. It states that if I act and I couldn’t have done anything else, then I am not morally responsible for my action and its consequences. This is intuitively very plausible as a definition of free will. The odds look long for the compatibilists, as determinism rules out PAP. In fact, at this point, most observers would call game over.

However, Harry Frankfurt (a compatibilist) changed all that with his paper Alternative Possibilities and Moral Responsibility. In fact, his paper was so revolutionary that Frankfurt-Style Counterexamples is a buzzword among philosophers interested in this debate. A FSC is a scenario that follows Frankfurt’s original argument. I will try to generalize all FSCs here.

The scenario involves two men: Jones and Black. Black wants Jones to do some action A (A could be any action. Popular choices seem to either involve voting Republican or assassinating another person). Black has a way to control Jones so that if Jones ever decides to not do A, Black can step in and make Jones do A. Jones is completely unaware that he is so controlled. It plays out that Jones decides on his own to do A, and Black never has to step in. Note that Jones seems to be morally responsible, but could not have done otherwise.

Deep stuff. I don'’t want the reader to think that FSCs are unanswerable. Although there is no definitive refutation at this point, incompatibilists have presented many promising ideas on refutation. I will point my fellow theists to a paper I read just yesterday on the topic. Graduate student Tedla G. Woldeyohannes claims that FSCs beg the question against the metaphysics of dualism. His argument is that, if substance dualism is true, the control that Black has in FSC is not possible. This seems to me to be one interesting and very promising line of attack against FSCs, and by extension, compatibilism.

The Free Will debate is far too vast for me to adequately cover here, even if I had the ability to do so. I have just scratched the surface of the literature on this topic. Thousands upon thousands of pages have been published on free will in the last 10 years alone. There are many philosophers involved, each with his own version of the story and solution. If you are interested in pursuing this further, the place to start is to read the papers and books that shape the debate. I know of two good anthologies for this (there are surely many more). The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, edited by Robert Kane and Moral Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities, edited by David Widerker and Michael McKenna. Kane’s own book, The Significance of Free Will is the book that sparked my interest in philosophy.

Naturalists then are willing to accept both determinism and the absence of PAP in the world, but vigorously deny that determinism leads to a lack of moral responsibility. The onus is equally on both naturalists and theists at this point. One the one hand, we need to show how FSCs do not work. On the other hand, naturalists need to show that compatibilism can offer a freedom worth wanting. Frankfurt'’s picture does offer moral responsibility, but still seems unsatisfying. Is moral responsibility really all we want in an account of free will? My intuition thinks not.

Explanations and Causes

Are all explanations causes? It seems to me that they are not. First, what is a cause? A cause is a bit like a conditional in logic: given P, Q follows. If Q did not happen after P, then P could not be a cause of Q. Scientific explanations are causal: Putting hydrochloric acid in sodium hydroxide causes the creation of water and sodium chloride. If the creation of water and sodium chloride did not occur, we could reasonably claim to have falsified my previous sentence. A cause determines its consequent.

Our next task is to see if an explanation is another word for a cause. I think that it is quite plausible for someone to say something they are not the same. I will steal an example from Stewart Goetz to help my view. Imagine a man is on death row because he brutally raped and murdered a woman. The executioner is the husband of the woman who was raped murdered. The executioner has two reasons for acting: he could act out of personal vengence or he could act out of his obligation to justice. After he executes the murderer, we want to know why he killed the murderer. Suppose he says, "I did it because I am the agent of the state. I was fulfilling my duties to justice." This seems a satisfactory explanation for his action. Suppose, on the other hand, that he invoked a desire for revenge as his reason. This also seems satisfactory.

Now, is it implausible to think that the executioner could have had both reasons in his psyche? Of course not. If explanations are causes, then is this not a case of overdetermination? The executioner has both reasons that can explain his action. At this point, something seems wrong. This is not a case of overdetermination. Thus, explanations are not causes.

Now, this goes against most of analytic philosophy, so I'd be interested to hear any thoughts. Sometimes after 1 am, my brain acts like it is on crack.

Site Move and Redesign

A Preliminary Expectoration has moved to expectoration.blogspot.com. After I decided to use my real name on my blog, telcontar.blogspot did not make any sense as my address. I've also revamped the design. I was unhappy with several aspects of the former look of APE; and so I found a premade Blogger template that gave me everything I wanted. Finally, I have updated my blogroll to indicate my changing reading patterns. Check all of them out! (Of course, a link here does not imply any sort of ideological endorsement). There is a new group blog by the leaders of the Intelligent Design movement. I'll leave my loyalties up in the air over ID until I have the time to write an adequate post about it.

UNC = Nat'l Champs!

North Carolina won the title game last night over Illinois, 75-70. It was close for a bit near the end, but North Carolina pulled out the victory. Sean May had a double double, with 26 points and 10 rebounds. The Illini player that I lauded in the semifinal, Roger Powell, tried to guard May. Powell wasn't very successful, for May was bigger and taller. It surprised me to find out that this is Roy Williams' first national championship. He was so famous at Kansas for so long that I just assumed that he had won one or two over there.

Sin City

Sin City was an excellent movie. I do not feel qualified to say too much, as I have seen little in the film noir genre. The movie was shot with an understated elegance and the characters were portrayed excellently. The plot reminded me of Lord of the Rings in some ways. In LotR, the viewer (or especially, the reader) gets the feeling that the world of Middle Earth is much larger than the story being told. Sin City is divided into three stories told in sequence, each of which interlink with each other. Certain locations and characters are seen in each. I felt as if Sin City was a real place and we are just getting a glimpse into a much larger world. Artistically, then, it is a masterpiece.

I'm not quite as pysched about the message it left me with. Independence and inner strength, rather than love or truth, are the virtues prized most highly in Sin City. Nothing wrong with those, of course; it's merely that when they become dominant in our motivations, we lose an important part of ourselves.

Perhaps that is the message of Sin City: this world is so evil that few survive, and none survive whole.

Final Four #1 = [ILL 72, LOU 57]

Illinois 72, Louisville 57

Illinois just put on a fantastic show against Louisville to kick off the Final Four. Up by only 3 at the half, Illinois came out hot. Although they didn’t pull away in the first 8 minutes, they managed to psychologically dominate the game. On one possession, Roger Powell hit a three with 2 seconds left on the shot clock. Next time down the court, he missed another three but ran inside, grabbed his own rebound, and dunked it while still in the air. Powell finished with 20 points. Louisville kept up for a while, but just couldn’t hold on to the slim lead they obtained early on.

Now, off to see Sin City. I predict UNC by 14 for the second game.

John Paul II (1920-2005)

The Pope John Paul II has died after his health had been going downhill. I have not read much that he wrote, but what I have read I admire for its clarity and directness.