An Interesting Critique from Someone Who Has Actually Read Harris's FREE WILL

I just looked at a review of Harris's Free Will, by Russell Blackford (a writer with a couple of PhD's, one in philosophy)--a review that doesn't help me overcome my aversion to reading the book.

Blackford comes at the book from the standpoint of someone who actually agrees with Harris's criticisms of the view Harris explicitly attacks--but complains about the book anyway, for reasons that are, I must say, disturbingly familiar. Blackford's complaint is summed up in the following passage:

Harris may, indeed, have isolated one tendency in the thinking of some philosophers and some ordinary people. Perhaps he has met people who think about free will in a way that matches up with his definition, and I'm sure some readers will find that the definition rings true for them (the evidence suggests, remember, that ordinary people do not all think alike about free will - and philosophers certainly do not).


But Harris does not claim to be attacking one tendency, perhaps a dangerous one, in ordinary thinking or the philosophical literature. Nor does he limit himself to claiming (against the evidence to date) that it is the dominant tendency.

As far as he is concerned, he is writing about the true conception of free will, and anyone who disagrees is changing the subject. They are not talking about free will, he thinks, but only about "free will" - about an intellectual construction of their own making. That is almost the reverse of the truth, and if anything it is Harris who wants to change the subject by insisting on his own pet definition.

I say this critique is disturbingly familiar because, well, it has the same basic form as my criticism of Harris's attack on religion in his first book, The End of Faith. Here is what I said in Is God a Delusion?:

Religion, for him, is about scriptural literalism...Religious moderates are therefore represented as people without the integrity of their convictions, people who are simultaneously unwilling to accept where literalism leads (because of the influence of modern insight and rationality) and unwilling to accept where modernity and rationality lead (because of nostalgic attachment to the text).

We aren't led to this conclusion unless we accept the equation that Harris makes between fundamentalism and religion. Harris never considers the possibility that fundamentalism may be the perversion...He blithely equates religion with fundamentalism, and the rest is easy: fundamentalism is irrational; it has no resources for transcending itself. If religious moderation is born out of fundamentalism, it can only be because these moderates can't stomach fundamentalism but are unwilling to follow reason to its conclusion.

Had Harris offered, at the start of the book, a narrow stipulative definition of "religion," and said that he was only attacking religion in that very narrow sense, I would have praised the book for identifying a dangerous phenomenon and explicating precisely what made it so dangerous. But instead, Harris allows his attacks to sweep indiscriminately across anything that calls itself religious...

Apparently intellectual vices are hard to shake off. Or maybe when a fallacious way of reasoning works once (works in the sense of launching you to fame and fortune), there's little incentive to abandon it.

Sam Harris writes about free will. Oh goody.

Note: This is not a review of Sam Harris's newest book, Free Will, which I haven't yet read. It is, rather, an account of why I dread having to read it.

After completing his PhD in neuroscience, Sam Harris--a former undergraduate philosophy major and my least favorite new atheist--has, it seems, chosen to continue his career as an unusually prolific and influential undergraduate philosopher.

I say "continue" because his first major book, The End of Faith (and its follow up "Letter to a Christian Nation"), tackled a core topic in the philosophy of religion--"What is faith, and is it a virtue?"--and his second major book, The Moral Landscape, tackled a core topic in moral philosophy: "Is there an objective standard for morality, and if so what is it?" Now, in his newest book, Harris turns to the perennial philosophical question of whether human beings possess free will.

This is a question I struggle with. I struggle with understanding the concept of free will (What do we mean by "free will," and under what conditions could we be said to have it?) and with the range of formidable arguments for divergent positions on the issue. When I read new theoretic accounts/defenses of free will (such as Stewart Goetz's admirable effort in Freedom, Teleology, and Evil), I do so as something of a hopeful skeptic. I'm looking for an understanding of freedom according to which it can be shown to operate as a coherent third alternative to (a) being determined to act by prior causes or by the weight of reasons for action, and (b) acting simply at random or arbitrarily. But I have not yet found such an account (my reasons for remaining unconvinced by Goetz appear in my Religious Studies review of his book). At the same time, I live my life as a practical believer in the reality of such a third alternative, because I don't know how to make sense of my experience as an agent--especially as a moral agent--in other terms.

In short, this topic interests me both as a human being and as a philosopher. So what can we expect from Harris's new book?

In his previous books, Harris demonstrated great eloquence and even greater confidence in the correctness of his own views, while largely failing to do what philosophers are trained to do in graduate school--namely (a) display an understanding and appreciation of the relevant philosophical literature and (b) carefully develop one's position in conversation with the best arguments one has found for opposing views. In short, they were books on philosophical topics written by someone with only an undergraduate philosophy degree...and they read like books on philosophical topics written by someone with only an undergraduate philosophy degree (albeit someone with a sharp intellect and talent as a writer).

Now it's clear from recent comments that not every reader of this blog will regard Harris's propensity to ignore what professional philosophers have had to say on these topics (especially those with opposing views) as a vice. But since I do, my expectations of this new book aren't all that high.

I don't expect Harris to lay out the range of possible nuanced views on free will clearly and completely and then locate his own position within this range. I don't expect him to faithfully engage with the best arguments for views different from his own, comparing the relative strengths of the arguments for these alternatives. I don't expect him to have gone through the literature to determine whether the arguments he develops have already been made, nor whether they have already been criticized...and if so to engage with those criticisms. I don't expect him to anticipate objections to his arguments that haven't yet been made by others, to develop those challenges as powerfully as he can and then respond to them.

I do expect him to display supreme confidence, despite his failure to do any of these things, that his own position is correct.

In other words, I expect the book to be very annoying.

Nevertheless I'll likely read it for the following reasons: First, I hope that his writing abilities will enable him to present his newly acquired knowledge of neuroscience in a manner conducive to deepening my understanding of this topic. Second, I expect that he will present an energetic argument from these neuroscientific starting points, one that might possibly introduce something new to the traditional philosophical arguments against free will. Third, the book is short, and so the investment of time isn't great. Fourth, it's likely to be far more widely read--and hence far more likely to shape popular thinking about this philosophical topic, including the thinking of my students--than will any of the articles and books on free will written by professional philosophers.

And in the end, I'll need to grudgingly thank Harris for precisely this reason: He'll succeed in generating wider interest in and dialogue about an important philosophical topic in a way that others, with less popular appeal, simply can't hope to do. He will have used his formidable platform to spark deeper philosophical reflection about free will than might otherwise occur. Maybe he'll motivate some readers to dig deeper into the topic, to explore what others have to say.

But that doesn't mean I look forward to reading it.

If anyone has actually read the book already and can disavow me of my grim expectations, I might treat the forthcoming task of reading the book as less onerous--and so might procrastinate less about it. But I'm not put at ease by the recent Scientific American blog review by John Horgan, "Will this Post Make Same Harris Change His Mind About Free Will?" (a blog review which, by the way, makes at least one crucial philosophical mistake that I may address in my next post).

Love, Freedom, Universalism...and Abortion.

In his blog post today, Richard Beck has offered a beautifully accessible and compelling case for universalism in the form of a critique of Rob Bell's "conditionalism" (the idea that God's offer of salvation is unlimited, but whether all are saved depends on the free response of creatures). Really worth checking out if you are interested in the topic.

Beck's essay is so nicely done that I'm inclined to let it speak largely for itself. But since his essay bizarrely dovetails with the class discussion I had today about Judith Jarvis Thomson's essay, "A Defense of Abortion," I can't help but say a few words about that connection.

Thomson makes a distinction in that essay between the question of what you ought to do and the question of what you have a right to do. There are some things we ought not to do--it would, in Thomson's words, be "indecent" of us to do them. But we might still have a right to do them.

Thomson's distinction here led to a class discussion about what it could mean to have a right to do something that, morally, you ought not to do--especially if it's not merely a legal right we're talking about, but some more basic right that is invoked to justify the legal right. In what sense can I affirm your right to do what it would be horribly indecent of you to do? I can't mean that your choice is a matter of moral indifference, so that either choice is morally "alright." So what, then, could I mean?

The basic idea seems to be that, in some sense, the choice should be yours. The choice should be left up to you. But what, exactly, does that mean? Does it mean I've violated your right if I try to talk you out of it? If I point out that it would be an indecent thing to do? If I seek to persuade you not to do something so terrible?

(I'm not implying here that the choice to abort is necessarily indecent here, although it might be. Thomson certainly doesn't think abortion is always indecent. But she thinks there are choices which are indecent which we nevertheless retain the right to make. So let's have in mind a different choice: Suppose your sister is dying and urgently needs a bone marrow transplant. You are the only one who can provide it. But to save her life means being out of comission during the championship baseball game that you finally have a chance to play in. The choice, we might say, should be yours. But many, I think, would regard the decision to play the game and let your sister die--assuming this was a certain outcome--as the wrong choice to make. Seriously wrong.)

In our class discussion, we generally agreed that there was a difference between persuasion and coercion, and that the right to make a choice is more clearly a right to be free from the latter than from the former. Of course, there may be efforts at persuasion that are pursued in deeply intrusive ways--I may, in effect, force you to put up with my persuasive diatribes, shoving my opinion down your throat so relentlessly that the persuasion becomes coercion. The message becomes, in effect, "Unless you choose as I want you to choose, I will hound you relentlessly."

And, clearly, one can be coerced into being subjected to persuasive efforts one would rather not hear. In short, there are legitimate question about how to draw the line between persuasion and coercion, or about when persuasion is as problematic as coercion. The line here is not neatly drawn. But still, there is a difference.

We also talked about species of coercion. If I make it clear that I don't want to associate with you any more if you make that indecent choice, is that coercive? Presumably it has a different status than putting a gun to your head or telling you that I will inflict financial ruin on you if you choose to let your sister die. But still, might it not qualify as coercive?

On the one hand, it seems I have certain rights about who I will and will not associate with. And it may be only fair to let you know how I will exercise those rights if you choose in ways I find detestable. We might think you have a claim on making a fully-informed choice, aware of the consequences for such things as friendships. If I just can't spend time with a person who would choose to play in a baseball championship rather than save their sister's life...well, shouldn't I have the right to tell you that, even if I acknowledge that the choice between playing the game and saving your sister is yours to make?

Then again, telling you something like that may be manipulative or even coercive, a way of intruding illegitimately into your choices. One might imagine that a great deal depends on context. In any event, there may be a difference between threatening a cost if you make the "wrong" choice, and letting you know what I will do if you make that choice, where what I will do is something you won't like. Not every case of the latter is necessarily a case of the former.

These were the sorts of things we talked about in class today. And what is the lesson that my class drew from this discussion? Well, there were more questions than answers, I think. But I would guess that the following constitutes one small point of consensus: To say that the choice should be yours is not to say that others--others who care about you and your choices--must abandon you to your choices, so as to ensure that you operate in a social and personal space completely free from others' thoughts, feelings, and convictions.

And here is where my class discussion about what it means to have the right to choose merges with Beck's line of thought.  There is, obviously, room for discussion about the concept of freedom at work in Beck's argument, his idea that what you care about has a more basic status than what you choose. But even if you lean towards a more strongly libertarian view of freedom than Beck seems to have, there is something to be said for Beck's conviction that the kind of God affirmed in Christian theology would never merely abandon us to our choices--especially not when those choices are rooted in confusion and ignorance and deeply misguided priorities.

It is possible to let a person make choices without abandoning them to their choices. It is possible to be involved, and involved in a loving way, even though there are difficult boundary issues, even though the line between persuasion and coercion--or between stating intentions and making threats--is sometimes hard to draw. Consider again the case involving the choice between a playing a championship game and saving your sister's life with a bone marrow transplant, but now imagine that a loving parent is on the scene. Would staying out of your choice be the most loving thing? Could she still respect your freedom while urgently pleading with you to make the life-saving choice?

And what about a choice more akin to what is at stake in salvation--a more choice without a time limit and more clearly about one's own fate, one in which the resources to turn away from a destructive path remains available. Imagine an addict and a loving parent who cares deeply about the addicted child, who has resources that can help break the addiction. Is the parent violating the demands of respect for freedom by staging an intervention?

There are difficult boundary issues here, lines between respectful persuasion and coercion, between manipulation and loving confrontation. But a God of love who knew the heart of every creature would, it seems, be uniquely situated to maneuver those complex boundaries, to preserve the balance between loving involvement and letting people choose.

Love does not walk away, even if it does not coerce.

Mangling Me at The Jesus Creed...

Not literally...but Scot McKnight has another piece on universalism over at The Jesus Creed this week--this one about my argument that appears in Universal Salvation? The Current Debate (edited by Robin Parry and Christopher Partridge). Unfortunately, McKnight misconstrues my arguments there in a significant way--perhaps influenced subconsciously by his desire to push the challenge he posed in relation to his earlier article on "Thomas Talbott's Gauntlet". His challenge, in effect, is this: What scriptural basis is there for thinking God would afford the unregenerate an ongoing opportunity to repent and seek salvation after death?

In effect, McKnight wants to argue that I am making a case for universalism that rests on the assumption that God would do exactly this. But that is not what I am doing in the essay. Rather, I am investigating the coherence of a particular approach to defending the doctrine of eternal damnation--an approach that appeals to the freedom of the creature, and to the idea that God's moral character inspires Him to respect that freedom, even if it leads to damnation. And freedom alone would inspire damnation only if it were possible for the creature to choose freely to remain forever alienated from God.

Freedom would explain eternal damnation only if a creature could either (a) freely choose to be alienated forever, or (b) forever freely choose to be alienated. Doing (a) involves making, at some point, a final and decisive choice for alienation. That is, the person decides at some particular moment, "I choose to be alienated from God FOREVER." Doing (b) involves, at every moment ad infinitum, making the choice to be alienated from God at that moment.

In my essay in the Universal Salvation? anthology, I don't devote much attention to the distinction between (a) and (b). On reflection, this may be a defect of that essay. But for various reasons--some of which can be extracted from the arguments I do lay out in that essay, I think (a) makes little sense. Whether I can freely choose at some moment to make a permanent commitment depends not merely on me at that moment, but on other things as well. If what I am presented with is a "limited time offer," then it clearly is true that the choice to reject the offer, if unreversed by the time the offer runs out, becomes a choice to forever reject the offer. If, by contrast, what I am presented with is a standing offer--one that just isn't ever revoked--then I can't really choose to forever reject the offer unless I follow course (b). While I might say to myself at some given time, "I reject this offer FOREVER," I remain free to change my mind precisely because the offer is a standing offer. So I can't really CHOOSE at some particular time to forever reject the offer when the offer has the form of a standing offer--because I remain forever free to change my mind given the nature of the offer, that is, given something outside my control (something that is, instead, a matter of the choices made by the one who extends the offer).

If--as liberal defenders of the doctrine of hell assume--we suppose that there is nothing in God that operates as an impediment to salvation, but that eternal damnation is wholly explained by the free choices of the creature, then we must, I think, take it that God's offer of salvation is a standing offer. If it is a limited-time offer, then at some point God withdraws the offer such that even if an unregenerate person later freely repents and earnestly seeks salvation, God withholds it. Here, it is not just the freedom of the creature that explains eternal damnation, but some active steps on the part of God. It is not merely the creature who rejects God, but God who, in effect, rejects the creature (at leat after the limited-time offer of salvation has expired).

So, the liberal doctrine of hell must suppose that the damned are those who follow course (b)--they forever reject God. My question in the essay that McKnight discusses is whether this is possible. My answer is that it is not. (John and I, in God's Final Victory, develop these arguments far more rigorously, but only after we tear apart the arguments which suppose that a God anything like the God of orthodox Christianity would ever decisively reject creatures). In any event, my conclusion in that essay is that the liberal doctrine of hell doesn't work. And this negative project does not depend on me illegitimately presupposing, without scriptural warrant, that God never withdraws His offer of salvation. Rather, I am simply asking whether, on the assumption that God never withdraws this offer (an assumption made by those who support the liberal doctrine), one can coherently defend the view that some are eternally damned by their own free choices. My answer is no.

My defense of this answer turns on some principles about the conditions under which a choice can be legitimately called free. McKnight takes these principles to identify the conditions under which God can be justified in damning someone--that is, conditions under which God can justifiably reject creatures forever. But in making this move, McKnight is considering a very different approach to justifying eternal hell--not the one I am considering in the Universal Salvation? essay. And in asking whether there is a scriptural basis for thinking creatures might freely turn to God after death and so be saved, McKnight is not merely asking whether there is any scriptural basis for the assumption that some universalists rely on to make their case for the salvation of all. He is also asking whether there is a scriptural basis for the assumption made by those who embrace the liberal doctrine of hell.

Now, with respect to this question that so concerns McKnight, I would argue that he is illegitimately restricting the scope of what counts as a "scriptural basis." My view is that, given a fairly orthodox understanding of God's character as developed by the Christian tradition through its earnest engagement with Scripture, we have prima facie (fancy philosophy talk for "presumptively") good reason to suppose God would never decisively reject His creatures. And from this it seems to follow that if a creature turned to God after death, they would be welcomed into the bosom of God as surely as if that choice were made before death. And so, if I (and John Kronen, and others like us) are right about what Scripture teaches concerning God's nature and His attitude towards His creatures, there is a scriptural case for the view that salvation remains possible after death even if no isolated scriptural passage says this.

Are there any considerations that might overcome this prima facie scriptural case? Many have been offered. John and I consider the most important of them in our book and find all of them unconvincing.

(On a more amusing note, I offered a fairly brief--for me--correction of McKnight's misunderstanding of my argument in a comment on his post--and the discussion in the comments section continued as if I hadn't said anything. The very first comment after my correction offered an interpretation of what "Reitan" is presuming that might have been forgivable had I not already piped in, but...well, let's just say that I often get the sense that interpreters of dead scholars are often grateful that those scholars aren't around, and would ignore them if they were.)

Talbott Endorses GOD'S FINAL VICTORY

Speaking of Thomas Talbott in conjunction with John's and my new book, Talbott has just provided the following endorsement (actually a mini-book-review) of God's Final Victory:

In their comparative case for Christian universalism entitled God’s Final Victory, John Kronen and Eric Reitan display an exhaustive knowledge of the relevant philosophical and theological literature; and even though they make no claim of completeness for their study, they may in fact have produced the most complete discussion to date of the relevant philosophical and theological issues. No philosopher or theologian who in the future addresses the issue of universalism will be able to ignore the arguments of this book, and even many parishioners in the pew, however impatient they may be with finely drawn philosophical distinctions, will benefit greatly from specific chapters, such as Chapter 1: Introduction, Chapter 4: Universalism and the “Plain Sense” of Scripture, and Chapter 9: Final Concerns. The final chapter in particular will be of interest to the Christian community as a whole, because it includes an easy to digest summary of the overall argument and also addresses the issue of evangelism as well as other practical Christian concerns.


The book’s most important contribution to the contemporary discussion lies in a sustained and powerful critique of the so-called Argument from Freedom, the argument that, for all we know, God cannot save all sinners without violating their freedom in inappropriate ways. Kronen and Reitan demonstrate first how, given the traditional Christian understanding of his nature, God is in a position to confer efficacious grace on anyone, or on any combination of persons, without violating the rational autonomy of any individual (see Chapter 7). But they also have an additional surprise, albeit one that Reitan has articulated in previous papers, for those who insist that salvation requires an undetermined libertarian free choice that could have gone the other way. For as they also argue in Chapter 8 (successfully, in my opinion), the assumption that sinners retain their libertarian freedom indefinitely together with the Christian doctrine of the preservation of the saints yields the following result: We can be just as confident that God will eventually win over all sinners (and do so without causally determining their choices) as we can be that that a fair coin will land heads up at least once in a trillion tosses. One can hardly expect everyone to find such arguments as persuasive as I do; but even those who remain unpersuaded will at least find in them a formidable challenge to be met.

All I can say is...Woot! Also, if you check out the link to the book's Amazon page, you will notice that the hardcover price has been SLASHED to a mere $85.71!!!! That's $34.29 off the list price! WHAT A DEAL!!!! Pre-order your copy now, before this deal disappears!

(Can't tell you the exact release date yet, but it'll be sometime in the next few months, and there are no glitches in the production schedule that I know of--just turned in corrected page proofs yesterday afternoon and the index is coming along on schedule).

Excerpt from That Damned Book: Efficacious Grace and Rational Freedom

Since participants on this blog seem to have an ongoing interest in issues of free will, I thought I'd share something from the chapter I'm working on right now from That Damned Book. The excerpt is from the first of two chapters in which we critically assess the argument that God will not save all because to do so would require Him to trump the freedom of the unregenerate in a morally unacceptable way. In the chapter from which this excerpt is drawn, we consider the first of two responses to this "liberal" justification for the doctrine of hell--namely, the response which invokes the concept of "efficacious grace" (roughly, a divine act which guarantees the salvation of the sinner by ensuring that the sinner responds favorably to God's offer of loving union with Him). In this excerpt, we begin to consider the case for the view that it is possible for God to bestow efficacious grace. Once we narrow in on the "Thomistic" view on this matter (meaning the view endorsed by followers of St. Thomas Aquinas), we offer an account of the Thomistic view of freedom. It is this part of the excerpt that I think may be of special interest to readers of this blog.


That God can bestow efficacious grace was assumed by most older dogmaticians, whether Protestant or Catholic, who discussed the matter. But the Catholics were divided over the nature of efficacious grace. Adherents to the older Thomist and Augustinian tradition took such grace to differ in kind from so-called “merely sufficient grace” (which gave sinners all they needed for salvation other than the appropriate subjective act of will). Followers of Molina, however, held that efficacious grace does not differ in kind from sufficient grace, but differs only in virtue of the fortuitous situation the creature is placed in when receiving sufficient grace.

While volumes of scholastic theology have been written on this dispute, for our purposes a brief overview is sufficient. According to the Thomists and their Protestant followers, when God grants efficacious grace, what He does is guarantee conversion and regeneration by putting creatures in a state that influences their motives such that they have every reason to respond favorably to the offer of salvation and no reason not to. But if this is what efficacious grace involves, it raises important questions about the nature of creaturely freedom. Most significantly, one may wonder if efficacious grace is consistent with libertarian freedom—by which we mean, roughly, the power to act or not act on motives that incline but do not determine the will. Freedom in this libertarian sense exists only if, when one makes a choice, one could have chosen otherwise—that is, there is some possible world in which one chooses otherwise.

In affirming that God can grant efficacious grace, the Thomists did not mean thereby entirely to deny creatures freedom in something like this sense. Rather, they meant simply to limit its scope. Specifically, the Thomistic view is that what we call libertarian freedom is a coherent understanding of freedom only when the creature confronts conflicting motives for action. It does not extend to circumstances in which the creature has every reason to pursue a given course of action and no reason not to. Under such circumstances the Thomistic view is that the will of the creature is not merely inclined towards the given action but determined to do it. The action remains wholly voluntary, but there is no possible world in which an agent who has every motive to do A and no motive not to nevertheless refrains from doing A—and so, it seems, the action is determined even though voluntary, and so conforms to what is usually labeled “compatibilist freedom” by contemporary philosophers.

But it strikes us that this contemporary language implies something Thomists did not mean to imply—namely that there are two kinds of freedom, compatibilist and libertarian. We find it more in tune with Thomistic ideas to say that freedom simply operates differently under conditions of uniformity of motives than it does under conditions in which motives conflict. In the latter case, free choice looks like what we think of when we speak of libertarian freedom, whereas in the former case it looks like what we think of when we speak of compatibilist freedom.

If this is right, God could guarantee that the unregenerate freely-but-inevitably make the subjective choices necessary for salvation. For Thomists, this is the essence of how efficacious grace works: it brings all the creature’s motives into conformity with the choice of pursuing loving union with God above all things.

The Molinists, however, objected to the Thomistic view of efficacious grace because they took it that freedom has a libertarian character even under conditions of uniform motives. Granted this strong notion of libertarian freedom, it would initially seem impossible for God to give efficacious grace without first extinguishing the creature’s freedom. But the Molinists argued, on the contrary, that (i) God has middle knowledge, and (ii) for every rational creature there is a possible world in which she would freely (in the strong libertarian sense) respond favorably to God’s offer of salvation. That God has middle knowledge means He knows, for any creature X He might create, what X would freely do in any circumstance God might put X in. Thus God can give efficacious grace to X by creating that world in which He knows, by middle knowledge, that X would favorably respond to grace.

For a number of reasons we are unconvinced by this Molinist doctrine. First, we are not convinced that divine omniscience entails middle knowledge. It is not clear to us that, in the absence of an actual (libertarian) free choice made under an actual set of circumstances, there is any truth of the matter with respect to what the agent would freely choose in the libertarian sense. Furthermore, as William Lane Craig has shown, supposing that God does have middle knowledge does not, by itself, demonstrate that He can give efficacious grace. Hence, we will not argue here that efficacious grace is possible on the Molinist view of freedom. Given the strong libertarian perspective of the Molinists, we think a different argument for universalism (which we discuss in the next chapter), is more compelling than the argument from efficacious grace developed here.

In this chapter, then, we will argue that God has available to Him a morally permissible means of bringing it about that all a creature’s motives uniformly favor conversion. If so, then on a Thomistic view of freedom there is a morally permissible means for God to guarantee that all freely make the choices necessary for salvation.

So, is there a means whereby God could, without moral fault, bring about in a creature uniformity of salvation-inducing motives? To answer this, we think it may be helpful to develop a fuller picture of the Thomistic view of freedom by way of a contemporary philosopher—Thomas Talbott—whose thinking is very close on this matter to that of the Thomists.

Like the Thomists, Talbott insists that one cannot imagine anyone freely choosing what they have no motive to choose and every motive not to choose. Such a choice, for Talbott, is incoherent. If one is in a condition such that all of one’s motives converge on a single choice, then Talbott thinks this choice becomes inevitable.

On Talbott’s view such a choice may nevertheless be truly free—but only if certain conditions are met. Talbott argues that if ignorance or deception entails that one chooses based on misrepresentations of the alternatives (such that what one thinks one is choosing is different from what one is actually doing), then one’s freedom is impeded. And if controlling affective states entail that an agent is determined to choose one option even if informed deliberation would come down in favor of another, then the agent is “in bondage to desire” and, again, not truly free. But if someone is “freed from all ignorance, deception, and bondage to desire,” the agent’s choice is free even if all motives converge on a single option, thereby making the choice of that option inevitable.

But if all of this is right, then there will be different ways to produce conformity of motives, not all of which should be assessed in the same way. Consider the following case. Suppose Jenny grows up in a dystopian future where all children are fed a highly addictive drug from infancy. They are taught (falsely) that the drug is a medicine they need to stay healthy—while in fact it is used by a tyrannical regime to control the people. Given her addiction and beliefs, Jenny’s motives all converge on the choice to continue taking the drug. But insofar as this choice is governed by deception and addiction, it is not free in Talbott’s sense.

But suppose a resistance group reveals to Jenny the truth, so that she now knows the drug is harmful but remains addicted. She now has reason-based motives to stop taking the drug, but they are impotent because she is in bondage to her addiction. Perhaps the resistance gives her a counter-drug that weakens the strength of her addiction but does not shut down the cravings. Now, whenever she is in the vicinity of the drug, she faces an inner struggle. Sometimes, with the right help and support (and a bit of luck) she can resist her craving; but usually she falls prey to it, weeping in horror at her own weakness. At this point we might say she has some measure of freedom—but it remains constrained by the hold the drug continues to exert.

But then imagine the resistance group finds a way to break her addiction. Now she neither craves the drug nor thinks taking it is a good idea. Let’s suppose, further, that she has no other motive to continue taking it but many reasons not to: concern for her health and continued freedom from addiction, gratitude to her liberators, a desire to oppose the unjust regime, etc. Suppose, in other words, that once she is finally freed of her addiction all her motives converge on a single choice: not to take the drug. Even if this means (as Talbott and the Thomists believe) that her rejecting the drug is inevitable, we wouldn’t want to say her choice isn’t free. Rather, we’d say that, with respect to this issue, she is truly free for the first time.

This example shows, we think, that the “libertarian” and “compatibilist” labels are both inadequate for the sense of freedom that Talbott champions. Prior to help from the resistance, Jenny’s choice to take the drug would be free in the compatibilist sense—but not free in Talbott’s sense. After her final liberation, her choice to refuse the drug is free in Talbott’s sense—but not in the libertarian sense (which assumes the possibility of having chosen otherwise). What makes the choice free in the one case but not in the other is that reason is no longer impeded from playing the role it ought to play in decision-making. Hence, we think the best label for this conception of freedom is “rational freedom.” And given Aquinas’s emphasis on the natural ordering of the will to follow reason, we think such “rational freedom”—which treats only some cases of uniform motives determining one’s choices as free—best captures the Thomistic view.

Underlying this view of freedom are several presuppositions, which can be summarized as follows: (i) Values are objective, such that there are objectively good or best choices and objectively bad ones; (ii) the rational faculty makes judgments in accord with its finite grasp of this objective order of values; (iii) the will can be controlled by non-rational forces (such as addictions, childhood coping mechanisms, entrenched habits); (iv) the will is naturally ordered to choose in accord with rational judgments, such that in the absence of non-rational controlling factors the will always chooses in accord with reason.

These presuppositions imply, in brief, that the will is naturally ordered to follow reason (its “default setting,” if you will, even if the will can be reprogrammed), and that reason in turn is naturally ordered to discern the objective good. On this view, choices are free to the extent that both will and reason can operate in accord with their nature—that is, there is nothing (such as “ignorance, deception, or bondage to desire”) that impedes them from acting on their natural teleology. This, we think, captures the essence of freedom as it is understood both by the Thomists and, more recently, by Talbott.

In any event, what all of this shows is that one can bring about uniformity of motives both in ways that impede “rational” freedom and in ways that do not. As such, if efficacious grace is a divine act of producing uniformity of salvation-favoring motives in the unregenerate, this divine act may or may not impede freedom in the Thomistic sense—depending on whether this uniformity is produced by inducing false beliefs and/or affective states at odds with reason, or whether it is produced by revealing truth and removing affective barriers to acting on what reason discerns.

Given this perspective, the question is not only whether God can bring about uniformity of salvation-favoring motives in the unregenerate, but whether He can do so in a way that promotes rather than impedes rational freedom. In fact, we think it falls within the power of an omnipotent being to do both. Hence, not only do we think it is within God’s power to bestow efficacious grace. We think it is within God’s power to do so in a way that does not violate the freedom of the unregenerate—at least if “freedom” is understood in this Thomistic sense.

Guest Post on Free Will and Determinism

A student in my philosophy of religion class has (in keeping with an invitation extended at the start of the semester) bravely offered up something he has written for anonymous posting on this blog. While this is something that was written for another class, he thought it had bearing on questions that come up routinely on this blog (he's right), and that it relates to issues we are wrestling with in class (right again). Since I suspect he is hoping that posting his thoughts here will inspire both discussion and constructive feedback, I encourage both. It goes without saying, however, that disagreement and criticism should be respectful. Anything that does not, in my judgment, meet this condition will be deleted. With that said, here are some thoughts on free will and determinism from an undergraduate student at Oklahoma State University:

Abstract


Oftentimes, people have a black and white perspective on the punishment of those responsible for unjust actions. Even though someone’s brain might biologically operate differently than the average brain, they are usually punished equally. In the famous case of Phineas Gage (Macmillan, 2000, pp.47-50) an iron rod entered under his left eye and up through his skull, landing 25 feet behind him. In the process it destroyed his frontal lobe. The post-accident Gage was not the same as the pre-accident Gage based on Dr. Harlow’s observations and the observations of friends and family. We can all agree that the psychological changes that ensued were not directly Gage’s fault.

Biological factors aside, causal determinism can still be applied. Similar to the nurture aspect of the nature-nurture perspective in psychology, a person’s upbringing can play a tremendous role in their future personality or actions. For instance, an abusive or drug-addicted parent is going to somehow have an affect on his/her child’s life. We must take the deterministic perspective into consideration in our legal system and in our own personal judgments of other people. Just as we have got away from stoning adulterers, burning ‘witches’ at the stake, and lynching people because of their color, we must evolve. We must gradually move away from our unambiguous ideas about justice. Causal determinism further clears the lens by which we judge others’ actions and reactions so that we may develop more accurate opinions of each other.

Discussion

There are several types of determinism. The one this essay focuses on is causal (cause-al) determinism—not to be confused with predeterminism, Calvanism, or theological determinism. Determinism is defined as all things in life including actions, thoughts, thought processes, reactions, and behavior have a cause-and-effect determination based on an unbroken series of prior events. The idea is analogically similar to dominoes falling. For instance, and this is just an example for clarity: John Doe has an intense fear of flying. He has this fear because his mother died in a plane crash ten years ago. Therefore, he does not fly out of country and refuses to see his brother who lives in Britain. Perhaps his brother thinks John simply does not want to see him, however due to casual determinism he prefers to stay at home because his mother died on a plane. Determinism is not always a conscious phenomena; it exists in the subconscious as well, or perhaps in both. Jane Doe might be scared of snakes because she had been bitten at age two, but she no longer recalls the actual occurrence. These are all just basic, general examples of determinism.

Specifically, there are different types of determinism aside from what has been discussed previously. Soft determinists often agree with compatibilism, or the idea that free will and determinism can coexist. In this idea, one’s reactions and opinions might have been shaped by past events, but the individual is not chained to his/her past. Essentially it recognizes determinism as a part of free will.

Hard determinists often stand by the argument of incompatibilism, or the belief that the ideas of free will and determinism cannot coexist in one idea or theory. Determinism is absolute and free will is an illusion, and since one’s birth, a series of events were set in motion—a domino flicked or a clock wound, if you will—and this one action has solely affected all thoughts and opinions since. If you perceive you have free will and you act, in reality you are acting because something subconsciously or consciously affected you previously. The problem with hard determinism is that an evil person’s moral behavior can be blamed entirely on the environment or biology of that person. It causes one to disregard moral control entirely because he/she did not feel in control of his/her life and destiny. Some who perform bad actions use hard determinism as a scapegoat. That is not to say determinists are not in favor of punishing criminals.

Indeterminists renounce determinism, believing that past events have no bearing on one’s decision-making or thought processes, and the human psyche consists solely of free will. This idea, like hard determinism is seemingly more extreme than soft determinism.

I will be mainly focusing on the compatibilistic idea of determinism because it is the least radical. It is the golden mean between indeterminism and hard determinism. It is also the easiest to apply to everyday situations and everyday life, and like in most areas of philosophy and psychology, usually the least black-and-white approach yields the best results. In psychology, the overall consensus now—after much debate—is that both nurture and nature play a role in childhood development. This blending of ideas is the approach I will take with free will and determinism.

First, I will discuss the biological perspective of determinism. There are many individual psychological cases relating to biology of the human brain. In the incredible case of Phineas Gage, it goes to show how the physical alteration of the brain can permanently change personality. After the incident, he was “no longer Gage” (Macmillan, 2000, pp.47-50). He did not function like he used to, and for this he never regained his position at work as a foreman. Harlow and others describe him after the incident as unable to plan and being profane. Although some scholars believe the actual description of post-accident Gage was distorted, he was a changed man.

There are other case studies where brain damage has played a role in moral/ethical decisions (Rutigiliano, 2008, p.1). For instance, in the case of Albert Fish, damage to the frontal lobe had disastrous consequences.

An example of a serial killer that had suffered sever injury to his frontal lobe is Albert Fish, better known as the Brooklyn Vampire. At the age of seven he had a severe fall off a cherry tree which caused a head injury from which he would have permanent problems with, such as headaches and dizzy spells. (2) [4] After his fall he began to display many violent tendencies, including an interest in sadomasochistic activities. At the age of twenty he killed his fist victim, a twelve-year-old neighbor by the name of Gracie whom he cannibalized.

Albert is just one example of biological determinism of one’s personality or moral actions. More and more studies have concluded that many extremely violent-natured people have something literally wrong with their brain (Rutigiliano, 2008, p.1).

A startling amount of criminals on death row have been clinically diagnosed with brain disorders. A recent study has demonstrated that 20 out of 31 confessed killers are diagnosed as mentally ill. Out of that 20, 64% have frontal lobe abnormalities. (1) [4] A thorough study of the profiles of many serial killers shows that many of them had suffered sever head injuries (to the frontal lobe) when they were children.

Other biological predispositions may affect a person’s future judgment, character, or actions. For example it is well known that there is actually a specific gene responsible for the “addiction” complex. Often I hear people say that they are predisposed to becoming an alcoholic because his/her father was. I have also heard the same thing said about the gambling mentality. Granted that it is no excuse for bad behavior, it is still something to be considered.

Now I will discuss the environmental perspective of determinism. The environment of a child at an early age often plays a large role in how they will act for the rest of their life. If their father shows no respect and curses the majority of the time, the child will pick up the same habits. At such a young age, it is hard for children not to follow in their parent’s footsteps, as they are starting with a clean moral slate. They have no immediate perception of what is right and wrong, especially about the abstract, until their parents pave the way. Fear about a reoccurring event in obvious ways affects a person’s lifestyle. If one was too scared to drive a car because of a dangerous wreck caused by a drunk driver that might cause them to stay at home. They would lose social contact with the outside world. The wreck might also cause them to despise anyone who drinks even in moderation. The chain continues. If a person grew up in a low income area with drug-addicted parents, and they literally knew nothing except crime and gangs, having never seen the other side of life, how can we expect them to resort to anything different from what they have seen? Crime, drugs, and violence often is the ‘language’ these people have spoken their entire lives. If no one is willing to teach them a different language—one of love or responsibility—how can we judge them?

Conclusion

Do we, as horribly flawed creatures, have a right to judge others based on something they cannot control? Some of us need to step back and rethink the morality of people’s actions in general. Often it is easy to say, “well if I were in that situation, I would never do that.” In reality we cannot say that in all truth because we would not be ourselves in that situation. We might be someone else, regressing into our primal selves or acting out of character. It is always better to judge oneself before judging others, as we see not the full picture. Causal determinism further clears the lens by which we judge others’ actions and reactions so that we may develop more accurate opinions of each other.


References

Macmillan, M. (2000). Restoring Phineas Gage: A 150th Retrospective. Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 9(1), 46-66. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database on Feb. 27, 2010.

Thimble, M. (1990). Psychopathology of Frontal Lobe Syndromes. Seminars in Neurology, 10(3). Retrieved from www.ect.org on Feb. 26, 2010.

Rutigliano, A. (2008). Predestined Serial Killers. Serendip’s Exchange. Retrieved from Serendip’s Exchange on Feb. 26, 2010.

Lois Rogers Medical, E. (n.d). Secret tests on brains of serial killers. Sunday Times, The, Retrieved from Newspaper Source Plus database on March 10, 2010.

Pragmatic Value of Belief in Free Will

A friend of mine just posted a short essay on his blog that touches on some of the themes that recur here, so I thought I'd share it. The essay, Detrimental Determinism, quotes the results of a study in which participants were given essays to read about free will and determinism from a scientific perspective and then invited to perform a simple task in which cheating was possible. Those exposed to essays that argued for determinism were more likely to cheat--and the more they believed in determinism (as assessed by a questionnaire administered at the end), the more likely they were to cheat.

My friend speculates that the result would be the same if the participants were all Christians and were presented with contrasting essays by theologians who argue for and against divine predestination.