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Sunday, December 04, 2011

Did God get lucky?

Dan Chapa has responded:

Steve’s first criticism of Molinism is to call it fate and fatalistic, because in Molinism God does not decide what we would freely do in various circumstances.  (link) Steve doesn’t explain why this qualifies as fatalism.  Was the Cowboys selection of Tryon Smith fatalistic just because the first eight players were off the board?  No, just because you don’t decide everything does not mean you cannot decide anything or that the outcome of what you do choose is inevitable.  While God does not determine what we would choose in various circumstances, He does decide the circumstances.  Steve is confusing the inability to determine everything with the inability to determine anything.

i) No, my argument wasn’t based on (the Molinist) God’s inability to determine everything. Rather, my argument was based on Craig’s admission that God doesn’t have an unconstrained choice between two options. Yet critics of Calvinism typically brand Calvinism as “fatalistic” because predestined agents are acting under constraint (i.e. their choices and actions are circumscribed by the decree).

But according to Craig, the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom antecedently constrain God’s freedon of choice:

There may be no world feasible for God involving universal, freely embraced salvation which comes without other overriding disadvantages. Sure, God could have refrained from creating Fred (or both Fred and Sophie), but then the resulting world might have been even worse or at least no better. The hypothesis is that God has done the very best He can, given the true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom which confront Him.


So God’s options are forced options. But if a Calvinist said human options are forced options, an Arminian would say that’s fatalistic.

ii) In Molinism, God can’t change the outcome. For the counterfactuals of freedom are a given. At most, God can choose which outcome will eventuate.

God doesn’t create possible outcomes. He can only choose between one outcome and another. He can only create the actual outcome. And even then his field of opportunity is further constrained by what’s feasible. Not all possible worlds are feasible worlds.

For God, it’s the luck of the draw. Will the counterfactuals of freedom deal him a winning hand or a losing hand?

Steve’s second criticism of Molinsim is that “So not only must God play the hand he’s been dealt, but he was dealt that hand from a fictitious deck by a fictitious dealer!”  (link) Steve basis this argument on Craig’s statements that “the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom which confront Him are outside His control. He has to play with the hand He has been dealt” and on Craig’s denial that abstract objects, like numbers, exist.  But counterfactuals of freedom are not abstract objects like numbers.

i) It’s unclear what Dan means by that. After all, Craig presumably denies the abstract objectivity of numbers future contingents alike. So it’s not as if Craig is contrasting one with the other. 

ii) It’s also unclear whether Dan is making a general statement about Molinism. For instance, Plantinga is also a Molinist, but Plantinga is not a fictionalist. Rather, he seems to espouse the divine ideas tradition that Craig repudiates.

Imagine God has a hypothetical simulator machine and keeps it in your basement.  He puts hypothetical people in it and it spits out scenarios.  The idea of the simulator machine or the idea of its output, the scenarios, may be abstract objects like numbers, but the machine is not.  It’s sitting in your basement.  Steve is confusing God’s thoughts and ability to hypothesize with the concepts of God’s thoughts and ability to hypothesize.

Once again, Dan misinterprets my objection, perhaps because he fails to grasp the underlying issue. If we play along with Craig’s metaphor, the deck of cards would correspond to the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom while the dealer would correspond to the creaturely agents.

But this comparison breaks down. For middle knowledge refers to God’s prevolutional knowledge of what human (or angelic) agents would do in various hypothetical situations, in light of which God instantiates one scenario.

But at this stage of God’s deliberations, there are no actual creatures who embody the counterfactuals of freedom. Their actual existence is the result of God’s decision to instantiate them. As such, there are no property-bearers (=creatures) in whom these properties (=counterfactuals of freedom) inhere.

Since Craig is a fictionalist, he can’t treat possible persons as abstract objects. But if possible persons are nonentities, then what creatures correspond to the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom? What undergirds that claim? What makes it true?

Steve’s third criticism of Molinism is that it’s incoherent to talk about what a person would do if we assume they had a radically different past and were in completely different circumstances, like JFK being born in medieval Tibet.  This assumes there is nothing more to us than our nature, genetics and circumstances.  It’s like we could have an identity swap with another person, so long as that other person had our genetics, memories and upbringing. 

I didn’t say there was nothing more to us than our parentage. The question, rather, is whether there is less to us than our parentage. To be the son of Joseph Kennedy and Rose Kennedy is an intrinsic property of being John F. Kennedy. Unless Joseph Kennedy was his father, JFK would not exist. Unless Rose Kennedy was his mother, JFK wouldn’t exist.

Does Dan seriously think that JFK would still be the same person if Shirley MacLaine was his mother? Is Dan denying historical causation?

Transworld identity is grounded in correspondence to the nearest-possible world. You can’t switch person, place, and period at will and still have transworld identity.

But the bible does talk about what people would do if they had been born in another time, like the Pharisees in Christ time would have killed the OT prophets (Matthew 23:29-32) or what Christ’s servants would do if His kingdom had been of this world (John 18:36).  Such statements are not incoherent, in part because there is such a thing as “us”, over and above our circumstances and genetics.

i) Molinism is an exercise in philosophical theology, with extensive input from modal metaphysics. As such, objections to the coherence of Molinism can’t be trumped by Dan’s Mickey Mouse prooftexting. Craig, Planting, and Flint doesn’t simply quote the Bible whenever they get into a bind. The internal structure of Molinism has to mesh on its own terms.

ii) Dan’s appeal to Scripture is quite one-sided. The Bible often  delineates individuals by reference to their ancestry. So it’s not as if Scripture treats ancestry as incidental to your personal identity.

iii) Mt 23:29-32 is simply a tu quoque argument responding to the Pharisees according to their own claims: “For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, 30saying, 'If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.' 31Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.”

Jesus is quoting the scribes and Pharisees, then responding to them in kind. That’s completely different than Jesus himself making a claim about what they’d do had they been born in another time. Jesus isn’t saying, “Even if you had different parents, you’d be the same person.” That goes way beyond the purview of his reply.

iii) Moreover, Dan’s appeal is nonsensical, for your nurture can definitely have an influence on how you turn out. The fact that you murder a prophet because you had one set of parents doesn’t mean you’d murder a prophet if you had a different set of parents.

iv) And even if Jesus was making a statement about what they’d do under those circumstances, that’s a claim about their attitude. And it takes the actual individual as the frame of reference, then imaginatively projects him into a different time or place. It doesn’t start with some counterpart who was born in the past or the future, but with Jesus’ contemporary, along with everything that made him what he is today–at the time he’s having that conversation with Jesus.

v) Dan’s appeal to Jn 18:36 is sloppy. That counterfactual involves an alternate future, not an alternate past. It’s not a different time, but the same time in a different world. His counterfactual envisions a parallel present, where Jesus is still speaking to Pilate in 1C. The servants who fight for him under that scenario have the same ancestors.

This alludes to Peter’s bungled attempt to prevent Jesus from being taken into custody. It’s not Peter born a 100 years earlier to a different mom and dad. In context, the history leading up to the present is the same. That’s not what’s different about this alternate possible world. What’s different is that Jesus has different stake in this alternate possible world.

Steve’s fourth criticism of Molinism is that God’s not determining what we would choose in every setting conflicts with His omnipotence.  Steve even compares William Lane Craig to a Rabbi who’s rejected by Orthodox Jews and popular among Mormans for denying omnipotence.  (link)  The comparison is uncalled for and would be like comparing Calvinists to Hindus with an evil god.  Probably Steve’s argument would look something like God cannot create a rock so big He cannot lift it because the idea of a rock so big God cannot lift is logically impossible.  There’s no such rock, and similarly there’s no such thing as libertarian free will.

But they are not similar. They were dissimilar. To say that God can’t perform a logical contradiction is not a restriction on God’s omnipotence, for that’s a pseudotask. There is nothing for God to do.

By contrast, Molinism really does deny the omnipotence of God. The counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are beyond God’s control. The creature limits the Creator. So, yes, that is, indeed, comparable to Rabbi Kushner’s position. 

But if LFW is impossible, God does not have LFW, as Plantinga points out (see Theism and Persons within Advice to Christian Philosophers).

i) To begin with, that’s a digression from my actual argument. I guess Dan is trying to change the subject to deflect attention away from my actual argument.

ii) In addition, it’s duplicitous of him to invoke divine freedom when it’s Molinism that says God must play the hand he’s been dealt. How does that uphold divine freedom? That’s clearly a severe constraint on divine freedom.

God didn’t create the deck. God didn’t shuffle the deck. God can’t reshuffle the deck. The sequence is whatever it is–despite God's personal preference. It could yield a best-case scenario, worst-case scenario, or something in-between. The Molinist God has to hope and pray and cross his fingers.

27 comments:

  1. As much as I'm inclined to join you in bashing Molinism I'm not sure I agree with this statement:

    'By contrast, Molinism really does deny the omnipotence of God. The counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are beyond God’s control. The creature limits the Creator. So, yes, that is, indeed, comparable to Rabbi Kushner’s position.'

    The Molinist will want to say that God can not be in control of whatever compossible states of affairs involving counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are available to him because of LFW. He could have created a world with determined creatures but, on their view, compatibilism is false so any world in which creatures are determined will not allow for the greater good of moral responsibility, love, real freedom – the same old song and dance that we get from every Open Theist, Arminian, and Molinist on the planet. I think we should agree with them that it is impossible for God to have complete control over what worlds are available for him to choose from given the existence of creatures with LFW. It’s the desire to retain LFW that causes the limited options. Their problem is not that their God is finite but rather that they believe in incompatibilism and, consequently, that any world in which creatures are determined is ‘unfitting’ for God to create thus limiting the number of ‘fitting’ worlds by a long shot. But according to the internal logic of Molinism this is a strength.

    There are plenty of ways to beat up on Molinism - many of which you have performed with ingenuity - but I don’t think this is one of them. I await a superb rebuttal that sends me packing with my tail between my legs. ;)

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  2. If, by Craig's own admission, the Molinist God has no control over what the counterfactuals of freedom are, in and of themselves–if he has no control over what they are like, but can only control which ones (or combinations thereof) will be exemplified or unexemplified–then I don't see that he can make determined creatures. He can only instantiate the counterfactual as is.

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  3. You seem to think that, on Molinism, God must use his middle knowledge but I don't see why. He could create any number of worlds where his creatures are completely determined and therefore lack LFW but he simply isn't interested in instantiating these worlds. You might say that if he ignored his middle knowledge and focused entirely on his natural knowledge he could instantiate any world with determined creatures but instead he brings in his middle knowledge so that he can instantiate a world with LFW.

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  4. Suppose you fall back on God's necessary knowledge, i.e. his knowledge of possibilities. But in Molinism, possibilities are cashed out in libertarian terms. So, within that framework, I don't see how the Molinist God can determine human choices or actions.

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  5. Within that frameword it would be impossible but that's only because the Molinist God freely chooses to work within that framework. As I see it, if your 'finite God' criticism is gonna go through you'd have to give an argument to show that, on Molinism, God must necessarily work within this framework.

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  6. Molinists are libertarians. Incompatibilism is a defining feature of Molinism.

    In my experience, libertarians regard libertarian freedom as an essential feature of human nature. Indeed, if they didn't regard libertarian freedom as essential to our humanity, there wouldn't be much motivation to be libertarians in the first place!

    So, on that libertarian assumption, the Molinist God couldn't create determined human beings. He could make determined creatures, but they'd lack an intrinsic property of humanity. For instance, they'd lack a precondition of moral responsibility (as libertarians define it).

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  7. That’s been true in my experience as well but I’m not sure how this advances your argument. The Molinist God is under no obligation to actualize a world with persons or to enter into this ‘framework’ as we’ve been referring to it. He could simply not create anything or he could create a world populated by puppies and rainbows and sunshine but no people anywhere. The Molinist God may be limited in what world he chooses but that’s only because, on this view, compatibilism is false. But we’ve already given them that for the sake of argument so it would be bad manners to take it back now. :P

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  8. David, I thought you said he could create a world with determined *humans*. I took it that the 'creature' referred to was a human creature. I didn't think Steve was denying that the Molinist God could choose not to create at all, or simply create a world full of puppies.

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  9. I did say that but Steve rightly pointed out that most Molinists believe that LFW is essential to personhood. My mistake. And I wasn’t suggesting that Steve believes that the Molinist God doesn’t have to create or that he can’t make Puppies-Without-Persons World. I just used these as examples of the Molinist God’s freedom and how he need not limit himself to what the CCF’s give him so he still has an infinite number of possible worlds to choose from and therefore he can’t be accused of being finite.

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  10. I hope that clarifies things! :)

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  11. But he needs to limit himself if he creates humans, right (at least on the assumption that humans are essentially free; or that if humans exist then they have moral obligations)? I just thought the discussion was over whether he could create determined *humans*, with Steve saying no, you saying yes. You said, "He could have created a world with determined creatures," and I took "creatures" to = "humans," but ≠ "puppies."

    The other issue is whether the Molinist God would create worlds with puppies. So, perhaps the Molinist God "can" create such a world because he has the power to, but he "can't" in that there's far better worlds to create.

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  12. Yes, God needs to limit himself if he wants to make humans due to it being impossible to determine the world in exhaustive detail if we have LFW. My criticism of Steve's argument is that, on Molinism, this is no more a sign of finitude than the fact that God can't square a circle.

    I thought the discussion was over whether the Molinist God is finite so I haven't been understanding the relevancy of bringing up the question of whether persons are essentially free or not. It just doesn't matter to the argument as I see it.

    The other issue is a really interesting one that I don't have a position on other than that I don't think it makes sense to speak of a 'best possible world'.

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  13. David,

    On the other issue first, I didn't speak of a "best" possible world.

    I'm specifically concerned with this claim of yours:

    The Molinist will want to say that God can not be in control of whatever compossible states of affairs involving counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are available to him because of LFW. He could have created a world with determined creatures but,

    Steve said: So, within that framework, I don't see how the Molinist God can determine human choices or actions.

    You responded: Within that frameword it would be impossible but that's only because the Molinist God freely chooses to work within that framework. As I see it, if your 'finite God' criticism is gonna go through you'd have to give an argument to show that, on Molinism, God must necessarily work within this framework.

    I take it, then, that the discussion between you and Steve can be simplistically represented thus:

    David: God can make a determined human, but choses not too.

    Steve: I don't think God can determine human choices.

    David: God can't determine human choices given his choice to freely create libertarian free humans, but he could have chosen otherwise and created determined humans.

    So let's call your position D, and D = "God can make determined humans."

    At this point Steve offers this rejoinder:

    SR: But suppose the Molinist is committed to the idea that human beings are essentially libertarian free, then God couldn't determine *human* choices (or all of them, anyway). Or, suppose that humans are essentially free simpliciter. It would seem that the Molinist at least is committed to the truth of incompatibilism. If incompatibilism is true, then it is necessarily true. Thus, if humans are essentially free simpliciter, they cannot be determined. Or, lastly, if any world humans obtain they are under moral obligations to their creator, then they cannot be determined since determinism undermines moral responsibility.

    And it seems SR leads to Steve's conclusion:

    SC: Hence, God can't make determined humans.

    And we can see that SC contradicts D. Thus I don't see how you think the claim isn't relevant to defeating D?

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  14. Methinks I'm doing a poor job of explaining my position.

    I completely agree with Steve that, on Molinism, humans have LFW essentially. On Molinism, D is false. I fully acknowledge that I made a mistake in the section you quoted.

    I disagree with Steve when he argues that, on Molinism, since D is false it entails that God is finite.

    Also, I didn't mean to suggest that you believe that talk of a 'best possible world' is meaningful. I was just stating the only strong opinion I have on the issue of God's freedom in actualizing possible worlds.

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  15. No, I think you're explaining yourself fine. I thought you were saying Steve's point didn't help to undercut D. I wasn't weighing in on the "finite" point, call it F. Just the D point then.

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  16. However, it did *look* like you used D to defeat F. So at this point are you saying that it's simply the fact that on Molinism God could have refrained from creating that defeats F?

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  17. Yes, my argument is that D does not support F. I'm saying that since God could create an infinite number of possible worlds without humans, including those with no creation whatever, we have a defeater for F.

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  18. D does not "support" F (?), or did you mean D does not "defeat" F?

    Now you say the ability to create many worlds without humans defeats F, right. Many worlds claim is W. So, D doesn't defeat F, W defeats F, right?

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  19. Okay, this is the quote from Steve you gave:

    By contrast, Molinism really does deny the omnipotence of God. The counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are beyond God’s control. The creature limits the Creator. So, yes, that is, indeed, comparable to Rabbi Kushner’s position.'

    This is what you construed as F. How does W defeat F? The only sustained argument I saw was D. How is W relevant to F?

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  20. A sufficient condition for God to be F is that there are possible worlds that he can not actualize. That is, it is sufficient that W is false to prove that God is F. However, there are no possible worlds in which determinism is true and humans are ‘significantly free’ (to use Plantinga’s annoying description of LFW =P) so the fact that the Molinist God is unable to actualize such a world does not prove that W is false and therefore Steve has not shown that the Molinist God is F.

    I hope I said that right... I'm not as good at working with these abbreviations as you guys. I get lost!

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  21. David, that F doesn't seem to resemble Steve's F, which you quoted and responded to. If F is meant to be taken as:

    F* = God is finite iff there exists a possible world, W, such that God cannot actualize W

    then I'd agree that the Molinist God isn't finite on *this* sense. (This leaves aside whether the Molinist God "can" create a world where, say, there are 5 people who go to heaven and 10 who go to hell. Perhaps he can't do this because it could conflict with his goodness; or similar questions, cf. the Rasmussen paper.) Whether Steve construes his claim as F or F* is another matter.

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  22. 'Whether Steve construes his claim as F or F* is another matter.'

    If we define F as simply not being in control of what CCF's are at his disposal then I agree that the Molinist God is F. I just don't think that's a fair definition of F, I guess.

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  23. "I just don't think that's a fair definition of F, I guess."

    Maybe, maybe not. I'll leave that for Steve to address :-)

    Perhaps he could distinguish between weak-finiteism and strong-finiteism; WF and SF, respectively. So, your F* is SF and Steve's F is WF. Then you both can have your cake and eat it too. :-)

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  24. I love cake! And there's conclusive evidence that on my first Birthday I had my cake... and ate it too! Thanks, Mom! ;)

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  25. If you ate it you don't "have" it. :)

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