The Transcendent and Immanent Frames

I find two theses compelling which are somewhat at odds with each other. The first regards the nature of human activity and the second regards the nature of time.

First, let us consider my view of time. I hold a block theory of time. This theory holds that all times are equally real. It is difficult to articulate the theory in English since English does not permit us to speak without designating time. When I say that all times "are" equally real, this can be misheard as saying that they are all real at the same time. They clearly are not at the same time. They are at different times. Each moment of time is equally determinate, equally specified as being as it was, is, or will be. I thus reject the view that any time possesses the real property "is present" or "is future" or "is past." Rather, on my view, these must be what one might call "pseudo-properties" or "secondary properties." They are properties which hold of phenomena only perspectivally, that is, from a certain point of view. In this case, a time is past only with respect to other times which are future with respect to it.

Let us now turn to the view of human activity. The view is the expressivist one which we considered a few days ago. This is the view that a human's action determines that human more specifically. The view is that an action specifies and clarifies what one is more determinately. The view thus holds that how one is is more indeterminate further in the past, and becomes more determinate as one acts. From this point of view, my future is indeterminate until I act and thereby specify it.

This view of human action also seems to conflict with another view of human activity which I hold, that is, a compatibilist account of human freedom. I hold that our actions may be fully responsible, fully expressive even, whether or not our actions are determined by facts prior to and independent of them. Thus, I am committed to a view on which the expressivity of human action, if it holds, is independent of whether or not those actions are fully determined by the past together with the laws of nature or by divine decree.

Thus, I have a view on which our future is both indeterminate and determinate. In traditional philosophical fashion, I propose to resolve this dilemma with a distinction. The distinction is between an immanent and a transcendent frame, or two different perspectives on human activity.

The transcendent frame is the perspective from which we see things from eternity, as it were. It is the perspective which grants all reality equal being, and registers properties as they appear in their place in the whole. In this point of view, it is fully determinate that George Washington would be president, and it is fully determinate at his birth that he would be so, because we are observing all of these moments together, relating them together. In this frame, everything is as it occurs in its full development throughout time.

The immanent frame, on the other hand, is the perspective of beings in time, agents acting responsively to events. This perspective acts in relation to a determinate present, a less determinate past, and an even less determinate future. It is the perspective of agent-perceivers, and thus the perspective of situated beings who negotiate an environment.

The challenge, then, is to show that these two perspectives are not at odds with each other, but compatible. In fact, it is necessary for me, as someone who holds that God views the world through both frames at once, to argue that the two frames can be used together, that they provide complementary, rather than opposed, views on the world.

Because I am arguing that God views the world through both frames, it is not open to me to hold that the immanent frame is one of ignorance. In our case, it is an ignorant frame. In our case, the immanent frame's perspective of the past is indeterminate because we are forgetful, and the future is indeterminate because we do not yet know what it holds, but my claim is that these degrees of indeterminacy hold when God views the world through the immanent frame, too. Yet God knows what the past held and what the future holds, so how can this be so?

The crucial distinction between the two frames is that the immanent frame is the frame of agents. Agents perform actions which impact the development of the future and the interpretation of the past. So the difference between the immanent and transcendent frames is the difference between being part of the course of events and being a mere observer, respectively. It is the fact that the immanent frame necessarily observes the flow as one in which one can intervene, whereas the transcendent frame observes the flow as completed. One decides, the other observes the results of the decisions.

God decides in full knowledge of what he will decide, but this is not a problem for his use of the immanent frame since he is perfectly good and takes it all in together. The indeterminacy of the immanent frame for God is strangely ambivalent. It is one which is hardly there, since there is no space in which he has not already determined what he will do, yet it is a supposition of his decision--his decision determines the future as much, if not more so, in his case as in ours. It thus fills in what "was" indeterminate, what would otherwise be determined differently.

This is not a synthesis or a pair of frames which it is easy to hold together. It is easy to view them as incompatible, and it mirrors the difficulty others have in melding a scientific and ordinary view of the world. One of the challenges of philosophy in general is melding together, in some coherent way, the world as revealed by science and the world we seem to find ourselves, the world of quarks and E=mc^2 and the world of ordinary clocks, chairs, and trees. The division into two perspectives is a frequent way of trying to solve this problem, but often has the result of opposing the two views. My hope that my pair of perspectives are more clearly compatible than others.

By temperament, I am opposed to dualisms, and this pair of views is close to being yet another dualism. Ideally, we can locate a unity beneath the difference which would support and motivate the difference. I am not sure. Alternatively, perhaps there is a point of view from which both perspectives can be united in ordinary life, not just in the life of God. It is a benefit of my view, however, that it is required to permit the two views to occur alongside one another in at least the case of God.

Ability

In the last post I mentioned the need for an analysis of ability in order to tell whether my account of the freedom required for moral responsibility is compatible with determinism. Here, I am going to take a stab at providing such an analysis.

First off, it seems obvious to me that, if I have the ability to do something, then it is possible for me to do it. Some will likely disagree with me about this, and many will likely claim that there is more to ability than the possibility of acting in a certain manner, but it is at least a reasonable starting point for our investigation. I am not committed to this being a complete analysis of ability, but it seems unlikely that any other part of an analysis would conflict with determinism if this part does not.

The puzzle which arises with an analysis of ability in terms of possibility is as to the kind of possibility. A compatibilist, of course, must deny that it is possibility in the sense of being compatible with a proposition stating how things were in the distant past together with the laws of nature (or stating whatever might be determinative of whatever happens). Jack Spencer at MIT has argued that ability needs to be understand in a manner compatible with our having the ability to do things which are logically impossible, and I find his argument compelling (Able to Do the Impossible, Mind (2017) 126: 465-96). So the possibility in question cannot be one which entails even such a weak kind of possibility as logical possibility.

Abilities are possessed by individuals. Further, such abilities can be carried around from situation to situation. I thus propose that we understand ability to phi as holding with respect to an agent when the agent, taken as she is at the time she is said to have the ability to phi, possesses the properties in virtue of which some individuals who actually phi, do so. Or, better, to decouple abilities completely from their exercise, we could better say that an agent possesses the ability to phi when that agent possesses the properties which are required for an agent to phi.

This need not be the only case where an agent can be said to have an ability. For instance, some abilities may be built up from lower-level abilities. If A has the ability to teach something in general, and B has the ability to learn it in general, then A, ceteris paribus, has the ability to teach it to B, even if no one has ever taught it to B. The ceteris paribus clause is required in this case to deal with cases where the learning style of B conflicts with the teaching style of A, such that A can teach a topic to students in general, but not to B, because A lacks the ability to teach the topic to students of the sort which B is--but this would be clear in a more fine-grained account of the abilities of A and B, which would still not require A's ability to include the ability to teach a topic to B in particular.

Jack Spencer argues that there are cases where there are necessarily unexercised abilities. That is, that it is possible for someone to have an ability in a world where no one exercises the ability. His example involves a lonely genius in a deterministic world who could, but never does, discover what things were like in the distant past and the complete description of the laws of nature. Again, however, by analyzing ability at the level of the properties required of an agent to phi, we can simply note that the lonely genius has all the required properties himself, and simply is never caused to utilize those properties.

The difficulty for my view is to say what keeps an agent from trivially having the ability to go 10 feet into the air simply because he has the properties required to do so in the event that a giant gust of wind blew him up into the air. There are a couple ways we could solve this problem. In the given case, we might require that the mode of ascent be specified. The agent lacks the power to propel himself 10 feet into the air under his own power, even if he contributes to the height he ascends with the gust of wind. Alternatively, we might specify that abilities only count under normal conditions. Thus, the agent in this example only has the ability to ascend 10 feet if gusts of wind of this kind are normal. I suspect that the latter better tracks the way we talk about abilities, while the former is more precise for metaphysics. To put it another way: when we talk about abilities, we mean abilities under normal conditions, and so it is the context of what counts as normal which specifies which ability in the more precise sense we are talking about.

Freedom

I have not posted anything about free will recently, so here I intend to sketch an account of freedom which is compatible with determinism. Before I get into that, however, let me explain the point of compatibilism with respect to free will and determinism. The point is not that I think the world is determined, though it may be, nor that I am afraid that it might be. I would be a compatibilist with respect to free will and determinism even if I were convinced that the world was indeterministic. The point is to articulate what free will depends on, what the concept of free will amounts to, or what kinds of free will are possible. A compatibilist, such as myself, holds that whether or not the universe is deterministic should not make a difference to whether or not we are free.

Free will is a vague term, and can be used in different ways. Ordinarily, I understand it as whatever choice-relevant factor is required for moral responsibility. One can also understand it to refer to the prerequisite for a being determining its own choices. I will need to do some work in a moment to clarify this second type.

Take freedom as prerequisite for moral responsibility first. If this is all freedom is, then an account of moral responsibility which makes clear whether any of its elements presuppose indeterminacy will answer the question of whether free will is compatible with determinism. My account has it that moral responsibility arises from the ability to consider other points of view on a decision. The only element here that seems likely to require indeterminacy is that it is an ability. So the next step here would be to provide an analysis of (particularly unexercised) ability which is compatible with determinism.

Now take freedom as self-determination. If freedom is self-determination, then when a being performs an action freely in this sense, the freedom of that being has the final say on whether the being performs that action. This need not mean that no other factors are involved, and clearly must be compatible with the being doing things for reasons. Hegel's account of freedom lies in this kind, where he suggests that a being is free if it does all it does from itself, not determined by anything outside itself. The notion of "outside itself" at work here is not, however, a physical one. It is a matter of appropriating or incorporating things into oneself. Thus, one can be free in this sense in a deterministic world so long as one finds oneself--sees one's own values and so on--in what determines one. To put it another way, one would be free so long as one can say "Amen" to all that determines one in its manner of determining one--if one is glad to be determined in the way one is.

Argument for Everything Being Necessary

Here I present an argument that everything is necessary. The argument can be modified to result in different types of necessity depending on the types of necessity used in the premises. Let me present the argument, and then elaborate.

1. God necessarily exists. (Premise)
2. Necessarily, if God exists, then God is omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent. (Premise)
3. There is a best of all possible worlds. (Premise)
4. Necessarily, if God is omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent, then, if there is a best of all possible worlds, God actualizes the best of possibility worlds. (By definition of terms)
5. Necessarily, God is omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent. (from 1 and 2)
6. Necessarily, if there is a best of all possible worlds, God actualizes the best of possibility worlds. (from 4 and 5)
7. Necessarily, God actualizes the best of all possible worlds. (from 3 and 6)

If the weakest necessity involved above is logical necessity, then this proves that it is a logical necessity that God actualize the best of all possible worlds. Ceteris paribus for other types of modality.

A defense of there being a best of all possible worlds would take a post of its own. Let me say merely that for this argument I am conceiving of these worlds as not merely initial states but including all of time from their beginnings into eternity. If this is problematic, then conceive of possible worlds as possible initial conditions and add an argument for divine determinism. This is required to preserve the strength of modality. If a view like molinism is right, and we have some say in what worlds are possible in the relevant sense, then this will weaken the modality of the conclusion by weakening the modality of premise 3.

Premises 2 and 4 should be familiar to anyone who has thought much about the problem of evil. Actualizing the best of all possible worlds, in the present context, is roughly equivalent to making it the case that there is the least possible evil. To the extent that they are not equivalent, the problem of evil needs a more nuanced account of what is wrong. Let the best of all possible worlds be defined such that, were we to know that God had actualized it, we would be satisfied that God had, in fact, done the right thing in actualizing it, and thus God would be vindicated.

If one does not hold that God necessarily exists, one can dodge the argument, although it is a pretty common claim. This does not, however, require one to reject the claim that God exists, and leaves one with a conclusion that everything is necessary given God's existence, which is not much weaker. Weakening the strongest modality via molinism, as mentioned above, also brings the argument down to a more intuitive level.

So, there are three ways to respond to this argument. One can accept the conclusion that everything that occurs is, say, metaphysically necessary, one can reject a premise (likely 1 or 4), or one can weaken the modality so far that it is more intuitively plausible.

Divine Freedom

If God was determined by his nature to create the world, then, for God to be God, he had to create the world. In that case, a reality where God does not create is a reality without God. On the other hand, if God was not determined by his nature to create the world, then, since he surely was not determined to create the world by anything else, it is unclear why God did create the world. It would seem odd, in that case, to praise God for creating the world, since, per hypothesis, God creating the world was not required for God to be God, and, given that to be God is to be morally and otherwise perfect, thus could not have increased his perfection.

The problem is this:
1. If God is determined by his nature to create, then there can be no God without the world.
2. If God is not determined by his nature to create, then there is no reason to praise God for creating.
3. God is not dependent on anything outside himself for his being as he is.
4. There is reason to praise God for creating (we seem to do it, and the psalms include praises of God for his deeds in general).

The problem is that we must take either the antecedent to 1. or the antecedent to 2. as true, and yet the consequent of 1. conflicts with 3., and the consequent of 2. conflicts with 4., and we tend to take both 3. and 4. to be true. There are, however, multiple possible solutions.

The easiest would be to deny that 1. and 3. conflict. Such a response would be to say that just because there can be no world where God exists and does not create does not make God dependent on the world. That is, God being dependent on X is a stronger notion than God logically entailing the truth of the proposition that X exists.

Another option might be to press the relation between 2. and 4., and affirm that God is not determined to create the world. This requires holding that, while the fact that God created increases his praiseworthiness, it does not increase his glory or holiness. One must then argue that praiseworthiness is a relational property, holding where God's glory or holiness are made evident, and thus that praiseworthiness is not applicable in the same way where no world exists. One must allow that the Son can praise the Father, etc., but this may be avoided by appeal to the idea that the Son already perfectly knows the Father's gloriousness and holiness, and so holds him infinitely praiseworthy without external evidences. We, however, praise God for his creative work because such work evidences his glory to us, where we require some amount of evidence in order to come to rightly see that God is praiseworthy. Here, then, that God created the world gives us reason to praise him, yet it does not increase his praiseworthiness as seen from within the Godhead.

I am inclined to think, however, that this second route won't hold up. I take it that praise for someone on account of their doing some action is based on the idea that the action is evidence for a praiseworthy characteristic about that person. It is evidence for this characteristic precisely because that characteristic had something to do with the person's performance of the action in question. It is, then, precisely insofar as creation evidences God's divinity that creation gives us reason to praise God.

If we desire to explain creation, then we must presume that God's character determined his creative work. Otherwise, creation will not actually be explained. Any explanation of why God created will be incomplete if God was not determined by his nature to create. It may explain the possibility of creation, how it was not contrary to God's nature to create, but it will not explain the actual fact of creation. If creation is left mysterious, on the other hand, it is just as mysterious what characteristic of God we might be praising God on account of in praising him for creation.

Therefore, if we are to praise God for creation, then we should grant that God's nature compelled him to create, and we should hold that this does not entail that he is dependent on creation for his divinity or existence.

Ordinarily God's being free in a libertarian sense is supposed to be strongly motivated by problems such as his otherwise dependency on the created world. I have argued in this post that we ought to reject God's libertarian freedom in this case, and instead pursue alternative conceptions of what is involved in the relation of dependency. If God is not free in the libertarian sense for creating the world, then it is reasonable to suppose that he is not libertarianly free for any other actions either.

I Beside the World

In ordinary life, we are in the world. However, we are capable of abstracting from the world presented to us, and imagine various what-ifs. These alterations may be more or less extreme, from the existence of unicorns to the non-existence of the world. What remains in any case, however, is the imaginer's awareness of what is imagined, that is, in all my imaginings, I remain. In imagination, then, I am completely separable from reality. I do not appear to be in reality, then, or at least I appear to be quite different from most reality. Because of this, I seem to come on the world as a quite different sort of thing, the world stands, as it were, opposite me.

I appear, from this angle, to be fixed, whereas the world about me appears malleable. I am therefore able to ask questions about comparisons between this way things are and other ways it could have been. This gives me access to modal terms such as possibility and necessity, as well as notions of ought, as I compare ways of acting in this world with one another.

On the other hand, my life may be determined in terms of the world's effects on me (granted that these effects are in interaction with my own effects on it). I am the person who has encountered this particular world in this particular way. My life, my consciousness, is essentially a consciousness in this world. I would, then, be a quite different individual had I been born into a different world. From this point of view, then, I seem to be, fundamentally, a product of the world, not co-equal with and opposite the world as in the above view.

The above seem quite contrary. One points out how much I can distance myself from the actual world, and how contingent it thus appears to be with respect to my own being.

One solution is to treat the first view about imagination as revealing nothing more than the extent of our imaginative powers. Thus, we would take my ability to imagine myself without the world but not the world without myself to be simply about my powers of imagination, and to have no relevance for metaphysics. Another solution is to take the second view as getting us wrong, and merely being about the connection between our experiences and the world our experiences take place in. Thus, in the latter solution, we would disconnect who I am from the life I have lived.

I do not particularly like either of these solutions. The first seems more acceptable than the second, however. The first threatens our modal concepts, suggesting that they are merely products of imagination. The second threatens our understanding of individuals as distinct, threatening to portray us each as fundamentally identical, empty selves over the world which possesses content. This is related to problems of free will. For any form of free will to work, various modal notions must be preserved, primarily the notion of ought. Most forms of determinism, likewise, treat our entanglement with the world as giving essential reasons to believe we are determined. Thus, any compatibilistic view of free will must preserve both points of view together in some way.

One way of doing this would be to argue that both views are equally right, and that neither is subsumable into the other. The most likely way of making this work would be to subsume both views under a third view. Perhaps we come upon the world already having our own, pre-experiential, content which then impinges upon our relation to the world and permits us to step back from it (that is, we may innately be a particular sort of person, independent of any physical existence). Perhaps, too, we are fundamentally linked to our experiences, but our experiences are less entangled with the reality out there than it seems, and more subject to our own creativity (to avoid LFW at all, this must be combined with pre-experiential content).

The problem with the idea that we have pre-existential non-physically generated content (e.g., character, dispositions, etc., which cannot be traced back to anything apparently contingent about our lives) is that it basically returns us to LFW because it is essentially inaccessible. It would be as helpful to maintaining some variety of personal determinism as certain hidden variable interpretations of quantum mechanics are to maintaining that the universe is determined rather than chancy. On the other hand, should such an account work best, it seems difficult to avoid the conclusion that we are, at one level at least, basically souls of some sort, though it at the same time risks reducing the self to a soul, and downplaying our nature as fundamentally embodied beings, and thus risks downplaying the necessity of the resurrection of the dead for beings like us. This issue with embodiment tends to arise with any view that requires souls, however, so it might not be much of a real problem, but rather a danger inherent in our being (assuming we are) body-soul amalgams. Note that, from a God's eye view, this would still be compatibilistic freedom, but with no hope of our ever being able to predict human actions even in principle, since certain variables (the pre-experiential content) would be available only to God.

An alternative might be to subsume our imaginative lives under our lives in the world, so that the experiences which constitute me include imaginative experiences which arise from my encounter with the world. This requires an account of why the notions which arise from purely imaginative thought should be regarded as having any weight. This might arise simply because we are capable of acting from the point of view which imagination provides, and thus are not constrained by actuality. The fact that only actuality is ever actual need not bother us so long as the awareness of alternatives plays a necessary role in explaining why this actuality was actualized rather than some other.

Subsumption, however, does not play very well with portraying a compatibilistic perspective from which one can act as an agent. It tends, instead, to present freedom as a permissible because unavoidable delusion.

One problem with taking the imaginative point of view too seriously is that we are incapable of imagining apart from a point of view, and thus the point of view which cannot be eradicated from imagining may simply be a feature of imagining. It need not be true that we really could not but exist, despite our inability to imagine such a state of affairs without our awareness, and so, apparently, ourselves, remaining. Nevertheless, such a viewpoint makes us feel as if we are somehow more stable than the fluctuating world around us. I do not essentially change along with the world, and it seems like I might have. Experiencing might have felt deeper, less malleable, than it does in imagination. If this had been the case, then we would have felt ourselves to change along with our representations of the world, and thus have felt ourselves as unstable as the world.

Perhaps this is the best solution: we actually can imagine the world without us, in spite of the fact that we remain looking at such a picture. The one who views the picture is not in the picture, and thus the picture can be a picture which does not include that one. The one we cannot remove is one who is not essential to the content of imagination, but to the act of imagining, just as one needs a thinker to think. In this case, imagining is a function of persons, who are conditioned. Imagination gives us access to alternative options for how the world may be, and thus spread options before us to choose from. In choosing from these options, we may be determined, yet this does not remove the fact that it is an agent choosing which takes place, and that the optionality of the options is relevant to what is going on. I suspect that the only way in which a determinism may contradict free will is if it removes any sense in which the options must be perceived as available options by the chooser at the time of choosing in order to explain what the chooser did on account of the choice.

Distinguishing Agency in Determinism

Any form of determinism which holds that we are responsible must articulate some distinction, however fuzzy, between factors which are relevant to responsibility and those which are not.

It seems obvious that one ought not be held responsible for things over which I have never had any control over. This thought needs to be refined, however, as it at first seems like the premise underlying libertarian free will.

I am constrained by certain factors external to myself. These include some factors of brain chemistry and bodily structure. My position is that only agential factors--for example, my intentions, desires, worldview--are relevant to responsibility. Our desires, etc., are subject to moral judgment because they are rightly part of our agential makeup.

The following is mostly a first attempt to deal with this--possibly a second attempt, but from a different direction from before. It is subject to revision in future posts or elsewhere.

What is it for something to be "rightly part of our agential makeup"? First, they must be the right kinds of things, that is, they must be mental. Second, they must be more or less well integrated into our whole agential makeup. Third, they must be basically stable.

The remainder of this post will serve to briefly elaborate and support these three criteria.

Mentals

Only mentals may be agential in a morally relevant way.

I mean to be quite broad here. By "mentals" I mean whatever mental phenomena are, whether properties or things. The criteria excludes mere objects and merely physical properties. Non-subjective stuff is not subject to moral critique, except within the context of subjective relations. I think this criteria is obvious, but it is also important, since it keeps this account from being, at least flatly, materialistic.

Integrated

Only what is more or less well integrated into our whole agential makeup may be subject to moral critique.

This excludes phobias and other mental phenomena which neither support other aspects of our agentiality nor are so supported. A mental is supported by another agential feature when that agential feature provides a basis for the mental. Likewise, a mental supports another mental when it provides a basis for it. 'A is afraid of x because of agential feature y' is a case where y supports x, for example. This support only counts when the agent grants it, however. A must hold that y gives reason for the fear of x. That is, the support must be subjectively granted, it must exist as support within the agential makeup of the agent.

The question may arise as to how much integration there must be, and I doubt that answer can be clearly answered. Particularly given how non-differentiable mentals tend to be (that is, how hard it is to enumerate thoughts as distinct and fundamentally separate), it is hard to say how many links a given mental needs. It does seem like we can generally judge pretty well when something is anomalous in a person, however. The basic question is whether it fits into an outlook on the world which is perceived by the agent to be more or less coherent.

Some cases of irrationality may end up sneaking in, of course, but that seems like a point in favor of this theory, cf. Woody Allen. In these, the irrationality is seen as supporting aspects of the agential structure.

Stability

Only features whose form can be traced more or less clearly through time may be subject to moral critique. 

This may be considered as the diachronous version of integration. That is, where the above criteria holds that a mental must be supported or support, this criteria requires that a mental must have an origin which is not seen as an improper origin by the agent. Basically, this means that the agent must be able to maintain herself as a coherently storied being, and thus must be able to see herself as living out of or into a story.

Both this and the prior criteria have "more or less" in them, which permits for responsibility to admit of degrees.







Given these three criteria, agency may be distinguished from the ongoing flux of cause. I stand out by virtue of my being an integrated composition of mentals in an agential structure which develops organically through time.

N.B. On Agential Structure

I may return to this, but for now: agential structure includes more than mere mentals, for instance, action and unconscious tics may be agential when they exhibit other agential features (probably always including mentals). I am also inclined not to treat the category of "mental" as unproblematic, so this may turn out to be a major location for future revision.

Incomplete Reductio on Free Will

Let worlds be partial. A complete world is a set of all possibly true and possibly false propositions, together with their truth values. A partial world does not specify truth values for some of the propositions. In a partial world W, p is not either true or false, but either both possible true and possibly false, or either true or false. For every partial world, every possible (i.e., logically coherent) completion of it, whether complete or partial, is also a possible world. Thus, if in W = {p is F, q is T, r is both possibly T and possibly F} then {p is F, q is T, and r is T}  is a possible world, and {p is F, q is T, and r is F} are both also possible worlds. Any proposition which is specified in the same way in every possible completion is considered specified in that way in the original partial world.

Assume that there exists a possible (partial) world where the proposition ‘x is saved’ is unspecified for all x where x is a human, and that there are no propositions of the form “if p, then a is saved” (where a is some human) where p is unspecified (it cannot be true without specifying the truth of a is saved), and where there is no corresponding proposition “if not-p, then a is saved” (where a is some human). In that case, in some possible world, the proposition ‘x is saved’ would be false for all x where x is a human.

The original possible world, call it W, corresponds to a world where individuals have the capacity in themselves to determine, to some extent, their eternal destiny. The argument is not dependent on the actual unspecifiedness of truth values (and thus, granting God’s complete foreknowledge does not get one out of the conclusion). The unspecifiedness of the truth values of all ‘x is saved’ where x is human is intended to model LFW. So long as my salvation or damnation are not dependent on external forces, or at least so long as my damnation cannot be precluded by external forces, the argument should follow. Even assuming a Calmenian approach, where eternal security is granted with irresistible grace, the conclusion will follow, since each human has some choice over whether to enter into that state where they are stuck saved. The only way that the conclusion may be resisted is if propositions in the original partial world require that some people be saved, in which case the salvation of some will be based on external forces.

There are a variety of ways to modify the original world so as to more closely model views of our actual initial position. One may specify that certain special individuals are predestined, but so long as there are not too many of them, the conclusion retains its force. One may specify that the damnation of some is specified in the original world on account of a lack of opportunity, but this does not change the conclusion. One may specify that there are propositions in W of the form “if p, then a is saved” (where a is some human) where p is unspecified, and where there is a corresponding proposition “if not-p, then a is saved” (where a is some human), but in this case the specification of p will either be up to God, in which case he will be choosing sets of humans, rather than individual humans, and a kind of determination is included (I have suggested this as a kind of deterministic Arminianism before), or p is up to humans (or chance). In the case where it is up to humans (because humans have LFW) or chance, human freedom over one’s own salvation is still not retained, although neither is particular election—which strikes me as a worst of both worlds option, although intriguing. There is a plausible exception to the loss of human freedom where p is determined by humans in very restricted cases where p is a moral decision by some human, such as seeking God, but it is difficult to imagine many cases where it would intuitively be of the sort desired here, where either p or not-p will result in someone’s salvation. One further modification is to specify that the world will not end until some minimum number of humans have been saved. This last modification results in some world never ending, and having a number of humans approaching infinity, while others will be front loaded with damned people. It does not, however, evade the conclusion.

Given the argument, then, we effectively have

Premise: humans have LFW

Conclusion: There is some possible world where no one is saved.

The above modifications either limit LFW or change no one to almost no one. In the latter case, the modification does not seem to be of the sort which would alter our consideration of the argument. The argument is intended as a reduction on LFW, and so the first kind of modification is the intended result of the argument. The remaining option is to acknowledge the argument, claim that both the premise and conclusion are true, albeit not in our world. In this last case God could not guarantee that he would save a people for himself. He could know that, as it happens, he would save a people for himself, however, which may be enough. There would be no guarantee that, if God created a world, any of the humans would be saved as opposed to damned. He could create the world knowing how it would turn out, however, but could not constrain the worlds at his disposal to create to include worlds with humans who would be saved as a people for himself. We would expect, in that case, that, had there been no worlds where anyone was saved, God would not have created. We might likewise suppose that of the worlds available to God, on account of LFW, this was the one with, say, the least evil and the most saved people.

We also result in an order of creation as follows:

1.       God exists, and imagines all possible worlds.

2.       God’s foreknowledge of these worlds includes how people would behave in each of these beginning worlds.

3.       God determines how he would interact with each of the possible worlds (and foreknows the humans’ free responses to any of his possible interactions with them, to which he determines his interactions, etc., knowing how each possible action on his part would affect the worlds).

4.       God selects a (best, according to some measure) world, together with the foreknown free actions of humans and of himself.

5.       God creates the world, lets it run, and interacts with it and the humans in it, as foreknown.

Effectively, this appears to be a variety of Molinism. Placing divine choice where the above order places it, that is, above/outside of time, avoids the issue of God being determined by having foreknowledge (which I have argued for before). If we eliminate divine foreknowledge, however, there is no guarantee that the world God creates ends up being one in which anyone at all is saved.

Foreknowledge and Libertarian Freedom: The Self-Reference Problem

I have held a certain argument against the compatibility of libertarian free will and exhaustive divine foreknowledge which I thought I saw a way out of recently, but in writing this post discovered that the “way out” was susceptible to a modified version of the same argument.

The argument is as follows: if God has complete divine foreknowledge, then for God to do otherwise than he does would involve God causing his beliefs about the future to have been false (and thus, not knowledge). Thus, God could not choose to do otherwise than he does while retaining his complete foreknowledge. To put it another way: God’s complete foreknowledge includes foreknowledge of things which God does. Given that God knows what he will do, he must do that which he knows he will do, and so does not have libertarian free will.

The above argument works as is, however, only if God acts temporally. That is, if God’s actions follow each other in time, and are done in response to other temporal events, as is the case with our actions. If, on the other hand, God acts once, or all at one moment from his perspective, then it is possible for him to have libertarian free will with respect to his actions.

If God’s actions are temporal, then when God acts he already has the knowledge of what he is about to choose to do. He cannot, therefore, act otherwise. If God’s actions are done all at once, along with his knowing the future, then his actions may be libertarianly free. This requires more than just God’s acting in a moment, however. If God acts all in a moment, but foreknows in a prior moment, then the problem remains. If God acts without foreknowledge, then he effectively acts blindly. It is necessary, therefore, if we are to retain both God’s libertarian freedom and his foreknowledge, that God act in light of his foreknowledge of what will happen under certain circumstances. He then acts all in a moment choosing what he will do. Having done so, he may as well have complete divine foreknowledge, but it cannot affect what he does, since he has already acted. He may, in his actions, know what set of actions he is choosing and thus what the future will be, and may therefore perform each action in light of all the other actions which he is performing, and this, it seems to me, is as close to complete divine foreknowledge as we can get while retaining God’s libertarian free will—and is close enough for me (not that I endorse the position, given that I don’t actually believe that God has libertarian free will).

This counter, which I believe is a variety of Molinism, is supposed to allow for God having libertarian free will, but it is unclear as of yet whether it falls to the same argument as I started with if we modify the argument a little.

The problem is that Molinism requires God to have knowledge of what people will freely choose under certain conditions. If this includes God, then he has knowledge of what he will, in fact, do, and so is no longer libertarianly free. If it does not include God, then the question is why not? It cannot be due to the fact that his circumstances do not exist, or are unknown, since God, at least, could rigorously specify his circumstances which we have vaguely specified as choosing between various actions. If there is some fact as to what God will do in these circumstances, then, having complete foreknowledge of what would happen in various circumstances, i.e., knowledge about all facts about what will happen or be done under any possible circumstance, God will know what God will do under the circumstance at hand. Thus, even if God’s foreknowledge is limited to what will happen under various circumstances, God is still caught in his foreknowledge such that he cannot have libertarian freedom.

The point of arguing against God’s libertarian freedom is that if God does not have it, we do not need it in order to be morally responsible, or for any other purpose. If God is good and not libertarianly free, then moral agency does not require libertarian free will, else God would need it in order to be good. At this point, I believe I have shown that the options for belief regarding libertarian freedom are:

1. Open theist: deny divine foreknowledge, affirm libertarian freedom. 
2. Determinist: affirm divine foreknowledge, deny libertarian freedom.

The question is which we should choose. The choice is unproblematic for me, since I do not see libertarian freedom as logically possible. Likewise, do not think that the A-theory of time, which open theism relies on, is logically coherent either (more on that in a later post).

On the Possibility of Determinist Arminians

Okay, I am not an Arminian. The point of this is to show that, even if everyone were to agree to determinism, it would not necessarily remove the arguments between Calvinists and Arminians, and thus things like the Wesleyan denomination would still have a reason to exist beyond adding to the total number of denominations.

I take the relevant difference in this debate to be, not that of whether or not we have free will, but that of who the active agent in salvation is. I also believe that this question an be separated from the free will debate. I am not planning on saying much else in this post.

A Calvinist will say that God is the active agent, causing us to have faith. An Arminian will say that God initiates, enabling us to have faith by prevenient grace, but that we must each finally choose to have faith in Christ.

The hard part is separating the agent question from the free will debate. Given determinism, God knows the future. He knows what will happen given any original state of the universe he might create, and, given his nature, what he will do in that universe and how that will affect things. Thus, God knows who will be saved and has a certain amount of control over who is saved. However, this is a different kind of control than the Calvinist ascribes to God. The Calvinist holds that God chooses each individual. What determinism entails is just that God can choose from a certain number of, likely restricted, sets of possible saved people, which set to actualize.

So, given determinism, an Arminian needs to hold that God chooses from a set of possible worlds, and in each possible world, a certain set of people are saved--which God knows even while choosing which world to actualize. God's choice is therefore limited by the nature of the individual persons. He may choose, again to a limited extent, which set of persons to actualize, but which of those persons comes to faith would then be reliant on the natures of those people and their circumstances.

I think this leaves a meaningful distinction between the God as active agent and the person as active agent in salvation. I also think that this is actually where the difference is problematic--even given determinism. I therefore also think that the free will debate is not really all that important to theology.

Reading and Free Will

The internet has been down where I have been the past couple of weeks, or I probably would have written something. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, it is hard to evaluate what one does not have access to), I have no idea what it was I was going to write.


I tend to read philosophy even when the internet is fine, but over this summer I have noticed that I do not read fiction quite so much, and have the feeling that I do not know how to read fictional stories. I appreciate fictional stories as valuable. It is not a matter of not seeing fictional stories as valuable, but a matter of not knowing how to get the value out of it. This may well be the same as not having developed, or having lost, the taste for it.

The problem is that when I read, I tend to read the facts off the page, but that raises the question of what else there is to read. We often think as if the world consisted of the facts in the world, and those alone, but this deprives the world of meaning in the most basic sense. If we view the world as simply the facts, and not as having values, then the world is a very dull place. Thus, what I think I am missing in reading fictional stories as simply facts, is the implicit values of the world which the author is giving me.

To view the world as a person is to view the world as having values, or at least the possibility of value. Viewing the world as mere facts makes the idea of "value" inapplicable to the world (likewise, "interesting" or "dull"). Viewing the world as mere value thereby also removes any reasons for action. If there are no values in the world, then there is nothing to act on the basis of. To read fictional stories well, or any stories for that matter, then, it is necessary to view the world of that story as one to be acted from within.

How does one read a story, which will not change, as if one had to act in it? (This closely parallels the problem of free will: how is it right that I view the world as one I have to decide on a course of action within, when it appears as though what I do is simply part of how the world goes along?)

On the Logical Possibility of Single Predestination

A Calvinist will argue that God predestines some to be saved and equally predestines others not to be saved. This is called double predestination. A Lutheran, on the other hand, will argue that God predestines some to be saved and merely fails to predestine the others either way, so that they default, due to their sin nature, to being damned. They are left in their condition, not actively predestined to be damned. This is single predestination.

It may be noted that I have, before today, regarded single predestination as logically absurd. That line of thinking goes like this: God is omnipotent, thus he is able to do whatever he wills. A lack of willing to save is, given what he knows (i.e., given how things are), indistinguishable in its results from a willing to damn. Thus, if God does not will to save some, then those he wills to damn. I am not now changing my position, only raising an objection to such an over-simple argument against single-predestination which will require further investigation as to whether God must intend all that occurs or merely knowingly cause all that occurs (this distinction should become clear soon, if it is not already).

In the philosophy of morals, there is a suggested moral principle, which appears to be at work in most human moral reasoning, called the principle of double-effect. This principle, which may be regarded as an outcome of Kant's second formulation of the categorical imperative (always to treat humans as ends, never merely as means), is that one may cause harm in doing good if the harm is a side-effect of doing good, and not necessary to the doing of that good. This does not yet provide a basis for single predestination.

Let us consider a variation of the classic trolley dilemmas: There is a trolley coming down the track, and if nothing is done, it will run over five men. I am at a switch. If I pull the switch, then the trolley will go on another track which reconnects to the original track before where the five men are (so that if nothing happens on the side-track, the trolley will still run over the five men). Now, let us suppose there is a large weight on the track which will stop the trolley, thus saving the five men if I pull the switch (I should note that this version of the trolley dilemma did not originate with me, but it also seems to be in a variety of places, so I am unsure of the source).

The principle of double effect may be considered as the rule that one may knowingly cause harm, but one may not intend harm. This gets us closer to understanding a possible basis for single-predestination. If I do an act, one might ask me what I am doing, and I may say "pulling a switch," and they may ask me what I am doing that for, to which I may respond "saving five people from being run over by a trolley." They may then ask how it will save them, to which I may respond, "it will make the trolley hit that large object, and thus stop before it returns to the track." Now, if there is a man standing in front of the weight, this makes no difference to my intent. However, if the weight is, itself, a very large man, then I am intending harm to a person. The first is allowed, given the principle of double-effect, the second is not.

Now, to return single-predestination, the point of single-predestination is that God intends those who are saved to be saved, but that God does not intend the damnation of the others, despite the fact that he knows that they will be damned. The argument of single-predestination is that there is no action which God does where you could ask what he is doing in any way so as to get the answer "damning some."

Now, the moral problem of an omnipotent God saving some and not others is much more complicated than any trolley dilemma (for one, most would argue that God could have saved all, or none, if he had wanted), and it is not clear that it is right to argue that anything happens in the world which God does not intend, rather there are those who hold, and take comfort from, the belief that God intends all things for his glory and our good. The above was simply to show that, implicit in the disagreement between those who hold single-predestination and those who hold double-predestination, is a disagreement about whether God intends everything or simply knowingly causes everything, while intending only a part.

Causes at Two Levels, Chance, and Free Will

There are various places in Scripture where we can see God saying that he, himself, will do something. Divide the nation of Israel, or bring about what is now referred to as the diaspora, for example. At the same time, historians look at societal forces at that time, and see causes for those things happening. Does that mean that God did not do those things? What was the cause of Job's suffering? As readers, we see Satan making his requests, and there were the Sabeans and Chaldeans who actually killed his children and took his property, but Job himself says "The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD." and we are told in the very next verse that "In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong." (Job 1:22).

Thus we say that God acts through means. He ordains what happens, but he also ordains how it is that what happens comes about. These are the two levels of cause, then: by the ordaining will of God, and by the societal and/or physical consequence of other things. The second could be divided again, but I do not find it necessary for this point.

Because God Said So

First, this is always a true answer to the question "Why?" but it is still often the wrong answer, and one should avoid giving it as an answer to a question asked out of curiosity in even the smallest degree (my attitude in this respect apparently makes me fun to troll). At the very least, we ought to indicate some aspect of the nature of God that leads us to believe that this is a helpful answer to the question. This answer is getting at the purpose, what is often called the final cause, of things. It is similar to answering a child's question about why their bedtime is so early by telling them "because I said so," or, which is ethical "because you need to get up at such-and-such a time tomorrow, so if you don't go to sleep now you'll be tired and cranky, and that won't be any fun for either of us"

Because Physics Says So

 This still tends to be a true answer to most questions, although, again, the answer ought to be what about physics makes it so. Where "Because God said so" gets at the purpose, "Because physics says so" gets at the causal sequence that led us to the thing to be explained, which is often called the efficient cause. "Why did the ball drop?" "Because I let go of it, gravity, etc." "But why did you let go of it?" At this point we do not have a story about how the physical interactions led to the person's dropping the ball, and, given Quantum dynamics, it may be by chance. In which case we could say that they were not determined to drop the ball.

Necessity/Possibility and Certainty/Uncertainty

In discussing this, let me make a distinction between what is necessary and what is certain, on the one hand, and what is possible and what is uncertain, on the other. What is necessary is that which would imply a contradiction if the reverse were true instead, and all else that we know, up to the time of the decision, were to remain the same. What is possible is what would not imply a contradiction if the reverse were true instead, and all else that we know, up to the time of the decision, were to remain the same. What is certain is what does happen, and what is uncertain is what may or might not happen. For examples: It is necessary that E=Mc^2, it is certain that Christ will return to judge the living and the dead, it is possible that I walk out of my room. I would argue that all events that happen are certain, and that there are therefore no uncertain things.

Free Will?

So, there is a sense in which one could say that we have Libertarian Free Will, the power to choose one way or the other, because it is not necessary, but merely certain, what we will choose. I hold that everything is certain because God made it as it is, and thus we are, theologically speaking, determined, but this does not remove the fact that we may have a form of libertarian indeterminism when we are looking purely at the temporal explanation for our actions. This libertarianism holds when we view ourselves from the immanent perspective of God, and is real, but it does not hold from the transcendent viewpoint of God.

God Made the World. Ergo, Theological Determinism

I would like, here, to return to why I believe that God made all of the world in all time as it is at each time.

First, God certainly made the world in its original state. Second, time is a created thing. Therefore, God created time from a transcendent point of view, and thus created all that happens in and through and to time in the moment that he made it. The world is in time, and thus God, in creating time, created all the acts that occur in time, and acted in time in all the ways that he does and has and will, in response to our prayers. That is to say, his act of creation, because it occurs, at least from one perspective, to be transcendent, causes the cause of the world's beginning of being to be indistinguishable in cause and type from its continuing to be, from that perspective.

Libertarian Free Will and Theological Determinism

Thus, it is accurate to say that we have libertarian free will, and are determined by God to do as we do, and this is no contradiction because we are libertarianly free in the immanent view, but not the transcendent one, and theologically determined in the transcendent view, but not the immanent one. In the immanent view, we are called to seek God, but look from the transcendent view and you will see that God is the one who causes himself to be found in the most glorious way, and so we also say that he seeks us, even when we do not want to be found. Immanently, we choose to act, even sometimes rejecting God, but transcendently God is weaving all our lives into a tapestry that shall glorify him forever, even if we do not know how. From here, I would like to explain the five points of calvinism in light of this, and how one's understanding of them may be altered by this combination of libertarianism and determinism.

Total depravity--our wills can only do what is evil apart from God, I have argued that this is by definition: What is good is to glorify God in thought, word, and deed; to do anything that glorifies any other in the slightest, without intending it to be, at the same time and even more, glory to God, is to sin. This remains in both immanent and transcendent views if one agrees with me about what sin is.

Unconditional grace--If, apart from worshiping God, we can do nothing good, then what good could we do to receive salvation? Salvation is what puts us in the place where our "worship" is no longer abhorrent to God, that is, our "worship" becomes Worship. God has already made certain all of our acts, so that even if we freely will to accept salvation, that was ordained by God, and why should he be kept from ordaining this because we have been sinning in various ways before then? So was everyone else! If he caused none who had been sinning constantly beforehand to be saved, then no one would be saved. Shall we say it was our act of faith? Yes, without faith we would not be saved, but that act is there because, and only because, God put it there for what is really no visible reason to us. There is a sense in which, from the immanent view, God's grace may be seen as conditional upon our acceptance, but our acceptance is worship, and we cannot worship unless God reveals himself to be glorified, and that is from God, not from any human. I may focus in a later post on the temporal order in salvation. This is the point that seems to me to necessitate viewing salvation through both an immanent and a transcendent view.

Limited atonement--really bad phrasing. The work of Christ on the cross and his resurrection are enough for all the world to be saved by, with more left over. However, given that God ordained long before the cross who would finally be covered by Christ's sacrifice, it is not false to say that his sacrifice is only ever going to be applied to some, that is, while any may accept the free gift, and it is offered to all, it is ordained that only some will accept it, and the purpose of Christ in dieing was not to save all, but only those ordained that he save. If his purpose had been to save all, then he failed in his purpose, but because his purpose was to save those whom the Father had given him, he succeeds. The limit is in who will have it applied to them, not how many or who it is enough for. This is in both views, since the Holy Spirit applies our salvation to us in both views, but because of how libertarianism affects Irresistible Grace, holding only an immanent view of salvation which includes this forces you to say that Christ has died for some, who knows how many, but maybe they will be saved, maybe not, and thus it makes more sense, since it reduces to the same thing, to just dispense with it when viewing things immanently.

Irresistible Grace--God's grace in salvation (and all else) is not only necessary, but sufficient, to cause people to be saved. No one, not even the person's own self, can avoid their own salvation when God says "You will be my treasured possession." This is how those who Christ died in order to save are saved, whether with much running, weeping, and fighting, or not. From the immanent view, however, we can say that God's grace is resistible, and many resist for a long time before being saved, and some resist their whole lives, but this is not for want of the power of God.

Perseverance of the Saints--Once God has someone, he has them for good. Any who are truly saved will not die apart from God, and anyone who dies apart from God was never truly saved, though "On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’" (Matthew 7:22-23) By this we know that there are some who will die, and we will all think they believed until their death, but we shall see that they were deceiving themselves and us, and trying to deceive God. In an immanent view, this remains, but if we limit ourselves to judging by what people do, then we must not judge. Who are we to know? We cannot know the mind of a human, that is for God. a person's salvation is between that one and God. Yet we may decide that because of this that we ought to preach and teach as if most of those hearing were totally lost. What can we lose? It is impossible to overemphasize the gospel of Jesus Christ, which affects all of life. Only know that, if you are saved, then God holds you tightly, and you cannot be taken from him.