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Monday, October 25, 2010

Alvin Plantinga's Free Will Defense

Alvin Plantinga is perhaps the foremost Christian philosopher of our generation. He has been, until his recent retirement, the John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. His fame is due primarily to two things: 1) His development of the idea that the belief in God is properly basic and is warranted without any external evidence (Reformed Epistemology). 2) His Free Will Defense which is viewed by many as having demolished the logical problem of evil. I have, in a prior post,  discussed the essence of his Reformed Epistemology. In this post, I would like to point out a few problems with his Free Will Defense as a solution for the logical problem of evil.

The logical problem of evil, as opposed to the evidential problem of evil, is the contention that to posit the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good god in an evil world constitutes a logical contradiction. In other words, an all-powerful god, all-knowing god, and a perfectly good god could not permit evil. (The evidential problem of evil says it is unlikely, not necessarily impossible, for such a god to exist given the amount of  evil in the world).

Plantinga explains the essence of his argument:
[W]e can make a preliminary statement of the Free Will Defense as follows. A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all. Now God can create free creatures, but He can't cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if He does so, then they aren't significantly free after all; they do not do what is right freely. To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, He must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can't give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so (God, Freedom, and Evil [1977], 30).
1. A world with significantly free creatures is more valuable than one with creatures who are not significantly free.

I would like to know on what basis Plantinga makes this claim. How can one say that a world with significantly free creatures is really more valuable than one without such free will? He is making "significant free will" more important than the permission of evil and the subsequent suffering it entails. I would like to see an argument for this assertion.

2. An act can only be considered morally significant or praiseworthy if the individual could have made a different choice.

In other words, if one is not capable of making an evil choice, then his choice to do right is not morally praiseworthy. Plantinga explains:

What is relevant to the Free Will Defense is the idea of being free with respect to an action. If a person is free with respect to a given action, then he is free to perform that action and free to refrain from performing it; no antecedent conditions and/or causal laws determine that he will perform the action, or that he won't. It is within his power, at the time in question, to take or perform the action and within his power to refrain from it.

...[I] shall say that an action is morally significant, for a given person, if it would be wrong for him to perform the action but right to refrain or vice versa
(Ibid., pp. 29-30).
This would mean that none of God's actions are morally praiseworthy and that in reality the term morality does not apply to God. As James R. Beebe puts it:

God, it seems, is incapable of doing anything wrong. Thus, it does not appear that, with respect to any choice of morally good and morally bad options, God is free to choose a bad option. He seems constitutionally incapable of choosing (or even wanting) to do what is wrong. According to Plantinga’s description of morally significant free will, it does not seem that God would be significantly free. Plantinga suggests that morally significant freedom is necessary in order for one’s actions to be assessed as being morally good or bad. But then it seems that God’s actions could not carry any moral significance. They could never be praiseworthy. That certainly runs contrary to central doctrines of theism ("Logical Problem of Evil").
3. To accomplish the greater good, God is justified in permitting evil.

Plantinga writes:

The Free Will Defense can be looked upon as an effort to show that there may be a very different kind of good that God can't bring about without permitting evil (God, Freedom, and Evil, p. 29).
My problem with this is twofold. First, it contradicts the concept of absolute morality which Christians claim to hold. However, in the Free Will Defense, it is okay to allow some evil so that a greater good will come from it. This is "the end justifying the means" which Christians usually attribute to moral relativism. Such a view takes a teleological or consequential view of ethics as opposed to what Christians normally insist upon, a deontological view. In other words, actions are not intrinsically right or wrong but are judged to be right or wrong depending upon the results of the actions.

Second, to permit an evil to occur when one could have prevented it makes one culpable. Christians often make the distinction between God permitting evil and God causing evil. They argue that God cannot cause evil because that would violate his holy character. Why does it not violate his holy character for him to permit evil? If I permit my child to do evil, how can I hold him responsible for what I permitted; and, furthermore, how can I escape culpability in the evil he committed? Permitting something is a form of condoning it.

19 comments:

  1. I think, Ken, God is necessarily morally perfect while humans can do what is moral in a contingent sense, is how Plantinga would answer that point.

    But . . . we seem to live in a world where God allows almost anything (though Christians will maintain He restrains evil in some way). But none of us would ever create a family or society like this. First, just by having the capacity to create a society or family would tell us we also had some sort of duty of care. Second, basic intuition tells us that maximal freedom will create more raping and pillaging and disadvantage the weakest and poorest among us.

    When Jesus talked about the disciples being evil but knowing how to give good gifts, as an analogy for how much more benevolent God is, surely we can play at that game too, and ask whether God can be in any way good without having the remotest sense of a duty of care.

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  2. It's unfortunate that Marc Hauser is basically disgraced, because in his book "Moral Minds" he talks about something really fascinating, which is how we have a bias towards acts of omission versus acts of commission. We're much more likely to judge the former as morally permissible, even though the outcome is the same.

    It's no surprise that God doesn't escape this bias. It's often rationalized that he didn't do it, but he permitted it. Of course, there are plenty of times in the Bible when he does do horrible things all by himself, and other times when he does horrible things by telling his followers what to do.

    The strangest paradox in my mind though is that God is supposed to be omniscient. He already knows every choice everyone is going to make, including all the horrible evil things people do to each other, and he creates them anyway (he has to... omniscient beings can't have free will!).

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  3. Mr Pulliam, you may be interested in Stephen Law's recent paper that tackles Plantinga's arguments.

    http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2010/02/evil-god-challenge.html

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  4. If God can't safeguard people against making evil choices without wiping out their freedom, how is heaven going to work?

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    1. One of the best questions ever. Assuming there was a heaven, those expecting it to be free of evil would be in for a surprise.

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  5. Exactly Hacksaw, if he can safeguard people against evil choices in heaven without wiping out free will, then why didn't he do that on earth. If he can't and just changes everyone to robots, then you won't be you. If he can't and still allows free will then what's to say that humans won't go sinning and destroy paradise again.

    Or it is all just a load of bullocks.

    Edit: lol word verification "confining"

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  6. "A world with significantly free creatures is more valuable than one with creatures who are not significantly free."

    How can a world class philospher make a statement like that? Personally, I would like to live in a world where God gave people free will, but limited it in order to avoid people inflicting suffering on others. I wouldn't need to see a dictator murder countless numbers in order to see the goodness of free will. And I would be perfectly willing to have my own free will cut short the moment I was about to harm another individual. After all, that is what we try to do in our society, right? Else we wouldn't have a legal system and police force in a free and democratic society.

    "Christians often make the distinction between God permitting evil and God causing evil."
    Agree that permitting something is a form of condoning it anyway. But then some (Reformed) teachers seem to essentially teach that God causes evil, side-stepping that problem (out of the frying pan, into the fire?).

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  7. "Christians often make the distinction between God permitting evil and God causing evil."
    Agree that permitting something is a form of condoning it anyway. But then some (Reformed) teachers seem to essentially teach that God causes evil, side-stepping that problem (out of the frying pan, into the fire?).

    There is that pesky Bible too, Isaiah 45:7 - "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things."

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  8. However, in the Free Will Defense, it is okay to allow some evil so that a greater good will come from it. This is "the end justifying the means" which Christians usually attribute to moral relativism. Such a view takes a teleological or consequential view of ethics as opposed to what Christians normally insist upon, a deontological view. In other words, actions are not intrinsically right or wrong but are judged to be right or wrong depending upon the results of the actions.

    That's something that's ALWAYS bothered me in apologetics circles. When justifying some horrendous act in the Old Testament they make utilitarian appeals to the greater good - while at the same time they want to claim they have absolute morality and some sort of deontological ethics. It's just having your cake and eating it too.

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  9. Nathan Hanna offers a reformulation of the Logical Argument from Evil which doesn't fall to the free will defense.

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  10. No, that is not the ends justifying the means. Sure, all those horrible genocides are argued using a utilitarian form of justification, and so is almost any appeal to every cruel and inhuman OT law the evangelicals don't want to see return but believe they were dictated by God.

    However, to allow some evil (not to commit some evil) so a greater good will come from it is not utlitarian. We do this all the time. Americans ostensibly do this with their gun laws (which is something I would never myself defend).

    This is the difference between the deductive and inductive version of the problem of evil. God could have created a hot stove to cook the vegetables on in the Garden of Eden, knowing full well Eve would lean over and burn her bare nipple on it one day, but knowing that this period of pain would be outweighed by cooked vegetables and a learning experience.

    The inductive version says that the variety and extent of evil is more the real problem, which even Plantinga agrees with.

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  11. However, to allow some evil (not to commit some evil) so a greater good will come from it is not utlitarian.

    Except in the OT.... Yahweh or his followers are committing it. Yahweh doesn't just allow the slaughter of infants but he commands it (1 Samuel 15:3).

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  12. I agree with you, Samuel. I was just constrasting the different arguments re. evil. Yaweh is a consruct of Jewish prophetic imagination, but there is some divine inspiration in there too, I think.

    You can't take all these things too uncritically, or you will end up either an atheist or a fundementalist.

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  13. Alright, I mean these as serious questions. They seem really obvious objections to the free will defense, so somewhere some theologian has probably already answered them, but I don't know the answer. So I'm not being flippant.

    1. If free will requires the possibility of evil action, and God has free will, wouldn't that mean that the acts of God are possibly evil?

    2. Alternately, if the acts of God are never possibly evil, that would necessarily mean that God has no free will. And if free will is so valuable that the pain of every abused child is justified by the value free will creates, then isn't it problematic of God possesses none of it at all?

    3. Alternately, if God's acts are possibly evil, but never actually evil, thereby meaning that he has free will but never does evil, then it is possible for free will to exist without evil, and the free will defense fails unless some really good reason exists that God can do this but humans can't... and I've never heard one.

    4. The best nominee for such a good reason would be if God, by nature, always chooses the best option he knows of, and by his omnipotence, always knows all possible options and which are best. Humans by contrast do not have omnipotence, so are occasionally evil. But for that to defeat the problem of evil, humans would have to always choose the good to the best of their ability, and that seems untrue.

    5. From a different perspective, is the free will defense compatible with the behavior of God in the Bible?

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  14. Ken, I'm addressing your points only because I can't address everything in the comments section on here.

    1. A world with significantly free creatures is more valuable than one with creatures who are not significantly free.
    "How can one say that a world with significantly free creatures is really more valuable than one without such free will? He is making "significant free will" more important than the permission of evil and the subsequent suffering it entails."
    --Say we were automata, or mindless beings without the freedom to choose good or evil, we would have no will if we (humans) were not free to make that choice. We would no longer be humans. So I think Plantinga is correct in saying that a world with free human beings is better than a world without (or a world with some form of robots with no free choices but no evil as well). If you had no freedom to choose evil, you would also have no freedom to choose love.

    With respect to addressing the response to evil and subsequent suffering in the world God does care about this, in not wanting it to happen. He has sent His son Jesus to die for our sin and evil so that we can live without sin and evil in eternity.

    2. God does not have the same constraints humans do, in that humans can choose good or evil, because by human nature we are flawed creatures; i.e. sinful by nature. God is not sinful by nature but He is holy or good by nature. He cannot act out of step with His nature, therefore the same logic of God's actions can be morally praiseworthy.

    3.--There is still normative (objective) right and wrong. This is not jumping in to relativism to let God give creatures free will. "However, in the Free Will Defense, it is okay to allow some evil so that a greater good will come from it" Not necessarily, but again, with the FWD, 'He can't give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so'
    --Your second point on this, "to permit an evil to occur when one could have prevented it makes one culpable" but this is not a 'free pass' God gives and says, go commit as much evil as you want. On the contrary he punishes evil. I could say 'to permit love to occur when one could have chosen not to allow it makes one culpable' so by that same line God is also responsible for the freedom to love.

    --If I permit my child to do evil, how can I hold him responsible for what I permitted; and, furthermore, how can I escape culpability in the evil he committed? Permitting something is a form of condoning it.
    Yes if you permit your child to take a kitchen knife under your supervision and stab people your are responsible. If you ask your child to make a sandwich while you are gone but he takes a kitchen knife and kills people you are not responsible for his choice to stab people. Your are confusing permitting action and condoning action. They are not the same thing.

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  16. Good comments so far. I haven't seen any references to natural disasters, which is a little surprising since this is usually the go-to rebuttal to the free will defense. Plantinga has resorted to suggesting that demons cause natural disasters in a lame attempt to claim they are covered by free will. Of course the obvious problem is that there is no reason to give demons free will since they can't be saved. And even if it were necessary for them to have free will for some other reason, why allow them to act in this world or interfere with human affairs? I can't imagine any possible justification for that.

    Ken I have to congratulate you for your answer to point 1. - "A world with significantly free creatures is more valuable than one with creatures who are not significantly free." I've read numerous responses to Plantinga's argument and this is the first time I've seen this point refuted the way you did. Plantinga is making a value judgement here; he assumes it is better to live in a world with both free and evil than with no free will and no evil. This seems to be a pretty obvious weakness in his argument that nobody else has mentioned.

    As others have noted in the comments section, we could also live in a world with limited free will and significantly less evil. If god were to remove our ability to rape, torture, and commit genocide, our freedom would be limited only slightly but human suffering would be greatly diminished. This would also not cause problems for the christian scheme of salvation since people would still be free to commit lesser crimes, thereby condemning themselves and requiring a savior.

    Again, both of these seem like very obvious problems with Platinga's defense and I'm surprised I've never seen them in any of the rebuttals published in university journals. Good job Ken.

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  17. Face it neck beard boys, Plantinga's defense kicks your world view in the balls and leaves it curled up on the ground in a fetal position, desperately gasping for the air that it knows it does not deserve but that it sucks down anyway to satisfy its own hedonistic impulses. Wow, Godless Goddess, your comments have really opened my eyes. Let’s put the Hitchens-Dawkins Kool-Aid down for a while and look at reality: Kalaam Cosmological Argument, the Argument from Reason, Fine Tuning of Universal Constants, irreducible biological complexity, the argument from morality…. Your entire world view lies shattered at your feet. If you truly honor the gods of reason and critical thinking half as much as you claim, you would plant your face firmly into your hand, step away from the device, find a quiet place, and rethink your life. Indeed, why are you even bothering to comment at all? No atheistic position can be taken seriously until two threshold questions can coherently be answered. 1. Why is the atheist even engaging in the debate. On atheism, there is no objective basis for even ascertaining truth; there is no immaterial aspect to consciousness and all mental states are material. Therefore, everyone who ever lived and ever will live could be wrong about a thing. By what standard would that ever be ascertained on atheism? Also if atheism is true, there is no objective meaning to existence and no objective standard by which the ‘rational’ world view of atheism is more desirable, morally or otherwise, to the ‘irrational’ beliefs of religion. Ridding the world of the scourge of religion, so that humanity can ‘progress’ or outgrow it, is not a legitimate response to this because on atheism, there is no reason to expect humanity to progress or grow. We are a historical accident that should fully expect to be destroyed by the next asteriod, pandemic, or fascist atheist with a nuke. In short, if atheism is correct, there is no benefit, either on an individual or societal level, to knowing this or to spreading such ‘knowledge.’ 2. Related to this, why is the atheist debater even alive to participate. If there is no heaven, no hell, no afterlife at all, only an incredibly window of blind pitiless indifference, then the agony of struggling to exist, seeing loved ones die, and then dying yourself can never be outweighed by any benefit to existing. As rude as it way sound (and I AM NOT advocating suicide) the atheist should have a coherent explanation for why they chose to continue existing. Failure to adequately address these threshold questions should result in summary rejection of the neckbeard’s position.
    In the end, we all know you can’t answer these questions because yours is a petty, trivial, localized, earth bound philosophy, unworthy of the universe.
    Finally, is there a basement dwelling troll left in the multiverse who doesn’t drag themselves out of the primordial ooze and logged onto this site in order to announce our collective atheism towards Thor, that gardens can be beautiful without fairies (a powerful rebuttal to fairy apologetics, by the way, but it leaves a lot unanswered about the Gardener), and that we cling to Bronze Age skymen due to our fear of the dark? Let me translate that to neckbeard: you are unoriginal, you are wrong, and you are an ass.

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  18. The problem is that free will doesn't exist because everything has a cause. Theists try to frame free will as a good vs evil choice. That ignores the fact that there would always be at least one external cause that pushes us to choose one thing over another.

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