مطالب

My objective in this article is to question whether the problem of free will can, within our current conceptual system, be framed coherently. It is already widely recognized that a mental faculty, the will, needed to initiate action, no longer fits with current thought. However, we can still ask whether human decisions and actions are determined by something other than the agent. So the important question is whether we still have a cogent concept of determinism . The two prevalent alternatives are a closed set of deterministic laws of nature, and a simple distillation of the principle of sufficient reason: all events must have a cause. I first provide examples showing that philosophical concepts come and go as categorial frameworks change. The modern concept of deterministic laws of nature was developed during the latter half of the modern period and is now being called seriously into question. G. W. Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason could only be justified in theological terms, which most contemporary Western scholars reject. I end with an inadequate account of a dawning worldview based on complex adaptive systems theory, in which most human actions are best described in terms of non-necessitating propensities .

The principle of alternate possibilities ( PAP ) says that you are morally praiseworthy or blameworthy for something you do only if you could have done otherwise. Frankfurt examples are putative counterexamples to PAP. These examples feature a failsafe mechanism that ensures that some agent cannot refrain from doing what she does without intervening in how she conducts herself, thereby supposedly sustaining the upshot that she is responsible for her behavior despite not being able to do otherwise. I introduce a Frankfurt example in which the agent who could not have done otherwise is God. Paying attention to the freedom requirements of moral obligation, the example is commissioned, first, to assess whether various states of affairs that are unavoidable for God can be obligatory for God and for which God can be praiseworthy. The example is, next, used to unearth problems with conventional Frankfurt examples that feature human agents. I argue that conceptual connections between responsibility and obligation cast suspicion on these examples. Pertinent lessons that the divine Frankfurt example helps to reveal motivate the view that divine foreknowledge and determinism, assuming that both preclude freedom to do otherwise, may well imperil obligation and responsibility.

Divine freedom is reviewed with respect to three important themes: fate, revisions in divine decisions, and divine obligations. A study of the first theme yields the conclusion that God is free because He has absolute power and authority. In addition, God is free in relation to human beings in the sense that He can do what they do not expect. This theme is found under the heading of decree and measure, qaḍāʾ and qadar. Theologians have also grappled with the problem that the divine decrees appear to change, and on the tablet containing the divine decrees, there can be changes and erasures. This leads to the second topic, badāʾ, the apparent revision of divine decisions, which the theologians treat as abrogations of commands. God can be understood to foster a relationship with us in which He will appear to us as free to respond to our changing conditions, especially prayer and repentance. Finally, the obligations God sets for Himself and reveals to us through scripture are considered. This indicates a kind of divine freedom that only has meaning in the loving relationship between God and His servants that is cultivated through divine revelation. It is then suggested that these various dimensions of divine freedom can best be understood through complementing philosophical and scriptural approaches to the issues and that the understanding of this kind of synthetic hermeneutics can be deepened through comparative theology.

An argument is presented, based on a common-sense interpretation of an everyday experience, for emergent dualism as the best available account of the origin of the human mind/soul. Emergent dualism is superior to subjective idealism in that it honors the common-sense conviction that the things we encounter have a real, physical existence, separate from our mental perceptions of them. It is superior to materialism in that it allows for our mental states to have real, physical effects, distinct from the effects of the physical states that accompany the mental states. It is also superior to materialism in allowing for a real, unified self that is not merely a collection of physical particles. These features allow emergent dualism to provide a foundation for libertarian free will; belief in such free will is another deliverance of common sense that cannot readily be reconciled with materialism. Emergent dualism is superior to standard varieties of dualism in giving a plausible account of the minds of non-human animals. Perhaps surprisingly, emer gent dualism is superior both to traditional dualism and to standard varieties of materialism in combining readily with theories of biological evolution, in which natural selection promotes both the physical and mental development of complex organisms.

If we have libertarian free will, then it is plausible to believe that the occurrences of certain physical events have irreducible and ineliminable mental explanations. According to a strong version of (metaphysical) naturalism, everything in the physical world is in principle explicable in nonmental terms. Therefore, the truth of naturalism implies that libertarian choices cannot explain the occurrences of any physical events. In this paper, I example a methodological argument for the truth of naturalism and conclude that the argument fails. I then consider additional concerns raised against the reality of libertarian freedom. First, I examine the claim that if a physical event E is not causally determined to occur by another physical event, then there is no way to account for the difference between E’s occurring randomly and E’s being causally determined to occur by a mental event. Second, I consider the assertion that the affirmation of libertarianism is a mind-of-the-gaps version of the God-of-the-gaps objection to a divine explanation of a physical event. Third, I take up the question of whether the inability of libertarians (or anyone else) to pinpoint precisely where the initial physical effects of libertarian choices occur is a good reason for rejecting libertarianism. Fourth, I examine the claim that belief in the existence of the soul or immaterial mind is the result of an explanatory hypothesis to account for how libertarian free choices can causally produce physical effects. Fifth, I look at the traditional objection to substance dualism from the impossibility of causal interaction between a soul and its body.