Philosophy 410: Philosophy of Religion

Monday, September 22, 2008

God and Free Will

Suppose it were known, by someone else, what you are going to choose to do tomorrow. Wouldn't that entail that tomorrow you must do what it was known in advance that you would do? In spite of your deliberating and planning, in the end, all is futile: you must choose exactly as it was earlier known that you would. The supposed exercise of your free will is ultimately an illusion. Historically, the tension between foreknowledge and the exercise of free will was addressed in a religious context. According to orthodox views in the West, God was claimed to be omniscient (and hence in possession of perfect foreknowledge) and yet God was supposed to have given humankind free will. Attempts to solve the apparent contradiction often involved attributing to God special properties, for example, being "outside" of time. However, the trouble with such solutions is that they are generally unsatisfactory on their own terms. Even more serious is the fact that they leave untouched the problem posed not by God's foreknowledge but that of any human being. Do human beings have foreknowledge? Certainly, of at least some events and behaviors. Thus we have a secular counterpart of the original problem. A human being's foreknowledge, exactly as would God's, of another's choices would seem to preclude the exercise of human free will. Various ways of trying to solve the problem – for example, by putting constraints on the truth-conditions for statements, or by "tightening" the conditions necessary for knowledge – are examined and shown not to work. Ultimately the alleged incompatibility of foreknowledge and free will is shown to rest on a subtle logical error. When the error, a modal fallacy, is recognized, and remedied, the problem evaporates.

Table of Contents (Clicking on the links below will take you to that part of this article)

1. Introduction: The Problem of Foreknowledge and Free Will

2. Three Kinds of Determinism

3. The Relationship Between Epistemic and Logical Determinism

4. Attacking the Premises of Deterministic Arguments

4a. Can a Future Contingent be true prior to the event it refers to?

4b. Can a Future Contingent be known prior to the event it refers to?

5. Possibility, Necessity, and Contingency

6. The Modal Fallacy

6a. The Modal Fallacy in Logical Determinism

6b. The Modal Fallacy in Epistemic Determinism

7. Residual concerns – Changing the past; Changing the future

8. Concluding Remarks

Further Reading

Notes

Sunday, September 21, 2008

For Monday:

7. God and Forgiveness, Anne Minas, p. 25 in Cahn’s Exploring Philosophy of Religion
8. God and the Concept of Worship , James Rachels , p. 38 in Cahn’s Exploring Philosophy of Religion

OPS Writing assignments due on both.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Philosophy Club

From: pr.society@hotmail.com

Greetings:

I thank all of you who have responded to requests concerning participation in Morehouse College’s Philosophy and Religion Society for the 2008-09 academic school year. Your interest is very much appreciated.

Although it is on somewhat short notice, our first meeting/ interest meeting will be held on tomorrow, Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 5pm in Sale Hall. I apologize for the short notice, but we were running into some scheduling conflicts.

I would very much like for all of you to attend. We will be introducing the organization, its purpose, officers and general plans for the upcoming academic school year. We plan to hold meetings at least twice a month, but tomorrow’s meeting is important because it will lay foundational work concerning who concretely desires to participate in the organization and functions. We do not plan to hold you long.

Additionally, please invite all of your friends/ colleagues that are either philosophy/ religion majors or minors AND all those who have a general interest in philosophical or religious studies discourse (in its academic function). We will open the society up to ALL MAJORS.

As for right now, that is all. I wish you all well for the rest of the day and I hope to see you Wednesday afternoon at 5.

Best,

Taurean J Webb
President, Philosophy and Religion Society

Monday, September 15, 2008

Today we discussed the concepts of a logical implication, logical consequence and/or a logical entailment.

For Wednesday, we will discuss various responses to the problem of divine foreknowledge and human free will. OPS writing assignments due on all of them, if you haven't turned them in yet:

3. God's Foreknowledge and Free Will , Augustine , p. 11 in Cahn’s Exploring Philosophy of Religion

4. God's Omniscience and Contingent Events , Levi Gersonides , p. 13 in Cahn’s Exploring Philosophy of Religion
5. Does God Know the Future? , Steven M. Cahn , p. 16 in Cahn’s Exploring Philosophy of Religion

For Friday; OPS writing assignments due then:

6. Does God Change? , William Hacker , p. 20 in Cahn’s Exploring Philosophy of Religion

8. God and the Concept of Worship , James Rachels , p. 38 in Cahn’s Exploring Philosophy of Religion

Saturday, September 13, 2008

FYI here's an overview of the topic discussed yesterday:
http://www.iep.utm.edu/d/divine-c.htm
See especially
3. A Persistent Problem for Divine Command Theory: The Euthyphro Dilemma

relationship between God and ethics. In this dialogue, written by Plato (1981), who was a student of Socrates, Euthyphro and Socrates encounter each other in the king’s court. Charges have been brought against Socrates by Miletus, who claims that Socrates is guilty of corrupting the youth of Athens by leading them away from belief in the proper gods. In the course of their conversation, Socrates is surprised to discover that Euthyphro is prosecuting his own father for the murder of a servant. Euthyphro’s family is upset with him because of this, and they believe that what he is doing—prosecuting his own father—is impious. Euthyphro maintains that his family fails to understand the divine attitude to his action. This then sets the stage for a discussion of the nature of piety between Socrates and Euthyphro. In this discussion, Socrates asks Euthyphro the now philosophically famous question that he and any divine command theorist must consider: “Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?” (p. 14).

For our purposes, it will be useful to rephrase Socrates’ question. Socrates can be understood as asking “Does God command this particular action because it is morally right, or is it morally right because God commands it?” It is in answering this question that the divine command theorist encounters a difficulty. A defender of Divine Command Theory might respond that an action is morally right because God commands it. However, the implication of this response is that if God commanded that we inflict suffering on others for fun, then doing so would be morally right. We would be obligated to do so, because God commanded it. This is because, on Divine Command Theory, the reason that inflicting such suffering is wrong is that God commands us not to do it. However, if God commanded us to inflict such suffering, doing so would become the morally right thing to do. The problem for this response to Socrates’ question, then, is that God’s commands and therefore the foundations of morality become arbitrary, which then allows for morally reprehensible actions to become morally obligatory.

Most advocates of Divine Command Theory do not want to be stuck with the implication that cruelty could possibly be morally right, nor do they want to accept the implication that the foundations of morality are arbitrary. So, a divine command theorist might avoid this problem of arbitrariness by opting for a different answer to Socrates’ question, and say that for any particular action that God commands, He commands it because it is morally right. By taking this route, the divine command theorist avoids having to accept that inflicting suffering on others for fun could be a morally right action. More generally, she avoids the arbitrariness that plagues any Divine Command Theory which includes the claim that an action is right solely because God commands it. However, two new problems now arise. If God commands a particular action because it is morally right, then ethics no longer depends on God in the way that Divine Command Theorists maintain. God is no longer the author of ethics, but rather a mere recognizer of right and wrong. As such, God no longer serves as the foundation of ethics. Moreover, it now seems that God has become subject to an external moral law, and is no longer sovereign. John Arthur (2005) puts the point this way: “If God approves kindness because it is a virtue and hates the Nazis because they were evil, then it seems that God discovers morality rather than inventing it” (20, emphasis added). God is no longer sovereign over the entire universe, but rather is subject to a moral law external to himself. The notion that God is subject to an external moral law is also a problem for theists who hold that in the great chain of being, God is at the top. Here, there is a moral law external to and higher than God, and this is a consequence that many divine command theorists would want to reject. Hence, the advocate of a Divine Command Theory of ethics faces a dilemma: morality either rests on arbitrary foundations, or God is not the source of ethics and is subject to an external moral law, both of which allegedly compromise his supreme moral and metaphysical status.

Friday, September 12, 2008

For Monday and Wednesday

For Monday and Wednesday, OPS writing assignments due Monday on all of them: