On 07 May 2007 I posted my term paper for a Metaphysics course I took as part of my on-going studies in philosophy. The paper, entitled Plantinga and the Problem of Evil dealt with Dr. Alvin Plantinga’s celebrated solution to the logical problem of evil. While most philosophers acknowledge Plantinga’s Free Will Defense as a successful reply to the problem, there are dissenting voices. My professor is one those dissenters, so I thought that it would be an enjoyable challenge to analyze both Plantinga’s Free Will Defense, and one of my professor’s essays on the subject. My essay, which you can find here, was the result of that work. My post went unanswered for a little over two months—and to be honest, I never expected anyone to make any comments. To my pleasant surprise, a Mr Steven Carr did just that on 16 July. Mr Carr’s comments can be found at the end of the link above. Here are Mr Carr’s comments:
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Steven Carr said...
“Now consider some state of affairs S such that in S Curley is offered—but has not accepted or rejected—a bribe. Obviously there are a great many possible worlds that include S—and in at least one of these Curley is significantly free but does no moral wrong.”
There are two possible worlds.
Let us assume God exists.
So Curley is in a situation S, which situation includes an omniscient God who infallibly knows that Curley will refuse the bribe.
If you believe in libertarian free will, there is also a situation S-prime, which is identical to S, except for one thing - the contents of God's knowledge. In S-prime , God infallibly knows that Curley will accept the bribe.
Now Plantinga declare it a fact that in both of those worlds, Curley will refuse the bribe.
This is obviously false.
The statement “God knows that if Curley is offered a bribe, he will freely choose to accept it,” is a plainly false statement. It contradicts Plantinga's libertarian free will assumptions that there are two identical worlds, differing only in the contents of God's knowledge (a world where we choose right in situation S and a world where we choose wrong)
God can actualise eithe of those two worlds. The situation is entirely symmetrical between good and evil.
If PLantinga says Curley is not significantly free in either of them, then that is a fault in his definition of an omniscient God.
“If he had, S would be actual, and Curley would have gone wrong and taken the bribe (for remember, God knows that if Curley is offered a bribe, he will freely accept it)”
God does not know that. Plantinga is pulling the wool over people's eyes.
Libertarian free will (if true), means there is a world where the counterfactual of freedom is that Curley will refuse the bribe.
Steven Carr said...
It is Christian dogma that God can, and has , created beings with free will that he knew in advance would never choose evil.
Nor does Plantinga's Molinism work (although Molinism is trivially true, granted libertarian free will and an omniscient God).
If it is part of the essence of me, that I choose evil when placed in some situations that occur in this world, then logically God can create a near-identical twin of me.
This twin behaves just like me, except on one or two occasions when I choose evil and he chooses good.
There is nothing to prevent God creating near-identical twins. My near-identical twin does not even have to be perfect. There could be circumstances in which I choose good and he chooses evil. Provided those circumstances are not actualised (and God doesn't have to actualise *every* circumstance I could logically find myself in), then there would be no problem.
So Plantinga's argument is shot to pieces.
Steven Carr said...
“Clearly there is some possible world in which Curley freely rejects the bribe—there is even at least one in which he does no moral wrong at all (and Plantinga acknowledges this). But if God actualizes that world, even weakly, Curley’s transworld depravity will be “triggered”: his S will be actual and he will go wrong with respect to his A.”
This is all just incoherent.
If the world is *defined* as being the world in which Curley refuses the bribe, then Curley will refuse the bribe.
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While I appreciate Mr Carr’s attention to my blog, I must admit that I do not find his objections to my essay to be formidable. To be frank, I cannot find a single unifying thread running through his replies, so I am forced to reply to what I take to be his main themes.
Steven Carr, Reply One—Libertarian Freedom and Red Herrings
In his first reply, Mr Carr attacks Plantinga’s argument because of the latter's commitment to “libertarian free will.” Carr thinks that the statement, “God knows that if Curley is offered a bribe, he will freely choose to accept it” is “plainly false.” Carr thinks that the Plantinga’s commitment to libertarian free will commits him to the idea that there are only two possible worlds, one in which human beings do right and one in which humans do wrong in some situation S (which he does not define beyond God’s knowledge of Curley’s actions). Now God, Carr thinks, can actualize either of these worlds.
Unfortunately for Mr Carr's case, all this is a mere red herring. Plantinga’s Free Will Defense certainly assumes some form of libertarian freedom. But it is not clear that this undermines his free will defense. Certainly the argument includes the premise that human beings are significantly morally free (by which Plantinga means that human beings are free with respect to their actions, and that those actions are not causally determined). This may or may not be the case; but for the purposes of Plantinga’s argument libertarian freedom need only be possible—and it certainly seems to be possible. To defeat Plantinga's argument, Carr would have to show that libertarian freedom isn't even possible; and he's hardly accomplished that.
Furthermore, Mr Carr makes the assertion that if libertarian freedom obtains, then there are only two possible worlds. It is not at all clear how these two possible worlds differ—at one point Carr says they differ in terms of the contents of God’s knowledge; at another, that one is the world where human beings “choose right” in S and one in which they choose wrong (though note that Carr did not stipulate that all human beings are included in S nor even that S is a part of both possible worlds). In any event, it hardly matters how Carr characterizes the two worlds, because his basic assertion—that libertarian freedom entails that there are only two possible worlds—is false. Libertarian free will is the view that human beings aren’t constrained in any way with respect to their moral choices, that every moral choice is completely freely chosen by a moral agent, and not determined by any causal factors other than the agent’s own volition. Carr thinks that this entails that there are only two possible worlds. But it is not at all clear that such entailment obtains! If Mr Carr wants to claim that libertarian freedom is incompatible with Plantinga’s free will defense, he is going to have to justify the claim that libertarian freedom entails only two possible worlds, because it is far from clear just why libertarian freedom would constrain the number and nature of possible worlds. In fact, it seems to me that just the opposite is the case.
Consider the case of Adam, a tourist in Las Vegas. Adam is playing blackjack; Bill is his dealer, and Charlie is playing the position to Adam’s left. During play, just as Charlie is pulling out his wallet to pay for more chips, Bill has a heart attack. Charlie, a medical doctor, abandons his wallet on the table, and rushes to Bill’s aid. This leaves Adam with at least four choices that I can see. (1) He can steal Bill’s wallet and leave. (2) He can steal the chips on the table and leave. (3) He can steal the chips and the wallet and leave. (4) He can ignore the chips and the wallet, and call for help. If one subscribes to libertarian freedom, all choices are possible for Adam. His will is not constrained in any way with respect to what choice he will make. So it seems to be the case that there are not just two possible worlds but four: one in which Adam chooses (1), one in which he chooses (2), and likewise for (3) and (4). And when one considers how very many choices all the people in the world have to make, and how very many options they face in making those decisions, it seems clear that there are far, far more possible worlds than the two that Mr Carr proposes--to say nothing of the possible worlds in which there are no people at all!
Mr Carr makes much of the implications of libertarian free will; but libertarian freedom does not have the entailments that he thinks it does! Either Mr Carr misunderstands the implications of libertarian freedom, or he misunderstands the role of freedom of will in Plantinga’s free will defense, or he has a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of possible worlds. In any event his analysis of all three is wrong, so his first reply hardly presents a problem to Plantinga’s solution to the logical problem of evil.
Carr might be able to attack libertarian freedom in order to undermine Plantinga’s argument. In order to do that, he will have to come to an accurate understanding of libertarian free will. But over and above this, Plantinga doesn’t need his argument to be true—he only needs it to be possibly true. So if Mr Carr is to employ an attack on libertarian freedom in an effort to refute Plantinga’s Free Will Defense, he will have to show not only that libertarianism is false, but that it is necessarily false—that it is, that it is not even possibly true.
It turns out that all this is a red herring—Mr Carr employs a scattershot approach to defeating Plantinga’s argument in which he makes grand assertions (“This is obviously false”) and dubious claims (“Libertarian free will (if true) means there is a world where the counterfactual of freedom is that Curley will refuse the bribe”) which do not actually address Plantinga’s argument, but which only serve to distract from the issue at hand. But let us not allow Mr Carr to distract us from what is at issue: Plantinga’s Free Will Defense.
Steven Carr Reply Two—Red Herring, Meet Straw Man
Again, Mr Carr employs the same scattershot approach in this reply that characterized his first. His hope is that one of his many claims (which, conveniently, are left to stand as mere propositions for which he does not offer any substantive arguments) will score against Plantinga's argument. Mr Carr even presumes to describe Christian beliefs; he claims that “It is Christian dogma that God can, and has , created beings with free will that he knew in advance would never choose evil.” Curiously, this claim is not at all familiar to me, despite my many, many years of Christian faith; perhaps I should have been reading the Gospel According to Steven Carr! In any event, Mr Carr does make one near argument in this reply, one which revolves around the ability of God to create near-identical twins.
“If it is part of the essence of me,” Carr says, “that I choose evil when placed in some situations that occur in this world, then logically God can create a near-identical twin of me.” Now, in the first place it is not at all clear that the inclusion of free will in a human’s essential nature is sufficient for knowing that God has the ability to create a near-identical twin of some person. Perhaps it is the case that freedom of will is part of the essential nature of human beings but that there is no God! It certainly seems possible for that to be the case. And if it were, the inclusion of freedom in human nature wouldn’t say anything at all about God! So right from the start, Carr’s argument stands on shaky ground, being based on so questionable a conditional as he has given us.
But let us grant that God has this ability for the sake of further inquiry. Carr says that this twin behaves exactly like him except on the “one or two” occasions in which Carr does wrong. On those occasions, twin-Carr chooses good. But Carr goes further, asserting that on the occasions where he chooses good, twin-Carr chooses evil.
Now suppose that twin-Carr exists in possible world W and suppose that the actual world and W are identical in every respect except for the fact that Carr and twin-Carr’s moral behavior are mirror opposites. Whenever Carr chooses evil, twin-Carr chooses good and vice versa. I am willing to grant all this because this has absolutely no bearing on Plantinga’s Free Will Defense. Plantinga’s basic assertion is that it is possible that God could not have created a world with moral good but no more evil. And it is not clear how Carr and twin-Carr will disprove such an assertion. Carr has as much as admitted that there are “one or two occasions” in which he chooses evil. So if God actualizes the world in which Carr exists (that is, the actual world) there will be evil in the world (at the very least the amount that results from Carr’s evil choices, however modest). So if God actualizes that world, there will be evil in the world, and it will not have been shown that God could create a world with moral good but no moral evil. But suppose that God had actualized W, the world containing twin-Carr. If he had done that, there would still have been moral evil in the world. Remember, twin-Carr’s moral behavior is a mirror opposite from Carr’s—which means that there are only “one or two” occasions in which twin-Carr chooses moral good. Which obviously means that every other of twin-Carr’s decisions are for moral evil. And that means that twin-Carr will bring about moral evil. And that means that if God actualizes W, it will be a world that contains moral evil. And so Mr Carr has still not shown that it is possible for God to actualize a world with moral good but no moral evil.
Mr Carr thinks that to get around these problems, all God has to do is not actualize the particular circumstances in which he chooses evil. But he fundamentally misunderstands the nature of world-actualization (as Plantinga characterizes it). Plantinga thinks that God actualizes the initial conditions of the world, and that human beings complete that world by their own free choices (and if he had read my essay thoroughly, he would not be confused on this point). It is not that God actualizes particular circumstances—he actualizes particular worlds. Now, given this objection, Carr’s counter-argument would be that God should actualize the world in which he chooses to do no moral wrong. But if he did, that would betray a fundamental misunderstanding of my essay, because that is just the objection that I argue against in my essay. If Plantinga is right that transworld depravity is possible, then it might turn out that God can’t create a world with moral good but no moral evil.
As it happens, disposing of transworld depravity would have gone quite a good distance toward defeating Plantinga’s Free Will Defense. But again, Mr Carr has declined to actually engage with Plantinga’s argument. This time Carr has erected a straw man—Carr spends his time establishing the fact that God can create a moral-twin Carr; but Plantinga never discussed the making of moral twins! So establishing the fact that God could make a twin-Carr does absolutely nothing to defeat Plantinga’s argument. The grandiose claim “Plantinga’s argument is shot to pieces” is clearly not warranted. Plantinga wants to establish that it is possible that God could not have created a world with moral good but no moral evil. Mr Carr has successfully shown that God could have created a moral-twin Carr, but this in no way shows that it is not possible that God could not have created a world with moral good but no moral evil. So once again, Mr Carr has failed to produce an argument that will defeat Plantinga’s Free Will Defense.
Steven Carr Reply Three—Incoherent Indeed
In his third reply Mr Carr abandons his scattershot strategy (thankfully) but does not come any closer to defeating Plantinga.
Carr quotes two sentences from my essay, from my concluding reply to Geirsson and Losonsky. The quoted section deals with the issue of transworld depravity—which is what prevents God from creating a world without any moral good. If Mr Carr had thoroughly read my essay he would have understood the role and significance of transworld depravity. Instead, the only counter-argument he can offer is this: “This is all incoherent.” I submit that if Carr thinks that my summary of Plantinga’s argument is “incoherent” it is not due to error on my part. Transworld depravity is a simple matter of conditionals: if such and such happens, this and that will be the result. Not at all incoherent, unless one is so committed to one’s position that one cannot even comprehend the arguments of one’s opponents. In any event, the professor who graded the essay (who, incidentally, is not a fan of Plantinga) found it coherent enough to give me an “A.” That being the case, I’m rather inclined to accept his judgment of the matter over Mr Carr’s. Of course, this reply leaves me open to the fallacy of argument to authority, and that would be right. So I will say instead that there is a difference between an argument’s being logically inconsistent and an argument’s being difficult to understand. And Mr Carr’s failure to properly understand Plantinga’s argument from Transworld Depravity is hardly a winning critique of Plantinga’s argument. I suggest that had Mr Carr spent more time studying Plantinga, he might have actually offered an argument against Transworld Depravity, instead of making the bald assertion that it is inconsistent.
Carr claims, “If the world is *defined* as being the world in which Curley refuses the bribe, then Crley will refuse the bribe.” But nothing in Plantinga’s argument suggests that world-definition is what is at stake here. Plantinga never makes the claim that some possible world is defined as the world in which Curley accepts or refuses the bribe. He merely says that in some worlds Curley freely chooses to accept the bribe, and in some to refuse it. That choice is a feature of those possible worlds but Plantinga never claimed that that was what defined those worlds. Again, this is a straw man (though a poorly developed one). But no matter: transworld depravity can settle this issue. Suppose that in possible world W' Curley is offered a bribe and chooses to refuse it. In that world, Curley suffers from transworld depravity—that is, in W' Curley does no wrong (including refusing the bribe). But because he suffers from transworld depravity, if W' were the actual world, Curley would go wrong with respect to the bribe. Thus it would turn out that God hadn't actualized W' at all--because Curley's choosing to reject the bribe is a feature of W', and if Curley accepts it, the world that has been actualized can't be W'.
Transworld Depravity Triumphant
And therein lies the power of transworld depravity. If a person suffers from transworld depravity, there is no way for God to actualize a world with no moral evil because any attempt to actualize such a world would activate transworld depravity—and then moral evil would have been brought into the world and it would turn out not to be a world with no moral evil. And most importantly, transworld depravity doesn’t have to be true—it only has to be possible. If transworld depravity is even possible, then Plantinga has established that it is possible that God could not create a world in which there is moral good but no moral evil.
Although I applaud Mr Carr for engaging in discussion around this issue, I must conclude that his attempt to defeat Plantinga’s Free Will Defense is utterly unsuccessful.
