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Originally Posted by Jim Johnston  Metaphysics of Freedom
From your book: "Libertarianism: A view of freedom where ought implies can; one is free if one could have done otherwise; related to causality, if my act was caused it could not have been otherwise; libertarianism denies determinism ... in order to affirm freedom" (p. 126). |
Since he does not deny determinism any more than the list of Reformed folks that you posted on the previous thread, then it would be incorrect to call him a libertarian (on his own definition from said book)
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i) So are you saying you're a libertarian about "worldview, presuppositional, and reason?"
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Or Turretin:
"The foreknowledge of God implies indeed the infallibility of futurition and of the event and the necessity of the consequence, and yet does not imply coaction or violence,
nor take away from the will its intristic liberty."
So Turretin is a libertarian in some areas? He asserts liberty with the rejection of PAP.
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ii) I struggle to see how you could agree with my critiques at the first two, but not the second. I don't see how my argument could fail at any level that assumed ought implies can is required for moral responsibility.
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That is the need for discussion. Hard and Impossibility are two different positions.
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I can iff I want to, and my want is entirely predetermined by God, and since it is my want I am responsible for it
| Frankfurt counters would work at this level too. But first:
i) It appears you assume classical compatibilism CC. So you'd need to defend yourself against the myriad attacks of CC both from within and without the compatibilist camp (do you in your book I ordered)? We can see you affirm CC by your hypothetical model (S could have done otherwise if S had wanted to do otherwise). But first, it's not clear that CC (Hypothetical Classical Compatibilism, HCC) can refute the consequence argument.
A different worry with HCC is that its analysis of 'can' and 'could have done otherwise' sometimes wrongly tell us that we could have done otherwise even we clearly could not have. McKenna puts it this way: Suppose Danielle has been scarred by a terrible childhood accident involving a blond Labrador retriever. This accident rendered her psychologically incapable of wanting to touch a blond-haired dog. Imagine that, on her sixteenth birthday, unaware of her condition, her father brings her two puppies to choose between, one being a blond-haired Lab, the other a black-haired Lab. He tells Danielle just to pick up whichever of the two she pleases and that he will return the other puppy to the store. Danielle happily and unencumbered does what she wants and picks up the black Lab.
Was she free to do otherwise? It doesn't seem so. Given her childhood experience, she cannot even form a want to touch a blond-haired Lab, thus she couldn't pick one up. But in this case the HCC analysis would be true. That is: IF Danielle had wanted to pick up the blond-haired Lab, then she could/would have done so. This is clearly false, though. The problem brought out here is that HCC isn't enough. We need more than just: S could have done otherwise if S had wanted to do otherwise. We need, rather, something like this: ..."and S could also have wanted to do otherwise." And this pushes the question back to whether the agent could have wanted to do otherwise. To answer that requires another 'could' statement: S could have wanted or chosen to do otherwise. This requires another hypothetical analysis: S would have waned or chosen to do otherwise, IF S had wanted or chosen to want or choose otherwise. The same question would arise about this analysis, needing another 'could' statement to be analyzed, and so on ad infinitum... (cf. Kane, Intro to Free Will, pp. 28-31).
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It really seems that on your view, a homosexual is basically doomed. That being put aside, there are many people who experience accidents (close to drowning, car accidents), willful evil etc (molestation) and are seriously psychologically traumatized, but still overcome and go back to "normal". They return to swimming, ride/drive in cars, get married to someone of the opposite sex and practice regular intercourse etc.
At this point you could just pound the table and write off all those who do go back to normal and say they were not really really really psychologically incapacitated. They were just partly incapacitated.
Under Dr. Anderson's Analysis, the issue would be: does a more basic level of freedom contradicted the higher level of freedom. If all levels agree then one will stay as one is. If not, the conflict will have to be resolved.
For example:
Psychological: I want no part of blond dogs because of said accident
Worldview: Blond Dogs are the key to accessing heaven and avoiding hell. Any belief that blond dogs are bad is abnormal and should be repented of.
At this point, you can
a)embrace being hellbound
b)embrace heaven and go against your psychological urges
c)embrace a different worldview with different requirements for heaven
No one just goes, let me change my psychological viewpoint, today. They will fight against it, if they believe that something is wrong with that psychological viewpoint. That something wrong is provided by worldview and more basic considerations.