All-or-nothing theology

My recent rumination on human freedom and power(lessness) has also produced some interesting thoughts about the divine. Remember that I, in the previous post of mine, entertained the thought that in order to really determine anything to happen, one would have to determine everything. Today, I will go more deeply into this theme and write, at last in this blog, proper theology. Please keep in mind that, as an agnostic, I do not utter anything about God but in a speculative sense.

First, on the concept of "determining". I take it to denote an act which, without any chance of failure, sets an occurrence to happen. This is whence "determinism" gets its meaning: a conviction that everything happens without the slightest chance of anything happening otherwise. My "determining" would not allow such statements as, for example, that the driver determines the course of the vehicle. The driver steers, yes, and usually has some kind of a mental representation of the route ahead, but determining would mean that there be absolutely no chance of anything other than the driver affecting the course of the vehicle. Not one unexpected bump, braking or collision, nothing.

Given that definition, it is hardly surprising that I do not think human beings can determine much in this world. Most people admit this straight away: no matter how well we plan our actions, we may always be taken by surprise. But many people, I believe, still would like to think that within ourselves, that is, in our minds, we can consciously determine things. Our freedom to do what we want might have external limitations, but internally we are free to determine ourselves. Now I have argued, quite persuasively, I think, that this is not the case. Let me recapitulate the essential from my previous post:

If my thoughts were in any way decoupled from the current situation, from the moment of spacetime where I experience myself now, why could I not predetermine my thoughts for all the future situations, up to the moment of my last breath? "But of course", you might say, "you cannot predetermine thoughts to be experienced in future situations, because you don't yet know what kind of situations you will end up in: thus, you have no chance of determining just the adequate thoughts for each situation." Well, that is very true indeed, and has been my point all along. The amazing thing is that it applies as much to the nearest future moment as to the farthest!

So, whatever happens in my mind is not something I (consciously) impose on the situation where I find myself. It is, rather, just another aspect of the situation itself. And this is why, in order to determine my thoughts in a given situation, I would have to determine all the other aspects of the situation as well. Now I think that "situation" would have to be the whole of reality. Let O stand for an occurrence I want to determine. If there were something, let it be X, in the reality that was not determined by me, it should remain possible that even the initially wanted O gets no chance of happening. In short, an undetermined X might prevent O from happening. The chance of X preventing O might be negligibly small, but theoretically, that would be enough: as long as X was not in my control, it could affect other things in unpredictable ways, so that I could not really determine them.

To be sure, that argument rests on some presuppositions that could be questioned. Still, this is only an attempt to clarify the concept of "determining" and suggest that determining, in fact, would require determinism. The only plausible determining agent would, on this view, be an all-determiner, one that sets everything to happen, without any chance of failing or getting surprised by anything. By some, this all-determiner might be called God.

There are many notions of divine omnipotence. Some say God cannot do what is logically impossible, while others maintain he can cause anything except for what free creatures do. But most would admit that God's power is of a determinative kind: if he can do something, he can make sure it happens. Would he be God if he could not? I would like to argue that if God can, and does, determine anything to happen, it entails him determining absolutely everything, at least in the context of one reality. This is because, as explained above, if there were in the reality some thing X that was not determined by God, that X could prevent from happening some other things God would want to determine. So if God is to have any real determinative power, he will determine everything, including X – better safe than sorry!

The above said might still be countered by dividing reality into parts determined by God and parts not determined by him. Let the former be X's and the latter Y's. In addition, one will have to hold that there may be no causal interaction between X's and Y's. This is necessary for making sure that X's can really be determined and that their status as such cannot be undone by any influence of the random Y-things. For example, in the context of Alvin Plantinga's philosophical theology, the free choices and actions of human beings would fall into the Y-category, as they are putatively not determined or determinable by God. But at this point, one is clearly about to establish two distinct realities that are somehow interwoven without being interactive. This seems not very good to me: I am afraid that accounting for some occurrences in the world, for example the bulk of human action, would require interaction between X's and Y's to be possible. Then, the X's could not be strictly determined, which would amount to nothing being determined. The majestic, divine acts of creation would thereby be diminished to mere trying.

Let me be clear about this: at the moment, I am deeply skeptical about any attempts of leaving room for determiners other than God in theistic metaphysics. The difficulty of squaring God's sovereignty with free human agency is manifest in the thoughts of classical theists such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. The latter, for example, applied Aristotelian metaphysics, one of the axioms of which goes: "Everything that moves is moved by another." In more abstract terms, this applies to all change from potentiality to actuality, so that everything that becomes actual is sort of pushed into actuality by something else. God is the only constantly actual being that pushes created things into actuality, and thus he is the ultimate cause of everything. At one point, Aquinas reasoned about free will and came to think that God does move "voluntary causes" as well as "natural" ones, but that voluntary actions are nevertheless voluntary because God operates such causes according to their nature. (Summa Theologica, Prima Part, Q83) Technically, it is still him who operates the causes, and no-one else.   This detail demonstrates quite well the tension emerging when we want to have one being with real determinative power, and other beings still able to decide something by themselves. Augustine, in turn, thought that a human being cannot will anything else than evil, unless God grants her his grace. This reads that whenever somebody genuinely wills something good, that is due to divine initiative. However, Augustine stressed that God's influence is not experienced by the person herself as manipulation, even though it technically could be seen as such.

As regards God, I think it would be best not to say that he "determines himself". Rather, he simply is the way he is. It would be meaningless to say God determines himself, because, by definition, he would then only be making sure he is just the way he is and not otherwise. In classical theism, God is taken to be immutable, eternal and necessary, and given this he would not have to specifically determine himself to be anything. There are other theistic models as well, such as different kinds of process theism, but it is not even required there that God have determinative power. That is why process theism is not relevant now.

So my primary theological suggestion here would be that if God has determinative power, then all occurrences in the world – the universe, reality, or whichever term you prefer – are determined by him. I think this could most easily be accepted by some Calvinists, whose theological tradition has generally been high on God's sovereignty. And given my recent arguments around the concept of free will (see here and here), I do have understanding for theists adopting that kind of a theology. For sure, its austerity does not appeal to everyone, because it implies that God has determined most appalling things to happen. The alternatives seem to be either to cling on to an unrealistic notion of human free will, or to turn to some kind of process theism.

A fatalist's take on freedom

In recent times, I have ended up thinking quite intensively about human freedom. One reason for this has been a university course I've been attending, with a special focus on the problem of evil in theistic philosophy of religion. Together with a peer, I gave an oral presentation on how the concept of free will has been utilized in theistic explanations for evil. As can probably be concluded from my previous posts on free will, I do not see that concept as having much explanatory power with respect to the problem of evil. In the most recent post, a specifically designed case example involving a moral choice was considered. The conclusion was that having free will cannot mean being able to consciously predetermine one's own states of mind, and thus it cannot entail an ability to prevent any decisions, moral or not, from happening in one's mind.

Before the discussion of the day, I have something of a confession to make. In the course of developing my arguments for this restricted notion of free will, that is since last summer, I have totally forgotten to mention what probably was my chief inspiration to the whole project. The unexpected reminder was found in Paul Katsafanas's article Nietzsche's Theory of Mind: Consciousness and Conceptualization, which includes a quote from Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil: "[A] thought comes when 'it' wishes, and not when 'I' wish." I am not familiar with BGE, but I remember reading the same quote last spring in an introductory booklet on Nietzsche's life and philosophy, and getting really excited about it. My arguments about freedom and free will almost certainly are derived from that simple line, in an attempt to articulate its truth in detail. Nietzsche's original purpose, however, was to refute the Cartesian argument where the existence of ego (the subject) was concluded from the empirical fact that thoughts occur.

No wonder Nietzsche is the one philosopher I could call my favorite. Having now read Twilight of the Idols, Thus Spoke Zarathustra and On the Genealogy of Morality, I am ever more bewildered by the capacity of that exceedingly diverse human being to put out pithy, gem-like thoughts, without trying to force them explicitly into a unified system. Something for consistency-obsessed, analytic minds like myself to water down, I guess! So, all hail the spirit of Nietzsche. Now let us get to the point.

Having come so far in my critique of the concept of free will, I have felt a need also to say something positive about freedom. The limitations explored so far seem to deprive the word "freedom" of a meaning that, presumably, quite many ascribe to it: the power to consciously master one's own conscious states. If I don't see how freedom could have that meaning, what could it possibly mean, then? Have I not arrived at the conclusion that there is no freedom, that my life is fully beyond my conscious control, and that the best a human being can do is to stop willing because willing does not have effect on anything? That is, actually, not what I am suggesting: one should understand my arguments as descriptive of our human condition, not as prescriptive of anybody's future or way of life. All I have been saying is that one cannot know – or consciously determine – the future states of one's own mind. That has some consequences, admittedly, but does not have to lead to any sort of pessimism or existential anxiety. This is what I will try to illuminate now.

It has been a recurring trend in my life to resort to fatalism of some kind. Even though I have been a highly active and sometimes even aggressive personality, I have often rather intensely experienced lack of control over what is happening. Such experiences have functioned as both inspiration for theistic belief and objects of theistic interpretations, resulting in a strong sense that there is someone else who has the control. My existential fatalism has been, until recently, quite emotional and involved much brooding about my "inevitable" future – mostly envisioned in grim terms. But my philosophizing about the nature of free will has, in the course of the past year, led me to embrace fatalism in a profoundly new way. At least it has been new to me.

I recall how, when I was a child, my mother used to tell me that, in the face of difficulties (given they are relatively minor), one can choose one's own attitude. She would tell me this with a sense of optimism when I got into the mood of whining or ranting about some unpleasant occurrences or prospects. It was usually not possible for me to believe her at the time, but what about now, when recalling that optimistic advice from years ago? Does not my recent critique of free will render completely implausible any claims like "you can choose a different attitude" – does it not imply that I am not free to choose anything? I really think it does not, even if it limits the sense in which such claims can be understood.

In the context of a sensibly revised notion of freedom, my freedom to do X would mean that it is imaginable as a possibility that I would do X in the future. If I'm being pessimistic now, it is perfectly imaginable that I proceed to choose a different attitude in the future, perhaps all the more if someone close to me encourages me to do so. But I cannot predetermine whether it is going to happen, at least not consciously. If my thoughts were in any way decoupled from the current situation, from the moment of spacetime where I experience myself now, why could I not predetermine my thoughts for all the future situations, up to the moment of my last breath? "But of course", it might be replied, "you cannot predetermine thoughts to be experienced in future situations, because you don't yet know what kind of situations you will end up in: thus, you have no chance of determining just the adequate thoughts for each situation." Well, that is very true indeed, and has been my point all along. The amazing thing is that it applies as much to the nearest future moment as to the farthest! It is inevitable that, at each incoming moment, I end up thinking in a way that is not authored by my conscious self.  Thus, even if actions are initiated by conscious thoughts, my conscious self is not the author of actions, but an executionary agency.* Should I not get anxious about this? Such a lack of conscious self-control is surely an unsettling thought.

But somehow, in my case, this realization has resulted in a more relaxed attitude and a new kind of curiosity towards the future. A common misconception of fatalism is that it entails believing in a future as if the future were already known. "My fate is to become X", "My fate is to remain Y", "Your fate is to struggle against Z" – whoever starts talking in such terms shows, in my view, not enough epistemic humility and respect to the matter. Fate is not known but until now, and we cannot speak on its behalf in the future tense. I am free to do whatever I am going to do, I just don't know what it will be. If this is determinism, at least my determinism allows for surprises from the individual's point of view. I don't see how a mind that consciously predetermines itself could allow itself to be surprised! And what would a life without surprises be? (In fact, I tend to think that in order to absolutely determine anything to happen, one would have to determine everything. This idea will be a subject of a future post, probably one on divine omnipotence and omniscience.)

The key to understanding the concepts of both fate and freedom would, on this view, be found in recognizing my ignorance – sometimes blissful and sometimes tormenting – of my very own future. Note that I am not, so far, promoting radical Humean skepticism. I am not saying it is unknowable whether the sun will rise tomorrow or not. An astrophysicist with some competence in philosophy could likely argue convincingly that there is no way the sun could not rise tomorrow, and that therefore we can know it will rise. At issue here is not the possibility of knowing what will happen with some celestial bodies in the course of next 24 hours, but the impossibility of knowing what will happen in myself in the nearest future, just a blink of an eye away from now. That impossibility is real. That is fate, and that is freedom.


* There is a lot of neuroscientific evidence that conscious thoughts are not the ones that initiate action. See here, for example.

On the illusory nature of choosing

"Free will is a trick of perspective."

-John Gray, Straw Dogs (2002) 

In my previous critique of the concept of free will I explored the inevitable limits within which a person makes choices. Upon confronting a situation in which she could (theoretically speaking) act in multiple different ways, the person represents possible courses of action in her mind before choosing what to do. I argued that these mental representations of action emerge in a contingent manner, so that the subject ultimately has to choose from a given set of options. Since then, I have developed a more radical critique of free will and especially the concept of "choosing".

As I argued before, since I cannot have knowledge of any thought, e.g. a choice, before it already happens in my mind, I cannot be the one in control of my thoughts. This principle was first applied to the formation of mental "images" or representations that precede the act of choosing. But it appears that through that very same principle, even the eventual choice can be shown to involve no conscious, subjective control. Instead, it merely happens to the person: she experiences the choice in the present and does not consciously predetermine it.

Consider this case example involving what we could traditionally see as a "moral" choice. Mary is a teenage girl whose parents grant her a weekly 10 pounds of money. It's friday, and Mary's mother does not remember whether her daughter has already received her allowance that week. She has, in fact, already on tuesday. But since her mother does not recall this, she asks Mary: "Honey, have I already paid you the usual 10 pounds this week?" Mary, who has already spent her allowance, faces a choice. On the one hand, she should be honest and accept that her 10 pounds is spent for that week. On the other hand, she has the option to cheat and receive an extra 10 pounds. It is tempting, because it's friday and she will be going out with her friends later. She imagines the two options in her mind for a little moment. And then, Mary makes her choice at time t. We'll say she opts for cheating.

The decision to cheat appears in her mind at t. At any of the preceding moments, say, t-1, she probably did not yet know that she will decide to cheat. If she did know that already at t-1, it is unclear whether she made the decision at t and not at t-1. And if she was aware of her decision already at t-1, what about t-2? There is no reason why not to make an endless regression out of this, up to the moment t-n, and yet there would still be no explanation for the decision being made at that very moment. Should we say Mary has been aware of her eventual choice through all eternity before it? That would be unrealistic. She has not. Then it is most reasonable to admit that she first becomes aware of her deciding at time t, which is the moment the decision actually happens. Now why does it happen?

An important maxim in Western philosophy, at least since Aristotle, has been that "everything that begins to exist has a cause", or in more Aristotelian terms, "everything that moves is moved by another". In the context of this influential claim, the act of choosing can be effectively deconstructed. Mary's decision to cheat begins to exist in her mind at time t. What caused it? Of course, you might say, Mary herself! She is the cause of her own choice. The next question is, what caused Mary? She has definitely begun to exist at some point. So she can't be without a cause. If you are more precise, you will probably say that it was Mary's preceding state of mind that caused her choice. But what was it, then, that caused the state of mind? You will either end up postulating for Mary's choice some cause outside herself, or you will claim that Mary is her own cause and has thus not begun to exist.

It is, of course, possible to say that nothing ever has begun to exist, but that everything exists eternally. Past and future, actuality and potentiality would only be illusions arising from the limited perspective of a human being. This was a position importantly developed by Spinoza, and possibly some thinkers even long before him. Moreover, it appears to be supported by some well-established findings of 20th century physics, such as the Special Theory of Relativity. If this is an adequate way to view reality, it is possible that nothing is caused in the traditional sense. Therefore, not even Mary's choice is necessarily a caused event.

Therefore, either

1) Mary's choice has a cause that is not Mary, unless Mary is the cause of herself.
2) Mary's choice has no cause.

My point here is to ask whether, in the light of the above said, Mary has had the slightest chance to consciously determine what she chose at time t. If she did not know of the choice before it happened, she had no means to consciously prevent it from being the morally "bad" one, the one of cheating and lying. Had the decision been different, this could not have been due to any conscious control exercised by Mary. The same can be said of any of Mary's thoughts, at t-1, t-2 or t-n. I see no conscious control of her own involved in the formation of her thoughts, and thus no "choices". All I see is thoughts or, broadly speaking, states of mind following one another. A posteriori (afterwards), Mary might think that her thought A "led" to her thought B. Still, when thought A was present, Mary could not know a priori (beforehand) what thought B would be like. The thought at time t does not tell anything a priori of what will be experienced at t+1, and thus even choices are just unpredictable thoughts appearing in the consciousness.

I recognize that my discussion of this subject depends on considering time as moments (t, t-1, t+1 and the like), and even more radically on the concepts of past, present and future. There is apparently a wide range of philosophical literature on the meaning of these terms, with which I am not very familiar yet. As regards the ontology of time, Einstein's special relativity has shown how the notions of past, present and future are dependent on the observer. On the other hand, when we speak of our subjective experience of time, it can be questioned whether the division of time in moments or periods is always meaningful. Is not the experience of time, after all, quite seamless and lacking clear points of division? But, in the context of a certain widely used language of time, I think I have adequately challenged the idea of consciously controlled thoughts and, thus, of consciously controlled choices.