Credo Ut Intelligam

Inclinations, Dispositions, Motivations

I think I finally understand why Kevin does not wish to call God's libertarian free agency "freedom of will". He writes,

"The Father freely chose to elect with nothing determining whether or not he would. But I will not call this libertarian free will. The will cannot choose at all, much less in a libertarian sense. It is a faculty and not a person. It moves in whatever direction the person has inclined it."

I think he is saying that to speak of libertarian free will means, by definition, that the faculty of will -- as distinct from the person -- is actually making its own choices. I certainly never intended, and I doubt that any one ever intended, to say this. When people speak of the will choosing, it is shorthand for "the person chooses by will (i.e., voluntarily)", or else the word "will" is being used to refer not to the faculty but to the person choosing, so that all that was being affirmed was that the person choosing chooses. Which is not in dispute. Kevin seems to think there is a substantive issue here: is the will "really" the person choosing or the faculty by which choice is possible? To my eyes it looks as if this is quibbling. If by "will" you mean "person choosing", then the will is the person choosing, and if you mean the faculty, then the will is the faculty. Does it make sense to ask what the will "really" is? Only if we have some prior way of fixing the meaning of the term "will". I am at a loss to know what this is.

Whatever anyone else may have intended, I certainly never intended to say that anything other than the person chooses. This should have been clear from my definition of libertarian free will in the third paragraph of my comments on Kevin's Divine Freedom and Human Nature: "a voluntas is libertarian free if and only if it enables the person to make some libertarian free choice".

In my previous post, I very briefly waved my hands in the direction of an argument for God's libertarian free will. I didn't expand upon it because I didn't regard it as important issue. As a result, my meaning didn't really get across. I still don't think there is substantive disagreement here, but I think further explanation could help clear up confusions in other areas. When I speak of God's freedom in election, my question is about the earliest "whatever-it-was" by which the decision to elect particular persons was determined. If the decree was determined, say, by God's prior love for the elect, then what determined this love? At some point we get back to X, where we must say that nothing determined X. And the only question is whether or not X is voluntary. If it is voluntary, I call it "of will".

Some things have their origin in God's nature: they are as they are because of what God is by nature -- i.e. what God is just by being God. Other things have their origin in God's will -- and by this I mean they originate in an act of will (volens), that is, a voluntary act. They do not originate in the divine faculty of will (voluntas) -- not in the sense in which I am speaking. The divine voluntas only makes the choice to elect possible. It equally makes possible the choice not to elect, or to elect different persons. But the actual election of the definite elect has its origin NOT in the faculty of will, which is part of God's nature, but in an ACT of will. This act of will is not part of God's nature, though it is made possible by a part of God's nature (namely, the voluntas). I deployed Occam's razor to eliminate any other origin for the decree of election distinct from (a) God's nature (what God is just by being God), or (b) a voluntary divine act.

Since I call any voluntary act an act of will, I say that God has libertarian free will in election. This does not mean that something other than a divine person makes libertarian free choices. It means only that election was both voluntary and libertarian free.

Now we come to the complexities Kevin has introduced into his theory of will. Much of what he says I do not understand, and I certainly do not see the motivation for introducing so many distinctions. He asks "If making a decision and inclining the will are so closely related, why not just choose the simpler option and say that they are the same thing"? Indeed, why not? He he answers, "The seemingly simpler view does not account, however, for the total depravity of unregenerate man or of the impossibility of God to do evil." Here Kevin implies that to identify the decision and the inclination gives rise to some incompatibility, or at least is in tension with, total depravity and divine impeccability. But it is hard for me to see how. From my point of view, it looks like making a decision and inclining the will are one and the same. In complete harmony with this (as far as I can see), I also affirm that the possibilities for how I can incline my will in a given situation (i.e., what decisions I can make) depend on what sort of a person I am. God cannot incline his will toward unrighteousness, and a sinner cannot incline his will in any direction without sinning (i.e., cannot choose good). Where is the problem supposed to be?

In the rest of the paragraph, Kevin goes on to argue against the incompatiblist view (i.e., moral responsibility requires libertarian freedom) -- a view which both he and I reject. I'm not clear on how this fits into the discussion we are having.

Throughout Kevin's post, I find the discussion to be very metaphorical, and I wonder if the metaphors are leading us astray. Can the will move other than as the person inclines it? How can this possibly be in question? Why is Kevin arguinng about it as if it weren't just a matter of definition? What else do we mean when we speak (metaphorically) about the "motion" of the will, unless it refers to a person voluntarity choosing or consenting? And what does it mean to say that a person inclines his will, if not that a person chooses or consents? When Kevin speaks of the will as a "faculty", perhaps he means more than I a willing to admit.

I say only this: some beings are able to choose and consent, they are able to act voluntarily; other beings are not; whether a given being is able to will or not depends upon what sort of being it is -- its nature. This ability does not itself do anything -- it does not move, nor is it moved. We use such expressions as "the motion of the will", but this is only a manner of speaking. A person does not have to do something to something before he can will. To will just is to act voluntarily. The will is not acted upon by the person, for there is nothing there to act upon. What there is is an ability, not a mechanism.

Prior to his clarifications, I thought that his "inclinations" referred to a person being inclined toward an act of will, rather than a will being inclined by a person. What I was arguing against was the view that I take to be Edwards's: in Kevin's terms, that a person's choices are always determined by the strongest disposition (or conjunction of dispositions). But even here I should be careful, since I'm not absolutely certain that I understand what Kevin means by "disposition". Let me rather use Edwards's word, "motivation", since it is his view to which I primarily object. I take it that what is motivated is not, strictly speaking, a will, but a person. And a person is motivated to act voluntarily, or to exercise or incline his will. However this works, the important thing is that once a person actually exercises or inclines or moves his will, the action has already been done, or at least it is inexorably determined which action will be done. Prior to this action, there are the motivations. According to Edwards, the motivations have various degrees of strength, and that action for which the motivation is strongest (all things taken together) always and by necessity determines what the person will do -- how he will incline or move or exercise his will. If, as Kevin seems to think, the motion of the will is something other than a person's act of inclining his will, then motivations precede not only the motion of the will, but also the person's act of inclining his will.

It is possible that Kevin actually agrees with me in rejecting this Edwardsian view. Certainly, it cannot apply to God, since his libertarian freedom conflicts with it. God's act of election, or his inclining his will toward that act, was not determined by the relative strength of preceding motivations. This follows from what Kevin and I agree upon: that act -- the earliest personal act from which election follows -- was libertarian free, and hence was not predetermined by anything. Kevin doesn't want to call this act an act of will. On this basis he can continue to assert that libertarian free will is impossible. But that assertion now looses its force against the incompatiblist. The incompatiblist libertarian is interested in defending human libertarian free agency. Whether we call this libertarian free will or not hardly matters. In fact, libertarians will typically define the will as the person choosing, rather than the facutly -- so their claim that libertarian free will is possible is true (the words as they use them express a truth). So Kevin cannot take up Edwards's argument against the impossibility of libertarian free will (defined as libertarian free agency), since he agrees that libertarian free agency is possible. Thus I still think that the issue of divine libertarian freedom is not relevant to the rest of the discussion, except insofar as it may help us to clarify the meanings of certain expressions we have been using.

Now, when it comes to the human will: I say that Adam fell when he first engaged in a personal act of inclining his will. I would identify inclining the will with willing, but if you say that the willing was posterior to the inclining, then I say the fall happened when he inclined, not when he willed. I'm not sure how there can be a voluntary act that is not an act of will, but Adam's act of inclining his will was certainly a voluntary act. This act was sin. Prior to this act, Adam's motivations were properly ordered. None of his motivations was stronger than his motivation to obey God. To the extent that his motives were comensurable, he was at least as highly motivated to obey as to do anything else. However, not being confirmed in righteousness, his motive to obey was not so much stronger than his other motives that obedience was necessary for him. If he were confirmed in righteousness, disobedience would still be in his power, but obedience would be necessary for him (disobedience would be impossible). Since he was not confirmed in righteousness, it was possible for him to incline his will either toward obedience or disobedience. In order for this to be the case, he had to be motivated toward the obedient action and toward the disobedient action. But his motive toward the disobedient action did not have to be a motive toward disobedience as such. It only had to be a motive toward an action that was, per accidens, disobedient. This motive was not sinful. His choice to incline his will toward that action was sinful, not because it had a sinful motive, but because it was a disobedient act. The only things that had real influence on his action were good motives: the motive to eat what is good for food, etc. The fact that the act was disobedient, although he was aware of it, had no influence in motivating him to disobey. If anything, it motivated him not to disobey -- only it did not motivate him overwhelmingly in that direction, so he was able to choose to incline his will otherwise.

Kevin goes through several possibilities other than the one I presented. In each of them it is rather obvious that Adam did not disobey without motive to disobey -- But when it comes to the situation I actually presented, all we have is Kevin's unargued claim that Adam could not have acted as I say he did: without motive to disobey, per se, but simply on a motive to do something that, as he well knew, was per accidens sinful.

Let me use another analogy. Suppose I willingly drink some foul-tasting liquid in order to cure a disease I have. I have absolutely no motive to drink something foul-tasting. I would much rather the medicine tasted good. But it is not up to me how the medicine tastes. In such a situation, I cannot do what I would most like (be cured, and not drink something foul-tasting). So I must settle for second best. I don't have to acquire any additional motive in order to drink the liquid. My motive to be cured, together with my knowledge that this alone will cure me, is sufficient to motivate me to drink. I do not need and do not acquire a motive to drink this liquid under the description "foul-tasting liquid". It is enough that I have a motive to drink the liquid under the description "liquid that will cure me". In the same way, at the moment of the fall, disobedience was distasteful to Adam. He would much rather have both eaten and remained in submission to God. But that wasn't in his power. He had to choose to incline his will either toward eating or not eating. He inclined his will toward the act of eating the fruit with good motivations. He was motivated to eat under the description "this fruit that is good for food", and not under the description "act of disobedience". He knew it was sinful to act as he did, but he wasn't motivated by the sinfulness of the act. He acted in spite of the fact that it was sinful and distasteful to him to disobey. It was not in his power both to find out what it was like to eat this fruit and to remain in submission to God. He had to choose one, and the relative strengths of his motivations left it open which he would choose. He fell as soon as he fixed his will upon what was per accidens sinful -- as soon as he chose a natural good over a supernatural good.

Here I am trying to describe things in such a way that Kevin will be able to conceptualize acting on a motivation other than the strongest. He will certainly need to do so if he is to say what he says in the last paragraph. There, he accurately translates my question to him:"What causes the person to incline the will in only one of two conflicting directions?" He thinks he can respond as I do:

"My answer is: in some case at least, nothing apart from the secret will of God. Since I have conceded the libertarian free agency of God in election, why not allow this for other acts of God or even acts of other persons? The inclination of the will is an effect and so, I must insist on sufficient causation. But it is not necessarily true that inclining the will is an effect. Unless someone can show that this is incoherent, I can deny libertarian free will and affirm libertarian free agency at the same time. Either the causal chain is broken as soon as we move back from the inclined will to the person, or the person was free to have broken it. "

But not without any motivation. A person's act of inclining his will must have some motivations. It cannot simply be an absurd, brute event. But these motivations need not determine it. It cannot be libertarian free because a person's act of inclining his will is something that comes to pass, and God forordains whatsoever comes to pass. But it can be undetermined by secondary causes, in which case the relative strengths of motivations will not determine the direction in which a person inclines his will.

But I get the impression that Kevin is not entirely comfortable with that last paragraph. I think he prefers to say that there is an unbroken chain of causal connection among secondary causes. He briefly argues for this, saying,

"if I hold to the secret will of God and do not link it to such a causal chain, then I am at a loss to explain how it is has anything to do with what happens in the world."

If sound, this argument proves much more than Kevin wants. The initial coming to be of the created world is not preceded by any secondary causes. Yet it certainly has something to do with what happens in the world. All chains of secondary causes eventually come back to a first link. Why can't there be mutiple, interlocking chains? There is no particular reason to think that miracles are determined by secondary causes going all the way back to the initial conditions of the universe. Certainly, the incarnation cannot have been thus determined. Of course, once the miracle occurs, the resulting effects fit themselves right into the causal processes that are already going on. Miraculously created wine intoxicates for the same reason ordinary wine intoxicates -- they are, in fact the same stuff. In the same way, the results of a non-determined choice fit right in to the causal processes already going on. Indeed, they fit more tightly. For they are also limmited (though not determined) in their origin. I cannot choose to bring about just any effect, only what is both in my power and possible for me. Preceding causal processes put limits on what is in my power, and preceding motivations put further limits on what is possible for me.

The problem with the idea of a single unbroken chain of necessary causation is precisely that it has the logical consequence that Adam's fall was determined by the "set up" of the universe, and that there was something morally wrong with Adam from the beginning. If his choice was determined by the relative strength of his motives, then he could only have fallen if his strongest motive was toward a disobedient act. Therefore, since he did fall, either his motive to obey was weaker than some other motive (disordered motives), or else he had a positive motive to disobey. In either case, there was something morally wrong with Adam -- which fact was determined by the initial "set up" of the universe.

If we hold to the "unbroken chain" view, then the fall was built into the universe from the start. This leads to more than an "inability to explain" the confessional denial that God is the author of sin. It is in serious tension with that denial. On the other side, where does rejecting the "unbroken chain" view leave us? -- with nothing except a difficulty understanding how God's decree of a particular choice "has anything to do with what happens in the world." But we know that we are going to have to get over this difficulty anyway with respect to other divine decrees (initial creation, incarnation, regeneration).

To my mind, an event within the universe undetermined by secondary causes is no less difficult to understand than the idea of secondary causation itself. How exactly can an event within the created universe cause another event? How does God's decree establish secondary causation, if this means something beyond regular conjunction? Even in physics, there is reason to doubt the "unbroken chain" view. Might it be just a relic of the Enlightenment?

Posted by mccartney at August 8, 2006 02:00 PM | TrackBack