Consequence argument against Calvinism

1. (Premise) If p is true, and I can't prevent p from holding, and p entails q, then I can't prevent q from holding. (cf. Finch and Warfield's modified beta)
2. (Premise) If Calvinism is true, and God sovereignly wills p, then I cannot prevent God from sovereignly willing p.
3. (Premise) If Calvinism is true, then I do A only if God sovereignly wills that I do A.
4. That God sovereignly wills p entails p.
5. Therefore, if Calvinism is true, and I do A, then I can't have prevented my doing A. (1, 2, 3 and 4)
6. (Premise) I am not responsible for what I can't have prevented.
7. Therefore, if Calvinism is true, I am not responsible for anything I do.
8. (Premise) I am responsible for something I do.
9. Therefore, Calvinism is false.

Action in and out of character

This post is obviously overgeneralized, but I think it is still heuristically useful.

The compatibilist has trouble with out of character action. The incompatibilist has trouble with in character action.

It is obvious that we sometimes are responsible for out of character action, and that we sometimes are responsible for in character action. Thus, to evaluate a particular compatibilist proposal, it's worth checking whether it allows for responsibility for out of character action, and to evaluate a particular incompatibilist proposal, it's worth checking whether it allows for responsibility for in character action.

Agent and substance causation

Some people think that events are never causes, except in a derivative sense.  It is substances that are causes (and when one or more substances are cause because they stands in some relations, then their standing these relations is an event, and we can derivatively count it as a cause).  It seems very natural for someone who takes a substance-theory of causation to take an agent-causal theory of action.  Doing so does not carry the cost that agent-causal theories of action normally carry, namely the cost of supposing two kinds of causation.  So a substance-theory of causation would seem to be a great match for an agent-causal theory of action.

However, I think that the substance-causal theorist may lose one of the benefits of agent-causal theories of action.  The traditional agent-causal theorist can make a neat distinction between my voluntarily doing something and my "doing" something in the non-agential way in which I depress the grass when I lie on it or circulate the blood throughout my body.  The non-voluntary "doing" is a matter of event-causation, while the the voluntary doing is a matter of agent-causation.  But on the substance-causal view, both the non-voluntary and the voluntary cases are instances of substance-causation, with one and the same cause--namely me.  Granted, the substance-causal theorist can distinguish the voluntary doings from the non-voluntary "doings" by saying that reasons enter in a certain way into the explanation of the former but not into the explanation of the latter, but this is exactly the sort of thing the event-causalist would say--an advantage of agent-causation has been lost.

This isn't really an argument for or against any theory.  The loss in this regard is balanced by a greater overall theoretical simplicity in having only one kind of causation.

Scientific realism

Despite having a pretty good Pittsburgh education in the philosophy of science, I never before read Ernan McMullin's "A Case for Scientific Realism". I was especially struck by one thing that I had never noticed before, which Fr. McMullin briefly notes in one context: things are different, realism-wise, in regard to fundamental physics and other areas of science. The rest of this post is me, not McMullin.

Observe that the pessimistic meta-induction works a lot better for fundamental physics than for the special sciences. The meta-induction says that past theories have tended to be eventually refuted, and hence so will the present ones be. (It's really hard to make the statement precise, but nevermind that for now.) But it is false that the special sciences' theories have tended to be eventually refuted. Some, like the geocentric and heliocentric theories in astronomy and the phlogiston theory of combustion, have indeed been refuted. But many theories have stood for millenia. Here is a sample of these theories: (a) there are seasons that come in a cycle, and the cycle is correlated with various botanical phenomena; (b) tigers eat humans and deer; deer eat neither tigers nor humans; (c) rain comes from clouds; (d) herbivores run from apparent danger; (e) much of the earth's energy comes from the sun. And so on. We do not think of these as scientific theories any more because they are so venerable and well-confirmed. This means that we sometimes mistakenly assent to the inductive premise of the meta-induction because those venerable scientific theories that have not been refuted have often become common-sense and hence we exclude them from the sample.

Nonetheless, the pessimistic meta-induction seems to have some force in regard to fundamental physics: there, the change is much more rapid, and very little remains of past theories. We do sometimes get results like the "classical limit" theorems for Quantum Mechanics where we can show that the earlier theory's predictions approximated the predictions of the newer theory, but this approximation in prediction does not typically yield the approximate truth of the earlier theory. The one kind of exception we sometimes get is that sometimes a part of what used to be a fundamental theory survives, but no longer as fundamental—atoms, for instance.

Non-fundamental concepts—such as cell or season—can survive significant shifts in fundamental theories, but obviously fundamental concepts like force or particle find it much more difficult to do so. There is a kind of multiple realizability in the concepts of the special sciences (not along the metaphysical but the conceptual dimension of a two-dimensional modal semantics) which makes them more resilient.

Van Fraassen proposes we be realists about the observable claims of science and non-realists about the unobservable. This is, I think, really implausible. Van Fraassen would have us believe in ova but not in sperm, just because the ovum is large enough to be seen with the naked eye while a sperm is not. But I think there is a view in the vicinity that is worth taking seriously: that we should be realists about non-fundamental science and at least somewhat skeptical of fundamental science.

Impeding the progress of science

We were considering the following argument in my Metaphysics class:

1. Scientific realism impedes the progress of fundamental physics.
2. If a theory impedes the progress of a science, it's probably false.
3. Fundamental physics is a science.
4. Therefore, scientific realism is probably false.

Anyway, after class Alina Beary, one of our grad students, gave a really cool counterexample to (2), and she gave me permission to blog it: The theory that there is such a thing as pain impedes the progress of biology. Just think of the progress we could make if our experimental practices weren't limited by worries about causing pain! Yet, the fact that the existence of pain impedes biological progress does not provide any significant evidence against the existence of pain.

There are other arguments involving (2). For instance, one might (perhaps incorrectly) think that dualism impedes the progress of neuroscience. But (2) is false, so that wouldn't give us significant evidence for the falsity of dualism.

I suppose one might try to distinguish between ways in which a theory can impede the progress of a science, and then some qualified version of (2) would still be true. That would be interesting, but I don't know to do this.

The character of God in the Bible

The Old Testament has a picture of its central character, God, that is on its surface inconsistent, with apparently contradictory features. But a deeper reading shows a deep consistency: a consistent but from our point of view complex character displayed in a variety of circumstances, from a variety of points of view, and also reflected in the emotions of narrators and interactions of other characters.

I shall not try to defend this reading of the Old Testament here. It cannot be done in a post, and maybe not even in a book, and certainly not by me. One must drink in the texts. Personally, I have found very helpful our Department Bible study in this regard. We are doing Book III of the Psalms (Pss. 73-89), and this has been one of the things that has led to this post.

Now, there come to mind four prima facie plausible explanations for the portrayal of a single character across a large body of literature by a large set of authors.

1. Imitation by a number of authors of a canon of primary texts or stories originally by a single author.
2. Harmonization by selection of texts and/or editorial work on particular texts.
3. Cooperative authorship.
4. A modeling of the character on an actual person with whom the diverse set of authors all interacted "in real life."

If (4) is the right explanation, then the fact that the authors wrote over a period of many centuries, in different social circumstances, together with the essential otherness of central character of the texts, makes it most unlikely that any mere human was the model. And the simplest explanation is that the authors were in fact interacting with the person they claim to be describing—Y*WH, the God of Israel. Therefore, if (4) is true, then we have strong evidence that God exists. Observe that it is not uncommon for the same person to have apparent surface differences as seen in different contexts and by different people—we call this "complexity" in the person and it lends reality to the person (which character complexity in the case of God is, I think, compatible with ontological simplicity, but that's a different question).

Note that the deep consilience not only suggests that the various authors interacted with the same person, but that they did not do so in a shallow way. It is possible to have portrayals of the same person by different people who were acquainted with the subject where there isn't such a consilience—I feel this way in the case of Plato and Xenophon's respective portrayals of Socrates, though I could be wrong (I have not drunk in the Xenophon texts sufficiently).

If (1) were the right explanation, we would expect shallow consistency in the portrayal of the character, and quite likely some deep inconsistencies, whereas we observe the opposite. It is hard for one author to take another author's character and portray that character in a consistent way, and the likely result of an attempt to portray that character is that one will have a similarity of outward mannerisms, but to a careful reader (or viewer) it just won't be the same character but an impostor. For instance, the Sherlock Holmes of the "New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" TV series from the '50s is a case in point (this is the most absurd example from the seires). But when two authors portray different surface detail with a deep consistency, then we have something quite unexpected on a copying hypothesis. Granted, this could result from literary genius combined with depth of appreciation of another's work on the part of the copyist, but such a combination is rare. Most literary geniuses create characters on their own, often even when the character bears the name of some historical figure. And the Hebrew Scriptures weren't just written by two or three authors, but by a much greater number. Thus, explanation (1) does not fit the phenomena very well.

As for (2), again harmonization might explain doctrinal agreement and agreement as to surface features, but unless the harmonization takes the form of a rewriting of the whole body of texts by a literary genius, it would not produce a deep consilience in the central character. And no such unified rewriting in fact happened: the Hebrew Scriptures retain a great diversity of genres and styles. Another striking feature is that at least as regarding texts from before around the 4th century BC, it does not appear that there was much in the way of centralized selection. It seems that the main criterion for canonicity in the first century—to the extent that the concept of canonicity existed—was not deep consilience in the character of God, but something more extrinsic like Hebrew-language authorship combined with venerable age.

Option (3) could work with a small number of contemporaneous authors—but certainly not with the great number of authors of the Hebrew Scriptures strung out across centuries.

So that leaves option (4), and so we have good reason to think that at least a number of the authors of the Hebrew Scriptures had encountered the character of God in reality.

What does the New Testament add to the argument? I think the deep consilience with apparent surface difference continues. So the argument is strengthened. And another point emerges. Jesus Christ, although typically not explicitly portrayed as God, is portrayed in a way that gives him a deep consilience of character with the Y*WH of the Old Testament. Just to give one example, he appropriates, in a credible way, God's desire to gather the Israelites to himself like a mother hen.

May we be thus gathered to him.

Of course, I do not claim originality for this argument. It is inspired by similar arguments seen in various places. Nor do I promote this argument as a way of convincing atheists. Because the evidence of the deep consilience needs to be gathered over years of drinking in the Scriptures, and maybe this can only be done while living the life of the community that has produced the Scriptures (i.e., the life of the Church or of the Synagogue), this argument, while of significant epistemic weight, may only be evidentially useful to Christians. Yet, God can help someone not living the life of the community to see the consilience, so it could have some value outside the community, too.

More on science and theism

One of the puzzles in the scientific explanation literature is how it is that one can genuinely have explanation in the special sciences—chemistry, biology, geology, etc.—given that the facts in the purview of the special science in question appear to reduce to facts of physics, and hence it seems that only physics-based explanations are appropriate. One strategy is to resist the reduction move. I am happy to resist the reduction move for biology, but to me reduction seems exactly right for geology and probably for chemistry.

The theist, however, has a neat story, like the one in my previous two posts. The patterns that the special science identifies are valuable. They are valuable intrinsically—they exhibit an aesthetic good (and scientists talk of the beauty of theories, though admittedly they do so less in the special sciences)—and they are valuable instrumentally as they make it possible for us to make predictions and organize our knowledge. Because these patterns are valuable, God intends them and their presence is causally explicable. This holds whether or not the given generalization in the special sciences rises to the level of laws or not.

What happens, though, when one pattern is subsumed into a wider pattern? As long as the narrower pattern is still there, it can be correctly used for explanation. But explanation in terms of the wider pattern is better, because the wider pattern is more valuable, and hence more explanatory of God's creative action. Thus, early on we may have learned that all mammals have hearts, and later on we learned that this is true of all vertebrates. It is still correct to explain the presence of the heart in Socrates by his mammality, but better to do so by reference to his being a vertebrate.

A similar move explains why it is that when there are two formulae that equally fit all the data, the simpler is the one to be preferred in explanation. This is relevant to both the curve-fitting problem and the problem of which of two mathematically equivalent formulations is the more explanatory.

Furthermore, that some simple theory approximately fits a body of phenomena is also of value. Hence, theories that are mere approximations can yield genuine explanations. And that is how it should be. In particular, Newtonian mechanics continues to be explanatory, and not simply because of classical-limit stuff in quantum mechanics.

The theistic story also explains why it is that Lagrangian mechanics was genuinely explanatory, despite not fitting well in the mechanistic model of explanation. This is, of course, an application of Leibniz's discussion of teleological explanation.

Non-theistic unificationist accounts of explanation

Here is a problem for non-theistic unificationist accounts of explanation. Suppose that in world w₁, I arrange a large sequence of n perfectly round stones (where n is large enough that the unification of the data on these n stones calls invites a unifying explanation) according to the rule that I place the kth stone at a distance f(k) from the Washington Monument, where f is some moderately complex mathematical function that I have picked for the occasion. Suppose there are no other perfectly round stones in the world. Then we can neatly unify the data: there are n perfectly round stones, where the kth is placed by me at distances f(k) from the Washington Monument.

Suppose, further, that as it happens there is another mathematical function, g, with the properties that (a) g is simple, and in fact significantly simpler than f, (b) g(k)=f(k) for k from 1 to n, and (c) g(n+1) is not equal to f(n+1). Then we don't want to say that the fact that the kth round stone is placed at distance g(k) for k between 1 and n explains the placement of the stones. For it is the function f, not the function g, that I am using. (If we want to go in for counterfactuals, we might say that if there were an (n+1)st stone, it would be at distance f(n+1), not g(n+1).) It is a mere coincidence that f equals g in this limited range.

The unificationist either can or cannot accept the claim that it is f, not g, that explanatorily unifies the stone placement. If she cannot, then unificationism is false (unless perhaps we have here a theistic unificationism on which God causes me to arrange things g-wise, even though I think of the arrangement as f-wise). Suppose, then, that she can. Presumably, this is because she notes that the f-based unification unifies not only the placement of the stones, but unifies my activity with it. Now, suppose a world w₂ where the stones have the same arrangement as in w₁, but where I don't exist and the stones causelessly appeared where they did. Then, in w₂, g, because it is significantly simpler than f, provides the better unification. Thus, in w₂, the fact that the distances of the stones obey g explains the stone placement.

But this is weird. For by moving from w₁ to w₂, we took away that which explained the placement of the stones—my activity governed by f—and, if theism is false, we put nothing in the place of the explanation. (If theism is true, then God had to have some reasons for arranging the stones as he did. More on that later.) The g-based arrangement of the stones in w₂ is also present in w₁, and is not explanatory there. It should not become explanatory in w₂ just because a cause was taken away. Therefore, unificationism says that in w₂ the stones' placement is explained by g, while the correct thing to do is that the one and only explanation that was present in w₁ is removed in w₂ if theism is false, and hence the stones' placement is unexplained. Thus, if theism is false, unificationism is false.

The theistic unificationist can say, along the lines of my previous post, that in w₂, the stones are placed by God, and not by me. And since God always acts on all the (unexcluded) good reasons that favor his action, and since g-arrangement exemplifies the good of orderliness (as g is a simple function) and hence provides a good reason for God to arrange the stones g-wise (and maybe a weaker reason for him to arrange the stones f-wise), we can say that God arranged the stones in w₂ in a g-wise way (and under that description, as well as to a lesser degree under the f-wise description), and thus the g-arrangement is, indeed, explanatory.

Unification accounts of scientific explanation and theism

According to unificationist accounts of scientific explanation, scientific explanations are bodies of propositions and/or schemata that unify a large variety of phenomena. But why think that a unification is an explanation at all? Why not think it is just the statement of a universal accidental generalization? And shouldn't explanations of contingent events be causal? The firm unificationist may reject these worries, of course, as question-begging. But a theist who is a unificationist can solve both of them.

God is omni-rational in the following sense: when he strongly actualizes a state of affairs, he does so on account of all the good (nonexcluded—this condition won't be relevant in the cases I want) reasons in favor of strongly actualizing that state of affairs. Unification under a natural description is a genuine value—it is an aesthetic value—and hence that a collection of phenomena can be unified under a natural description is a reason to produce that collection of phenomena. And because God is omni-rational, if he in fact strongly actualizes that collection of phenomena, he does so in part because the phenomena can be unified under that description. Hence, the unifiability of a collection of phenomena, by virtue of God's will, partially explains the obtaining of that collection of phenomena. Consequently, unificationist explanations can, in fact, be expanded into theistic causal explanations while doing justice to their unificationist character, in a way that takes care of my two objections to unificationism.

A theist who rejects Molinism, Calvinism and Thomism about indeterministic events, however, cannot run this line in cases where the unifying patterns are entirely the result of creaturely randomness, as in those unlikely worlds where coins flipped always (it's possible, just unlikely) land heads. In those cases, my story above disagrees with the unificationist, because that the arrangement was all heads is not God's reason for producing the arrangement, since God did not determine this detail. However, it is precisely cases like this which are least plausible for the unificationist.

Observe, also, that the theistic story adds something explanatory to the basic unificationist story. It unifies the unificationist explanations. Thus the unificationist would do well to be a theist. That's the intellectually satisfying way of being a unificationist.

The theistic theory of truth and the Euthyphro dilemma

Here is a theory of truth for propositions:

1. p is true if and only if God believes p.

And here is one for sentences:

2. s is true if and only if God believes what s says.

If traditional theism is correct, these theories of truth are necessarily extensionally correct. So what's wrong with them? In a post from last fall, I mentioned (2) but wasn't too happy with it. But now these theories seem rather good.

The standard tool for probing theistic analyses is the Euthyphro dilemma. Is p true because God believes it or does God believe it because it's true? But unlike in the case of the Euthyphro dilemma, I submit that there is no cost to taking the first horn.

Granted, it is initially tempting to say: "Surely, a knower's beliefs (at least in central cases[note 1]) reflect reality, and so (at least in central cases) God believes p because p is true." But this temptation should disappears once we see that in central cases of our knowing p, it is false that we believe p because p is true.

Here is a central case. Let p be the proposition that there is a computer in front of me. And let Bp be the proposition that I believe p. What explains why I believe that there is a computer in front of me is that there is a computer in front of me (and that it reflects and emits light to my eyes and puts pressure on my hands). Thus, p (partly) explains Bp. But observe that Tp, the proposition that p is true, does not explain Bp. Light reflects from the computer, not from the abstract proposition p. The proposition Tp is a second order proposition about p, and this second order proposition does not enter into the standard causal explanation of my believing p. It is the first order proposition p that does that.

The following seems correct: p explains Tp. It is true that there is a computer in front of me because there is a computer in front of me. Likewise, plausibly, God believes that there is a computer in front of me because there is a computer in front of me. Thus, Tp and the that God believes p have the same explanatory relation to p, and there does not appear to be any need to suppose that <God believes p> is explanatorily posterior to Tp, though in at least some cases there is reason to suppose that <God believes p> is explanatorily posterior to p. The Euthyphro dilemma, thus, is not an issue here. And the same goes for (2).

One could try to define truth as what God knows. But because truth may be a part of an analysis of knowledge, this could be circular in a way in which (1) and (2) don't seem to be.

History is a ripping good yarn

1. If x has a great plot, then it is probably not the case that either (a) x was produced by no authors or (b) x was produced by a largely unstructured committee of authors.
2. Human history has a great plot.
3. Human history is produced by God or by no authors or by a largely unstructured committee of authors (= all of us).
4. Human history is neither produced by no authors nor a by largely unstructured committee of authors. (1 and 2, non-deductive)
5. Human history is produced by God. (3 and 4)

Evidence for (2) is just how good plotwise history books are even when accurate. If one disputes that human history has a great plot as a whole, one might take some smaller portion of human history, but nonetheless one big enough that an analogue of (4) holds for it (so, not a part of human history dominated by a single figure like Napoleon).

[Edited for clarity.]

Sovereignty

Here is a thought. Suppose that I know that if I cause A, then either B or C will eventuate. Suppose that each of B and C furthers my plan, and neither of them furthers it better than the other. Then it does not seem that sovereignty would require me to know or decide prior to my decision to cause A which of B and C would eventuate. Sovereignty perhaps requires that nothing happens that is contrary to God's plan, but it does not require that God's plan should determine every detail.

Here is second try at a notion of sovereignty built on this:

1. x sovereignly executes plan P iff if we let Q be what x strongly and knowingly actualizes in executing P, and we let K be all that x knows explanatorily prior to x's decision to strongly actualize Q, and we let W be the set of all worlds at which both Q and K hold, then no world in W better fits the goals of P than any other.

In other words, x is sovereign in the execution of a plan provided that, given what x does and knows, he can't be disappointed in respect of the quality of the plan's execution.

One way to ensure sovereignty in the execution of a plan is to strongly and knowingly actualize every little detail. This is a Calvinist or Thomistic way. Another way is to know exactly how the details would turn out. That's a Molinist way. Another way is the "chessmaster way" (not my terminology or original idea; I think the view has been developed by W. Matthews Grant and Sarah Coakley): to choose a plan in such a way that no matter how things turn out, the goal wouldn't be any the less well achieved. One can do this in two ways: setting one's goal appropriately (so that whatever turns out, fits—that's not how chessmasters do it) or choosing the plan very carefully. Or a combination.

A theory of responsibility

The causation and explanation literature is big on contrastivity. But the responsibility literature is not big on contrastiveness. However, it seems to me that contrastiveness is essential to understanding respnsibility. Responsibility is contrastive. Consider two cases. Jones is brainwashed in such a way that he continues to be informed by the standard moral reasons not to cause suffering, but no longer by any reasons not to kill. He is brainwashed into having reasons to kill Kowalski. He has two means available for killing Kowalski, and both are poisons: A is painless and B is painful. Jones chooses to administer poison A to Kowalski. Smith, on the other hand, is a normal person, who has the standard moral reasons not to cause suffering and not kill. Smith chooses to administer poison A to Kowalski. (I guess we have two Kowalskis or overdetermination.)

Both Jones and Smith are responsible for killing Kowalski with A. Smith certainly is. But Jones also made a free choice between A and B. However, there is a crucial difference. Jones is responsible for killing Kowalski with A rather than killing Kowalski with B. Smith is responsible for killing Kowalski with A rather than not killing Kowalski. The bare statement that both are responsible for killing Kowalski with A hides the true structure of their responsibility. And the contrastive responsibility structure is important. Jones is praiseworthy in his contrastive responsibility for administering A in place of B. Smith is blameworthy in his contrastive responsibility for administering A in place of doing nothing.

It might be tempting to say that because of the brainwashing, Jones is not responsible for administering A. But to say that is to fail to give credit where credit is due. Jones is to be praised for using A rather than B, though he is not to be praised (or blamed, given the brainwashing) for using A rather than doing nothing. This is especially clear if A was more expensive, or made it more likely that Jones would be detected, but Jones nonetheless did it in order to reduce suffering.

One might try to handle cases like this non-contrastively, by having more sharply delineated actions: Smith is responsible for (a) administering a lethal substance. Jones is responsible for (b) not administering a painful substance. But in at least some cases, it may be a mistake to slice the actions up. Both Smith's and Jones' action was the administering of the lethal substance A to Kowalski. There was just one action each of them did, and there may have been one and the same description under which the action was intended (we may suppose that Smith also didn't want to give the painful poison). If there was one action, then neither (a) nor (b) was precisely what the agent intended. What both agents intended was to administer the lethal substance A to Kowalski. One could, I suppose, say that the one action, intended under the same description, could be such that one person is responsible for it under one description and the other under another. But I think contrastivity more neatly picks out what one one is responsible for.

Moreover, we could imagine a case like this. Jones doesn't have a general belief that it's bad to cause pain. He only has the belief that it's bad to cause a painful death. Smith also has the same belief, and he also has the standard belief that murder is wrong. Smith then is responsible for killing Kowalski painlessly and Jones is responsible for killing Jones painlessly: in both cases, the painlessness and the killing are essential to the intentions. But Jones is not responsible for the killing, but only the killing painlessly. And it seems that the best way to put it is that Smith is responsible for killing Kowalski painlessly rather than either killing painfully or not killing at all. But Jones is responsible only for killing Kowalski painlessly rather than killing him painfully.

And, I submit, the contrastivity in the responsibility matches up exactly with the contrastivity in the choice. Jones did not choose to kill Kowalski rather than not to kill him. To kill Kowalski rather than not wasn't a choice—it was a shoo-in, given that Jones had reasons for it and no reasons against it. What Jones chose to do was to kill Kowalski painlessly rather than kill Kowalski painfully. And this he chose freely, despite being brainwashed, because the brainwashing did not take away this freedom. (We could even imagine cases where the brainwashing bestowed this freedom. Maybe previously Jones did not believe pain to be bad, but did believe murder to be wrong, and the brainwashing made Jones have a belief that pain is bad but murder is not wrong.) Smith, on the other hand, freely chose to kill Kowalski painlessly rather than not killing him at all or killing him painfully. Jones' choice is on the whole to be praised, though we do not praise the having of a character that sets up such a choice. Smith's choice is on the whole not to be praised, except in respect of the painlessly rather than painfully alternative, though we somewhat praise his character for not making killing Kowalski a shoo-in.

Actually, things are slightly more complicated than the above indicates. For the evaluation of one's responsibility requires a specification of reasons. If Jones believes that pain is a good thing (suppose that Jones has never experienced pain, but uses the word "pain" in good Kripkean fashion for whatever quality was originally baptized with the word, and then Jones has been reading certain radical Greek philosophers who think pain is good), then Jones may not be to be praiseworthy for what he is responsible for. For in that case what he is responsible for may be killing Kowalski painlessly in order to take away a good from him rather than killing Kowalski painfully in order to bestow a good on him. And now what he is responsible for is bad.

I take it that statements of non-derivative responsibility are thus of the form:

1. x is directly responsible for doing A for reasons R rather than doing B for reasons S or ....

There is also derivative responsibility.

With all of this machinery in place, I can give a simple theory of direct responsibility, freedom and choice:

2. The following propositions are logically equivalent: (a) x is directly responsible for choosing A for reasons R rather than choosing B for reasons S or ... ; (b) x freely chose A for R over B for S or ...; and (c) x chose A for R over B for S or ....
3. The following propositions are logically equivalent: (a) x is directly responsible for doing A for R rather than doing B for S or ...; (b) x freely did A for R rather than doing B for S or ...; and (c) x did A for R and x's doing A for R was a causally non-aberrant development of x's choosing A for R over B for S or ....
4. A finite being x is responsible for doing A if and only if there are relevant R, B, S, ... such that x is responsible for doing A for R rather than doing B for S or ....
5. x is derivatively responsible for X if and only if there is something relevant that x is directly responsible for and which relevantly contributes to the explanation of X.

The relevance condition in (4) is typically deeply contextual. At least sometimes (e.g., if X is non-contrastive), the relevance conditions in (5) will be contextual as well.

To put it briefly, once we go contrastive and understand actions thickly (i.e., with reasons attached), direct responsibility, choice and free choice all collapse. There is one particularly notable gap in the theory: I only affirm (4) in the case of finite beings. God, who is his own essence, can perhaps be directly responsible for doing something without there being a contrasting action.

Colors and time

I am inclined to think we are four-dimensional (or, more precisely, (n+1)-dimensional, where n is whatever number of dimensions space turns out to have) beings, but that we do not have temporal parts. So what do I say about apparently monadic properties that one can change in respect of, like being red? My preference is to say that these properties are, in fact, non-monadic. For instance, "I am beige" (or whatever color term correctly indicates the current typical shade of my skin) expresses the fact that I beigely occupy the present, where the present is a spacelike hypersurface.

Presentists can say, more simply, that "I am beige" expresses my being beige simpliciter. So it seems that on theoretical simplicity grounds, presentists win out. But I think this is mistaken. For whereas presentists need to posit two properties—a monadic being beige and a binary beigely occupying—eternalists of my sort need only posit a single binary property of beigely occupying. (Of course, the presentist could analyze her being beige in terms of beigely occupying the present, but then the presentist loses the advantages of the theory.)

Here is a reason why the presentist needs a binary beigely occupying. I am beige on my left half. (I am also beige on my right half, but nevermind that.) Given a relational beigely occupying, I can let L be the region of spacetime occupied by my present left half, and analyze "I am beige on my left half" as "I beigely occupy L." But this uses the relation of beige occupation.

I do not think this can be done with mere monadic beigeness. The best way I know of rendering "I am beige on my left half" in terms of monadic beigeness is something like "My left half is beige." But there is no such object as my left half. Cutting me in half is not cutting nature at its seams, and if there are such things as parts at all, they are obtained by cutting nature at its seams. But it's worse than that. Suppose there were such an object as my left half. It wouldn't be beige! For one of that object's surfaces—the one where the object meets my right half—would be mainly bloody red.

One might try to talk of the left half of my surface being beige. But a surface has two sides, which can have different colors, and so we would still need a non-monadic property: being beige on the outside/inside. Or at least a pair of monadic properties. But not just the plain monadic being white. Besides, I don't think we have surfaces. Those would be weird things in the case of beings whose material components are made up of particles or that have blurred wavefunctions.

So, the presentist also needs beige occupation in addition to beigeness. But isn't it simpler to just analyze the latter in terms of the former?

Multiple simultaneous sexual relationships

A reader wanted to know if I knew of any secular arguments against multiple simultaneous sexual relationships. I don't have anything fully worked out. But I think my strategy would be first to argue that sexual relationships ought to be love relationships, with the sexual aspect being unitive.

I would then express the following worry about multiple simultaneous sexual relationships. Suppose Sally has ongoing sexual relationships with Sam and Matt. If these are not both love relationships, then they are problematic for that reason. So suppose they are both love relationships. Then I would query: What happens to Sally's union with Sam while Sally is engaging sexual relations with Matt? Either that union persists then or it does not.

If the union with Matt persists then, then Sally is not giving herself fully to Sam, and her sexual activity with Sam is not expressive to the comprehensive self-giving nature of sexual congress.

If the union with Matt does not persist, then Sally is being unfaithful to her ongoing sexually-consummated love for Matt. She has become united with Matt, but then has severed that union in favor of a union with Sam.

To make this into a full argument, one would need to argue that one ought to be faithful to love, that sexual relations are supposed to be unitive, and that sexual activity outside the context of a love relationship is morally inappropriate.