There is a messy little gap in how the Free Will Defense is sometimes thought about—or at least has been thought about by me. First it is argued that the following Trans-World Depravity thesis is logically possible:
- (TWD) In every feasible world, every significantly free creature sins at least once.
Then from the possibility of TWD, one wants to conclude:
- God is justified in creating a world where some significantly free creature sins.
But (2) doesn’t follow from TWD. For TWD is logically compatible with:
- In every feasible world, every significantly free creaturely action is a sin.
And it is far from clear that if (3) were true, then God would be justified in creating any world with significant freedom. Indeed, if (3) were true, we might think that a perfect being would end up creating a world with no significant freedom. I am not sure about this, but it is at least clear that to argue for (2) given (3) is an uphill battle.
So, what we needs to work with is not just TWD, but something stronger, like:
- (TWD+) In every feasible world, every significantly free creature sins at least once, and in some feasible world there is a favorable balance of right to wrong exercises of significant freedom.
Of course, the kind of reasoning that leads Plantinga to accept the logical possibility of TWD would also lead one to accept the logical possibility of TWD+. So this is just a minor hiccup. (We may need some further specifications about that feasible world. But that’s not any more of a problem.)
And, in fact, we don’t need TWD+, but the weaker:
- (TWD1+)In every feasible world with significantly free creatures, at least one significantly free creature sins at least once, and in some feasible world there is a favorable balance of right to wrong exercises of significant freedom.
This leads to a choice point for when we teach the Free Will Defense to undergraduates. We can either skip over the issue, and just ignore the fact that (2) doesn’t follow from TWD. Or we can make this into an object lesson of how some objections to an argument don’t really affect the heart of the argument but require “merely technical” revisions, like the move from TWD to TWD+. Students can then have good, clean and educational fun in refining TWD in various ways.
Historical note: This is not actually a logical error in Plantinga. At least in God, Freedom and Evil, Plantinga does not claim that (2) follows from TWD. Rather, Plantinga just says that it is obvious that TWD is compatible with the thesis that God creates a world containing moral good. I think, though, to defend this quick claim, Plantinga will need to uphold something like TWD+.
5 comments:
Alex
"(TWD1+)In every feasible world with significantly free creatures, at least one significantly free creature sins at least once, and in some feasible world there is a favorable balance of right to wrong exercises of significant freedom."
This is simply not true. If there is even one significantly free creature (F) who does not sin, there is a feasible world with significantly free creatures in which no significantly free creature ever sins. There is no reason to assume that a world with only F is not feasible.
Walter,
If that were true, it would be an argument that TWD1+ entails TWD+. I take it that you are thinking that God could create a world where F is the only significantly free creature, and then F wouldn't sin. But that doesn't follow. For the counterfactuals of free will could turn out to be such that if F were the only significantly free creature, then F would sin. In fact, we could imagine the counterfactuals of free will having a structure on which y is sinful iff x is sinless.
Alex
Unless TWD+ is correct, it does follow that God could create a world (w1)where F is the only significantly free creature, and then F wouldn't sin.
The reason why you claim it doesn't follow is because "In every feasible world with significantly free creatures, at least one significantly free creature sins" would include w1.
And that means your FWD1+ is not weaker at all. Because FWD1+ entails that there is a feasible world in which F will inevitably sin.
So, God, who is omnipotent, is incapable of creating a sufficiently 'decent' F that won't sin.
That may be possible, but it is a very bold claim. TWD and TWD+ and TWD1+ are all based on the belief that God is incapable of creating even one morally perfect creature, and, considering the claim of omnipotence and omniscience, a very strong argument is needed to back this up. Simply stating this as a apologetic strategy doesn't work.
"Unless TWD+ is correct, it does follow that God could create a world (w1)where F is the only significantly free creature, and then F wouldn't sin."
I am sorry: I just don't see how this follows from TWD1+. In fact, I can sketch an argument that it doesn't follow. Imagine there are only two possible creatures: Alef and Bet. And imagine that each only has one choice ever to make, a choice between right and wrong. Now imagine that there are only the following eight possible worlds:
w1: Alef exists and Bet does not and Alef chooses rightly
w2: Alef exists and Bet does not and Alef chooses wrongly
w3: Bet exists and Alef does not and Bet chooses rightly
w4: Bet exists and Alef does not and Bet chooses wrongly
w5: Alef and Bet both exist and Alef chooses rightly and Bet chooses wrongly
w6: Alef and Bet both exist and Alef chooses wrongly and Bet chooses rightly
w7: Alef and Bet both exist and Alef chooses rightly and Bet chooses rightly
w8: Alef and Bet both exist and Alef chooses wrongly and Bet chooses wrongly
We could further imagine that precisely w2, w4, w5 and w8 are feasible and all the other worlds are infeasible. Then FWD1 (leave out the + aspect) is true: there is no feasible world where everyone always chooses rightly. But FWD is false: there is a feasible world where Alef chooses rightly, namely w5. Moreover, there is no feasible world where Alef exists alone and chooses rightly.
Now in practice there are more than eight possible worlds. But you haven't offered an argument that that matters.
Alex
TWD+ says that
"In every feasible world, every significantly free creature sins at least once, and in some feasible world there is a favorable balance of right to wrong exercises of significant freedom."
Let's say this is not true, then e.g. Alef doesn't sin in w10, but Bet and Thet do. But in that case, we can "imagine" a w1 in which Alef is alone and chooses rightly and there is no reason why w1 would not be feasible. We don't simply get to declare some world feasible or not.
So, the FWD only works on the extremely outrageous assumption that there is no possible significantly free creature who will never sin.
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