Divine willing

A correspondent asked me how a simple God can choose. I've thought much about this, never quite happy with what I have to say. I am still not happy (nor is it surprising if "how God functions" is beyond us!) but the following helps me a little.

Suppose I am choosing between making a brownie or a smoothie, and end up making a smoothie. Then there are four stages with each stage causing the next:

1. Deliberation between brownie and smoothie (and any other options).

2. An internal intention for a smoothie.

3. Physical movements.

4. Output: smoothie!

At Stage 1, I am still open between brownie and smoothie. Starting with Stage 2, I am internally set on the smoothie, and at that point I become morally responsible for setting myself on the smoothie.

Now one great thing about God’s power is that God doesn’t need means: he can produce effects directly.

In particular, God will omit stage 3: he doesn’t need moving limbs (nor anything else beyond himself) to produce the smoothie in the way that I need them.

Now suppose we apply perfect being theology to God. It’s a perfection of power not to need means. But stage 3 is not the only means in the above story: stage 2 is also a means. If God really doesn’t need means, then stage 2 will also be omitted in God, and we will have the two (non-temporal) stage production:

1. Deliberation between brownie and smoothie (and infinitely many other options).
2. Output: smoothie!

In particular, nowhere in this account is there an internal intention. It’s not needed: God acts directly on the external world.

We might ask: How does God know that he intends to create a smoothie? I think it’s by direct observation of the output, stage B in the divine case. (And God’s knowledge of contingencies is extrinsically grounded in the contingencies.)

If that sounds wrong, let’s ask how we know what we intend. Sometimes we know what we intend by introspection: by observing the internal intention of stage 2. But not always. Sometimes stage 2 is not conscious—we deliberate, we presumably form an internal intention but we are not directly aware of it, and then we act. When we deliberate whether to do something minor like whether to lift the left or the right hand, sometimes the first thing we are aware of is not an internal intention or specific act of will, but the movement of the hand itself. Thus, even in us, knowledge of our intentions is sometimes read off from stage 3.

Moreover, in some cases, for us, stage 3 is not distinct from stage 4. For we have bodies that we move, and sometimes—as in the hand-lift case—the output is the same as the physical movements. In some such cases, then direct knowledge of the merges stages 3 and 4 is how we know our own intention. There may even be rare cases where stage 3 and stage 4 are distinct, but in our consciousness, the knowledge of stage 4 comes first. Suppose I am deliberating whether to press the space-bar or the enter key in response to the computer saying “Press any key”. I choose to press the space-bar. It may well be that in the order of consciousness, I first feel the impact of my finger on the keyboard, then I discern the subtler kinesthetic sensation of my finger having moved through the air, and then only then do I realize what key I intended to press. I don’t know if this is how it happens—it’s too fast to be confident of phenomenology—but it seems like an intelligible possibility.

In any case, there is nothing absurd about knowing an intention by direct observation of the output.

While writing the above, it occurred to me that perhaps we shouldn’t be all that confident that we always have a stage 2. In the cases where our knowledge of what we intend comes from knowledge of stage 3 or 4, and we do not have direct conscious access to an internal act of intention, the internal act of intention is a mere theoretical posit. Perhaps that theoretical posit is correct, but perhaps it is not. If it is not, then one can intend a specific output without having an internal specified act of intention.