scholarly journals The possibility of a free-will defence for the problem of natural evil

2004 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. J. MAWSON
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Moral Evil ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Natural Evil ◽  
Possible World ◽  
Natural Means ◽  
The Way

In this paper, I consider various arguments to the effect that natural evils are necessary for there to be created agents with free will of the sort that the traditional free-will defence for the problem of moral evil suggests we enjoy – arguments based on the idea that evil-doing requires the doer to use natural means in their agency. I conclude that, despite prima facie plausibility, these arguments do not, in fact, work. I provide my own argument for there being no possible world in which creatures enjoying this sort of freedom exist yet suffer no natural evil, and conclude that the way is thus open for extending the free-will defence to the problem of natural evil.

Depravity, Divine Responsibility and Moral Evil: A Critique of a New Free Will Defence

1995 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 375-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. M. Weisberger
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Moral Evil ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Possible World ◽  
Strong Connection ◽  
Moral Good ◽  
Argument From Evil

One of the most vexing problems in the philosophy of religion is the existence of moral evil in light of an omnipotent and wholly good deity. A popular mode of diffusing the argument from evil lies in the appeal to free will. Traditionally it is argued that there is a strong connection, even a necessary one, between the ability to exercise free will and the occurrence of wrong-doing. Transworld depravity, as characterized by Alvin Plantinga, is a concept which has gone far to explain this relationship. Essentially, the notion of transworld depravity involves the claim that in any world where a person is significantly free that person would, on some occasion, act morally wrongly, or as Plantinga phrases it: ‘If S' were actual, P would go wrong with respect to A’ (where S' is a possible world, P is a person and A is an action). Not only, Plantinga claims, is it possible that there are persons who suffer from transworld depravity, but ‘it is possible that everybody suffers from it’. If transworld depravity obtains, Plantinga notes, God ‘might have been able to create worlds in which moral evil is very considerably outweighed by moral good; but it was not within His power to create worlds containing moral good but no moral evil – and this despite the fact that He is omnipotent’. On this view, God could not instantiate perfect-person essences who would not ever sin. Although Plantinga argues that these instantiated beings are significantly free in that they could have done otherwise (i.e. not sinned), it does seem that his claim about transworld depravity amounts to a claim about transworld depravity amounts to a claim about the existence of a necessary connection obtaining between freedom and evil. For even though it makes sense to claim that an individual may have unactualized dispositions, to claim that everyone, past, present and future, has unactualized dispositions seems to be a significantly different claim. It is therefore difficult to see how this latter claim differs in substance from the claim of a necessary connection obtaining between the capacity for free will and the commission of evil acts.

scholarly journals A Role for Conscious Accessibility in Skilled Action

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiara Brozzo
Keyword(s):  
Prima Facie ◽  
Skilled Action ◽  
The Way

AbstractSkilled sportsmen or musicians—more generally, skilled agents—often fill us with awe with the way they perform their actions. One question we may ask ourselves is whether they intended to perform some awe-inspiring aspects of their actions. This question becomes all the more pressing as it often turns out that these agents were not conscious of some of those aspects at the time of performance. As I shall argue, there are reasons for suspecting lack of conscious access to an aspect of one’s action to be incompatible with intending to perform that aspect of one’s action. Subsequently, though, I will also argue that, in some cases, the incompatibility is only prima facie, and can be dispelled by drawing the following distinction: that between aspects of one’s action that are merely temporarily not consciously accessed, versus aspects of one’s action that are permanently inaccessible to consciousness. I will thus remove an obstacle towards saying that skilled agents intended to perform certain aspects of their actions, despite lack of conscious access to those aspects at the time of performance.

First Names and Political Change in Modern Turkey

1978 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 489-495 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard W. Bulliet
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Modern Turkey ◽  
The Way

One of the few predictable opportunities for the exercise of free will that comes the way of most human beings is the bestowal of names upon their children. To be sure, local or national custom may legally restrict or otherwise limit the scope of that freedom in some cases; but by and large, there is normally some choice to be made, and the beneficiary of the choice, the child, is inevitably powerless to influence it.

scholarly journals "Sufficient to Have Stood, Though Free to Fall": Free Will in John Milton's Paradise Lost

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Martineau
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
John Milton ◽  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
Garden Of Eden ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
Book Of Genesis ◽  
The Way

In Book I of Paradise Lost, John Milton (1608-1674) asserts his intent to “justifie the wayes of God to men” (Paradise Lost1 I 26), paving the way for a revolutionary discussion of human nature, divinity, and the problem of evil, all couched in an epic retelling of Satan’s fall from grace, his temptation of Adam and Eve, and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden, as recounted in the Book of Genesis. In his treatment of the biblical account, Milton necessarily broaches a variety of subjects which were both relevant during his time and remain relevant in ours. Among these topics, and certainly one of the most compelling, is the matter of human free will.

Intention‐Based Semantics

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Borg
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Acoustic Properties ◽  
Possible World ◽  
Important Respect ◽  
Physical Objects ◽  
Intentional Agents ◽  
The Way

There is a sense in which it is trivial to say that one accepts intention- (or convention-)based semantics. For if what is meant by this claim is simply that there is an important respect in which words and sentences have meaning (either at all or the particular meanings that they have in any given natural language) due to the fact that they are used, in the way they are, by intentional agents (i.e. speakers), then it seems no one should disagree. For imagine a possible world where there are physical things which share the shape and form of words of English or Japanese, or the acoustic properties of sentences of Finnish or Arapaho, yet where there are no intentional agents (or where any remaining intentional agents don't use language). In such a world, it seems clear that these physical objects, which are only superficially language-like, will lack all meaning.

Implementing Free Will

2011 ◽  
pp. 108-124
Author(s):  
Bruce Edmonds
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Evolutionary Algorithms ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Social Accountability ◽  
The Brain

Free will is described in terms of the useful properties that it could confer, explaining why it might have been selected for over the course of evolution. These properties are exterior unpredictability, interior rationality, and social accountability. A process is described that might bring it about when deployed in a suitable social context. It is suggested that this process could be of an evolutionary nature—that free will might “evolve” in the brain during development. This mental evolution effectively separates the internal and external contexts, while retaining the coherency between individual’s public accounts of their actions. This is supported by the properties of evolutionary algorithms and possesses the three desired properties. Some objections to the possibility of free will are dealt with by pointing out the prima facie evidence and showing how an assumption that everything must be either deterministic or random can result from an unsupported assumption of universalism.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
pp. 221-232
Author(s):  
Laura Kounine
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Free Will ◽  
The Body ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Trial Process ◽  
The Witch ◽  
Fundamental Categories ◽  
The Way

The process of identifying the witch brought questions about emotions, gender, and selfhood to the fore. As witchcraft was a crime largely without evidence, legal and religious authorities had to employ their expertise in their attempts to uncover the truth about a person. The trial process reveals the overlapping and at times contradictory individual, communal, legal, and religious understandings of not only witchcraft, but more fundamental categories of sin, morality, free will, guilt, and innocence. The trial process further reveals how individual and communal narratives took on, and themselves shaped, understandings of witchcraft, gender, and emotions in popular media, visual culture, and intellectual treatises. The way in which people attempted to make sense of themselves and each other, how the body and emotions were ‘read’, and how this was gendered, was thus at the very heart of the struggle to identify the witch.

Heptapod B and the Paradox of Foreknowledge: Confronting Literature and its Filmic Adaptation

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-100
Author(s):  
Israel A. C. Noletto ◽  
Sebastião A. T. Lopes
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Artificial Language ◽  
Adaptation Process ◽  
Terrestrial Origin ◽  
Philosophical Criticism ◽  
Narrative Framework ◽  
The Way

Abstract Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life (1998) and its filmic adaptation Arrival (2016) both use Heptapod B, an artificial language from extra-terrestrial origin, capable of conferring on its speakers the ability of precognition, as a primordial narrative framework. Innovative as it is, it not only determines the way the stories are recounted, but also raises some very interesting philosophical issues. Focusing on that fantastical language, we promote a comparative analysis of the differing perspectives of the novella writer and the filmmakers regarding the free will and determinism dichotomy in connection with foreknowledge, and how these distinct views may have been influenced by the adaptation process. With the aim of providing a solid basis for such discussion, we collect and review the contributions of Linda Hutcheon, Brian McFarlane, George Bluestone, Linda Gualda as well as of others in relation to the plot developments in the literary text and its filmic adaptation. As a result, we point out what is prioritized or transformed in the adaptation process, thus offering a theoretical and philosophical criticism on the two stories and a comprehensive exegesis of the texts.

Providence, Freedom, and Human Destiny

1990 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Talbott
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Moral Evil ◽  
Specific Region ◽  
Universal Love ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Good For ◽  
Love Of God ◽  
Libertarian Free Will ◽  
Traditional Doctrine ◽  
Human Destiny

According to some theists, God will never completely destroy moral evil or banish it from his creation entirely; instead, he will eventually confine moral evil to a specific region of his creation, a region known as hell, and those condemned to hell, having no hope of escape from it, will live out eternity in a state of estrangement from God as well as from each other. Let us call that the traditional doctrine of hell. Elsewhere I have argued that any form of theism which includes such a doctrine, even one that tries to preserve consistency by denying the universal love of God, is in fact logically inconsistent. But moderately conservative theists, as I have called them, have an argument for the traditional doctrine that some have found convincing, one that emphasizes libertarian free will. The argument is this. Because God is perfectly loving, he wills the good for every created person and wills the redemption of all who have fallen into evil; but because he has also given his loved ones the gift of freedom and some of them in fact exercise their freedom to reject him forever, it is simply not within his power, even as an omnipotent being, to redeem all of those who fall into evil. According to moderately conservative theists, therefore, the following hypothesis, which I shall call the Rejection Hypothesis (RH), is at least possibly true:(RH) Some persons will, despite God's best efforts to save them, freely and irrevocably reject God and thus separate themselves from God forever.

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