The Incoherent Notions of Free Will and Determinism. Part III

Christian dualism is Christianity on the back foot

This is the third part of a three part series that discusses an article on "Free will and Determinism" which appeared in the November issue of Premier Christianity magazine. The article was written by Justin Brierley. Brierley is an otherwise respected Christian commentator but as it turned out his article is, as far as I'm concerned, "exhibit A" in the case against Christian dualism. The other parts of this series can be seen here and here.

Below I follow my usual practice of interleaving my comments between article quotes.

On subject of Calvinism Brierley comments as follows:

BRIERLEY: Can the person who commits a heinous offence be judged guilty of a crime if they were bound to act in such a way by divine decree of God? Indeed, it could be argued that God himself is more culpable than they are.

MY COMMENT: As I have said in the previous parts of this series,  just how humans chose to act, whether good or bad, has a kind of "pre-existance" in platonic space, the space of possible outcomes. Thus, given this space of potentiality the role of Divine sovereignty is that of either positively selecting the possibilities or allowing their emergence from platonic space into a reified cosmic story. This role makes me think twice about attributing Divine culpability to human activity; for that activity need not have been positively selected for by the Creator, but rather permitted. Looked at  like this we find a way of respecting both human responsibility and Divine sovereignty.

However, as I have already said we are still left with the age old theological conundrum over the existence of suffering and evil and why the Divine will should allow such to be reified. On this particular issue I can only direct the reader to the enormous body of theological literature which addresses this question. The only time I have addressed it is here.

Brierley now goes onto consider atheistic materialism:

BRIERLEY: ...in a purely naturalistic worldview, all that's really happening at a fundamental level is a variety of atoms bumping into other atoms, triggering electrochemical responses in the brain. What's more, because  the universe runs on the deterministic principle of cause and effect, all of those collisions were predetermined in the distant past. You and your beliefs  are a product of along chain of inevitable physical events.

MY COMMENT:  The deterministic principle of cause and effect? Sorry, I've never heard of it outside naive interpretations of physics! As I have already said in the previous parts, I fail to recognise Brieley's depiction of the physical regime. There have been some attempts to try to restore an underlying mathematical determinism to quantum theory but I'm not aware that these efforts have resulted in any successful predictions. Physics today is not about a cause & effect billiard ball mechanics but about the mathematical constraints on patterns of behaviour. Ally this to the inherent mathematical chaos of the physical regime and we find that Brierley's billiard ball model looks downright silly. 

In any case given that the cosmos comes with two perspectives  ( i..e. the first person and third person perspectives - that is, respectively, my view of myself and the third party's view of me) it is not immediately obvious why even a highly deterministic particulate third person account of human beings is anymore fundamental than the first person sense of choice; the first person perspective is irreducible and the third person account, in the final analysis, actually traces back to a first person's observations, perceptions and theories. The first person perspective cannot be factored out of science; first person observations are the corner stone of science. 

Continuing with his billiard ball paradigm Brierley talks of the processes in the brain as follows:

BRIERLEY: But the atoms [in the Brain] aren't doing any reasoning. It's all just a series of physical events - snooker balls bouncing off each other. They aren't the least bit interested in the truth or falsity of the thoughts they are producing.  As CS Lewis wrote "If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on biochemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees".

MY COMMENT: To be frank I'm not sure whether Brierley is just acting as devil's advocate in using his snooker ball paradigm or whether he truly takes it seriously; certainly, sophisticated atheists would be unlikely to take it seriously, so who is Brierley being devil's advocate for?

Brierley's reasoning here doesn't work even for something as deterministic as a computer. Whether we are dealing with human minds or computers, we don't expect to find reasoning down at the microscopic level; the phenomenon of reasoning is a high level feature and as such it is only found in the organisation of the system. Moreover, if you are a theist, the idea of teleology isn't going to be the problem that it is to atheists and therefore teleologically speaking the high level organisation has meaning in so far as it has goals and purpose; we don't expect to find that meaning at the low level. Teleology throws an entirely new  light on the system; it might be just wind in the trees to atheists but it can't be so for the Christian. Like computers, human thinking systems are there for a purpose.

But really it is no surprise to me that the billiard/snooker ball paradigm, if used in a reductionist fashion,  induces disbelief; after all, if billiard balls are supposed to be the primary reality then where in such a system is conscious sentience to be found? The paradigm puts precedence on the third person perspective in a way which obscures the implicit presence of the first person perspective and may prompt the erroneous conclusion that there is no such thing as a first person perspective; in fact some atheists might even declare that consciousness is an illusion. If some people have tricked themselves into thinking that consciousness, the very core of personality, is an illusion what chance does the perception of God stand? For some Western Christians the only way to respond to this impasse is to become dualists and introduce the ghost that haunts the snooker ball machine! Christian dualism is Christianity on the back foot. 

Brierley goes on to make some comments about the problems atheism has with rationality: Viz: "The only way to guarantee that our reasoning  is itself rational is if there is a transcendent mind beyond the physical  stuff of nature. Getting rid of God turns out to create more problems than it solves". This I am inclined to agree with; without a sympathetic rational deity the rational integrity of the created order cannot be assumed.  But why determinism, or as Breirley appears to define it, "predictability",  should desecrate the sacredness of matter for Breieley I can only conclude that he really can't think round the intellectually toxic snooker ball paradigm. It is a paradigm that promotes disbelief in atheists and terror in the minds of Christians. Christian dualism is Christianity on the back foot. 

Brierley then moves his attention to Christian determinists: 

BRIERLEY:  Meanwhile Christian determinists are faced with the problem of how to rescue the concepts of love and justice from being rendered meaningless by a God who controls every thought and desire. 

MY COMMENT: This argument about the meaningless of love and justice in the face of Calvinism holds no weight at all given that at this stage Brierley's failure to clarify the free-will vs. determinism dichotomy renders it unintelligible and therefore itself meaningless. He has given us no coherent definition of either determinism or freewill and this means that no rational judgement regarding his dichotomy can be made.

In an attempt to make sense of what St Paul says in Romans 8:28-29 about the predestination of believers Brierley gives us this metaphor:

BRIERLEY: Imagine a Boeing 747 is scheduled  to fly from London  to New York.  Anyone who  gets on that plane  is 'predestined' to arrive at that destination. But the individuals who choose that flight  were not predestined to do so. Likewise all those who are in Christ are predestined to glory, but choosing whether or not to be part of that collective group is something within the free control  of each individual. 

MY COMMENT: This is a gallant try but there's a problem here: If we change the aircraft to a ship then we can see that it is possible for the passengers to bypass the "predestination" bit and jump over board and try their chances by swimming for it. After all, people do choose to leave the faith. So potentially there is the possibility that the boat, which presumably is predestined to arrive at its ultimate destination, arrives with only few on board. So whether or not passengers arrive at the predestined destination is a conditional rather than a "predetermined" certainty.  Quoting Romans 8:28-29:

28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

So, should Paul have made it clear that the "predestination" of salvation is a conditional outcome and really only applies if you stay on board with the faith? In which case since we can't be sure whether people stay on board or not, then they have lost their "predestination" (since Brierley appears to equate "predestination" and "predictability").

It is doubtful whether God operates in the same time dimension as we do and therefore I don't here want to be drawn in to the question of exactly what Paul meant in these verses. But it looks to me as though the least we can say is that Paul had a strong view of God's sovereignty (see also Romans 9:14ff) which to me means that God at least has a veto power on what pops out of platonic space into reified reality.

I also raise here a point I raised in the first part about the apparent observer relativity of "determinism". If an agent (whether God or human) knows an outcome in advance, even though that outcome is part of a random sequence of events, that outcome then subsumes as a "determined" outcome as far as that agent is concerned (i.e. it is known). This means that, depending on one's informational frame of reference, even a so called "free-will" event (or a random event for that matter), if known in advance, becomes "determined" or "predestined" relative to the informed observer.

BRIERLEY: In the end we will always have imperfect knowledge of God who exists beyond temporal limitations. Paul recognised it: "for we see through a glass darkly" (1 Cor 13:12).

MY COMMENT: Well at last there is something here I can agree with; namely, that the subject has  a mystery at its core and this mystery is God himself.  I would say that that mystery is a facet of the age old problem of suffering and evil. For if God is absolute sovereign as he appears to be in the Bible why does he allow the emergence from platonic space creatures which so often make such bad decisions?

The only other mystery is this: Just what do theologians mean by freewill and predestination? There's quite a nifty tactic here: Offer a dichotomy with the suggestion that one is to endeavour to make a choice one way or the other, but leave terms so vague that it becomes all but impossible to successfully engage the question. One can then safely chose one of the options and cover one's tracks, smoke and mirrors style, by declaring that it is all rather too mysterious for us mortals to arrive at a clear resolution of the question and this excuses the theological obfuscation that tries to pass itself as reasoning.

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I recently saw the following comment on the freewill question: Do I have freewill, if by free will I mean "The ability to do otherwise"?  The definition of freewill implicit here breaks down horribly; for using this definition I would have said that I certainly don't have the ability to act otherwise about certain things that I nevertheless very much chose to do: For example I chose not to kill my grandchildren. My mental set up is such that it is a very sound prediction that I would never chose to do such a thing; that is, while I remain sane it is all but impossible for me to chose to do otherwise. And yet in spite of this impossibility it is entirely meaningful to say that it is my choice not to carry out such acts. But on Brierley's understanding of determinism, an understanding which is apparently very closely related to predictability, there would be no "free will" being displayed here; the implications of Brierley's thinking is that in my cherishing of my grandchildren I'm a puppet in the grip of determinism!

There are a whole host of human actions and non-actions that are highly predictable and according to Brierley's concept of predictability as the anti-thesis of free-will, wouldn't therefore classify as "free choice". The further absurdity here is that even Divine choices, which are predictably constrained by truthfulness, justice and love, wouldn't, according to Brierley, classify as "free choices"!

However, there are, nevertheless, a range of choices where the outcomes are not so predictable. For example, given my human nature it is quite within my powers to either be truthful or to lie when my pride, social image and that kind of thing are at stake. Here we have something that is far less predictable and yet the outcome is as much a choice of mine as my choice to not to kill my grandchildren.  There is of course a host of moral decisions where human nature finds itself in a zero sum game and caught between choices which favour self over others.  This is the human predicament of societal living. 

***

I suspect that the so called problem of "freewill and determinism" is a problem manufactured  by  the snooker ball cause & effect model and cack-handed attempts to circumvent this with ghost in the machine dualism. In dualism we have a pathological paradigm that has prised apart mind and matter into two distinct categories. Brierley depicts the world of atheist materialism as a world of strict cause & effect, of billiard balls bumping into other billiard balls and where these interactions are to be regarded as the primary reality and every thing else as a secondary illusion (Although to be fair this model is probably a straw man as far as the more sophisticated atheists are concerned).

Not unnaturally Brierley is repelled by his snooker ball model. And so he should be on several counts. Firstly, as I have repeatedly said, it isn't even an accurate depiction of the physical regime as we understand it today, a regime that has random aspects and chaotic balances. Superimposed on top of this is the first person perspective of conscious cognition; any attempt to reduce this to mere billiard ball interactions would in any case trace back via the third person perspective to a conscious observing, thinking, theorising first person. The very meaning of materialism is grounded in conscious cognition and conscious cognition's rational and theoretical apprehensions. 

This theoretical apprehension has less the character of a cause & effect snooker ball model  than it does a world of mathematical patterning, a world where even random patterns have a role to play.  In the snooker ball model one may be tempted to pass on the responsibility by claiming "A snooker ball bumped my elbow and that's why I did it!" or "A tiny snooker bumped my neurons and that's why I did it!". But in a world of mathematical patterning this is not quite so easy to pass off!. 

The billiard ball cause & effect model has multiple issues: How can a billiard ball entity host conscious cognition without being haunted by a "ghost in the machine"? For Christians (unless they have escaped into ghost in the machine dualism) billiard ball mechanics also creates a problem with death: For if death entails that the unique set of identifiable billiard balls making up a person are scattered how can there be any life after death?  (Hence, the dualist's solution of patching in a "ghost"). But as we know from quantum theory there is no such thing as identifiable and unique billiard ball particles; the exchange of particles in a quantum configuration entails no new configuration; one can't meaningfully exchange quantum particles any more than one can meaningfully exchange the bits in a binary sequence; quantum particles have identity by virtue of their configuration; that is, their identity is relational. What this means is that personality cannot be identified with a unique set of billiard balls. Rather, a person's identity can only be bound up with an identifiable configuration. If identity is found in configuration then we have something that can be passed on from one medium to another and yet retain its configurational identity.

ADDENDUM 25/3/19: 

All our decisions, whether labelled as "determined" by determinists or "free-will" by "free-willists", eventually take their place in the fixed and "determined" resin block of history. In one sense we can look back on our decisions with a kind "God's eye view" on them with the potential of knowing those decisions and their results in full. The question then is this; does this perfect hindsight render what at the time were thought of as "free-will" decisions as no longer a case of "free-will" but somehow determined?  Or if we go back in time before the decisions were made does the fact that those decisions are, from a divine omniscient perspective, seen in a kind of hindsight, make them "determined"?  That is, does the mere existence of the omniscient render what would otherwise be "free-will" no longer "free will"?  I think that questions like this are an reductio ad absurdum for the whole "free-will vs determinism" contrived dichotomy.