Plantinga's free will defense
Encyclopedia
Alvin Plantinga
Alvin Carl Plantinga is an American analytic philosopher and the emeritus John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He is known for his work in philosophy of religion, epistemology, metaphysics, and Christian apologetics...
's version of the free will
Free will
"To make my own decisions whether I am successful or not due to uncontrollable forces" -Troy MorrisonA pragmatic definition of free willFree will is the ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints. The existence of free will and its exact nature and definition have long...
defense is an attempt to refute the logical problem of evil, the argument that to posit the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good god in an evil world constitutes a logical contradiction
Contradiction
In classical logic, a contradiction consists of a logical incompatibility between two or more propositions. It occurs when the propositions, taken together, yield two conclusions which form the logical, usually opposite inversions of each other...
. Plantinga's argument (in a truncated form) is that "It is possible that God, even being omnipotent, could not create a world with free creatures who never choose evil. Furthermore, it is possible that God, even being omnibenevolent, would desire to create a world which contains evil if moral goodness requires free moral creatures."
Plantinga's defense has received wide acceptance among contemporary philosophers, though it only addresses moral evil
Moral evil
Moral evil is the result of any morally negative event caused by the intentional action or inaction of an agent, such as a person. An example of a moral evil might be murder, or any other evil event for which someone can be held responsible or culpable....
, not natural evil
Natural evil
Natural evil, or surd evil, is a term generally used in discussions of the problem of evil and theodicy that refers to states of affairs which, considered in themselves, are to be avoided and not to be promoted, and for which no agent is morally responsible...
, and some argue that the defense is flawed in that it presupposes an incompatibilist view of free will.
Logical problem of evil
The logical problem of evil emerges from four core propositions:- An all-powerful (omnipotentOmnipotenceOmnipotence is unlimited power. Monotheistic religions generally attribute omnipotence to only the deity of whichever faith is being addressed...
) God could prevent evil from existing in the world. - An all-knowing (omniscientOmniscienceOmniscience omniscient point-of-view in writing) is the capacity to know everything infinitely, or at least everything that can be known about a character including thoughts, feelings, life and the universe, etc. In Latin, omnis means "all" and sciens means "knowing"...
) God would know that there was evil in the world. - An all-good (omnibenevolentOmnibenevolenceOmnibenevolence is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "unlimited or infinite benevolence". It is often held to be impossible, or at least improbable, for a deity to exhibit such property along side omniscience and omnipotence as a result of the problem of evil...
) God would wish to prevent evil from existing in the world. - There is evil in the world.
As J. L. Mackie
J. L. Mackie
John Leslie Mackie was an Australian philosopher, originally from Sydney. He made significant contributions to the philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language, and is perhaps best known for his views on meta-ethics, especially his defence of moral skepticism.He authored six...
has highlighted, there would appear to be a contradiction between these propositions such they cannot all be true. Given that the fourth proposition would appear to be undeniable, it can be inferred from the above that one of the other three must be false, and thus there cannot be an all-good, all-knowing and all-powerful God. Or, to put it another way, if God does exist, He must be either "impotent, ignorant or wicked".
The problem, and various solutions to it, have been debated by philosophers since at least the time of Epicurus
Epicurus
Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher and the founder of the school of philosophy called Epicureanism.Only a few fragments and letters remain of Epicurus's 300 written works...
in the fourth century BC. One of the most historically significant replies to the problem is the free will
Free will
"To make my own decisions whether I am successful or not due to uncontrollable forces" -Troy MorrisonA pragmatic definition of free willFree will is the ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints. The existence of free will and its exact nature and definition have long...
theodicy
Theodicy
Theodicy is a theological and philosophical study which attempts to prove God's intrinsic or foundational nature of omnibenevolence , omniscience , and omnipotence . Theodicy is usually concerned with the God of the Abrahamic religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, due to the relevant...
of Augustine of Hippo
Augustine of Hippo
Augustine of Hippo , also known as Augustine, St. Augustine, St. Austin, St. Augoustinos, Blessed Augustine, or St. Augustine the Blessed, was Bishop of Hippo Regius . He was a Latin-speaking philosopher and theologian who lived in the Roman Africa Province...
, which has been extensively criticized.
Plantinga's argument
As opposed to a theodicyTheodicy
Theodicy is a theological and philosophical study which attempts to prove God's intrinsic or foundational nature of omnibenevolence , omniscience , and omnipotence . Theodicy is usually concerned with the God of the Abrahamic religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, due to the relevant...
(a justification for God's actions), Plantinga puts forth a defense, offering a new proposition that is intended to demonstrate that it is logically possible for an omnibenevolent, omnipotent and omniscient God to create a world that contains moral evil. Significantly, Plantinga does not need to assert that his new proposition is true, merely that it is logically valid. In this way Plantinga's approach differs from that of a traditional theodicy, which would strive to show not just that the new propositions are sound, but that they are also either true, prima facie
Prima facie
Prima facie is a Latin expression meaning on its first encounter, first blush, or at first sight. The literal translation would be "at first face", from the feminine form of primus and facies , both in the ablative case. It is used in modern legal English to signify that on first examination, a...
plausible, or that there are good grounds for making them. Thus the burden of proof on Plantinga is lessened, and yet his approach may still serve as a defense against the claim by Mackie that the simultaneous existence of evil and an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God is "positively irrational".
As Plantinga summarised his defense:
A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all. Now God can create free creatures, but He can't cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if He does so, then they aren't significantly free after all; they do not do what is right freely. To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, He must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can't give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so. As it turned out, sadly enough, some of the free creatures God created went wrong in the exercise of their freedom; this is the source of moral evilMoral evilMoral evil is the result of any morally negative event caused by the intentional action or inaction of an agent, such as a person. An example of a moral evil might be murder, or any other evil event for which someone can be held responsible or culpable....
. The fact that free creatures sometimes go wrong, however, counts neither against God's omnipotence nor against His goodness; for He could have forestalled the occurrence of moral evil only by removing the possibility of moral good.
Plantinga's argument is that even though God is omnipotent, it is possible that it was not in his power to create a world containing moral good but no moral evil; therefore, there is no logical inconsistency involved when God, although wholly good, creates a world of free creatures who chose to do evil. The argument relies on the following propositions:
- There are possible worlds that even an omnipotent being can not actualize.
- A world with morally free creatures producing only moral good is such a world.
Plantinga refers to the first statement as "Leibniz's lapse" as the opposite was assumed by Leibniz. The second proposition is more contentious. Plantinga rejects the compatibilist notion of freedom whereby God could directly cause agents to only do good without sacrificing their freedom. Although it would contradict a creature's freedom if God were to cause, or in Plantinga's terms strongly actualize, a world where creatures only do good, an omniscient God would still know the circumstances under which creatures would go wrong. Thus, God could avoid creating such circumstances, thereby weakly actualizing a world with only moral good. Plantinga's crucial argument is that this possibility may not be available to God because all possible morally free creatures suffer from "transworld depravity".
Transworld depravity
Plantinga's idea of weakly actualizing a world can be viewed as having God actualizing a subset of the world, letting the free choices of creatures complete the world. Therefore, it is certainly possible that a person completes the world by only making morally good choices; that is, there exist possible worlds where a person freely chooses to do no moral evil. However, it may be the case that for each such world, there is some morally significant choice that this person would do differently if these circumstances were to occur in the actual world. In other words, each such possible world contain a world segment, meaning everything about that world up to the point where the person must make that critical choice, such that if that segment was part of the actual world, the person would instead go wrong in completing that world. Formally, transworld depravity is defined as follows:Plantinga says that "What is important about the idea of transworld depravity is that if a person suffers from it, then it wasn't within God's power to actualize any world in which that person is significantly free but does no wrong—that is, a world in which he produces moral good but no moral evil" and that it is logically possible that every person suffers from transworld depravity.
Criticism
Critics of Plantinga's argument, such as philosophers J. L. MackieJ. L. Mackie
John Leslie Mackie was an Australian philosopher, originally from Sydney. He made significant contributions to the philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language, and is perhaps best known for his views on meta-ethics, especially his defence of moral skepticism.He authored six...
and Antony Flew
Antony Flew
Antony Garrard Newton Flew was a British philosopher. Belonging to the analytic and evidentialist schools of thought, he was notable for his works on the philosophy of religion....
, have responded that it presupposes an incompatibilist view of free will (free will and determinism are metaphysically incompatible), while their view is a compatibilist view of free will (free will and determinism, whether physical or divine, are metaphysically compatible). The view of compatibilists such as Mackie and Flew is that God could have created a world containing moral good but no moral evil. In such a world people could have chosen to only perform good deeds, even though all their choices were predestined. Plantinga dismisses compatibilism as "altogether paradoxical" and "utterly implausible". Regarding Flew's criticism Plantinga concludes that "his objection is in an important sense merely verbal and thus altogether fails to damage the free will defense."
Another issue with Plantinga's defense is that it does not address the problem of natural evil
Natural evil
Natural evil, or surd evil, is a term generally used in discussions of the problem of evil and theodicy that refers to states of affairs which, considered in themselves, are to be avoided and not to be promoted, and for which no agent is morally responsible...
, since natural evil is not brought about by the free choices of creatures. Plantinga's reply is a suggestion that it is at least logically possible that perhaps free, nonhuman persons are responsible for natural evils (e.g. rebellious spirits or fallen angels). This suggestion assigns the responsibility for natural evils to other moral actors.
Derk Pereboom while acknowledging that "many of those involved in this debate agree that Plantinga has provided a successful response to the abstract logical problem of evil", delineates a number objections, including the following:
- Michael Tooley insists that the more pressing problem is the logical compatibility of the existence of God with the actual evils in the world, a problem referred to as "the logical problem of horrendous evil" by Marilyn McCord AdamsMarilyn McCord AdamsMarilyn McCord Adams is an American philosopher working in philosophy of religion, philosophical theology and medieval philosophy.-Family:Adams is the daughter of William Clark McCord and Wilmah Brown McCord...
. - David Lewis argues that even if each person would go wrong for some world segments, it would be possible for God to cause the person to do the right thing in just these cases, preserving selectively some significant moral freedom.
A recent objection to the defense is due to Geirsson and Losonsky, who question the interpretation of the fourth assertion in the definition of transworld depravity ("If S´ were actual, P would go wrong with respect to A"). This is a contingent fact: it is true in the actual world, but false in the world W. So one may ask if this contingent fact was up to God or not. If it was caused to be true by God, one may wonder why God actualized a world in which this person is transworld depraved when God could have actualized a world where this person, at least with respect to this action, would not suffer from such conditional depravity. If on the other hand, the fact is not up to God, we must accept that an omnipotent God has no power over contingent facts about the world; after all, there do exist possible worlds where the conditional statement in question is not true. Geirsson and Losonsky note that Mackie's reasons for rejecting Plantinga's defense were quite similar:
Despite these objections, many philosophers accept Plantinga's defense, with its implicit incompatibilism, as a strong reply to the logical problem of evil.
Acceptance
Most philosophers accept Plantinga's free will defense and thus see the logical problem of evil as having been sufficiently rebutted. Robert Adams says that "it is fair to say that Plantinga has solved this problem. That is, he has argued convincingly for the consistency of God and evil." William AlstonWilliam Alston
William Payne Alston was an American philosopher. He made influential contributions to the philosophy of language, epistemology and Christian philosophy. He earned his Ph.D...
has said that "Plantinga [...] has established the possibility that God could not actualize a world containing free creatures that always do the right thing." William L. Rowe
William L. Rowe
William Leonard Rowe is a professor emeritus of philosophy at Purdue University who specialises in the philosophy of religion. His work has played a leading role in the "remarkable revival of analytic philosophy of religion since the 1970s"...
has written "granted incompatibilism, there is a fairly compelling argument for the view that the existence of evil is logically consistent with the existence of the theistic God", referring to Plantinga's argument. In Arguing about Gods Graham Oppy
Graham Oppy
Graham Robert Oppy is an Australian philosopher whose main area of research is the philosophy of religion. He currently holds the posts of Professor of Philosophy and Associate Dean of Research at Monash University and serves as Associate Editor of the Australasian Journal of Philosophy, and...
offers a dissent, acknowledging that "[m]any philosophers seem to suppose that [Plantinga's free will defense] utterly demolishes the kinds of 'logical' arguments from evil developed by Mackie" but continuing "I am not sure this is a correct assessment of the current state of play". Concurring with Oppy, A.M. Weisberger writes “contrary to popular theistic opinion, the logical form of the argument is still alive and beating.”
Among contemporary philosophers, most discussion on the problem of evil
Problem of evil
In the philosophy of religion, the problem of evil is the question of how to explain evil if there exists a deity that is omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient . Some philosophers have claimed that the existences of such a god and of evil are logically incompatible or unlikely...
presently revolves around the evidential problem of evil, namely that the existence of God is unlikely, rather than illogical.