Is God Morally Responsible/Good/Praiseworthy If He Cannot Do Evil?

It’s nice to see my blog seemingly influence people, even if it’s only in names and taglines. Among those who have read my blog, however rarely, is a blogger named The Analytic Philosopher whose tagline is “Philosophical Musings,” which of course is similar to my own tagline “Philosophical Musings etc.” (I say seemingly influence because the influence might not be real.[1]) In a similar vein, the name of my blog seems to have at least partly inspired the name of the Maverick Atheism Blog.[2]

Still, what I’d really like to discuss is the following claim in the Analytic Philosopher’s entry Jesus and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities. Originating in Harry Frankfurt’s famous philosophy paper “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,” the philosophically famous principle of alternative possibilities (PAP) says that “a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise.”[3] Jesus being essentially morally perfect means in all possible worlds that Jesus exists, Jesus is morally perfect. Since we Christians believe that Jesus is God incarnate, we of course believe that Jesus is morally perfect. With that in mind, consider the Analytic Philosopher’s argument:

Suppose Jesus in [some possible world] W promises His mother, Mary, that He will be home by some time t in order to build her a table. Of course, since Jesus is Lord He fulfills His obligation and, as promised, builds her a table after having arrived at home at t. Given PAP, Jesus was morally responsible for what He did only if He could’ve done otherwise. But then a problem is evident. That means there is a possible world W* that is just like the W except that, in W*, Jesus breaks His promise and so doesn’t make it home at t. So here is a dilemma for the theist who thinks Jesus is essentially morally perfect. Either Jesus isn’t essentially morally perfect, because there are worlds in which He goes wrong, or it is impossible for him to be morally responsible for obligatory acts.

As the blogger notes, one “might be inclined to reject the PAP.” Should one reject it?

The Principle of Alternative Possibilities

Frankfurt counterexamples, named after the very same Harry Frankfurt who coined the term “principle of alternative possibilities,” are proposed examples that show PAP to be false. To use something along the style of Frankfurt (indeed, borrowing a fair amount from his original paper), suppose Jones chooses some action (say, stealing a candy bar) but Black has a device in the brain of Jones such if Jones were to choose not to steal the candy bar, the device would force Jones to steal the candy bar. Jones however decides to steal the candy bar and so the device is not used. In this case, Jones could not have done otherwise but to steal the candy bar, yet he is still responsible for his action. Thus, the PAP is (in at least some sense) false.

Still, isn’t there some sense where the PAP is true? Suppose Jones could not even try to not steal the candy bar, because the device prevents even this from occurring. Would we say Jones is not responsible for his action then? Actually, he still could be. Suppose that if Jones were about to try not to steal the candy bar (suppose the device or the mad scientist had some sort of precognitive ability), the device would mind-control Jones so that he could not even try to not steal the candy bar. If Jones were to try to steal the candy bar though, the device would do nothing. Suppose then that Jones does try to steal the candy bar and the device does nothing. Even in this situation where Jones is incapable of trying to not steal the candy bar, Jones is morally responsible for his attempt at thievery.

We could even modify the scenario slightly so that Jones is incapable of doing something morally wrong, because the device steps in whenever he would make an immoral decision. Suppose Jones always chooses what is right and good, so that the device never intervenes. Then even though Jones is not morally free in the sense that he is capable of doing evil as well as good, Jones would still be a good man.

The upshot from all this is that the PAP is clearly false. God and thus Jesus as the Son of God cannot even try to do evil; there is no possible world where God (or Jesus as God incarnate) does evil. But the inability of an agent to even try to do evil does not imply that the agent isn’t morally responsible for one’s actions, as the case of Jones demonstrates.

Still, in the absence of a mad scientist’s device present in God’s mind, how is it that God (and thus Jesus) can be morally responsible while being unable to even attempt evil? This might depend on what exactly one means by “morally responsible,” but if being morally praiseworthy is a sufficient condition for moral responsibility, then I think Jesus is morally responsible. But in the case of God, how can a being who cannot fail to do good be morally praiseworthy or even rightly be considered as good?

Is God Morally Praiseworthy If He Can’t Do Evil?

One could object to God’s essential goodness by saying that because God does good in all possible worlds, it makes no sense to say that God is himself good, morally praiseworthy, or worthy of worship, since God has no choice but to do good, and there is no possible world where God does evil. When it comes to morally significant freedom (in the sense of being able to freely choose between good and evil actions), God has none.

The first thing to say is that this objection seems to rely on the PAP, which has already been proven false thanks to Frankfurt counterexamples. One can use Frankfurt counterexamples to show that its possible to be good without having morally significant freedom, as in the case of Jones freely doing good without having morally significant freedom due to Black’s device. With the proven falsity of the PAP, the onus is on the person who claims God not having morally significant freedom somehow leads to God not being praiseworthy and good.

Still, let’s ignore the burden of proof here. Can we show this objection is unsound even without Frankfurt-style cases? I think so, because one possibility is that God is worthy of worship at least in part because God is the Good, i.e. the paragon and model of moral goodness. As an analogy, the fidelity of an audio recording of a symphony is measured against how closely it matches the actual, original performance; the original performance sets the standard for audio fidelity. Similarly, God’s perfectly holy nature sets the standard of what moral goodness is, e.g. God is by nature loving and just, and these attributes become moral virtues for us. God is basically morality incarnate, and just as we should follow morality above all else even if morality’s nature cannot be different from what it is, so too should we follow God above all else even if God’s nature cannot be different from what it is. God is worthy of worship even without morally significant freedom, in part because, unlike us humans, God is the Good.

In a similar vein, just as morality is good even if its nature cannot be other than what it is, so too can God (and his actions) be good even if his nature cannot be other than what it is. If it makes sense to praise the virtues of morality, it makes sense to praise the Good. Thus, at least partly because God is the Good, God is worthy of praise and worship. And if God being morally praiseworthy is sufficient to make him morally responsible, then God is morally responsible. I think this would also wind up with Jesus being morally responsible even if there is no possible world where he does evil. If God is the Good, his goodness and his good deeds (like incarnating himself as a human and undergoing extreme suffering to save our souls) are worthy to be praised. Jesus, as God incarnate, is thus morally praiseworthy and morally responsible.

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[1] In addition to saying “That my tagline is the same as yours is purely coincidental” after admitting to reading my blog, he explained in a subsequent communication that he never once noticed the tagline when reading my blog—despite the tagline being present in every one of my blog’s posts. One wonders if he didn’t at least subconsciously notice the tagline upon thinking of a tagline for his own blog. Still, it could be coincidental. The Analytic Philosopher noted I wasn’t exactly the first blogger to come up with the phrase “philosophical musings” (as a Google search confirms).

[2] This one I have more direct evidence for; see the blog’s Q & A page.

[3] Frankfurt, Harry G. (1969). “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility” The Journal Of Philosophy 66. p. 829.

Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (p. 5)

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Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism

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Conclusion

The evolutionary argument against naturalism goes like this:

1. Pr(R|N&E) is low
2. The person who belives N&E (naturalism and evolution) and sees that Pr(R|N&E) is low has a defeater for R.
3. Anyone who has a defeater for R has a defeater for pretty much any other belief she has, including (if she believed it) N&E.
4. Therefore, the devotee of N&E (at least such a devotee who is aware of the truth of premise 1) has a self-defeating belief.

One of the big reasons to accept the Probability Thesis (premise 1) is that if N&E were true, then the semantic content of our beliefs is causally irrelevant in the sense that a belief causes stuff by virtue of its neurophysiological (NP) properties, and not by its semantic content. If a belief had the same NP properties but different content, the same behavior would result (the same neurophysiological properties means we would have the same electrical impulses travelling down the same neural pathways and thus issuing the same muscular contractions). Even if that weren’t the case, the ANPD scenario suggests it’s still possible for “garbage” beliefs to be associated with electrochemical reactions producing advantageous behavior. If semantic epiphenomenalism (SE) isn’t true on N&E, then semantic pseudo-epiphenomenalism (SPE) is, and both Pr(R|N&E&SE) and Pr(R|N&E&SPE) are low, thereby making Pr(R|N&E) low.

The argument for the Defeater Thesis (premise 2) is that if R is defeated in (S1), then it is defeated in (S2), and if R defeated in (S3), then it is defeated in (S4), and so forth, where (S6) is the scenario of a person who accepts both N&E and the Probability Thesis. The general idea is that the effect of an evolutionary naturalist believing Pr(R|N&E) to be low is akin to believing that drug XX has been put into one’s body (where drug XX destroys the cognitive reliability of most who take it).

The upshot of all this is that there is a serious conflict between science and naturalism, because the conjunction of naturalism and evolution is in an interesting way self-defeating.

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Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (p. 4)

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Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism

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The Defeater Thesis

Borrowing heavily from Plantinga, I’ll use the drug XX analogy[4], where drug XX is a fictional drug that renders one’s cognitive faculties unreliable for the vast majority of those who take it, with the type of unreliability in question being general cognitive unreliability, such that those so afflicted can’t even rely on their cognitive faculties to determine whether they’ve passed cognitive reliability tests and aren’t necessarily capable of detecting their own cognitive unreliability (note that this is the same type of unreliability that EAAN has in mind), though those afflicted can still have some true beliefs, including the belief that drug XX entered their system (though they might be mistaken how they came to that belief). The only people who are immune to drug XX are those that have the blocking gene, a gene that produces a protein that blocks the effects of drug XX, but the likelihood of any given individual having the blocking gene is small. Once a person ingests drug XX, the drug soon enters the bloodstream and has a high probability of rendering that person’s cognitive faculties unreliable within two hours. With that, consider the following scenarios:

Scenario (S1): I know that my friend Sam ingested drug XX and that twenty-four hours later he came to believe that that a series of tests has confirmed that he has the blocking gene and that his cognitive faculties are reliable, though I have no independent reason for thinking this occurred. And since Sam obtained his belief about the cognitive tests long after he ingested drug XX, there’s a reasonable chance that this belief was produced by unreliable cognitive faculties, and so this would-be evidence for Sam’s cognitive reliability (Sam’s memory of passing the cognitive tests) is undermined by drug XX, and my belief Drug XX entered Sam’s bloodstream defeats my belief that Sam’s cognitive faculties are reliable.

Scenario (S2): After I learn about poor Sam I ingest drug XX while being aware of its potential effects. I know of no relevant difference that distinguishes my case from Sam’s. Some years after the incident I come to believe I have taken a series of tests that say I have the blocking gene and that my cognitive faculties are reliable, but since this belief came long after I ingested drug XX, it seems this would-be evidence for my cognitive reliability (my memory of passing the cognitive tests) is undermined by drug XX, just as the would-be evidence for Sam’s cognitive reliability (Sam’s memory of passing the cognitive tests) is undermined by drug XX in (S1). Thus my belief Drug XX entered my bloodstream defeats my belief that R is true with respect to me.

The above two scenarios illustrate how drug XX can defeat R even for oneself, and also provide an undefeated defeater, since any alleged evidence one comes to believe in after ingesting drug XX would be undermined by drug XX. In scenario (S2), any evidence I give for the reliability of my cognitive faculties (e.g. my memories) would be presupposing the accuracy of my cognitive faculties—thus being circular reasoning. I consequently can’t maintain my belief in R in (S2) on the grounds that my cognitive faculties seem reliable to me, or that nothing seems to have changed for me, because all that relies on the very cognitive faculties that are being called into question. If I had knowingly taken a drug like drug XX that has a high probability of rendering my cognitive faculties unreliable, I can’t legitimately use something that’s the product of those cognitive faculties as evidence for my cognitive faculties being reliable. In scenario (S2), I cannot reasonably believe R is true for me while believing I ingested drug XX, and thus my belief Drug XX entered my bloodstream defeats R with respect to me.

Plantinga suggests N&E is like drug XX in its power to defeat R. N&E, like drug XX, plays a causal role in cognitive reliability; on N&E, it is naturalistic evolution that created humans and their cognitive faculties, so if on N&E it is likely that naturalistic evolution gave us unreliable cognitive faculties, that would seem to provide a defeater for R. Not only that, but Pr(R|N&E) being low would seem to provide an undefeated defeater for R.

While I think scenarios (S1) and (S2) illustrate the general principle, I think we can make the case stronger using some scenarios from a scholarly paper titled A Mental States Approach to the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism. Let’s consider a few more analogies, some of which refer to the XX-mutation—a genetic mutation that injects drug XX into the bloodstream soon after one is born.

Scenario (S3): A doctor has injected me with drug XX soon after I was born (the doctor mistakenly thought he was injecting an important vaccine), and I come to believe in the following. I initially believe I am the product of a sort of evolution that makes the reliability of my cognitive faculties very likely. I am a renowned scientist who has built a machine that I know is capable of reliably detecting whether and when drug XX entered a person's bloodstream, and I am extremely confident about the reliability of this machine (I as a qualified expert see that it works for myself and numerous scientific experts have unanimously agreed that it is reliable), such that if the machine reports drug XX entered my bloodstream, I would be as confident that the drug did enter my bloodstream as I would be in Scenario (S2). I administer the test to myself and the machine reports that drug XX entered my bloodstream at around the time I was born; as such, I am as confident that drug XX entered my bloodstream as I am in scenario (S2). Later I come to believe I have taken an extensive battery of cognitive reliability tests to confirm that I have the blocking gene, but since this belief came long after drug XX entered my bloodstream, it seems this would-be evidence for my cognitive reliability (my memory of passing the cognitive tests) is undermined by drug XX just as it is in scenario (S2), and so it seems my belief Drug XX entered my bloodstream soon after I was born defeats my belief that R is true with respect to me.

Scenario (S4): I come to believe in the following. The XX-mutation afflicts approximately one in a million individuals, with only a small percentage of those with the XX-mutation having the blocking gene. I have constructed a device similar to the one described in (S3) except this device detects whether evolution gave someone the XX-mutation, and I am as confident in the reliability of this machine as I am with the one in (S3). For most of my life I believe that I am the product of naturalistic evolution that makes my cognitive reliability very likely. After some years though I finally try the XX-mutation detector on myself. To my horror, the machine reports that I have the XX-mutation and thus that drug XX entered my bloodstream soon after I was born, thereby making me believe that naturalistic evolution gave me the XX-mutation. Later I come to believe that I’ve passed a series of cognitive tests to confirm that I have the blocking gene, but since I believe these tests happened long after drug XX entered my bloodstream, it seems that this would-be evidence for my cognitive reliability (my memory of passing the cognitive tests) is undermined by drug XX just as it is in scenario (S3), and so it seems that I have a defeater for my belief that my cognitive faculties are reliable. My belief Drug XX entered my bloodstream soon after I was born defeats R for me here just as it does in scenario (S3). Similarly, my belief that I have the XX-mutation (since I believe this mutation injects drug XX into my bloodstream soon after I’m born) defeats my belief that R is true with respect to me.

Scenario (S5): I come to believe in the following. Via a nifty combination of scientific and philosophical argumentation, it is proven beyond all reasonable doubt that naturalistic evolution entails that the XX-mutation is inevitably a part of any humanoid’s genetics. The aforementioned scientific and philosophical argumentation say that given N&E, it is likely that the XX-mutation rendered everyone’s cognitive faculties unreliable, though on N&E there is also the small chance that everyone evolved the blocking gene to render everyone immune to drug XX. N&E entailing that the XX-mutation is part of our genetics thus makes Pr(R|N&E) low, and I thus come to believe Pr(R|N&E) is low. I believe some time after it’s discovered that drug XX entered our bloodstream, credible scientists have run cognitive tests to confirm that we have the blocking gene. But since this belief came long after drug XX entered my bloodstream, it seems that, like scenario (S4), this would-be evidence for my cognitive reliability (my memory of the cognitive tests) is undermined by drug XX. My belief I have the XX-mutation defeats R for me here just as it does in scenario (S4).

Scenario (S6): The Probability Thesis is true and Pr(R|N&E) is low, but I do not initially believe this and instead think I am the product of a sort of evolution that makes my cognitive reliability very likely. Later however I study philosophy and see for myself that the probability of my humanoid cognitive faculties being reliable given that I am a product of naturalistic evolution is low. Afterwards I come to believe I have taken an extensive battery of tests that establish my cognitive reliability, but since this belief came long after naturalistic evolution created my cognitive faculties and I believe that given N&E, naturalistic evolution has a high probability of giving me unreliable cognitive faculties (by which I mean I believe that Pr(R|N&E) is low and naturalistic evolution is what gives me my cognitive faculties), it seems that this would-be evidence for my cognitive reliability (my memory of passing the cognitive tests) is undermined by the effects of naturalistic evolution similar to how naturalistic evolution giving me the XX-mutation in scenario (S5) undermines my would-be evidence for R, and so it seems that I have a defeater for my belief that my cognitive faculties are reliable.

To strengthen the case further, let XX symbolize “drug XX entered one’s bloodstream” and let’s stipulate that in scenarios (S1) through (S5), Pr(R|XX) (the probability of R given that XX entered one’s bloodstream) is as low as Pr(R|N&E) is in scenario (S6). So above we have a slippery slope of scenarios. The idea is that if R is defeated in (S1), then it is defeated in (S2), and if R is defeated in (S3), then it is defeated in (S4), and so forth. Or to put it more explicitly in the form of a deductively valid argument where lines 2 through 6 are material conditionals (a material conditional is where “If P, then Q” just means “It’s not the case that P is true and Q is false”):

1. R is defeated in scenario (S1).
2. If R is defeated in scenario (S1), then R is defeated in scenario (S2).
3. If R is defeated in scenario (S2), then R is defeated in scenario (S3).
4. If R is defeated in scenario (S3), then R is defeated in scenario (S4).
5. If R is defeated in scenario (S4), then R is defeated in scenario (S5).
6. If R is defeated in scenario (S5), then R is defeated in scenario (S6).
7. If R is defeated in scenario (S6), then the Defeater Thesis is true.
8. Therefore, the Defeater Thesis is true.

Because premises (2) through (7) are material conditionals, the only way e.g. premise (2) could be false is if R is defeated in (S1) and R is not defeated in (S2). So identifying a false premise would identify where the slippery slope stops. But it’s difficult to find a premise that is plausibly false. It would clearly be irrational for me to believe that Sam’s cognitive faculties are reliable given the information I have in scenario (S1), in which case premise (1) is justifiably true. There also doesn’t seem to be a relevant difference between scenarios (S1) and (S2) whereby R is defeated in (S1) but not (S2), and the same goes for every pair of scenarios in premises (2) through (6): there doesn’t appear to be a relevant difference between the two scenarios in any individual premise where R is defeated in one but not the other. So each premise (2) through (6) would seem to be justifiably true.

What about premise (7)? Thinking that R is defeated in scenario (S6) but not for the general person who accepts the Probability Thesis seems especially implausible. Scenario (S6) is where I see the Probability Thesis is true and I believe I have passed a battery of cognitive tests that confirm my cognitive reliability. If R is defeated even here, it’s hard to imagine what relevant difference there might be between this and another person who sees that the Probability Thesis is true. Part of the point of (S6), after all, is that any would-be evidence for R would be undermined just as any would-be evidence for R is undermined in scenario (S5). It seems that for the Defeater Thesis to be false, R would have to be undefeated in scenario (S6).

If however R is not defeated in (S6), where does the slippery slope stop and why? Where does there exist a relevant difference between two scenarios that saves R from defeat? It’s particularly hard to find a relevant difference between (S5) and (S6). One might say in (S6) we know of overwhelming evidence in addition to N&E that makes R likely, whereas that’s not the case in (S5). But why exactly do we have this evidence in (S6) but not in (S5)? To make the problem for this more explicit, imagine that the two worlds of (S5) and (S6) are essentially identical apart from the differences entailed in (S5), such that I believe that the specific type of naturalistic evolution my species is a product of has given me genes that (together with proper nutrition etc.) makes it likely that my cognitive faculties are reliable, that cognitive science and evolutionary biology has given us strong evidence for human cognitive reliability, that truth-conducive faculties are adaptive in Earth primates, and so forth. I also believe that we have overwhelming scientific evidence that we have the blocking gene to nullify the effects of the XX-mutation. Yet all this alleged evidence for cognitive reliability seems undermined when one accepts the evidence long after drug XX entered the bloodstream. So how exactly is it that the alleged evidence for R is undermined in scenario (S5) but not in scenario (S6)? If there is a relevant difference between the two scenarios, what is it?

One could believe that the relevant difference between scenarios (S5) and (S6) is N&E’s mechanism of probable cognitive unreliability (MoPCU), i.e. whatever it is that makes Pr(R|N&E) low. In scenario (S5), that mechanism is the XX-mutation; whereas in scenario (S6) N&E’s MoPCU is (presumably) something else, e.g. perhaps what makes Pr(R|N&E) low in (S6) is semantic content being causally irrelevant and invisible to natural selection coupled with the fact that the enormous variety of “garbage” belief sets akin to dreams vastly outnumber belief sets that accurately resemble one’s external reality. So, one objection to the argument is that N&E’s different MoPCU is the relevant difference between (S5) and (S6) such that R is defeated in (S5) but not in (S6), which would make premise (6) false.

But there’s a problem with N&E’s MoPCU being a relevant difference. N&E’s MoPCU in scenario (S6) is functionally identical to drug XX in that it induces the same type of cognitive unreliability with the same probability (in the sense that Pr(R|XX) = Pr(R|N&E)). Thus, which mechanism is N&E’s MoPCU does not seem to be a relevant difference. Apart from N&E’s MoPCU, there doesn’t appear to be any other plausible relevant difference between (S5) and (S6) here. If so, then the would-be evidence for cognitive reliability in scenario (S6) is undermined just as it is in scenario (S5). In (S5), N&E’s MoPCU is the XX-mutation; in (S6) the mechanism is different, but it’s functionally identical to drug XX (inducing the same type of cognitive unreliability with the same probability). It therefore seems arbitrary to hold that R is defeated in (S5) but not in (S6).

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[4] Well, not the analogy, since Alvin Plantinga himself has several variants, and I’m using my own variety here. Still, drug XX rendering one’s cognitive faculties unreliable for some portion of those who ingest it is common in all of Plantinga’s renditions of this analogy that I’ve read.