The Kalam
Cosmological Argument and Libertarian Free Will are incompatible
Essentially,
the KCA implies by assertion that you cannot have ex nihilo creation—than an
event cannot be created out of nothing, and by nothing. Only God, Craig and
others suppose, can do this. And thus the universe, created out of nothing
(arguably) was created ex nihilo by God. The causal chain goes back to the Big
Bang and stops. How can this be explained? Well, since causality must continue
regressing backwards, if there is a beginning to causality, it can only explained
by God.
However,
the theist is usually, if not a Calvinist, an adherent to the notion of
libertarian free will (LFW). By this, I mean that they believe an agent could
make free choices—could have done otherwise. This implies that the agent is the
originator of a freely willed decision, or the causal chain in a
decision. The determinist, on the other hand, believes that every effect has a
cause and that that cause is itself an effect or a prior cause, and this
goes back to the Big Bang or similar starting point where the physics breaks
down, or some other such situation (quantum cosmological loop or suchlike). As
Roderick Chisholm claims (Chisholm, as cited in Owen Flanagan, The Problem
of the Soul: Two Visions of Mind and How to Reconcile Them [New York: Basic
Books, 2003], ix) that when we act freely, we exercise:
. . . a
prerogative which some would attribute only to God: each of us, when we act, is
a prime mover unmoved. In doing what we do, we cause certain things to happen,
and nothing—or no one—causes us to cause those events to happen.
You
cannot get clearer language that ties libertarian free will to the Kalam in
insisting on there being uncaused causation. Chisholm might not claim that God
is the only prime mover, but most theists, including Craig, certainly do. This
is the talk of a prime mover, and God is supposed to be the only one. In case
o=you are doubting this, here is Robert Kane, the famous naturalist philosopher
rare in his insistence on the existence of LFW (Robert Kane, The
Significance of Free Will [New York: Oxford University Press, 1996], 4):
Free will
. . . is the power of agents to be the ultimate creators or originators and
sustainers of their own ends or purposes . . . . when we trace the causal or
explanatory chains of action back to their sources in the purposes of free
agents, these causal chains must come to an end or terminate in the willings
(choices, decisions, or efforts) of the agents, which cause or bring about
their purposes.
The point
is that the denier of LFW claims that the agent is themselves part of a larger
causal chain which explains why the agent did what they did; that the reasons
were derived from what is known as the causal circumstance—the snapshot of the
universe at that prior moment of the events.
On the other
hand, the theist generally believes that the causal chain starts with the
agent; that they originate the causal chain. This allows them ownership
over the decision so that the reason for the decision cannot be further
deferred to other (antecedent) causes. However, this means that the agent is
creating something out of nothing. There is ex nihilo creation, since no prior
reason can be given to explain the agent’s decision, otherwise we return to
determinism.
Yet
allowing for ex nihilo creation defies the opening premise of the KCA. William
Lane Craig is always espousing the intuitive “truth” (and we know how
unreliable institution can be) of the metaphysical claim that ex nihilo
nihil fit—out of nothing, nothing is made. But the theist is pretty much
always an adherent of the KCA and LFW (it is worth looking at the
meta-data for the philpapers philosophical survey to see evidence of
this)! Indeed, as Chisholm and Kane point out, agents have to be originators of
causality if LFW and ultimate responsibility are to hold. But Craig insists
that this is impossible, since only God can be a prime mover, and, unmoved,
move the universe.
Potential
Objections
The
theist seems to use one of two defences here:
1) That
prior cause merely influence but do not define the decision
2) That
the agent is itself a cause—and that this is fine. For example, there is the
theory of agent causation supposing that agents are different to events and
event causation. People can somehow ground causal chains and decisions in a way
which is different to, say, a boulder rolling down a hill, hitting a tree and a
pine-cone falling out. That kind of causality has no agency.
1) can
easily be answered in the following way.
One of
the most common defences of Libertarian Free Will (or contra-causal free will)
is that I sometimes term the 80-20% approach. Most people, to some
degree or another, accept that our lives are at least somewhat and, in most
cases, a good deal influenced. This may be by genetic, biological or
environmental factors. It is hard to deny that, at the point of making a
decision, we aren’t having our decision influenced by external or internal
motivators. This is expressed often as a claim like “Well, we are influenced
quite a bit, but we still have some degree of free will” or “I think we are 80%
determined, but 20% of our decision-making is freely willed”. There is this
idea that the will can override causality in some force of agency.
I will
now show thy this approach is entirely incoherent.
Before
looking at this particular point, it is worth laying out the issue of causality
and free will. Contra-causal free will is so called because it appears to want
to break the rules of causality. Causality is a more difficult concept than
many give credit for as you can see by this very book. Taken in its simple
manner of understanding, it presents this issue, known in some parts as the
Dilemma of Determinism (Paul Russell, Freedom and Moral Sentiment, 1995, p. 14):
. . . the
well-known dilemma of determinism. One horn of this dilemma is the argument
that if an action was caused or necessitated, then it could not have been done
freely, and hence the agent is not responsible for it. The other horn is the
argument that if the action was not caused, then it is inexplicable and random,
and thus it cannot be attributed to the agent, and hence, again, the agent
cannot be responsible for it. In other words, if our actions are caused, then
we cannot be responsible for them; if they are not caused, we cannot be
responsible for them. Whether we affirm or deny necessity and determinism, it
is impossible to make any coherent sense of moral freedom and responsibility.
What this
means is that an action is either caused or it’s random. To claim it is caused
but not determined is nonsensical. The basis of rejecting LFW is this, since
neither option allows for free will. To think otherwise would imply that the
agent caused the action but that it wasn’t determined; that the agent could
have done otherwise. For example, at 9:15am this morning in the universe, when
the phone rang, I could have picked it up, or I could not have done. I had the
ability to do either. Or, at t=1 in causal circumstance CC the agent
could have done X or Y. If the agent had done X and we continued the universe
until t=10 and then rewound the universe, do you know what, he could
have done Y.
The
problem with this is that with CC at t=1, the agent had a set of reasons
for doing X. This is what determined that he chose X. The universe up until
that moment, his genes and biology, the environment up to every single atom,
had causal influence to produce the “choice” of doing X. So if we went on 10
minutes and then rewound at CC t=1, considering the entire universe
would be identical, and the person identical, what could cause the agent
to choose Y and not X? In order to do so, the agent would have to be ever so
slightly different, or the environment (universe) would have to be different.
In order to claim that the agent could have done differently would
surely require a reason. Since a freely willed action cannot be randomly
defined, as the agent has no ownership over random, then there must necessarily
be a reason.
Causality
takes on the form of a chain of events, when seen in its simplest (and I argue
in this book, erroneous) form., but it is useful for explaining the point here.
A causes B which causes C and then D. This goes back until the beginning of the
universe or some such similar causal scenario. What Libertarian free willers
believe is that since the causal chain cannot regress back to the Big Bang or
similar, as this implies determinism, the agent must be the originator of
the causal chain. Let’s look at this in terms of “why” questions. Why did D
happen? Because of C. Why C? Because of B, and so on. In the case of an agent,
we cannot keep asking the why question because we keep going back and back,
beyond the decision. So at some point, the agent has to be ultimately causally
(and thus morally, it is argued) responsible for the decision—the originator of
the causal chain. The problem is that without the ability to answer the why
questions, the basis of the causal chain becomes “just because” which is
synonymous with random or irrationality. This is why, in Freedom Evolves,
philosopher Daniel Dennett claims that free will requires determinism since
without it, there is no reason for an action, and it becomes meaningless.
Which is
all good and well, but what about the issue at hand? Well, when people claim we
are, say, 80% determined, but that 20% of an action is still freely willed, we
have exactly the same problem—we have just moved that argument into a
smaller paradigm, into the 20%. Assuming that we forget the 80% fraction which
is determined so not being of interest to the LFWer, we are left with the 20%.
But this is devoid of determining reasons. So what, then, is the basis of that
20% in making the decision? The agent cannot say, “Well my genetically
determined impulses urged me to A, my previous experience of this urged me
towards A, but I was left with a 20% fraction which overcame these factors and
made me do B” because he still needs to establish the decision as being
reasonable; as having causal reasoning behind it. So if that 20% is not just
random or unknown )but still grounded in something) and had any meaning, then
it would be reasoned! The two horns of the Dilemma of Determinism raise their
ugly heads again. We are left with reasoned actions or actions without reason,
neither of which give the LFWer the moral responsibility that they are looking
for.
It is not
so much the scientific reasoning and evidence that the LFWer has to contend
with (which is mountainous, and enough in its own right) but the metaphysical
reasoning about causality which demands serious attention.
2) (that
the agent is itself a cause—agent causation) is a non-starter, as far as I am
concerned. Agent causation is a theory developed by philosophers like Roderick
Chisholm half a century ago. I am not that sure that many people adhered to it
these days, preferring models like event causation (such that people are
reliant on brain states which are physical events). It seems there is no good
reason for asserting that agents are causally different to standard events. One
can appeal to some kind of dualism, but causality is metaphysical as a concept,
and dualistic substances would surely need to “adhere” to it in the same way
matter does. To merely suppose an agent can be sufficient explanation for the
cause of a decision is particularly question-beginning. Without causal reasons,
a decision grounded in no reason other than “the agent” is synonymous with
random. Brain events, genetics and biology, we know, cause agents to make the
decisions they do. Mixed with the environment, and you have a causal circumstance
and determinism.
We know,
for example, that in the Benjamin Libet style experiments (where we can observe
that the brain kicks into gear before the conscious brain “decides” to press a
button), we can actually ask the subject to press a left or right button and
send transcortical stimulation (magnetic stimulation) in to the brain and make
the agent choose left or right, depending in where we send it. The agent then assigns
their own agency to that afterwards claiming that they freely chose left or
right. These are just the tip of a very large iceberg which extends to the sea
floor of causal determination. . . the agent cannot be asserted as an entity
able to start a causal chain, because this assumes that a causal reason is
given for a causal chain, but in a causal vacuum. There can simply be no sense
to be made of rational agent origination.
This all
means that someone who subscribes to the KCA cannot consistently and coherently
be a subscriber to libertarian free will. (Jonathan MS Pearce, Did God Create
the Universe from Nothing? Countering William Lane Craig’s Kalam Cosmological
Argument [Onus Books, 2016], 39-45, 46)
