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Figure 1. Multiperspectival Approach for the study of Human Will and Responsibility: Proposal of The Corrupted-Will Reformed Model.
section discusses the Situational Perspective, and considers the epistemological situation itself. It represents each specific task in which the agent, governed by the systems rules, knows something. I attempt to provide a theological position that may govern the epistemological relation between responsibility and human will, integrating, therefore, the current state of scientific knowledge in the areas of cognitive psychology and neuroscience.
the issue of human will and responsibility, my analysis will be divided in two subsections. In the first part, I propose to delineate the several possible philosophical and theological beliefs regarding human will and responsibility. To illustrate such views, I will focus on Calvins classification of human will.3 Nevertheless, it should be emphasized that several other secular philosophers have held similar views throughout history. In the second subsection, I will explain two different and important concepts of Cognitive Psychologythe differences between the First-Person (1PP) and Third-Person (3PP) Perspective frameworks. I will finish this part by correlating both subsections with previous published works demonstrating that there is a strong correlation between adoption of 1PP and allocation of responsibility to the self. Such a process, though, necessarily involves the inclusion of a libertarian notion of the will in order to maintain the so-called freedom of the individual. I note that adopting such an attitude would be surrendering to the natural consequences of the so-called noetic effects of sin over the human mind and that, whenever an unbiased 3PP framework is adopted, no libertarian notion of free will is required for the allocation of responsibility to the self.
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Subsection I
Several attempts have been made throughout the history of philosophy to define the exact relationship between human will and responsibility. 4 In the field of theology, this discussion has received even more attention since the effects of human action had to be balancedwith the existence of a God who, according to the Christian view (especially in reformed circles) was absolutely sovereign.5 Actually, the very possibility of such harmonization between Gods sovereignty and human will has been questioned by many who found both concepts simply irreconcilable.6 In order to express the different possible theological positions regarding human will and responsibility, I find it useful to employ John Calvins classification, which follows. According to Calvin, the concept of coerced will was a contradiction in itself and, therefore, should not be used. For him, although it is possible to define an action either as self-determined or as coerced, the human will itself (understood as an internal disposition related to personal preferences) would never be amenable to coercion.
John Calvin, Bondage and Liberation of the Will: A Defence of the Orthodox Doctrine of Human Choice against Pighius, Texts and Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2002). 4 David Boaz, Libertarianism: A Primer (New York: Free Press, 1998); William Belsham, Essays (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1789); Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, XXth ed., s.v. Free Will. 5 John M. Frame, No Other God: A Response to Open Theism (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2001). 6 David Basinger, The Case for Freewill Theism: A Philosophical Assessment (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996); Richard Rice, The Openness of God: The Relationship of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Free Will (Nashville, TN: Review and Herald Pub. Association: 1980).
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In opposition to the concept of a coerced will (which would be a form of an externally-determined will), Calvin proposed two other different forms of describing the human will (both of them considered to be self-determined). They are the libertarian free will and the corrupted (bounded) will. A libertarian self-determined theory of the will implies the real existence of an unlimited range of possibilities for an action (either in positive or negative terms). Libertarianism holds to a concept of free will that requires the individual to be able to take more than one possible course of action under a given set of circumstances. In fact, the essence of libertarianism is for agents to look back on choices and be able to say: I could have done otherwise.7 Furthermore, libertarianism argues that free will is logically incompatible with a deterministic universe and that agents must necessarily have free will in order to be responsible for their acts. The view of a corrupted or bounded will affirms the existence of an entity called human will, but denies that it is free in the sense that it has an unlimited range of possibilities. To Calvin all human actions are not independent of Gods sovereignty. Nevertheless, in order to avoid attributing directly to God the origin of sin, Calvin distinguished between God (who is the principal or sovereign cause of all things) and his creatures (who are the inferior causes). Calvin says, The proximate cause is one thing; the remote cause another.8 According to Calvin, the human will was just a remote cause and, therefore, could not be independent or free from the proximal cause. Calvin states in his Institutes:
Man, since he was corrupted by the fall, sins not forced or unwilling (non invitum nec coactum), but voluntarily (volentem), by a most forward bias of the mind; not by violent compulsion (non violenta coactione), or external force (non extraria coactione), but by the movement of his own passion; and yet such is the depravity of his nature, that he cannot move and act except in the direction of evil.9
Historically, the term compatibilism has been classically employed to describe the concurrence of both Gods sovereignty and mans responsibility.10 Compatibilism means that Gods predetermination and meticulous providence are compatible with voluntary choice. Although human choices are not coerced (people do not choose against what they want or desire), they never make choices contrary to Gods sovereign decrees (which are predetermined from eternity). This harmonic concurrence of both realities is clearly expressed in several bibliRobert Kane, Free Will: New Directions for an Ancient Problem, in Free Will, Blackwell Readings in Philosophy, ed. Robert Kane (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003), 222-248. 8 John Calvin and Jean Calvin, Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, trans. J. K. Reid (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 181. 9 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961). 10 John M. Frame, Determinism, Chance and Freedom, The Works of John Frame and Vern Poythress, http://www.frame-poythress.org/frame_articles/2005Determinism.htm (accessed July 21, 2010).
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cal texts. Luke, for example, when referring to Christs death says, Him, being delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye by the hand of lawless men did crucify and slay (Acts 2:23). In Calvins words:
We allow that man has choice and that it is self-determined, so that if he does anything evil, it should be imputed to him and to his own voluntary choosing. We do away with coercion and force, because this contradicts the nature of the will and cannot coexist with it. We deny that choice is free, because through mans innate wickedness it is of necessity driven to what is evil and cannot seek anything but evil. And from this it is possible to deduce what a great difference there is between necessity and coercion. For we do not say that man is dragged unwillingly into sinning, but that because his will is corrupt he is held captive under the yoke of sin and therefore of necessity will in an evil way. For where there is bondage, there is necessity. But it makes a great difference whether the bondage is voluntary or coerced. We locate the necessity to sin precisely in corruption of the will, from which follows that it is self-determined. 11
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Subsection II
I turn now to demonstrate how necessity of a libertarian notion of free will for understanding responsibility arises from an excessive emphasis on the subjective and personal view of the matter. In order to understand such phenomenon, I use the basic concepts of what is called 1PP and 3PP frameworks in cognitive psychology.12 It is known that during activities involving spatial cognition, the human brain may operate in different reference frames as a means of representing the locations of entities in the space.13 In an egocentric reference frame, constituted by subject-to-object relations, locations are represented in relation to a personal agent and his or her physical configuration.14 In such a frame, the self is the center of the scene and all objects and all events are represented in relation to this central point. Therefore, the reference frame is, in some sense, the Euclidean space carried by the observer. It has been demonstrated, for example, that a specific area of the brainthe right inferior parietal cortexis activated whenever such egocentric calculations are necessary.15 In contrast an allocentric reference frame, sometimes also referred to as exocentric or geocentric, is constituted by object-to-object relations as described in a Cartesian coordinate system. This framework is independent of the agents position as well as from any
Calvin, Bondage and Liberation of the Will, 3. Kai Vogeley and Gereon R. Fink, Neural Correlates of the First-Person Perspective, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7.1 (2003): 38-42. 13 Roberta L. Klatzy, Allocentric and Egocentric Spatial Representations: Definitions, Distinctions and Interconnections, in Spatial Cognition: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Representing and Processing Spatial Knowledge, Lecture Notes in Computer Science/Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, eds. Christian Freska, Christopher Habel, and Karl F. Wender (Berlin: Springer, 1998), 1-17. 14 Daniel C. Dennett, Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984). 15 Eleanor Maguire, Human Spatial Navigation: Cognitive Maps, Sexual Dimorphism and Neural Substrates, Current Opinion in Neurobiology 9.2 (1999): 171-177.
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external observer. Examples of exocentric reference frames are maps in general where there is no subject of action or central figure, but all objects are disposed in the space. There is, for, example an already-validated International Terrestrial Reference Frame as well anInternational Celestial Reference Frame. The egocentric reference frames can be subdivided further in those employing 1PP as well as 3PP. In the context of spatial cognition, the 1PP refers to the perception of the centeredness of the subjective multidimensional and multimodal experiential space upon ones own body. Such view is the opposite of the 3PP, in which mental states resulting from spatial perception or judgment can be ascribed to someone else. The cognitive operations when perceiving a visual scene from ones own perspective (1PP) differs from taking a view of the same scene from another persons viewpoint (3PP). However, both tasks are centered in the body of the agent (both are egocentric reference frames): the self or the other, respectively. The crucial difference between 1PP and 3PP is that 3PP needs a translocation of the egocentric viewpoint. Such difference can be easily understood by analyzing electronic games which provide either a 1PP or a 3PP (see Figure 2). It is important to reemphasize that the adoption of 1PP is strongly related to some internal cognitive processes which involve allocation of responsibility to the self. As stated in a recent experiment regarding 1PP: It can be said that the agent with strong first-person perspective has a certain understanding of (and a possible empathy with) other agents or creatures. This capability seems to be essential to morally responsible agency.16 Nevertheless, in my view, the process of adopting 1PP for justifying morally responsible agency is an epistemological mistake (related to the noetic effects of sin in human mind) because it will always implicate a libertarian notion of the will. In the 1PP view, the self would only be responsible because it is independent of any external control (including Gods sovereignty). I defend that the necessity of a libertarian notion of free will arises whenever the human mind evaluates the relation between human will and responsibility in an exclusive and biased 1PP. In other words, human beings will always judge unfair the punishment for their own decisions if they are shown to be the result of past deterministic processes.17 For example, the individual would consider it unjust to be judged by an evil act (even recognizing that he or she actually had performed that act) if someone shows him or her that all previous conditions that led to that act had already been previously planned by someone else. In fact, in 1PP, the subject will assume responsibility only if he or she cannot establish a clear relation of causality between the past conditions and his or her act. In such situations, the human mind will naturally assume the ownership for that act and consider it to be direct result of his or her free will. Such necessity, however, never arises when a 3PP is adopted. When an external judge, for example, analyzes a criminal case, although he or she may ask about biological
16 Richard H. Corrigan, Divine Foreknowledge and Moral Responsibility (London: Prism Academic Publishing, 2007). 17 John M. Frame, Determinism, Chance and Freedom.
Classical Theological Debate about Free Will and Responsibility Figure 2. An easy way to realize the difference between the 1st- and 3rd-person perspectives is understanding how different computer games employ each one of these frameworks (both of which are considered to be egocentric agent-controlled strategies).
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predispositions or inducing circumstances for the evil that has been done (and even may use these facts for diminishing the punishment), the sentence will be objectively based on the occurrence of the act, not on the absence of predictable social and psychological causes. The fact that any libertarian concept of free will logically results in physical indeterminism has, since the early debates in philosophy, been clearly perceived. In fact, historically, the claim for the existence of free will has always been considered to be a statement that ones actions or decisions were outside the scope of ordinary physical determinism. That is, arguing for the validity of free will has been for some time synonymous to seeking to establish that ones actions or decisions were not the result of natural causes, but rather that they arose, to some extent, de vacua.18 The Christian philosopher Donald MacKay presents an interesting analysis on the relation between 1PP and 3PP and the matter of determinism. In his arguments, MacKay purports to establish that although ones actions can be completely causally determined in the strong sense for external observers (at 3PP), they may also, at the same time, be logically undetermined for the actor in question (1PP).19 In other words, according to MacKay, the fact that human behavioris
18 Larry DeWitt, The Hidden Assumption in MacKays Logical Paradox Concerning Free Will, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 24.4 (1973): 402-405. 19 D. M. MacKay, On the Logical Indeterminacy of a Free Choice, Mind 69.273 (1960): 30-40; D. M. MacKay, Choice in a Mechanistic Universe: A Reply to Some Critics, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 22.3 (1971): 275-285.
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logically undetermined from the 1PP does not necessarily lead to the necessity of a libertarian concept of free will, which would result inordinary physical indeterminism. Therefore, in MacKays scheme, physical determinism, behavior unpredictability, and responsibility are fully compatible and integrated in a coherent system without the necessity of any libertarian concept of free will. In summary, it could be stated that whenever the human mind evaluates the matter of responsibility and human will through an essentially 1PP, it will always logically suppose the necessity of a libertarian notion of free will in order to justify responsibility. In an analysis of 3PP, conversely, natural determinism and responsibility are completely compatible without libertarianism.
20 John M. Frame, Presuppositional Apologetics, in New Dictionary of Christian Apologetics, eds. W. C. Campbell-Jack, Gavin J. McGrath, and C. Stephen Evans (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006). 21 Calvin, Bondage and Liberation of the Will, 137. 22 Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will, in WJE Online, vol. 1, ed. Paul Ramsey (New Haven, CT: Yale University, 1754), http://edwards.yale.edu/archive?path=aHR0cDovL2Vkd2FyZHMueWFsZS5lZHUvY2dpLWJpbi9uZXdwaGlsby9uYXZpZ2F0ZS5wbD93amVvLjA= (accessed December 4th, 2010).
will as expressed in the Westminster Confession of Faith;23 and 4. Martin Luthers theology as expressed in his book The Bondage of the Will (from the Latin, De Servo Arbtrio).24
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make them will before they acted. Calvin thus states, The will of God is the chief and principal cause of all things.28
According to Edwardss theology, there is one law or rule relative to Being that is the basis of all rationality in this world. Such a rule, therefore, would be so essential that its validity extends even to God. Such a Supreme Ontological Law could be stated in the following terms: The freedom of action or the range of possible acts for every being is limited by (or subjected to) the essential nature of this Being. For Edwards, the ontological nature was the supreme concept, while the range of possible actions was merely a logical consequence of the nature. For example, because of the Christian definition of God as a holy and perfect Being, the range of His possible actions is limited to those considered fair and just. This fact, according to Edwards, by no means contradicts the notion of an all-powerful God, because, ultimately, even his omnipotence is subjected to his nature. In such a sense, one can realize how, for Edwards, the very idea of a libertarian free will is irrational if the word liberty is proposed to mean an unlimited and unrestrained capacity of volition. In such a situation, a perfect Gods Being would not possess a will, which is free in the libertarian sense. In the same way the freedom or range of possible actions of fallen human beings would be limited by their own corrupted nature. To Edwards this does not imply that humans cannot be responsible for their actions, but it clearly proves that all beings in this world are subject to his Supreme Ontological Law. For Edwards, freedom essentially means the absence of coercion. Therefore, although he considered human beings free, the concept of freedom should never be applied to the will itself, but to the actions. As he stated:
The plain and obvious meaning of the words freedom and liberty, in common speech, is power, opportunity, or advantage, that anyone has, to do as he pleases being free from hindrance or impediment in the way of doing, or in conducting in any respect, as he wills To talk of liberty, or the contrary, as belonging to the very will itself, is not to talk good sense.31
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Ibid., 17.
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will is what I call its strength: the strongest motive is the one that appears most inviting, and is viewed by the persons mind in such a way as to have the greatest degree of tendency to arouse and induce the choice; a weaker motive is one that has a lesser degree of previous advantage or tendency to move the willi.e., that appears less inviting to the mind in question. Using the phrase in this sense, I take it that the will is always determined by the strongest motive.32
At this point, it becomes clear that both Edwardss model of decision making, as well as his theory of human will, are essentially deterministic. In the case of human beings, as human desires are totally constrained (determined by the fallen nature that generates such desires), the consequent actions are, therefore, also totally determined by the utilities attributed to each possible option. In his writings, Edwards distinguishes between two types of inability natural and moral with only the second being related to responsibility. For Edwards, natural inability is the incapacity, either due to internal limitations or due to coercion, to act according to the will. Moral inability, on the contrary, would consist in the lack of will when obeying a command. In other words, in natural inability, there is a discrepancy between will and act, while in moral inability there is congruence. Although denying in other texts the existence of free will, at this point, Edwards simply seems not to discuss the causality of the lack of will (if it is contingent or necessary). Simply put, if the will is coherent with the action, the subject would responsible for the action. In his words:
We are said to be naturally unable to do a thing, when we cant do it when we will, because what is commonly called nature does not allow it, or because there is any impeding defect or obstacle that is extrinsic to the will; either in the faculty of understanding, constitution of body, or external objects. Moral inability consists either in the want of inclination; or the strength of a contrary inclination; or want of sufficient motives in view [it] consists in the opposition or want of inclination.33
In summary, in an attempt to relate the system proposed by Edwards to Calvins theology it can be perceived that Edwardss theology would only be compatible with Calvins Corrupted Will option. Clearly, it would not be compatible with the conception of a libertarian free will because this is the very idea that Edwards tries to combat. Not so evident, but easily demonstrable, it would also not be compatible with the conception of a Coerced Will because such a model of decision making emphasizes the existence of a decision, and therefore, links the action to a process that occurs internally inside the mind and, therefore, is self-determined and not coerced. At this point, it would be interesting to compare Edwardss theological position with that of some of other groups within Protestantism. One of these schools, the Arminians, rose as a soteriological line of thought within Protestant Christianity based on the theological ideas of the Dutch Reformed theologian Jacobus
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Arminius (15601609). Their beliefs have been mainly summarized in a document called Remonstrance, which was published in 1610 as a theological statement against the ideas of The Synod of Dort (161819), a hallmark of Calvinism. In relation to human will and responsibility, the Arminians basically believe in three propositions about liberty:
1. It consists of a self-determining power of the will or of a certain sovereignty that the will has over itself and its own acts, whereby it determines its own volitions to the exclusion of any prior cause lying outside the will. 2. Liberty involves indifference. In other words, it requires the mind to be evenly balanced between the alternatives until the act of volition occurs,. 3. Liberty requires contingency understanding contingency as opposed to necessity. Contingency would mean the absence of any xed connection between the contingent item and its cause.34
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In opposition to these ideas, Edwards held that freedom corresponds to the liberty to act according to the will, even if this will is not contingent, but necessary (see Figure 3). To Edwards liberty lies in the congruence between will and action in other words, in the absence of coercion. In opposition to the Arminians, real liberty would only occur if human was not contingent.
Clearly, the reformed tradition of the WCF does assume the existence of human will when talking about human choices and actions. Furthermore, in the above statements, the WCF seems to individualize two different historical moments of human will into a first and second period.
Dennis Bratcher, ed., The Five Articles of the Remonstrants, The Voice: Biblical and Theological Resources for Growing Christians, http://www.cresourcei.org/creedremonstrants. html (accessed January 27, 2010). 35 Philip Schaff, The Westminster Confession of Faith: Translation from 1656, in Creeds of Christendom, (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 1889), 13-14.
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Figure 3. Jonathan Edwardss Utility Model of Decision, which is essentially deterministic and compatibilistic. Edwards differentiate between Natural Inability (in which sinful actions are performed against the will by coercion) and Moral Inability (in which sinful actions are performed in accordance to the will). The relation between the strongest motive and the will is always constant and necessary according to Edwards. In Moral Inability, but not in Natural Inability, such unique option becomes actual after a process of conscious decision which generates responsibility.
The first period described in sections I and II and which could be designated as The Glorious State of Human Will relates to the time before the Fall and which has been classically described in reformed theology by the Latin words Posse non Pecare. In fact, Adam and Eve, the first human beings, were the only persons who could really be said to pursue a will that included both possibilities (to sin or not to sin). In other words, their range of choices was not constrained by a fallen nature. The second period described in section III and which could be designated as The Corrupted State of Human Will relates to the period after the Fall in which the corruption of human nature limits the range of possibilities of mans will (a state which has been classically described by the Latin words Non posse non pecare). In such period, although human will still exists (and it is in Calvins words not coerced by any external force), it is now internally limited by the corruption of mans own nature. As my discussion concentrates mainly on the second period, it can be perceived that according to the WCF, the corruption of the will was the direct consequence of sin, which, since then, has been transmitted to all humans since birth
Since WCF supposes the existence of human will, one recurrent matter of debate is the relation of such human will and Gods sovereignty. Does the existence of the latter lead to the denial in any form the reality of the first? Or does the compatibilistic view, which affirms both, logically imply that God is the direct creator of evil? To clarify I turn our attention to the WCF view regarding Gods sovereignty as expressed in Chapter III Of Gods Eternal Decree:
1. God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.36
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As it can be clearly perceived, the WCF states that the reality of Gods sovereignty by no means denies the existence of human will, nor does it imply that, due to Gods primary foreordination, he can be considered the author of evil. In summary, the WCFs view of human will is fully in accordance with Calvins definition of a Corrupted Will. Furthermore, the WCFs view is also compatibilistic because both the sovereignty of God and human responsibility for the existence of evil coexist harmonically.
Ibid., 4. Desiderius Erasmus, De libero arbitrio diatribe sive collatio (Basileae: Apud Ioannem Frobenium, 1524).
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Therefore, for Luther, the concept of free will would necessarily suppose a will that would be free from necessity of consequence, or, in other words, a will that would not be completely determined by God. Therefore the adjective free, when attributed to the will, would suppose that the will is autonomous or independent of God, or a god in itself. For Luther although the Doctrine of Human Will should not be abandoned (because terms expressing the existence of human will and decisions are extensively used in Scripture), attributing the adjective free to human will was an epistemological fallacy related to the primitive sin of Adam (the desire of autonomy from God). In fact, for Luther, the doctrine of Foreknowledge and Omnipotence of God was completely incompatible with the freedom of the will:
The foreknowledge and omnipotence of God are diametrically opposed to our free-will. Either God makes mistakes in his foreknowledge, and errors in his action (which is impossible), or else we act, and are caused to act, according to his foreknowledge and action. And by the omnipotence of God I mean, not the power by which he omits to do many things that he could do, but the active power by which he mightily works all in all. It is in this sense that Scripture calls him omnipotent. This omnipotence and foreknowledge of God, I repeat, utterly destroy the doctrine of free-will.39
Therefore for Luther, Gods foreknowledge and predestination was compatible with only one of Calvins options: that of the Corrupted Will. In relation to Erasmuss view of human will and responsibility, several interesting issues can be discussed. Up to the time of the Reformation, it could be said that there were basically two views of anthropology and soteriology. Either one believed in salvation by works or in salvation by grace. In other words, either one was a Pelagian (whether pure or semi-pure) or an Augustinian. Salvation was either by sovereign grace or by human merits. In between these two extremes, Erasmus of Rotterdam tried to find a middle position: the doctrine of Synergism. Synergism ascribes salvation both to God and to man. In salvation, God and man make an equal contribution. Salvation is both by merit and by grace. Erasmus saw salvation as a cooperation, a joint-venture, a partnership between God and man. The result was that, while God receives the glory, man also receives the reward for his merits. It could be stated, therefore, that from the reformed perspective Synergism is, in essence, an illegitimate hybrid of grace and free will.40 In Erasmuss words:
We should not arrogate anything to ourselves but attribute all things we have received to the divine grace, which called us when we were turned away, which purified us by faith, which gave us this gift, that our will might be synergos (a fellow-worker) with grace, although Calvin, Bondage and Liberation of the Will, 9. Ibid., 216. 40 Fook M. Cheah, A Review of Luther and Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation, in Martin Luthers Basic Theological Writings, ed. Timothy F. Lull (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1989).
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Classical Theological Debate about Free Will and Responsibility grace is itself sufficient for all things and has no need of the assistance of human will.41
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Luther also says, And so these passages, which seem to be in conflict with one another, are easily brought into harmony if we join the striving of our will with the assistance of divine grace.42 Because the synergistic view of salvation places an emphasis on works as an effective and essential road to salvation, it is still the main position held by some conservative Catholics as well as some liberal protestant theologians. Nevertheless, a classical and strict reformed view of responsibility would still hold to the defence of human will as self-determined and non-libertarian. Yet it should be compatibilistic because the language about human choices is clearly expressed in the Bible, and there is no logical contradiction (as demonstrated by Edwards, Calvin, and Luther) between human will and Gods omnipotence and predestination.
41 Martin Luther and Desiderius Erasmus, Luther and Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation, eds. E. Gordon Rupp and Philip S. Watson (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1969). 42 Ibid., 74.
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any new motion of our body, or new perception of our mind.43 It has long been held that the question of human will was closely related to the decision making process, which had a close relation to each individuals preferences. Nevertheless, the exact relation between act and will (as well as between will and desire) has not always been clear. Although John Locke, for example, initially identifies will with preference, desire, and choice (taking them as equivalent), he further denies in his writings such univocal relation:
The will signifies nothing but a power or ability to prefer or choose Although the word preferring seems best to express the act of volition, it doesnt express it precisely; for although a man would prefer flying to walking, who can say he ever wills to fly?44
Although the psychologist William Jamess further division of the concept of mind into three basic functions (cognition, emotion, and conation this last corresponding to the will) added some further clarification to the issue, we must recognize that it was a very simplistic and quite arbitrary division, taking into account that it could be stated of someone as willful loving or passionately reasoning.45 The definition of will seems to be so subjective and existential that, although intentions, plans, and thoughts may be experienced consciously, the action could indeed be said to be unwilled if the person says it was not. Furthermore, in common everyday language, the term will may refer to completely different concepts either to well-elaborated and organized plans for the future or to profound feelings and emotional desires. It is clear that the matter of intentionality, closely related to the issue which is currently known as conscious agency, has fascinated generations of psychologists. In fact, James believed that human will plays a crucial role to the subject by organizing its personal interpretation of life. In his Principles of Psychology he states:
But the whole feeling of reality ... the whole sting and excitement of our voluntary life, depends on our sense that, in it, things are really being decided from one moment to another, and that is not the dull rattling off of a chain that was forged innumerable ages ago.46
Interestingly, several non-Christian psychologists agree that the notion of free will is an elaborated and recurring illusion of the human mind.47 Since early scientific research on the phenomenon of conscious agency, it has been perceived that such natural and almost instinctive feeling may be fooled in several situations. This may happen in some specific clinical disorders, such as the alien hand syndrome, dissociative identity disorder, and schizophrenic auditory hallucinations. Such illusion has also been demonstrated to occur during other events such as hypnosis,
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1739). John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/ phl302/texts/locke/locke1/Essay_contents.html (accessed July 21, 2010). 45 William James, The Principles of Psychology, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1890). 46 Ibid., 453. 47 Daniel M. Wegner, The Illusion of Conscious Will (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002).
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automatic writing, Ouija board spelling, water dowsing, and facilitated communication, all of which illustrate in different ways the possible dissociations and nuances between will and action. This has led to the formulation of an interesting theory called Apparent Mental Causation. According to this theory, when a thought appears in consciousness just prior to an action and such thought is consistent with the action (and it appears exclusive of salient alternative causes for that action), human beings usually experience a feeling of conscious will and ascribe authorship for such action to the self. The experiences of conscious will would, therefore, arise from processes whereby the mind interprets itself, not from processes whereby the mind creates action. Conscious will, in this view, would be an indication that the subject believes he or she had caused an action, not a revelation of the causal sequence by which the action has been produced.48 Another valuable insight has been the conceptualization of what is currently called the Authorship Processing System.49 Such a complex psychological subsystem of human mind would stand outside the processes that effectively cause the action, laboring in parallel with it in order to generate for the subject feelings of doing, which inform the person of an estimate, based on available information, of who in fact is performing the action. According to the authors who proposed such theory, depending on the values of these estimations different degrees of subjective experiences of conscious will would take place. In the presence of strong evidences of external clues which suggest agency the authorship processing mechanism would, therefore, give rise to subjective experiences of conscious will that would compel people to believe they really caused their actions, although that may not actually be true in some cases. Daniel Wegner, from the Psychology Department of Harvard University, extensively explored such phenomenon is his most recent bestseller The Illusion of the Conscious Will.50 Wegner strongly denies any causative power to the subjective experience of the will, considering it an epiphenomenon of the Authorship Processing System. He states, The experience of conscious will is a marvelous trick of the mind, one that yields useful intuitions about our authorship but it is not the foundation for an explanatory system that stands outside the paths of deterministic causation.51 Despite not departing from a Christian worldview, Wegner openly advocates an interesting position that denies the idea that responsibility strictly relates to causality. In fact, in his model (similarly to the Edwards model of responsibility previously presented) the author associates responsibility directly to conscious
48 E. Pronin and others, Everyday Magical Powers: The Role of Apparent Mental Causation in the Overestimation of Personal Influence, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 91.2 (2006): 218-231. 49 Daniel M. Wegner and Betsy Sparrow, Authorship Processing, in The Cognitive Neurosciences III, ed. Michael S. Gazzaniga (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), 1201-1209. 50 Wegner, Illusion of Conscious Will, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002). 51 Daniel M. Wegner, The Minds Best Trick: How We Experience Conscious Will, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7.2 (2003): 7.
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In summary, it can be perceived that a growing amount of evidence from empirical research in cognitive psychology supports the concept of the free will (or a will that does not dependent on deterministic causes) as a complex and recurrent psychological illusion of the human mind. In order to explain such process without relying upon a supernatural or theological worldview, evolutionists biologists defend that such illusory process might have emerged as it played a role in the social adaptation of human beings.53 For a Christian, nevertheless, such empirical evidence reinforces the reformed presuppositions previously discussed, which defends an essentially deterministic understanding of human will and responsibility, in which human will possesses no autonomous causative power, but in which human will can be considered as a subjective epiphenomenon of the human mind.
Classical Theological Debate about Free Will and Responsibility Figure 4. It has been possible through high-field functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging systems to map the activation of specific areas of the brain during tasks involving neuropsychological paradigms which are able to test different cognitive functions, such as language, motor, and even complex decision-making processes.
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The frontal cortex, which is responsible for analytical processing and cognition. In relation to intentionality or agency, it has been known for a long time that the frontal cortex plays a central role in initiative and purposeful behavior and that lesions of the frontal cortex induce aphatic states characterized by abulia (lack of motivation) with diminution of both active (motor as well as cognitive) behavior. The limbic system, which is responsible for the processing of emotion-related information. The so-called reward-system, which is composed of mesolimbic and mesocortical structures that are responsible for evaluating external stimuli and regulating behaviors that involve pleasure and reward. The mesial temporal structures, such as the hippocampus, which are responsible for learning as well as past-memories evocations. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex and cingulate gyrus, which seem to be activated whenever the decision-making process involves any complex ethical dilemma. The left parietal lobe, which is responsible for numerical evaluation and cal-
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culating of outcomes related to each possible option involved in a decision. The right parietal lobe, which is responsible for processing any spatial information that might relate to the decision of a motor act. The complexity of this region as well as its unique role in spatial cognition has been extensively discussed elsewhere. In fact I have previously demonstrated that the cognitive framework through which spatial information is processed has an important parallel with one of Kants category (a special form of a priori and synthetic knowledge as proposed in his Critique of Pure Reason) responsible for generation of Geometric information.55 I have also demonstrated that several types of ischemic or tumoral lesions affecting the parietal lobe may lead to complex neuropsychological syndromes which may significantly impaire spatial cognition.56 Although some authors have proposed indeterministic models for neuroscience that might account for a certain level of indeterminacy,57 at the present time most neuroscientists agree that attributing even a small level of indeterminacy to each human individual action (or to each individual physiological event in the brain) would ultimately lead to such an enormous amount of uncertainty that almost no human behavior or social phenomenon would ever be amenable to description, explanation, or prediction by science.58 Furthermore even atheist scientists agree that, for matters of the criminal law, even a hard form of determinism would not undermine responsibility or punishment, and, therefore, no abstract notion of free will or indeterminacy would be necessary for supporting any ethical or legal system of the modern world.59 Actually, earlier generations of scientists defended not only determinism but also a strict version of the relation between the human mind and brain called physicalism. For example, the biologist Gerald Edelman, awarded the Nobel Prize of Medicine in 1972, argued that both the mind and consciousness are wholly material and purely biological phenomena, arising from highly complex cellular
55 Tobias A. Mattei, Kants Epistemology and Neuroscience: The Biological Basis of the Synthetic and A Priori Character of Geometric Knowledge, in Recht und frieden in der philosophie Kants, ed. Kant-Gesellschaft e.V (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008),655666. 56 Tobias A. Mattei, The Spatial Cognition and Its Disturbances: The Role of the Posterior Parietal Cortex, Rev Neurociencias 13.2 (2005): 93-99; Paul W. Glimcher and others, eds., Neuroeconomics: Decision Making and the Brain (London: Academic Press, 2008); T. Kahnt and others, Decoding Different Roles for vmPFC and dlPFC in Multi-Attribute Decision Making, Neuroimage 56.2 (2011): 709-715. 57 K. A. Pelphrey, J. P. Morris, and G. McCarthy, Grasping the Intentions of Others: The Perceived Intentionality of an Action Influences Activity in the Superior Temporal Sulcus during Social Perception, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 16.10 (2004): 1706-1716; Roger Penrose, Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). 58 H. Bok, The Implications of Advances in Neuroscience for Freedom of the Will, Neurotherapeutics 4.3 (2007): 555-559; P. Grim, Free Will in Context: A Contemporary Philosophical Perspective, Behavioral Sciences and the Law 25.2 (2007): 183-201. 59 Joshua Greene and Jonathan Cohen, For the Law, Neuroscience Changes Nothing and Everything, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 359.1451 (2004): 1775-1785.
processes within the brain.60 Nevertheless, although for many years the working hypothesis in neuroscience has been that a complete account of brain function was possible in strictly neurophysiological terms without invoking conscious or mental agents, this long-established materialist-behaviorist principle has been challenged in recent years by the introduction of a modified concept of the mind-brain relation in which consciousness is conceived to be both emergent and causal.61 This complex psychophysical interaction has been explained in terms of the emergence of hierarchies of higher-order and functionally-derived mental properties that interact by laws and principles different from, and not reducible to, those of neurophysiology. Reciprocal upward and downward interlevel determination of mental and neural actions are, therefore, accounted for on these terms, without violating the principles of scientific explanation and without reducing the qualities of inner experience to those of physiology. In accordance to these recent modern concepts of emerging consciousness as well as downstream causation, some Christian scholars, bringing together insights from both philosophy and neuroscience, have defended a non-reductive version of physicalism.62 According to such view humans are the authors of their own thoughts and actions and the mind is understood as a complex embodied and constituted by action-feedback-evaluation-action loops which occur in the environment. In such sophisticated theoretical models there is possibility of accounting for downward (mental) causation (explained in terms of a complex, higher-order system exercising constraints on lower-level processes) apart from any necessity of physical indeterminism. The Christian psychologist, Nancey Murphy, for example states the real concept that should be avoided in any serious discussion of the relation between brain and mind is not neurobiological determinism, but neurobiological reductionism.63 For her the relevant question is, in fact, whether humans, as whole persons, exert downward causation over some of their own parts and processes. Nevertheless in such system, what then would account for human responsibility, if all organisms would be capable of doing this to some extent? In other words, what needs to be added to this animalian flexibility to constitute a responsible human action? Murphy proposes that the main difference relies on a sophisticated language apparatus and on hierarchically-ordered cognitive processes which allow (mature) humans to evaluate their own actions, motives, goals, and moral principles and, therefore, generate a subjective perception of action which involves moral deci60 Gerald M. Edelman, The Remembered Present: A Biological Theory of Consciousness (New York: Basic Books, 1990). 61 R. W. Sperrya, Mind-Brain Interaction: Mentalism, Yes; Dualism, No, Neuroscience 5.2 (1980): 195-206. 62 Markus E. Schlosser, Non-Reductive Physicalism, Mental Causation and the Nature of Actions, in Reduction: Between the Mind and the Brain, eds. H. Leitgeb and A. Hieke (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2009). 63 Nancey Murphy, Non-Reductive Physicalism and Free Will, Global Spiral, http://www. metanexus.net/magazine/tabid/68/id/10501/Default.aspx (accessed January 27, 2010).
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sions.64 In summary, we have seen that, in accordance with the latest research data from neuroscience and psychology, an appropriate Christian understanding of human will should consider intentionality and consciousness as having a complex biological basis, which is essentially deterministic, but not reducible to it. Furthermore, such higher-order functions should be understood as pursuing causal power over lower-level constraints of human behavior and other basic brain functions.
Conclusions
I have demonstrated, in the Existential part of our Multiperspectival Approach, that the question about the necessity of a libertarian model of free will for justifying responsibility arises from an erroneous interpretation of the relation between human will and responsibility from an exclusive and biased 1PP. After analyzing the origin of the question, in the Normative section of the essay, Iproposed to search along the history of Christian tradition for the basic reformed presuppositions which would further guide the epistemological endeavor in the issue. After analyzing the position of John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, Martin Luther, and the Westminster Confession of Faith, we concluded that all of them involved the same view of human will as self-determined and corrupted by nature. At this point, I have demonstrated that, according to a Christian worldview, the very concept of freedom, when applied to the will in such a libertarian way, is meaningless and irrational because, according to such broad view of freedom even the Christian God would not be free, because he cannot act in contrary to his own nature. We have also concluded that, in order to be compatibilistic and to ensure that human will and Gods sovereignty harmonically coexist, a reformed view should be founded on a deterministic theory of biological working of the brain. Finally, in the Situational section of my analysis, I have demonstrated how a significant amount of empirical data from contemporary cognitive psychology of conscious agency and intentionality strongly supports the view of free will as a complex and elaborated illusion of human mind. I also explored the complexity of the neurobiological apparatus underlying the decision making processes and intentionality, emphasizing the integrative character of this complex system composed of several harmonized subunits. Such empirical evidence provides further scientific support for the proposed reformed perspective in which human will is understood as being essentially deterministic, but not reducible to the biochemical and neurophysiological levels.65
64 Nancey Murphy and Warren S. Brown, Did My Neurons Make Me Do It?: Philosophical and Neurobiological Perspectives on Moral Responsibility and Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 65 Special gratitude to my dear brothers and friends: Dr. Eduardo Oku and Dr. Everson Matte (The Drummer), who have taught me, through their exemplary life of joy in the fellowship of our Christian community, that there is a holy commitment to the gospel which
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transcends any professional duty or worldly vocational calling. May God bless me with the same wisdom they had in their personal lifes decisions!
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