Against the actual truth of transworld depravity

Here is an interesting result. If the Biblical account of creation is true, then Plantinga’s Trans-World Depravity (TWD) thesis is false. All this doesn’t affect Plantinga’s Free Will Defense which only needs the logical possibility of TWD, but it limits its usefulness a little by making clear that the defense is based on an actually-false assumption. (Quick review: Plantinga uses the logical possibility of TWD to argue for the logical possibility of evil. That argument would survive my critique. But he also suggests that TWD is epistemically possible, and hence could be the heart of a theodicy. That move does not survive, I think.)

I’ll take TWD to be:

1. Every significantly free creature in every feasible world does wrong.

A feasible world is one that would eventuate from God’s strongly actualizing the strongly strongly actualized portion of it.

But now consider this thesis which is very plausible on the Biblical account of creation:

2. At least one human made a significantly free right choice before any human made a free wrong choice.

For the first sin in the Biblical account is presented as Eve’s taking of the forbidden fruit in Genesis 3. But prior to that, indeed prior to Eve’s creation, Adam was commanded to take care of the garden (Gen. 2:15). It would have been a sin for Adam to fail to do that, and since this was before the first sin, it follows that Adam must have done it. Moreover, Adam being a full human being presumably had freedom of will, and hence was capable of refusing to work the garden. Hence Adam’s decision to obey God’s command to work the garden was a significantly free choice before any human made a free wrong choice.

Now, I don’t take the story of Genesis 2-3 to be literally true, but it tells us basic truths about the entry of evil into the world, and hence it is very likely that the structural claim (2) carries over into reality from the story.

I now argue that:

3. If (2) is true, then TWD is false.

Right after the first human made a significantly free right choice, God had the power to prevent any further significantly free choices from ever being made. Had God exercised that power, the world would have contained a creature—namely, the human who made the significantly free right choice—that is a counterexample to TWD. Moreover, the world where God exercises that power is plainly feasible. Hence, (1) is false, since in (1) there is a significantly free creature that does the right thing.

That said, Plantinga’s TWD is stronger than it needs to be for his defense. All he really needs to work with is:

4. Every feasible world that contains a significantly free creaturely right choice contains a free creaturely wrong choice.

And the world where God intervenes and prevents significantly free choices after the first human significantly free right choice is not a counterexample to (4), since prior to the creation of humans there was already sin by angels.

Note, though, that someone who wants to defend (4) by invoking the prior sin of angels needs to hold that the first humans would have sinned in their first significantly free choice had God not created angels or not given angels significant free will, no matter what circumstances the first humans were placed in. In other words, the defender of (4) has to hold that the actual righteousness of the first human significantly free choice has a strong counterfactual dependence on angelic freedom. The only plausible way I know of defending something like this is to say that angelic free choices are a part of human causal history and that essentiality of origins is true. So, interestingly, to hold that the weakened TWD thesis (4) is true seems to require both invoking the sin of angels and essentiality of origins.

Moreover, the defender of the actual truth of (4) would need to hold that the first angelic wrong choice preceded the first angelic significantly free right choice. For suppose an angelic significantly free choice came before any angelic sin. Then, again, God could have suspended free will right after that choice, and not created humans at all, and we would have a feasible world that is a counterexample to (4). Next, suppose that the first angelic significantly free choice was simultaneous with the first angelic sin. Presumably, the two were committed by different angels. But God could have suspended the freedom of those angels who in the actual world sin (this does not even require Molinism: God doesn’t need to know that they would sin to suspend their freedom), and plausible the simultaneous significantly free right choices of the other angels would still have eventuated. And then God could have suspended freedom altogether, thereby furnishing us with another feasible world that is a counterexample to (4).

One can modify (4) in various ways to get around this. For instance, one could say this:

5. Every feasible world that contains a significantly free creaturely right choice and that contains many generations of significantly free creatures contains a free creaturely wrong choice.

But note that if (5) is true, then one needs to invoke more than the value of freedom in saying that God is justified in creating a world with evil. One needs the value of multi-generational freedom.

Magic, science and the supernatural

We take for granted that magic involves the supernatural and science does not. At the same time, we believe that there is no such thing as magic. Hence, we believe that magical claims are somehow different from merely false but scientific claims, such as that phlogiston makes things burnable. I want to argue that this belief is questionable.

Consider three different claims:

1. Dancing a certain kind of dance typically causes rain.
2. Shooting UV light into clouds typically causes rain.
3. Shooting silver iodide into clouds typically causes rain.

Claim (1) certainly seems magical. Claim (3) is not a magical claim, because, I shall assume, it is true, and there is no magic. I shall assume that claims (1) and (2) are false.

But now here is the puzzle. Why is (1) supposed to be a supernatural claim (being on the face of it a claim of magic), while (2) is not?

There is, after all, another way of looking at this. We simply have three cause-and-effect claims, two of them false, and each claim is just as much a "scientific kind of claim" as the others. Observe, for instance, that each of the claims is just as much subject to empirical confirmation or disconfirmation as the others. Each of the claims posits a causal relationship between physical events.

Suggestion 1: Claim (1) is supernatural because it is presumed to be believed on non-scientific grounds, while (2) and (3) are presumed to be believed on scientific grounds.

Response: that a claim is believed on non-scientific grounds does not make it a supernatural claim. If Francine hallucinates Apollo telling her that the structure of benzene is a ring, the object of her belief about benzene is still a quite natural fact. Nor will talking about esoteric traditions be relevant, since purely natural scientific facts can be and in fact are passed through esoteric traditions (think of trade secrets through the ages up to the present). It is a variant of the genetic fallacy to think that a claim has a particular content because it comes from a particular source.

Suggestion 2: The person who believes (1) has a causal story connecting the dance to the rain by means of supernatural entities, while those who believe (2) or (3) either have no story as to the connection between the shooting of UV or silver iodide into clouds (they might simply have noticed, respectively, a spurious or genuine correlation) or else their story involves natural entities.

Response: One problem with this solution is the assumption that the culture that believes in a particular magical action, say a magical dance, needs to have a theory as to how the action produces its effect. But the culture need not have any kind of theory. They may simply believe that dancing a waltz causes rain to come, and that rain causes corn to sprout. We would not say that the second part of this belief involves the supernatural, and why should we say that the first part does? It is not uncommon for scientists to have no explanation for an effect, and so if the culture believes (1) but has no explanation for it, that does not suffice to make the claim supernatural.

Perhaps, though, the difference is that the scientist thinks there is a further explanation, and that this explanation is natural. But this is not characteristic of all science. A scientist may believe that a certain law, such as the law of gravitation, is basic and lacks any further explanation. Or a scientist may be agnostic on whether the law has any further explanation.

If I am right, then either magical claims need not involve the supernatural, or else what seem to be paradigmatic cases of magical claims are not always magical claims (claims such as that a dance causes rain, that a spell causes blindness, etc.).

Let us go a bit further, though, and consider the case where the proponent of (1) does have a further explanation. Do we have to conclude that then the claim is supernatural? Not at all—it surely depends on what that further explanation is. If the further explanation is that the dance stirs up the air, and the stirred up air stirs up the clouds, promoting condensation, then plainly the explanation is not magical. But let us take a more magical explanation. Maybe the idea is that the dance exudes a power that goes upward and pulls the clouds in. Again, though, this need not be a supernatural claim.

What if the claim sounds even more supernatural? Perhaps the people believe that the clouds are intelligent and respond to requests when these requests are made in a particular way. But why should that be a magical claim? Suppose Patrick believes that his goldfish is intelligent and responds to requests when these requests are made in a particular way. He need not thereby be attributing any supernatural qualities to the goldfish. In fact, we can go a bit further. Patrick either believes this of all goldfish or of just some. In the latter case, it may well be that he thinks these goldfish are special, supernaturally gifted, etc. But if he believes all goldfish are intelligent and respond to appropriately made requests, he most likely (though not necessarily) thinks that it is a natural feature of goldfish to be intelligent. Since the members of the culture I described probably believe all clouds, or all clouds of some specific type (maybe they think you need to be more wispy to be intelligent?), to be intelligent, they seem to be ascribing a natural property to the clouds.

But suppose that the folk have a story involving intermediate causes that are powerful beings like demons. Maybe the dance somehow binds demons to do their will, and the demons fly up to the sky and wring rain out of clouds. If that is so, we have more hope of thinking that the explanation involves the supernatural—but only if we have some reason to think that the demons which the folk believe in are supernatural (it would not be a supernatural explanation if the folk falsely believed vultures to be intelligent and to fly up to the clouds and wring rain out of them in response to a dance). If the folk believe they can bind the demons through dances, then they are likely to believe that causes within the realm of nature (a dance) affect the demons. Moreover, it seems likely that they think there are rules that govern demonic behavior, and the magician, by knowing these rules, is able to get the requisite results. But demons like that, manipulable demons, sound like are part of the natural realm, interacting with the natural realm in lawlike ways. What reason do we have for thinking that the laws that are alleged to bind their behavior should be thought of as supernatural laws as opposed to natural laws? Sure, some of these laws apply to the demons but don't affect birds, bees and mountains, and some of the laws that apply to birds, bees and mountains don't apply to demons. But there is nothing absurd about the idea of natural laws that govern only particles of a certain type—e.g., charged particles, or particles of dark matter.

So even fairly elaborate alleged explanations of (1) involving entities like demons or intelligent clouds do not render (1) supernatural.

Suggestion 3: Intelligence is supernatural, and explanations involving intelligent beings like demons are thus supernatural.

Response: If so, then we have to admit that at least one of the sciences—psychology—deals with the supernatural, and the distinction between the supernatural and the scientific falls apart. This suggestion seems a non-starter.

Suggestion 4: It would require a violation of a law of nature for dances to cause rain, and hence the mechanism behind (1) must be taken to be supernatural.

Response: I think something like this suggestion may be what is going on in our minds when we assume that (1) involves the supernatural. But I think here we have a serious confusion. Claim (1) is in fact false. Now if we found out that (1) is true, we might be tempted to posit a supernatural explanation for it. But that is beside the point. Consider claim (2) which is just as much contrary to the laws of nature as (1) is (I assume). We do not consider (2) to be supernatural because it is contrary to the laws of nature. Rather, we consider it to be false.

Final comments: I think (and this is by no means original) that one of the characteristics of magic is a lawlikeness. You do this, and that results. This lawlikeness of magic makes for a prima facie claim that claims of magic are not at all supernaturalistic. We read them as supernaturalistic simply because they violate the laws of nature we believe in, but they need not violate the laws of nature that the believers in magic believe in.

This shows a crucial difference between magic and monotheistic beliefs in miracles, creation, answers to prayer, etc. The monotheist (typically—there are some unfortunate exceptions) believes God acts freely. He creates as he chooses, not because he is bound to by some necessitating law. He is supernatural because he has a freedom to act that transcends nature. At the same time, the miracles are not forced on him by anything like a law of nature, in the way that someone might believe a dance forces a demon to cause rain. The more personal freedom, including freedom to act not in accord with the laws of nature, we attribute to the deity, the less magical the belief becomes.

Granted, on traditional monotheistic views, God must keep his promises. Thus, there is a kind of law that is binding on him. But it is a moral law, binding on him because of his perfect goodness, and in light of promises freely and knowingly undertaken.

If anything, then, typical magical beliefs are closer to scientific beliefs about nature than to monotheistic beliefs about divine action.

Demonic miracles?

Some of the Church Fathers take quite seriously historical reports of marvelous events associated with pagan temples and pagan sorcerers, and attribute these events to demons. The non-occurrence of such events in their own time they then take to be evidence of the power of Christ, who vanquished the devil by dying on the cross and rising again.

My natural tendency is to dismiss reports of magical and like phenomena. But on reflection, if I accept Christianity, shouldn't I take the hypothesis offered by these Fathers to be at least as probable as a sceptical hypothesis about such marvels? After all, if one accepts this hypothesis one needs to dismiss fewer reports by historians, which seems a good thing. Shouldn't I take it to be at least as likely as not that ancient sorcerers really were able to do strange things on occasion by the power of demons and that marvels happened in pagan temples? If I accept Christianity, this isn't an arbitrary hypothesis, like that of someone who thinks that Relativity Theory was false before 438 BC (a randomly chosen date), since as a Christian I independently (a) take Christ's death and resurrection to have been an event of cosmic significance, the great victory over the forces of darkness, and (b) believe that demons do exist.

Lies, deception, testimony and faith

One of the routes to being epistemically justification that p is true is to be told by a reliable reporter that p. This is justification by testimony. On the other hand, I might be told something by you and not accept it as testimony, but instead treat the fact that you told it to me as evidence, doing a Bayesian update of my credences based on the fact that you said the thing. If I treat your saying that p in this way, my credence that p may go up and may go down (e.g., if I think you're lying so that your asserting that p makes it more likely that p is false). Moreover, there is a difference between accepting your testimony and taking your assertion of p to be evidence for the truth of p. I want to focus on this difference, and say a few things about the difference between lying and deception.

The first point I want to make is that I can only take your assertion that p is true to be testimony if either you made the assertion to me, or I stand at the end of a chain where you told it to A₁, A₁ told it to A₂, and so on, until we get to someone who told it to me. Suppose that instead I stand in no such chain. Instead, I overhear your saying that p to B. Then I cannot properly accept p as testimony, since you were not speaking to me. That you asserted p to B is evidence for p, if I think it is likely you were telling the truth to B, but it is not testimony to me. Testimony is at least a ternary relation: A testifies that p to B (where B might be an individual or a group). If I am not testified to, I cannot properly believe on testimony.

Here's one reason. It is perfectly permissible to speak in ways that your interlocutor understands but which others will misunderstand. You do have a responsibility to ensure your interlocutor will not misunderstand. If you have a foreign vegan guest whom you know to think that the English word "egg" denotes a kind of plant (eggplant, say), you are neglecting not just your hostly responsibilities but your responsibilities as a speaker in saying: "This dish is made of egg." In fact, you are lying—in speaking, you are inviting your guest to take your words as testimony to the dish being made of a kind of a plant. You are giving false witness.

When we speak we have a responsibility not to be misunderstood by an interlocutor, and the interlocutor in turn gain the right—barring defeaters—to take what she thinks you've said as true. This right is tied to the responsibility. But when I overhear your asserting p to B, you have no responsibility to ensure my understanding you—your only responsibility is to ensure that B understands. Thus you do not confer on me the right to take what I think you've said as true.

Suppose this is right. Assume that you know that George is at Mark's house, but want to mislead me. You are talking with Frank and notice that I am listening in (maybe I am behind the arras, and you hear a rustle). You tell Frank: "George is at Jennifer's house", but you do so with a wink that ensures Frank doesn't take your words as literal truth. I don't see the wink, of course, so I come to have evidence that George is at Jennifer's house. But you haven't lied to me. You haven't lied to me because you weren't speaking to me, though you expected me to hear. Your properly speakerly responsibilities were to Frank, and these you fulfilled.

Note, too, that it may be that you are not even intending that I believe George is at Jennifer's house. It could be that you are merely intending that I take myself to have evidence for George's being at Jennifer's house. (This point is based on an idea of Mark Murphy's.) And in intending this, you are intending that I believe something true, viz., that I have evidence for George's being at Jennifer's house. My believing this is likely all you need for your purposes, since whether I actually believe on the evidence or not, presumably the presence of the evidence will get me to look for George at Jennifer's house, if I want to find him.

I once read in an early 20th century moral theology textbook (Smith, I think) that someone who is tortured and says something false is no more lying than an actor on stage, because she is not really engaging in the practice of assertion, but is uttering words more like a madman (I am very loosely paraphrasing the main idea from memory). Here is one way of saying something like this in the above setting. If I am torturing you, you shouldn't expect me to take your words as testimony. Instead, you would expect me to take your words as your way of saying whatever it takes to get the pain to stop. Thus if you say something that is false, you are not offering me testimony, but simply bringing it about that I have evidence of the Bayesian, not testimonial, sort.

In summary, here are some claims that I suspect are true, though I have not given much of an argument for many, or perhaps any, of them:

• Lying is not just deceitful or misleading speech. It is speech that provides (or maybe: is intended to provide) false testimony to the person being lied to. When you are not providing testimony to me, e.g., because you are not talking to me, you are not lying to me.
• It is a speaker's responsibility not to be misunderstood by the interlocutors.
• There is a difference between being known to be a listener and being spoken to, and only someone spoken to can be lied to.
• Credences should be differently updated on testimony than on evidence.
• There is an epistemic virtue, which I will call "the doxastic aspect of faith", which is the virtue of appropriately updating on testimony.
• Presumably, demons believe many claims made by Jesus, because they have evidence that Jesus is God and that God does not lie. However, this need not be the same as even the doxastic aspect of faith, because it may be that the demons are updating on Jesus's words considered as evidence, and not as testimony directed to them. Likewise, it would be possible for a human being to come to believe that what Jesus said on some topic is true without having even the doxastic aspect of faith in Jesus.