Moral, modal, and alethic properties emanate from God’s free choices.
Hi, Everyone
I’m hoping to get some feedback on some parts of my essay for this class. I’m going to write up a bit of it for your consumption and, if you’re nice enough and have some thoughts, for those thoughts. This might be somewhat less formal than the other posts here, but no matter.
At one point in this paper, I am concerned to argue that God enjoys what Ragland (2006, 382) calls liberty of non-motivational indifference. x enjoys liberty of non-motivational indifference with respect to some action iff x recognizes no reasons for or against doing that action.
One argument for this rests on Descartes’s claim that God’s willings determine moral, modal, and alethic properties of potential objects of willings. To enjoy such liberty, God need not have chosen prior to His choice that the object of His choice should have some moral, modal, or alethic property. God’s choices trivially satisfy the definition because, prior to His choices, there are no reasons for or against doing an action. For that reason, he cannot recognize any reasons; there just are none. This argument shows up in the literature in a few places.
Another argument that I’m toying with is one that I’ve not seen given anywhere. The argument begins with noting that God’s will and intellect are identical. Because of this, it cannot be the case that the intellect intellectualizes something as, say, good and then puts it forward to the will to assent or dissent or whatever. So God could only be in a state of non-motivational indifference since other types of liberty such as liberty of spontaneity and what Ragland (2006, 382) calls liberty of multi-directional indifference requires an act of the intellect prior to the act of the will. x enjoys multi-directional freedom of indifference with respect to an action iff x recognizes equally weighty reasons to do something or not to do it. x enjoys liberty of spontaneity iff x’s intellect puts forward that action to x’s will and x performs that action without being forced to do so by any external factor.
In the case of liberty of multi-directional indifference, it is required that the intellect determine moral, modal, or alethic properties of a potential choice. In the case of liberty of spontaneity, the same is required; the intellect must put something forward. It seems, then, that God enjoys liberty of non-motivational indifference and none of the other types of liberty.
Now here’s a question: is the argument from God’s will and intellect’s being identical yield the same result, viz. that God’s freedom must consist in liberty of non-motivational indifference? I think it does for the reason just given. If so, it seems that a feature of God—the identity of his will and intellect—explains why God’s freedom consists in liberty of non-motivational indifference.
And here’s a further question: supposing that the argument works, is the identity of God’s will and intellect explained by God’s being what I call a primary substance?—x is a primary substance iff x depends on nothing for its existence. One thought I am tempted by is that God’s being a primary substance explains why He is simple, i.e. why His intellect and will are identical.
Here’s a final question: how do you think an argument for this conclusion would go?
Best wishes,
Evan