Plantinga "The Free Will Defense"
Plantinga argues that the Logical Problem of Evil is solved by attributing evil to human free will. In Plantinga's view, God made humans able to perform actions that are significantly free. Plantinga defines a significantly free action as one that is both • Within a person's power to perform or not perform • Morally right/wrong to do (e.g., keeping/breaking a promise) or not do Also, Plantinga distinguishes moral evil from natural evil. Moral evil is caused by humans, whereas natural evil is caused by diseases, natural disasters, and the like. Plantinga says a world where humans are significantly free is better than a world where they're not, even if it's also a world with moral evil. According to Plantinga, if God were to prevent humans from ever freely doing evil, would God thereby ensure that humans always freely do good? Why or why not, according to Plantinga?
No According to Plantinga this contradicts the Free Will Defense. stating that it is not possible to be free if actions are already casually determined. For example: "If Georgia could have chosen otherwise, he would have chosen otherwise"(Pg.31) Or another example from the book being that when one is in jail they are still free to do what they want, but they are still being restricted.
As Plantinga notes, there are possible worlds where Curley is significantly free and always does the right thing. Still, Curley may have a problem: every one of those possible worlds conceivably includes a state of affairs that, if made actual, would be followed by Curley freely doing something that's morally wrong. Plantinga calls this problem "transworld depravity." How does Plantinga use the idea of transworld depravity to show that an omnipotent God can't necessarily create a world that has moral good but no moral evil, despite such a world's being possible?
Plantinga explains that malady known as Trans world Depravity, which is defined as: (33) A Person P suffers from trans world depravity if and only if the following holds: for every world W such that P is significantly free in W and P does only what is wright in W, there is an action A and a maximal world segment S' such that (1)S' includes A's being morally significant for P (2)S' includes P's being free with respects to A (3) S' is included in W and includes neither P's performing A nor P's refraining from performing A and (4)If S' were actual, P would go wrong with respect to A It is continued to be explained that if a person suffers from it, ten it wasn't withing God's power to actualize any world in which that person is significantly free but does not wrong. Plantinga even furthers this by explaining that every human being suffers from this.
Recall that Mackie argues that appealing to human free will does not solve the Logical Problem of Evil. In one of his objections, Mackie takes two things to be true: i. A world where humans always freely do good is logically possible. ii. An all-powerful God can create (or, as Plantinga says, "actualize") any logically possible world. Plantinga maintains that (i) is indeed true but (ii) is false. To set up his argument against (ii), Plantinga carefully lays out the concept of a possible world. First, a possible world is 'possible' in the sense that it can be described by a set of logically consistent statements, where each statement refers to a state of affairs. A state of affairs is a way things could be or could've been, e.g., the Cleveland Indians' winning the 2016 World Series, or, if the state of affairs obtains, a way things are or were, e.g., the Chicago Cubs' winning the 2016 World Series. Second, a possible world is a 'world' in the sense that it is a total or complete state of affairs Using W to represent some possible world, what does Plantinga say is found in the book on W?
Plantinga states that world W, as well as all other possible worlds, has a book. This book would contain a set of propositions just in case that state of affairs it corresponds is include in W. Those propositions must be true in W, like in all other possible words, for the book on W to be complete. So in short, found in book W is all sets of true propositions form W. And all worlds also have their own books as W does.
Plantinga calls (ii) 'Leibniz' Lapse', after the seventeenth-century philosopher and theist G.W. Leibniz, who claimed that God could create any possible world. Contrary to (ii), Plantinga argues that an omnipotent God doesn't necessarily have the power to create a world that has moral good but no moral evil, even though, as stated in (i), such a world is possible. First, Plantinga gives the case of Mayor Curley and Director Smedes, both of whom are significantly free. In the actual world, Smedes offers Curley a $35k bribe and Curley accepts. There's a possible state of affairs, which we'll label S′, that matches the actual world except that • S′ includes no states of affairs after Smedes' offering Curley a bribe. Thus, the set of statements that describes S′ amount to an excerpt from the book on the actual world that starts at the beginning of that book and ends at the part where Smedes tries to bribe Curley. [Note: this specification of S′ is a little simpler than Plantinga's.] • The bribe that Smedes offers Curley in S′ is $20k rather than $35k. S′ is included in a possible world, which we'll label W, where Curley accepts the $20k bribe. S′ is also included in another possible world, which we'll label W′, where Curley rejects the $20k bribe. What additional claim does Plantinga make about S′ in order to show that W′ is a world that God, even though omnipotent, couldn't have created?
Plantinga supposes that S' is a Maximal World Segment and that if S's were actual, Curley would have accepted the bribe. It is possible for such to happen however, it is explained further that God could not have created this World because to do so he would have been oblized to actualize S's leaving Curley free to take action,however (32) assures us that he would have accepted the bribe.
