Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian

Philosophers

Volume 3 Issue 2 Article 8

4-1-1986

Peter van Inwagen, AN ESSAY ON FREE WILL

Robert Audi

Follow this and additional works at: https://place.asburyseminary.edu/faithandphilosophy

Recommended Citation
Audi, Robert (1986) "Peter van Inwagen, AN ESSAY ON FREE WILL," Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the
Society of Christian Philosophers: Vol. 3 : Iss. 2 , Article 8.
DOI: 10.5840/faithphil19863219
Available at: https://place.asburyseminary.edu/faithandphilosophy/vol3/iss2/8

This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at ePLACE: preserving, learning, and
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BOOK REVIEWS 213

criticisms of Pannenberg will, to philosophers, perhaps seem to rest too often

on slogans ("reason is not autonomous") and conflation of normative and
psychological issues; but they nevertheless do manage to identify some very
important issues at the interface of theology and philosophy, firmly linking
Holwerda's essay with the rest of this volume.

An Essay on Free Will, by Peter van Inwagen. The Clarendon Press, 1983.
Pp. vi, 248. $29.95.
Reviewed by ROBERT AUm, The University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

This book is a detailed and rigorous study of the relation between freedom and
determinism. It provides a conception of what constitutes freedom, and it carefully
characterizes determinism. It critically assesses fatalism, proceeds to develop
and defend three arguments for incompatibilism (the view that freedom and
determinism are incompatible), and then sets out and assesses three arguments
for compatibilism. Next, van Inwagen considers what it would be like if deter-
minism should be true and we did not have free will; and he concludes with a
number of general points about the traditional problem of free will and deter-
minism. In what follows I shaH first briefly indicate some of his main theses
and arguments and then comment on a few controversial points. The book offers
many important conceptions, distinctions, arguments, and ideas. I shaH thus
have to be highly selective in describing its content and mainly suggestive in
assessing its case for incompatibilism.
The first chapter introduces the main issues and provides useful definitions.
For instance, determinism, the view that "the past determines a unique future,"
is distinguished from the Principle of Universal Causation, the claim that "every
event (or fact, change, or state of affairs) has a cause (2-3); and soft determinism
is distinguished clearly from compatibilism: it is determinism conjoined with
compatibilism (and hence does not entail that there is free will-a point often
missed in discussions of the issue). We are also given a sense of how freedom
is to be conceived and of why one might regard it as incompatible with deter-
minism.
Chapter II assesses some significant arguments for fatalism, which claims that
no one is able to act otherwise than he in fact does. Here van Inwagen usefully
distinguishes (as treatments of fatalism have not generaHy done) what is strongly
inevitable, i.e., such that it would happen no matter what one did (25) from
what is weakly inevitable, i.e., not strongly inevitable, but such that if one tried
to prevent it one would take the wrong measures, and it is strongly inevitable
214 Faith and Philosophy

that one be ignorant of the right ones (25). The chapter also discusses the
distinction between propositions and sentences and, in relation to that, the law
of the excluded middle, which van Inwagen argues one need not deny in order
to refute the case for fatalism.
In Chapter III, the arguments for incompatibilism are set out. Just one will
be specified, but it should be a key to understanding the others: van Inwagen
himself says that he might have called the chapter "One Argument for Incom-
patibilism Done Three Ways" (56). Let Po be a proposition expressing the state
of the world (roughly, all the truths about it) at an arbitrarily chosen time before
the birth of J (our representative agent); let P be a proposition expressing the
state of the world at T (a later time, in 1's life); and let L be the conjunction of
the laws of nature. Now suppose that, at T, J did not raise his hand. Here is
van Inwagen's Consequence Argument to show that, if determinism is true, he
could not have raised it (70):
(1) If determinism is true, then the conjunction of Po and L entails P
(2) It is not possible that J have raised his hand at T and P be true
(3) If (2) is true, then if J could have raised his hand at T, J could
have rendered P false
(4) If J could have rendered P false, and if the conjunction of Po and
L entails P, then J could have rendered the conjunction of Po and
L false
(5) If J could have rendered the conjunction of Po and L false, then J
could have rendered L false
(6) J could not have rendered L false [hence]
(7) If determinism is true, J could not have raised his hand at T.
The argument cannot be fully understood without one further explanation. What
is it to render a proposition false? Where s is a person, s can render a proposition,
p, false if and only if "It is within s's power to arrange or modify the concrete
objects that constitute his environment in some way such that it is not possible
in the broadly logical sense that he arrange or modify those objects in that way
and the past have been exactly as it in fact was and p be true" (68); roughly, he
can so alter his environment that, if he does so, it follows that either the past
was different from what it was or p is false. Now surely, if determinism is true,
J could not have rendered it false that he did not raise his hand, unless he could
have rendered either the laws of nature or Po, which is a description of the past,
false. And from here van Inwagen proceeds towards the incompatibilist conclu-
sion, i.e., (7).
After arguing for incompatibilism, van Inwagen quite properly turns to argu-
ments for compatibilism. He sets out and attacks the three he finds most current.
One is the Paradigm Case Argument (used, e.g., by Flew), according to which,
BOOK REVIEWS 215

roughly speaking, there must be free acts in order for us to teach the correct
application of 'free act,' which we do, and our successfully doing so is compatible
with the truth of determinism. The second is the conditionalization argument,
which rests on analyzing ability to do otherwise in terms of what s would have
done if certain things had been the case. Proponents claim that such conditionals
are compatible with determinism, hence ability to do otherwise is, too. The third
argument van Inwagen calls the Mind Argument because of its frequent appear-
ance in that journal. It seems to rest on the idea that if s's action is to be free
it must be non-randomly rooted in his character in a way that shows that indeter-
minism undermines freedom and that determinism is compatible with it. Against
the Paradigm Case Argument, van Inwagen argues that teaching the relevant
terms does not entail there being free actions. He also argues that no conditional
analysis proposed or likely to be proposed is correct; and, against the Mind
argument, he contends that neither randomness nor anything else that undermines
free action is presupposed by incompatibilism, which, he points out, can even
countenance a version of the view that reasons explanations of free actions are
"causal. "
Regarding the last two chapters, I shall be very brief. The fifth argues in detail
that "to reject free will is to condemn oneself to a life or perpetual logical
inconsistency. Anyone who rejects free will adopts a general theory about human
beings that he contradicts with every deliberate word and act" (160), since
deliberating entails believing that one is free to choose between (or among)
alternatives. This chapter also defends the thesis that "moral responsibility
requires free will" (180), and in doing so subjects Harry Frankfurt's well-known
attack on a version of this view to intensive and (I think) ingenious criticism.
The stage is now set for Chapter VI: incompatibilism has been defended and
moral responsibility argued to depend on free will. What, then, are we to say
of determinism? In brief, van Inwagen says "that there are no good arguments
for determinism, and that there are some rather good arguments against it" (190).
He discusses scientific considerations, among others; and though he concludes
that determinism is false, he grants that science could give us "compelling
arguments for believing in determinism" (223). Only then would he become a
compatibilist.
By way of evaluation, let me first speak very generally. This book is written
with unusual clarity; it is forcefully argued; and it makes a significant original
contribution to the case for incompatibilism. There are insights and subtleties
throughout; the scholarship is careful; and the argumentation is informed by
logical and semantical sophistication without being needlessly technical. Explicit-
ness is sought at every crucial point; and the standards of clarity of formulation
and soundness of reasoning are high and are applied as firmly to van Inwagen's
own views as to those of the opposition. The free will problem would not be so
216 Faith and Philosophy

long-lived, however, if there were not points at which one may wonder whether
the case is fully successful. Let me indicate one such point.
When van Inwagen speaks of rendering a proposition false, a natural reaction
is to take 'render' to be, as usual, a causal term. But van Inwagen warns us not
to take him to imply "that human beings can somehow enter into causal relations
with propositions ... to be able to render a proposition false is to be able to
modify ... one's environment-shoes, ships, bits of sealing wax-in a way suffi-
cient for the falsity of that proposition" (67). On the other hand, often he speaks
as if he did think it possible that one cause, or at least bring about, in some
broadly causal way, the falsity of a proposition. For instance, he calls "the
intuitive notion of being able to render a proposition false" that of "'having
control' over the truth value of a proposition" (67); and he even introduces the
notion of rendering a proposition false as "a way to describe our powers to
act-and, by acting, to modify the world-as powers over the truth values of
propositions" (66; cpo pp 63 and 74). Having power over the truth value of a
proposition certainly sounds like being able to change its truth value, or, say,
to make it false (or true).
To focus the issue, let us consider a true proposition which van Inwagen
believes can be rendered false: that no one has ever read all of Hume's Enquiry
aloud (66). Unlike the proposition that, say, magnets attract iron (66), this
proposition one "can render, or once could have rendered, false" (66). Note,
however, that van Inwagen distinguishes sentences from propositions and says
he does not understand locutions like 'became true' and 'remained true' (35).
If, as he plausibly suggests, 'That was once true' (applied, e.g., to 'It is no
longer true that the number of committee members is odd') means something
like 'If you had used those words on a certain earlier occasion, you would have
said something true' (36), why should we not treat rendering false similarly?
Thus, 'I could have rendered it false that no one has read the Enquiry aloud'
would be taken to mean something like: 1 could have done something such that,
had I done it, that sentence would have expressed a false proposition instead of
a true one.
Nothing I have said presupposes that the notion of rendering a proposition
false must be understood causally in at least some premises of the Consequence
Argument if the argument is to be plausible. But it seems likely that points quite
parallel to those I suggest would be warranted even by a plausible non-causal
(or prima facie non-causal) interpretation that is suggested by some of what van
Inwagen says: namely, that if s can render a proposition false by A-ing, then
his A-ing could explain why it is false. On this view, a proposition, e.g. that
no one has read the whole Enquiry aloud, can be such that its falsity is explained
by what an agent does, though not caused by that. In any case, it is difficult to
see why we should not at least take the notion of rendering a proposition false
BOOK REVIEWS 217

to entail a change in the truth value of some proposition; and the causal interpre-
tation is at least suggested by van Inwagen's treatment of 'ability to render false'
as a way of talking about our powers over the truth values of propositions. (Can
one have power over something one cannot (causally) affect?) If a causal reading
of a number of parts of the text is as natural as it seems, then it is not surprising
that premises (3) and (4) look inimical to compatibilism. It is difficult not to
think of them as attributing to J causal power over propositions; and even if one
extricates oneself from the causal flavor of 'render false,' one still tends to
conceive ability to render a proposition false as an ability to do something such
that one's doing it explains the falsity of that proposition. One surely tends to
read it, moreover, as designating ability to do something such that, if one does
it, it follows that the truth value of a proposition changes.
I have stressed the causal flavor that 'render false' often has in the text because
I think that it is important to see how it can influence one's reading of the
Consequence Argument. But it would be wrong to stop here. For van Inwagen
not only disavows this reading, but gives us another. Suppose we stick to (what
I find) the clearest reading of 'rendering false' that he gives us-roughly, doing
something whose occurrence is sufficient for the falsity of the relevant proposition
(67). This is a formulation he interprets by appeal to the notion of having control
over the truth value of a proposition (67-68), but he does not disavow the
formulation and it seems adequate to our purposes. If we use a neutral formulation
like this, which seems appropriate in any event to help us avoid begging questions,
then a compatibilist may say that one can render Po false. For that is simply
being able to do something such that if one does it, Po is false. And why must
determinism make that impossible?
The next step would be to question premise (5) along the following lines.
Since ability to render a proposition about the past false, in the neutral sense of
this phrase, does not entail ability to change the past (or even imply a change
in the truth value of a proposition), we need not grant van Inwagen that if one
can render the conjunction of Po and L false, one can render L false. Consider
his own example: regarding the conjunction of the propositions that the Spanish
Armada was defeated in 1588, and that Peter van Inwagen never visits Alaska,
he says: "If, for some reason, it is not within my power ever to visit Alaska,
then I cannot render it (the conjunction) false. This is a quite trivial assertion,
and the general principle of which it is an instance is hardly less trivial" (73).
But while it is perhaps trivially true that he cannot affect the truth of the first
conjunct, it is far from trivially true that he cannot do something such that his
doing it is in some way sufficient for the falsity of that proposition. Surely the
compatibilist might say that if van Inwagen had done something he did not do,
say A, then, if determinism is true, the past would have been different, at least
in the determinative chain leading to A. Is it not possible that this chain contained
218 Faith and Philosophy

actions, say, by illustrious ancestors of van Inwagen' s, which would have caused
the Annada to be delayed? He hasn't thereby affected the Annada; but the (or
a) world in which he A-ed-a world systematically different from ours--contains
some set of factors that did affect it and, in addition, was so connected with A
that if he had A-ed, then that set of factors occurred and, presumably because
of it, the Annada would not have been defeated in 1588. One way this possibility
might be realized could be described as a case in which his A-ing and the delay
of the Annada are both effects of the same cause(s). But it is not clear that the
relevant possibility must involve causal concepts.
Neutrally conceived, rendering a proposition about the past false does not
imply affecting the past; and if detenninism is true, then if one can render any
empirical proposition false-including one about the future--one can (a com-
patibilist might say) render propositions about the past false, in the sense that
one can do something such that if one were to do it the past would have been
different: under detenninism, it would be impossible to have the same past and
a different future. However obvious it is, then, that one could not have done
something that would change the past or causally render a proposition about it
false, it would seem to beg the question against compatibilism to assume that
one could not have done something such that if one did do it, the past would
have been different from what it was. (I do not say van Inwagen does simply
assume this; but I also do not see where he has a cogent argument for it.)
It may help to consider a related point about what detenninism allows. Whatever
necessity the laws of nature impose on events is of this sort: they require that if
the state of the world at one time is, say Po, then at another time it will be
precisely, say, P. But they do not categorically require the occurrence of either
state, nor does detenninism. As far as detenninism is concerned, there are worlds
where the laws of nature hold which have different events from those in this
world; and to say that s could have done otherwise is (on one compatibilist view)
to say that at least one of those in which he does do otherwise is accessible to
s. Accessibility in the relevant sense will be a controversial notion, but the
intuitive idea it expresses would be the absence of any bar (such as logical or
causal impossibility) to the world in question having been actual. It is not obvious
why such accessibility requires s's being able to render any true proposition false
in a sense fatal to compatibilism. But of course if determinism is true, then a
world with our laws in which one did do otherwise would presumably differ
from ours for each moment of time, e.g. in the cause(s) of s's act, the cause(s)
of that, and so on.
Considerations of the sorts 1 have raised about the Consequence Argument
can be applied, 1 think, to the other two arguments van Inwagen presents to
support incompatibilism; in any case, I do not have space to discuss those. Nor
can I pursue van Inwagen's critique of the three arguments for compatibilism
BOOK REVIEWS 219

he considers. Indeed, I believe he is mainly correct in his criticisms of them and

does a real service in exposing their weaknesses. I am not sure, however, that
he considers all the important arguments to which compatibilists may appeal.
At some points he seems to take the major versions of compatibilism to be
committed to the view that's could have done otherwise' may be conditionally
analyzed (see, e.g., 114 and, especially, 124, where he speaks of "the com-
patibilist" as being in deep trouble if a certain conditional analysis fails). But
he is aware that a compatibilist need not give a conditional analysis of this notion
(236-37).
If compatibilists need not give a conditional analysis of 'could have done
otherwise,' they might defend their view along the following lines. They might
first give a non-conditional account of 'could have done otherwise' in the sense
relevant to questions of moral responsibility. They might then argue that such
an account is consistent with determinism. It is of course not easy to provide
even a roughly correct account of 'could have done otherwise.' But one would
not have to be right in every detail to have some basis for defending compatibilism.
There is, furthermore, more than one kind of account to which compatibilists
may appeal. Accessibility accounts have been mentioned; a compatibilist might
also argue that s could have done otherwise, in the relevant sense, provided s
was not, in a certain way, compelled to act. Moreover, though compatibilists
have often given causal analyses of intentional action or conceived such actions
as explainable by subsumption under laws of nature, they need not do so and
may give causal or non-causal accounts of ability to do otherwise (for at least
this reason they are not necessarily open to the objection that they must conceive
divine agency as subject to the laws of nature).
Indeed, it is not altogether clear that compatibilists must provide any more
than a good indication of the sorts of criteria appropriate for applying the key
concepts. Consider van Inwagen's rule B, to which he rightly ascribes great
significance. Letting 'Np' stand for 'p and no one has, or ever had, any choice
about whether p,' it is to the effect that if N(p=:Jq), and Np, then Nq. Where p
is about events before there were people on the earth, Np is doubtless true-at
least if, naturally enough, we think of having a choice about whether something
is so as entailing some kind of causal power over it. And if, by the laws of
nature, p implies q, then if we conceive N on the model of logical (or nomic)
necessity, the rule is highly plausible. I suspect that any compatibilist who does
not feel a challenge here is simply shallow. Nevertheless, suppose we ask how,
where moral responsibility is at stake, one appropriately decides whether shad
a choice about, say, disclosing information which he has promised to keep
confidential. Does properly deciding presuppose either determinism or indeter-
minism? It is arguable that what is crucial is whether s was compelled to disclose
it. We will want to know, for instance, what s thought would be the bad conse-
220 Faith and Philosophy

quences for him if he withheld the information? It might also be relevant to ask
what morally upright people are expected to do or have done when in similar
circumstances. Must such an inquiry at least tacitly presuppose indeterminism?
Compatibilists are likely to argue that here the relevant sense of 'have no choice
about' is different from that applicable to events prior to people's appearance
on earth, and that this weakens the apparent analogy between rule B and its
logical counterparts. Certainly van Inwagen could argue forcefully against this
line; his book contains some of the resources for doing so. His case against
compatibilism could have been even stronger if he had explicitly brought them
to bear here.
With van Inwagen's chapter on what it would mean for us not to have free
will and with his points, in the final chapter, about determinism, I am largely
in agreement. He argues plausibly that it is inconsistent for someone who delib-
erates (as every remotely normal person does) to hold that we do not have free
will, e.g. because of the truth of hard determinism (determinism conjoined with
incompatibilism). His discussion of how scientific progress might bear on the
credibility of determinism is also valuable. If he does not establish incom-
patibilism, his book comes at least as close to doing so as any I know. Com-
patibilists must try to reckon with it; incompatibilists must master its arguments;
and serious students of the free will problem, whatever their position on the
issues, must welcome it. *

*For helpful comments on an earlier version of this review I am grateful to William P. Alston,
Larry Hohm, Terance Horgan, Jonathan Kvanvig, and Michael Zimmerman.

Evil and a Good God, by Bruce R. Reichenbach. New York: Fordham University
Press, 1982. Pp. ix and 198. $9.00.
Reviewed by CLEMENT DORE, Vanderbilt University.

Chapters 1, 2 and 4 of Professor Reichenbach's book, which, with Chapter 5,

contain Reichenbach's critique of the atheistic argument from evil, are best
considered as a clear and helpful (though overly repetitive) introduction to recent
literature on the problem of evil by, e.g., Plantinga, Rowe and Adams.! In what
follows, I shall discuss some problems which are raised by Chapters 2, 4 and 5.
Much of Reichenbach's Chapter 2, which is on the inductive form of the
argument from evil, is summarized by Reichenbach as follows: "the atheologian's
argument claims that instances of suffering which are seemingly or apparently
pointless are in fact or likely pointless, for we do not know of any higher good
to which they are a means. But this constitutes an appeal to ignorance; that we