Chapter 3 - Divine Determinism and Free Will

Summary

In this chapter I continue the task, begun in the last chapter, of considering whether divine determinism undermines human free will. In this chapter I take up manipulation arguments. I begin by focusing on Derk Pereboom’s Four Case Argument. This argument moves from intuitions about cases in which humans are manipulated by other humans to cases in which they are determined by laws of nature, maintaining that the original intuition that the human agent was not morally responsible is preserved even when the case is modified in various ways. I propose a variant of this argument in which the final case involves divine determinism. I also consider an argument that makes a direct appeal to intuition, maintaining that it is obvious that the sort of manipulation involved in divine determinism undermines human moral responsibility. I consider replies to both arguments, noting especially replies that depend upon pointing to the radical differences between God and human manipulators. I close with an investigation of bullet biting in the context of rejecting the truth of common intuitions.