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Power, liability, and the free-will defence: reply to Mawson

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2005

WES MORRISTON
WES MORRISTON
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Colorado at Boulder, 169 Hellems, Campus Box 232, Boulder, CO 80309-0232
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Abstract

Tim Mawson argues that the ability to choose what one knows to be morally wrong is a power for some persons in some circumstances, but that it would be a mere liability for God. The lynchpin of Mawson's argument is his claim that a power is an ability that it is good to have. In this rejoinder, I challenge this claim of Mawson's, arguing that choosing a course of action is always an exercise of power, whether or not it is good for one to have that power. I then go on to develop an argument for saying that if (for the reasons presented by Mawson) it is not good for God to have the ability to make evil choices, then it isn't good for us to have it either, in which case the free-will defence is unsustainable.

Type
A Reply to Mawson
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , March 2005 , pp. 71 - 80
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

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