Indeterminism and Freedom of Decision in Aquinas

279 Pages·2013·1.18 MB·English

THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA

Indeterminism and Freedom of Decision in Aquinas

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to the Faculty of the

The School of Philosophy

Of The Catholic University of America

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

©

Copyright

All Rights Reserved

By

Peter Furlong

Washington, D.C.

2013
Indeterminism and Freedom of Decision in Aquinas

Peter Furlong, Ph.D.

Director: Tobias Hoffmann, Ph.D.

Throughout his works, Aquinas consistently maintains that human beings have the
ability to make free decisions. One question he does not clearly answer, however, is whether a
fully deterministic world would rule out the possibility of free decisions.
Contemporary philosophers are themselves divided over whether determinism is
compatible with free decisions. Many philosophers put forward compatibilist theories of free
will. According to a compatibilist account, free decisions are compatible with determinism.
Incompatibilist theories, on the other hand, deny that free decisions are compatible with
determinism. Incompatibilist theories can themselves be divided into two major categories:
hard incompatibilist theories and libertarian theories. The former are incompatibilist theories
that deny the existence of free decisions, the latter are incompatibilist theories that affirm the
existence of free decisions.
Scholars disagree about how Aquinas would stand relative to these categories. No
matter how Aquinas is interpreted, his theory must be defended against contemporary
objections before it can be declared a tenable position.
This dissertation seeks to resolve the interpretational conflict surrounding the question
of whether or not Aquinas can be categorized as a compatibilist or an incompatibilist. If this
question cannot be answered, our understanding of Aquinas will remain drastically incomplete.
I attempt to show that it is possible to discern how Aquinas would answer this question. By
investigating various aspects of his account of free decision, I show that the theory Aquinas
puts forward is fundamentally libertarian.
Having investigated Aquinas’s theory in itself, this dissertation turns to a critical
analysis of his theory. The analysis focuses on several recent critiques of libertarian theories
of free choice, most notably, those put forward by Harry Frankfurt, Peter van Inwagen, and
Richard Double. Although there are clearly important differences between many
contemporary libertarian theories of free choice and Aquinas’s libertarian theory, I contend
that there are important similarities as well. Given these similarities, it is worthwhile to ask
whether Aquinas’s theory can withstand the critiques that have been leveled against
contemporary libertarian accounts. I ultimately conclude that Aquinas’s theory can withstand
the objections considered, although his account cannot ultimately be declared tenable without a
defense of his account of the immaterial nature of the intellect and will.
This dissertation by Peter Furlong fulfills the dissertation requirement for the doctoral degree in
Philosophy, approved by Tobias Hoffmann, Ph.D., as Director, and by Angela McKay Knobel,
Ph.D., and Michael Gorman, Ph.D., as Readers.

______________________________________
Tobias Hoffmann, Ph.D., Director

_______________________________________
Angela McKay Knobel, Ph.D., Reader

_______________________________________
Michael Gorman, Ph.D., Reader
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For Kelly
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................................1

CHAPTER 1: Aquinas and the Compatibility Question.....................................................8

SECTION I: The Argument from Modal Terms........................................ 13
SECTION II: The Argument from the Mechanics of Choice.................... 49
SECTION III: Arguments from Discussions of Non-Human Freedom.... 79

CHAPTER 2: Aquinas and the Rejection of the Principle of Alternative Possibilities 100

SECTION I: Objections to the Principle of Alternative Possibilities......... 102
SECTION II: Aquinas and the Principle of Alternative Possibilities......... 111
SECTION III: The Viability of Libertarian Theories that Reject PAP...... 134

CHAPTER 3: Evaluating the Luck Objection..................................................................147

SECTION I: Introduction and Preliminary Considerations......................... 147
SECTION II: The Mind Argument.............................................................. 154
SECTION III: The Roll-Back Argument..................................................... 165
SECTION IV: The Promising Argument..................................................... 192

CHAPTER 4: Reasons and Reasons-Explanations of Free Choice................................206

SECTION I: Reasons in Aquinas............................................................... 207
SECTION II: Agent-Causation and the Problem of Reasons Explanations 212
SECTION III: Contrastive Reasons Explanations...................................... 239
SECTION IV: The Problem of Arbitrariness.............................................. 256

CONCLUSION: ..................................................................................................................271

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...............................................................................................................275
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Introduction
This dissertation arises out of two related questions: What is Aquinas’s theory of human
freedom? and Is his theory of human freedom still viable in light of recent work by contemporary
Anglo-American philosophers? As stated, these questions are broad—far too broad for any
single work to answer. Partly, the problem is that it is difficult to define the boundaries of
Aquinas’s theory of human freedom. His theory of human freedom is, for example, quite tied up
with his views on the intellect and will. Thus, for a full picture of his theory of human freedom,
one would have to provide an account of the powers of the soul. Additionally, his theory of
human freedom is related to his views on grace, divine foreknowledge, and divine causal
contribution. Once the scope of the first question is understood, it quickly becomes apparent that
answering just this question, without even considering the second, would be a project of a
massive scale. Addressing the second question in its fullness would be an even broader task.
Aquinas’s full theory of human freedom includes reference to the soul, God, various
metaphysical principles, grace, and the teleological orientation of human nature. Surely no
single work could examine Aquinas’s views of these topics in light of the contemporary
literature on these issues. This dissertation, then, although arising from these two questions, does
not seek to answer them in their entirety.
Instead of attempting the impossible, I will limit my investigation in this dissertation to
two smaller questions. The first question, which is the topic of chapter one, is whether Aquinas

1
2

Aquinas thinks that free decisions are compatible with determinism.1 The question of the
relationship between freedom and determinism has loomed large in the minds of philosophers for
millennia, but perhaps it has never been so thoroughly discussed as it has in the last forty years.
If Aquinas’s theory is going to be investigated in light of current discussions, then the question
of how he views this relationship is the first place to start.
The question of how Aquinas views this relationship turns out to be quite difficult to
answer. The question is particularly difficult because it does not seem that Aquinas ever
explicitly treated the issue. Although he spends articles discussing whether the will acts of
necessity, and other similar questions, it is not at all clear that the questions he is discussing are
the questions in which we are interested. For this reason, quite a lot of time will be spent
investigating how Aquinas views the relationship between freedom and determinism. I
eventually conclude that Aquinas views free decision as incompatible with determinism, that is,
he is an incompatibilist.
Chapters 2–4 represent my attempt to answer a second question: Is Aquinas’s theory of
human freedom viable in light of the most powerful recent arguments against theories of
incompatibilist freedom? By investigating this question, I side-step issues concerning the
viability of Thomistic hylomorphism, the relation of God to human choice, and faculty
psychology. I do not avoid these issues because I think they are not important, nor because I
think Aquinas’s views on these issues are obviously viable (or obviously unviable), but rather
because not every question can be adequately addressed in a single work. It must be noted that

1 I will discuss the relevant meanings of ‘freedom’ and ‘determinism’ in chapter 1. For now, I will merely
say that the question as I will investigate it does not seek to address problems concerning grace, predestination, or
God’s foreknowledge.
3

the category of “the most powerful recent arguments against theories of incompatibilist freedom”
does not have clear boundaries. I have chosen several objections that have received much
attention in recent years, but another writer would surely have chosen somewhat differently. I
have chosen to address, for example, Peter van Inwagen’s Roll-Back Argument, but have not
addressed Alfred Mele’s version of the luck objection. I will not defend my choices other than to
note that I have not shied away from what I took to be stronger arguments, but rather have
attempted to address what I find to be the most serious objections to incompatibilist theories of
freedom.
In the second chapter, I begin my investigation of the viability of Aquinas’s theory with
an examination of arguments against the Principle of Alternative Possibilities. According to this
principle, an agent is only morally responsible for an action if he could have done otherwise.
Some philosophers have taken this principle to be the foundation of incompatibilist theories, but
this principle is now widely held to be open to counter-example. In this chapter I investigate
whether Aquinas accepts this principle and whether his theory can remain viable without it.
In the third chapter, I turn my attention to a family of arguments that all seem to find a
problematic element of luck in incompatibilist theories of freedom. In particular, I investigate
three arguments that are put forward by van Inwagen. In each case, I lay out the argument, then
seek to discover whether Aquinas’s theory remains viable in light of the objection. I should note
that my analysis of the viability of Aquinas’s theory will often take me into non-Thomistic
territory. My responses to van Inwagen, for example, will make little mention of
characteristically Thomistic positions. Instead I will, when possible, seek to defend Aquinas in a
way acceptable, at least in principle, to those who made the objections.
4

In the fourth chapter, I will conclude my examination by looking at the question of
whether incompatibilist free choices can be explained in terms of an agent’s reasons. There
seems to be reason to think that incompatibilist theories cannot allow for any explanatory role for
reasons. If they cannot, then it seems that these theories, including Aquinas’s, are not truly
viable. I then take up the question of whether contrastive reasons-explanations are possible for
such free actions.
The question of whether Aquinas is a compatibilist or not has been taken up by a number
of scholars in recent works. Particularly noteworthy are the discussions by Jeffrey Hause, Tobias
Hoffmann, Thomas Loughran, Scott MacDonald, Robert Pasnau, Eleonore Stump, and Thomas
Williams.2 Dispute much recent discussion of this topic, no consensus has been reached.
Although some of the contributions on this topic have been particularly insightful, no author has
undertaken the task of considering and evaluating the many different kinds of arguments that
have been put forth in favor of incompatibilist or compatibilist interpretations. Instead, authors
have tended to argue in favor of a particular interpretation in light of exegesis of particular texts
without engaging with the broad spectrum of arguments put forward by others in support of the
contrary interpretation. So, for example, Stump argues in favor of an incompatibilist
interpretation without engaging the arguments or examining the texts that seem to weigh in favor

2 Jeffrey Hause, “Thomas Aquinas and the Voluntarists,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 6 (1997):
167–182; Tobias Hoffmann, “Aquinas and Intellectual Determinism: The Test Case of Angelic Sin,” Archiv für
Geschichte der Philosophie 89 (2007): 122–156; Thomas J. Loughran, “Aquinas, Compatibilist,” in Human and
Divine Agency, ed. F. Michael McLain and W. Mark Richardson, 1–39 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America,
1999), 12–15; Scott MacDonald, “Aquinas’s Libertarian Account of Free Choice,” Revue Internationale de
Philosophie 52 (1998): 310; Robert Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2001); Eleonore Stump, Aquinas (Londen: Routledge, 2003); Thomas Williams, “Human Freedom and
Agency” in Oxford Handbook to Thomas Aquinas, ed. Brian Davies and Eleonore Stump, 189–208 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2012).