Talk:Joseph Priestley/Confessio philosophi

Two relevant passages from Confessio philosophi

I hope that I can be forgiven for quoting a pertinent passage from the primary text. Many readers might not want to read the whole of Confessio philosophi, so for convenience, I have extracted two passages that pertain to free will. Willow (talk) 23:03, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Passage 1

Philosopher: I see the problem; just give me a minute to catch my breath.

Theologian: Time to begin! Have you discovered something at last, my friend? Your suddenly unfurrowed brow promises something joyful and exciting, I don't know what.

Philosopher: Please forgive my delay; it was fruitful. For if I have learned anything with certainty in today's discussion, it is that if one turns to God, or rather withdraws from the senses and leads the mind back into itself (which is really the same thing), if one tries to find the truth with sincere disposition, then the shadows are parted as if by a blast of unexpected light, and in the middle of the night, through dense fog, the way is shown.

Theologian: You sound like one who has been initiated into mysteries.

Philosopher: You will be the judge of what I have to say. I cannot deny that God is ultimately responsible for everything, and consequently is the driving force behind sin.

Theologian: If you concede that, you concede everything.

Philosopher: Not so fast! No, I say, I cannot deny it, because it is certain. Take away God, and you take away this whole chain of events; establish Him, and you likewise establish it. This chain of events includes all the creatures which have been and will be, their good and evil actions and hence, their sins. Nevertheless, I deny that God wills those sins.

Theologian: So you propose that sins occur, not because God wills them, but because He exists.

Philosopher: You have hit the nail on the head! For although God has caused sins to happen, He is certainly not their originator. If it may be permitted to speak so scholastically, the ultimate physical cause of sins, as of everything, lies in God, but the moral cause lies in the sinner. I believe this is what was meant by those who said that the substance of the deed comes from God, but not the evil, even if they couldn't explain how the evil did not follow from the deed. More correctly, they should have said: God contributes everything to sin except the desire to sin, and consequently He does not sin. Thus, I feel that sins are not due to the divine Will, but rather to divine Reason, or to the eternal ideas of things, which are the same thing. These eternal ideas constitute the nature of everything, so one should not foolishly imagine that there are two basic elements of things and two gods, hateful to each other, one good, one bad.

Theologian: What you're saying is astonishing.

Philosopher: But I will make it so that you agree it's true. Here's an example which will make my point clearer and more believable. Why does three times three equal nine? Do we believe that it is because God wills it so? Or that the square root of two is an irrational number, should we conclude that God has willed it thus?

Theologian: I think not, if we are wise; for nine and three and the square root of two are numbers which can be clearly grasped; they are not just names with no idea behind them.

Philosopher: Thus, these theorems of the nature of things, these ideas like "nine" and the "square root of two" should be ascribed to the divine Reason, where the ideas of things have rested for eternity. In other words, these theorems are true because God reasoned them from the ideas of things, not because God willed them. Moreover, these ideas follow from God's existence, for if God were nothing, everything would be simply impossible and ideas like "nine" and the "square root of two" would share the common nothingness. Thus, some things owe their existence to God's existence, but not to His Will.

Theologian: I see that, but what does this have to do with sins? I await your answer with desire and wonder.

Philosopher: You perceive that I have not digressed in vain. For just as "three times three equals nine" owes its truth to God's existence and not to His Will, so "the ratio of three to nine equals the ratio of four to twelve" also follows from His existence. Indeed, every ratio, proportion, analogy and proportionality arises not from God's Will, but from His nature, or from the Ideas of things, which are the same thing.

Theologian: And then what follows?

Philosopher: Well, if this is true for ratios and proportions, then it is also true for harmony and discord. For they consist of the ratio of unity to diversity; harmony is unity among many things and is proportional to the diversity of the things being unified. The greatest harmony brings seemingly chaotic things unexpectedly into the greatest consonance.

Theologian: Now I see what you're driving at. It is the universal harmony that causes sins, since light must be set off with shadows. However, the universal harmony stems not from God's Will, but from His Reason, or rather from the Ideas (or nature) of things. Therefore the existence of sins must be ascribed to God's reason; consequently, sins follow from God's existence and not from His Will.

Philosopher: You guessed it! For the whole chain of events would be completely changed if sins didn't exist. But the chain of events follows directly from God's existence, and cannot be otherwise. For to say that many different effects could follow from one complete and sufficient cause (as God is for the universe) is just as absurd as saying that one thing is many things. Plainly, if you add and subtract the same quantity from a number, the original number always comes out. But the chain of events is nothing but the addition and subtraction of ideas. If anyone still opposes this notion, a ready proof will overcome his stubbornness. If God is the sufficient reason for things, or rather, the self-sufficient existence and the first cause, then this chain of events follows necessarily from God's existence. Otherwise, God would not be the sufficient reason, but something other than God would have a hand in establishing this chain of events; there would be two gods (as the Manichaeans believed) or at least God would not be the sole self-sufficient existence and first cause, both of which I hold to be false. Therefore, this chain of events follows from God's existence. Now it is well-known from the laws of logic that if the proposition "A implies B" is true, then so is the proposition, "The absence of B implies the absence of A." Therefore, since we have just proven that God's existence implies this chain of events, which includes sins, then one cannot remove the sins without removing God, which we wished to prove. So, sins and the whole chain of events follow logically from the ideas of things themselves, or rather from God's existence: establish His existence, and these sins are established; remove the sins, and one must also remove God's existence.

Theologian: I admit the proof is adamantine, nor can it be attacked by any rational mortal...

Passage 2

Philosopher: Please don't get worked up over an idea which is widely mis-understood and poorly expressed. We agreed before, as you yourself proposed, that everything had a sufficient reason; so of course, every act of desiring something also has its sufficient reason. This sufficient reason must either be external to the act itself, or it must lie in the act itself; however, in the latter case, that would make the act of desiring a self-sufficient existence, which is only true of God. Therefore, the sufficient reason for desiring something is external. To discover what the sufficient reason is, we must consider what "to desire" is. What does it mean to desire something?

Theologian: To delight in its existence, as you prudently defined it before, whether we think it exists or whether we just imagine its existence.

Philosopher: But to delight is to experience harmony, as we said before; therefore, everything we desire seems harmonious somehow. But whether something appears harmonious depends on the nature of the perceiver, the object and the medium between them. So although we can do whatever we desire, our desires are not arbitrary; we only desire things which we believe to be good or pleasing. But our beliefs are not arbitrary, either; no one has ever managed to make himself disbelieve something he knows to be true, no matter how much he wished otherwise. Therefore, since beliefs do not result from desires, neither do desires result from desires. And even if we could make ourselves wish something merely because we wanted to, what causes our desire to wish it? Is it because of yet another desire, and so on to an infinite series of desires; or is it completely random, i.e. for no reason at all?

Theologian: I cannot answer your reasoning, but I don't see you answering my objection that our free will is lost, either.

Philosopher: I admit it, if you define free will the way some people do: that it is the ability to act or not act, given everything necessary, both externally and internally, for the deed.

Theologian: Is that definition wrong?

Philosopher: In a word, yes -- if no explanation is given. Saying that something (in this case, an action) does not exist while all of its requirements exist is like saying that a word can still be undefined even after its definition has been given, or even like saying that something exists and does not exist. If something does not exist, one of its requirements must be missing, because everything is determined by all of the requirements for its existence.

Theologian: Then the correct definition is: Free will is the ability to act or not to act, given all the external things necessary for the deed.

Philosopher: In other words, by this definition, I can forego an action if I do not desire it, even if everything external is conducive to it. Nothing is more true, or in more perfect agreement with my philosophy. Even Aristotle defines an action to be "spontaneous", when its cause lies within the agent, and to be "free", when it is spontaneous by choice. Thus, the more spontaneous someone is, the more his actions flow from his nature, and the less he is influenced by external things. In the same way, a person is more free, the more capable of choice he is, i.e., the more he perceives things with a clear and quiet mind. Spontaneity comes from one's ability, whereas freedom comes from knowledge. But given that we have a good opinion of something, we cannot help but desire it; likewise, we cannot help but do something, if we desire it and recognize the opportunity. Nothing is more strange than to mutate the idea of free will into the incredible, even absurd, ability to act for no reason whatsoever. The privilege of free will consists of standing at the crossroads of life and only doing what we desire; and we can only desire what we consider good. But since we can find out what is good for us by using our reason, we shouldn't find fault with Nature, that she should've given us a weird ability of a certain "rational irrationality".

Theologian: But there are some who claim they have such freedom, that they can do something or not, knowingly and with forethought, but for no reason whatsoever.

Philosopher: I say this is just a matter of deceive or be deceived. These people don't like to think that their desires result from external things; and the pleasure they get from defying that idea motivates them. But their desires do not derive from themselves.

Theologian: But suppose that I were about to make a hand gesture; can't I move it this way or that?

Philosopher: You can move your hand however you want.

Theologian: So why do I move it to the right, and not to the left, as you see?

Philosopher: Subtle reasons are undoubtedly at the bottom of it. Perhaps it came to your head first, because you saw it first. Perhaps your hand is accustomed to that direction, or perhaps the movement is more troublesome in the other direction. Such an act results from all sorts of little circumstances, so many that no one could ever write them all down.

Theologian: But if you, or an angel, or even God were to predict in which direction I were to move it, then I would move it in the opposite direction and assert my freedom, though the prophet were unwilling.

Philosopher: But you wouldn't be more free because of that, for now the pleasure of contradiction has caused your desire. You see, if you always do the opposite of what's predicted, an infallible prophet could predict that as well, as long as he never told you beforehand. He could either foresee it silently, or tell it to a third party without your knowledge.

Theologian: So he can't tell me the truth beforehand? But why not, if he has foreseen the truth: for everyone who knows something true can tell it to every listener. But I will do the opposite of whatever he says; therefore, he does not foresee what I will do, which is contrary to the hypothesis. So either foresight or free will must be eliminated.

Philosopher: This argument is subtle insofar as it concludes that if a certain mind always does the opposite of what is predicted of it, no matter by whom, then such a mind contradicts the existence of an all-knowing being, or rather, the harmony of things. Therefore, such a mind has never existed, does not exist and will not exist.

Theologian: But what do you have to say about the well-known verse: "I see what is good, and I approve it, but still I choose to do the more evil."

Philosopher: This verse is absurd given our definitions, so it should be interpreted. Medea, who says these words according to Ovid, means to say that she sees the injustice of butchering her own children, but nevertheless, the pleasure of revenge on their father prevails over the horror of the crime, just as a greater good may prevail over evil. In other words, Medea sins against her conscience. "Good" and "evil" in this verse stand for "just" and "shameful"; no one should conclude from this verse that anyone ever deliberately chooses that which he considers altogether worse. Whoever thinks the opposite overturns all ethical principles and can't even say what "to desire" means.

Theologian: You have just about convinced me.

Philosopher: We human beings are so stupid; we ask for self-contradictory chimeras, despising the privileges of nature and God, not contenting ourselves with the use of our reason, the true root of all freedom. Unless we're given the power of unreasonableness, we never consider ourselves free enough! As if it were not the highest freedom to use our reason and desires as best as possible, with circumstances causing our reason to recognize truly good things, and our reason causing our desires to reach for them. Then truths would not be resisted; by their reason, people would see things as they are. For if passions are absent, it is just as impossible for us to knowingly make a mistake or willfully commit a sin, as it would be for a person with healthy eyes to not see an elephant. Certainly God's freedom is the greatest, although even He cannot make a mistake in choosing the best; the freedom of angels is next best, provided that they don't fall. In short, freedom comes from using one's reason; in this chain of events, we either walk like kings along the path of our responsibilities, or we stagger along untrodden paths, according to whether our reason is clear or cloudy.