Source Incompatibilism and God

I could probably get the answer to this question by digging a little bit at the existing literature, but I'll ask it here instead in the hopes that it will spark a bit of discussion.

Here are two different reasons one might think we aren't free -- 1) Determinism might be true, and 2) An essentially omniscient and sempiternal God might exist.  Both of these scenarios involve determination, but in different ways.  Traditionally, determinism has been formulated in terms of causation, and so if determinism is true, it's the case that we both lack alternative possibilities AND that we are caused to do what we do by factors stretching indefinitely into the past.  But God's foreknowledge need not involve (and in fact doesn't typically involve) causation.  That is, if an essentially omniscient and sempiternal God exists, then we lack alternative possibilities, but we are NOT caused to do what we do by factors stretching indefinitely into the past.

So I'm wondering a couple of things.  First, are Source Incompatibilists only worried about the kind of determination that involves causation?  And if so, what if we adopted a view of determinism (like Carl Hoefer's) according to which it has nothing to do with causation?  Would the Source Incompatibilist still have a leg to stand on?

Comments

[Clark Goble]

One should add that various views of the block universe from physics can imply this without necessarily embracing determinism. i.e. certain philosophical views that reconcile quantum indeterminancy with a substantial interpretation of general relativity. (Obviously GR proper entails determinism)

I'm surprised the block universe doesn't get mentioned more in these discussions and tends only to occur in the 3D and 4D debates (such as in Sider's Four-Dimensionalism) It often seems that all that is brought up is either determinism or foreknowledge. Although I suppose the block universe ends up entailing most of the same arguments as foreknowledge.

[Kip Werking]

I don't know of any prominent compatibilists or skeptics-about-fw that hinge their view upon the truth/falsity of determinism. As others have noted before, I think it is unfortunate that the philosophical territory in this area has been drawn along these lines.

My own view is similar to Galen Strawson's and Derk Pereboom's, neither of whom think determinism is especially threatening to one's free will (although Pereboom distinguishes between simple indeterminism and "agent causation"; see his forthcoming paper on the coherence of agent causation: http://www.uvm.edu/~phildept/pereboom/AC10.pdf). So if determinism is not especially threatening to one's freedom, then the type of determinism in question would be irrelevant too.

I think the problem, according to the source incompatibilist, is that one cannot form one's own character in a way that is logically impossible (from out of nothing, nothing comes), and yet superficially desirable, or even intuitively real. No amount of indeterminism, or determinism (of the causal or any other variety), will help an agent create themselves ex-nihilo. Every agent must be (to use a crude analogy) the unfolding of a program of which they themselves are not, and could not be, the author.

My own suspicion is that people have focused upon determinism because, in the deterministic scenario, this problem is especially conspicuous, but not especially threatening. I think it would be best, however, if we moved beyond this focus.

[Blake]

Neal: I think that you are right that there are several semi-compatibilists who maintain that we must be contra-causally free but we need not have genuine alternatives that are open to us. It seems to me that Linda Zagzebski, Eleonore Stump, and possibly David Hunt are among those who espouse such a positions. I maintain, along with Kevin Timpe and I believe Bill Hasker, that source incompatibilism entails leeway incompatibilism and thus semi-compatibilism is inherently unstable.

Further, it seems to me that those who argue that libertarian freedom requires some notion of ex nihilo self creation ignore the fact that, so far as I can tell, virtually all agent causal libertarians -- and some event causal libertarians -- maintain that we creatively interact with an existing nexus or environment to fashion a character and that we act within contraints of a pre-exisiting world that limits possibilities. No one claims that agents are simply in an isolated world without any influences or that there are not times when agents aren't free. Yet the ex nihilo argument presumes that they in fact make such assumptions about agent causal powers. It seems to me that agent causalists presume that there are various possibilities that are made live possibilities by the natural environment but the prior causes are not sufficient to explain the agent's choice without a basic agent causal power being added to the nexus of causes. Given the variety of views in this arena, however, it just may be that there is someone who has maintained that view of which I'm not aware.

[Joe Campbell]

This is a good question, Neal.

Last spring there was an exchange on the Garden between Pereboom and I (and others) about the kind of closure principle to which the source incompatibilist is committed. The source incompatibilist, I claimed, needs some such principle to support her incompatibilism.

Pereboom then claimed that the closure principle he endorsed was something like this:

If NC[S]e & e is a set of conditions that causally determines a, then NR[S]a,

where 'NC[S]e' means 'S has no choice about the occurrence of e' and 'NR[S]a' means 'S is not morally responsible for doing a.' In the exchange noted above, and in a recent paper (“Farewell to Source Incompatibilism”), I argue that any similar closure principles that differ only in that they are expressed in terms of entailment between propositions, may be used to show that agents in Frankfurt examples are not morally responsible for their actions, and thus compromises the source-part of source incompatibilism.

Based on this I would say that source incompatibilist’s should only be “worried about the kind of determination that involves causation.” If source incompatibilism is coherent, then it offers a fine response to the problem of divine foreknowledge.

[Blake]

Joe: Is there a link to your paper re: "Farewell to Source Incompatibilism"?

[Kevin Timpe]

First, I think it's important to be clear about the term 'source incompatibilist' (SI), as at least a few of us use it in slightly different ways. If I remember right, Joe uses the term, in his 'Farewell to Source Incompatibilism' paper, to refer only to those incompatibilists who embrace a source/ultimacy condition and reject all alternative possibilities conditions. I, on the other, had, use the term more broadly, and then differentiate between 'Narrow SI' for the position that Joe simply calls 'SI', and 'Wide SI', positions like mine and Kane's which include both a source/ultimacy condition and an alternative possibilities condition. This is important at least partly because I agree with Joe's post above that the kind of closure principle he discusses has the implication that agents in Frankfurt cases are not morally responsible, but I think that this poses a problem only for 'Narrow SI' and not 'Wide SI'. That is, I think his paper is a good argument against positions like Stump and Zagzebski, but not against mine. (Gee, imagine that!)

Neal initially asked the question 'are Source Incompatibilists only worried about the kind of determination that involves causation?' While I can't presume to speak for all SIs, I can hopefully presume to speak for myself (though even this might be dangerous!) and answer the question 'yes'.

Let me briefly say why I think the answer is 'yes' (though note that my answer will be less-than-fully precise and assume some controversial claims). I think a way to get at the difference between what we might can 'causal determinism of action A' and 'foreknowledge determinism of action A' is by invoking truthmaker theory. If A is causally determined, say by laws L and distant state of the past P, then (L + P) is a truthmaker for the proposition expressing some agent's action, say [X does A]. SIs about causal determinism and MR say that an agent can be MR for some action only if she is the ultimate source of A; perhaps we could say that X is the ultimate source of A only if X (or something about intrinsically about X) is the temporally occuring first causally relevant truthmaker for [X does A]. (Since even if determinism is true, X is a truthmaker for [X does A], I need to more fully spell out what I mean by 'temporally occuring first causally relevant truthmaker', but I hope that the general idea is intuitive. If determinism is true, then (L and P) is a truthmaker for [X does A] a long time before X ever exists, and thus also before X is the truthmkaer for [X does A]. Furthermore, (L and P) play a causal role in X's A-ing in that (L and P) is causally sufficient for X’s A-ing.)

But things are different with regard to foreknowledge (actually, I think that the knowledge part isn't all that relevant, and you get the same worry simply about the true propositions that God supposedly foreknows, but I'll stick with the foreknowledge language). SIs will think that foreknowing that [X does A] isn't causing A if X is MR for her A-ing (foreknowledge isn't causal). So presumably the proposition that God foreknows has X or something about intrinsically about X as its truthmaker, and there is no temporally prior causally relevant truthmaker for that same proposition.

[Kip Werking]

Sourcehood shouldn't require 100% strict truthmaking or logical sufficiency. For example, suppose that there is a 99.99 (followed by one billion 9s) percent chance that I will continue to exist from T1 to T2. There is a very small chance, however, that I will just stop existing. Suppose that I continue to exist from T1 to T2.

At T2, there was no prior truthmaker for my existing and having the character I do. Yet the source of my character obviously traces back, at least partially (indeed, mostly), beyond T1 and into the past, taking into account my genetics and childhood environment.

So it seems to me, the statement "perhaps we could say that X is the ultimate source of A only if X (or something about intrinsically about X) is the temporally occuring first causally relevant truthmaker for [X does A]" is not quite right. This is so, at least, if truthmaking implies sufficiency (as it seems to; I'm not familiar with truthmaking theory). Note that Kane, too, only requires agents to be responsible for "sufficient reason[s]... for the action's occurring." (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/dfwVariousKane.html).

The free will problem, I still think, does not involve truthmaking, logical sufficiency, or determinism. The dilemma is just as real, if not quite as conspicuous, if the world/brain is a mixture of deterministic and indeterministic parts. The problem is that people do not create their own characters in a way that is logically impossible but superficially desirable, or even intuitively real.

[Joe]

Blake: I don't have a web version of my paper but I'll send a short version to you via e-mail in the morning.

Kevin: You are right; my comments only apply to what you call 'narrow source incompatibilism.' That said, how can the wide source incompatibilist's response to the threat of divine foreknowledge be regarded as anything other than question begging? You write: "the proposition that God foreknows has X or something about intrinsically about X as its truthmaker, and there is no temporally prior causally relevant truthmaker for that same proposition." But this can't establish that divine foreknowledge is not a problem for the wide source incompatibilist. It only suggests that it is not the same kind of problem as the problem of free will and determinism.

Kip: OK, I'll bite. Why should we worry that "people do not create their own characters in a way that is logically impossible"?

[Sean]

I just wanted to point out that although Divine Foreknowledge may have not have causal implications, the idea of Divine Providence (associated more with the Reformed positions) certainly seem to have those implications. It would appear to be the latter with which most theologians are still grappling (though there is certainly still some work being done on the former). This would seem to be in line with your intuition.

[Christopher Franklin]

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for the post. It is not clear to me that your account could allow for alternative possibilities. Granting that foreknowledge is not causal, if God knows [X does A] one might wonder how X could have done otherwise (fill in Pike's argument). I am not sure what role alternative possibilities play on your account, but if they are necesary for an agent to be MR for A-ing, then one might be worried that no one is ever MR on your account (supposing that God is omniscient). The "temporally prior causally relevant truthmaker" condition would not seem to help at this point given that Pike's argumemt was not about divine providence but about divine foreknowledge. Let me know that you think.

[Kevin Timpe]

I see that I have much to say to try and defend or further explain my earlier post. Unfortunately, I'm leaving shortly for a conference. I know that the cyber-world doesn't wait for anyone, but I'll try to respond to some of the questions and criticisms to my earlier posting next week.

[Justin]

Sean,

Specifically, it's not God's providential control of his creation that eliminates alternate possibilities. Rather, it's God's providential control of his creation where his foreknowledge is logically prior to his creative act. This means Molinist accounts (like Flint's) can side-step the problem of providence and alternate possibilities. Also, providence shouldn't just be associated with the Reformed theological tradition but with the Christian tradition more generally (Catholic and Protestant).

Christopher,

Having read a couple of Kevin's papers, I'm under the impression that he does think alternate possibilities are necessary (but not sufficient) for freedom. Beyond that, I can't speculate as to how he would respond to Pike's argument.

[Kip Werking]

Joe:

You ask: “Why should we worry that ‘people do not create their own characters in a way that is logically impossible’?”

Let me sketch two answers to that question. The first answer is more rigorous and perhaps less satisfying than the second. First, I might answer that this question is just irrelevant. This is in the spirit of Pereboom’s critique of Dennett’s reference to “the varieties of free will worth wanting” in the introduction of his Living Without Free Will. Your question “why should we worry” is like Dennett’s question “is this a variety of free will worth wanting.” But, as Pereboom argues, free will might not, upon inspection, be valuable. Common usage, and not value, should be the test for defining “free will.” So it might be the case that there is a widespread desire for something which, upon inspection, is not ultimately worth wanting. Our lacking free will in this case would not be much to worry about.

I think investigating this common usage is a job for the new field of empirical/experimental philosophy, or psychology. I strongly suspect that, in accordance with the Fundamental Attribution Error and other psychological biases, people regularly do regard themselves and others as free in ways that are empirically false. Alternatively, the terms “free will” and “moral responsibility” might be philosophical terms of art that have no consistent use amongst non-specialists.

Here is a second answer. One reason people might worry about not creating their characters in a way that is logically impossible is that, if they don’t, then their characters are formed entirely by someone or something else. But everything about our lives (our dreams, aspirations, goals, actions) is a consequence and *unfolding* of this character. So, because we would like to have control over our life (and dreams, aspirations, goals, and actions), we would like to have control over our character. But this is obviously logically impossible.

The best and most dramatic illustration I have found, to explain why lacking free will might be disturbing, is the notion of a designer: suppose that a superintelligent being (who need not be supernatural or omniscient) “set-up” your initial conditions (such as your genome) and childhood environment such that you would become the sort of person, and live the sort of life, that this designer wished. Indeed, this designer predetermines every aspect of your life. Gary Watson discusses this idea in his “Soft Libertarianism and Hard Compatibilism.” According to Watson, compatibilism according to which such agents can still be free is “hard compatibilism” and this is the only kind of compatibilist to be. Even those who defend hard compatibilism, such as Watson, acknowledge that this is a “bullet to bite,” hence the label “hard compatibilism.” The problem, I suggest, is that for most of us, if not for Watson, hard compatibilist just isn’t good enough. There is, or ought to be, something profoundly jarring and disturbing about the notion of a designer designing my entire life for me. All of the choices, and actions, which I otherwise feel originate from myself, and just myself, are actually just the unfolding of this grand scheme. The designer seems to have control; the control I have is a sham. Whatever free will is, it should not be compatible with such design. If I am the author of my life, no one else can be.

Note that an excellent article, “For the law, neuroscience changes nothing and everything,” by two Princeton psychologists, Joshua Greene and Jonathan Cohen discusses this same “design” problem as Watson does (they call this problem the Boys From Brazil scenario, in reference to the film of that name) and reaches similar conclusions to my own.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Kip,

You are assuming, without argument, that our retributive practices are grounded on the basis of knowing whether a person is responsible for making themselves into the kind of person that we like/dislike. According to that presumption, you conclude that since we cannot know that kind of information (since it is, in fact, logically impossible), that our retributive practices are unwarranted. However, most of us (and by "most of us" I mean almost everyone) find no reason to accept that initial presumption. In fact, we would argue that it is intuitively and patently false. We believe, and argue, that our retributive practices are grounded on the basis of knowing whether a person is the kind of person that we like/dislike. And that's all there is to it.

In other words, in principle, it doesn't matter whether you are causa sui, whether your character was designed by a designer, or whether your character was wrought by random forces. As long as you have a character and your actions reflect that character, you are a worthy target for our retributive practices.

My fundamental right to say, "I don't like you", "I like you", "I hate you" and "I love you" to someone else are not based on whether those people are causa sui -- in fact the thought never crosses my mind. Rather, these statements are entirely grounded upon a matrix of my own preferences and my perception of the other person's character. Whether my retribitive practices are just depends on 1) the objective moral quality of my own preferences (which are a function of my own character), and 2) whether my perception of the other person's character constitutes knowledge.

Of all the free will literature I've read, going all the way back, I've never encountered anything of substance which militates against this basic assumption about the mechanics of responsibility. Rather, in my estimation, it only the existentialists who have gone astray in this regard.

[Blake]

Mark: I'm with Kip on this one. If I found out that a person's character were the result of a prior programming, or of disease, or of brain disorders, I wouldn't feel that retributive actions are justified in the least (an neither does the entire Anglo-American system of common law for that matter). As an attorney who practices in front of juries based upon jury-feedback and jury-advisors steeped in psychological analysis of how people assess guilt and responsibility, if I can show that a person's acts are the result of character defects based upon factors outside their control, or that their upbringing was harsh, or they were subject to illnesses and so forth, the jury will not punish. When we find that a person's acts were not within their control, or their acts are the result of diseases or mental illness, we don't punish them. We treat them differently. So I guess I would argue that several millenia of legal practice suggest that your observations are not quite accurate.

[Manuel]

Hi Blake-

That's really interesting. I don't know anything about jury feedback and jury-advisors, but I was under the impression that the consensus among legal research types was something to the effect that it is surprisingly difficult to get acquittals based on things like unfortunate and unusual character formation. I'd be grateful if you could point me in the direction of any research on this that defends the (intuitively plausible) claim that for acts that flow from character defects acquired in condition out of one's control, with harsh upbringing, and so on. (Heck, even literature by jury feedback & jury-advisors that isn't research-dependent would be interesting.) Feel free to respond off-thread if that makes more sense. Thanks!

[Kip Werking]

Let me quickly add this short note:

As a law student, my understanding is that such acquittals are very hard to obtain. For example, Wikipedia reports that:

"The public tends to believe that the insanity defense is used more often than it actually is, possibly because insanity-defense cases tend to be of a high-profile nature. The insanity plea is used in the U.S Criminal Justice System in less than 1% of all criminal cases, and only one fourth of those defendants are found "not guilty by reason of insanity". 60-70% of all insanity pleas are not in murder cases."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insanity_defense

The more important point I want to make is that there is an important distinction between the Boys from Brazil (or design) scenario I talk about and the mental illness or defect scenarios that Blake mentions. It is important not to confuse the two. In particular, the agent in the Boys From Brazil scenario need not have any mental defect whatsoever. The property "life was designed by a designer" is a purely historical property (like the property "is the genuine Mona Lisa"). Indeed, such a person might satisfy all of the compatibilist requirements for free will, whatever these may be. The designed criminal might be perfectly rational, but their rationality would work upon poisoned goals or desires.

In this case, I still think, pace Mark, that the historical property "life was designed by a Designer" has some pull on the intuitions of most people. I don't think this pull is nearly so obvious as the pull for the property "is mentally defective" (and so forth), but I think it is nevertheless real and relatively uncontroversial (or ought to be!). Being designed would render us into puppets, albeit sophisticated puppets.

Finally, I want to say that I think there is much to be said for hard compatibilism. Perhaps the only way to settle the dispute is to investigate what people actually mean, if anything, when they use the terms "free will" and "moral responsibility." Are these things compatible with the historical property "life was designed by a designer?"

[V. Alan White]

Since part of this thread depends on legal history, I'd urge some further research on the matter of criminal insanity.

May I suggest Bonnie, Low, and Jeffries, "The Trial of John W. Hinckley, Jr." Wonderful work on that trial as well as the history of insanity law in general. My overall comment would be that that this work reveals that the law evolved with assumptions about FW and responsibility that (in the mid-20th century) emerged into the "Model Code"--a two-tiered criterion of insanity that recognized that two necessary conditions of responsibility must be filled to be held responsible for one's actions. The first is that one has rational intent (this comes from the 1843 McNaughten rule--the ability to know right from wrong); the second is that one can conform oneself to the requirements of lawful conduct (based on a scientifically-argued basis for "irresistible impulse" that emerged from behavioristic psychology, and finally roughly equivalent to Wolf's ability to choose and do the good). Failure to comply with either entails lack of responsibility.

The point of the book is that the Model Code was hugely influential up to the John Hinckley trial. The result of that trial, based on the Model Code--the acquittal of Hinckley obtained on the evidential requirement that the prosecution prove beyond reasonable doubt that Hinckley was sane (and since legislatively moved to the defense in federal cases based on a lower standard of evidence)--has resulted in legislatures all over the states collectively invoking all sorts of standards of what constitutes exculpatory insanity (and, in the case of 3 states, the renunciation of the insanity defense--a definite move toward certain philosophical forms of compatibilism or hard incompatibilism).

In short, the law is currently in tremendous flux as to what constitutes conditions of moral and legal responsibility. We philosphers have more work to do than ever on clarifying what relationship, if any, FW has to responsibility.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Blake,

For the kinds of cases you mentioned ("If I found out that a person's character were the result of a prior programming, or of disease, or of brain disorders, I wouldn't feel that retributive actions are justified in the least"), I agree with you whole heartedly. For it is easy to see that in those cases our moral perception would not be based upon the person's own character. In your cases, if we were to punish this person, we would be punishing them based upon our perceptions of something or someone else.

For those who are trying to argue against responsibility, they have to argue that there are, in essence, no such things as people. As Richard Double might say, "Listen to me, since neither of us actually exists, can't we all just make the best of things and get along?" Sure, I'm being facetious, but that doesn't change the fact that the underlying methodology itself is dialectically preposterous.

Kip,

I'm still not seeing the problem.

If the designed person has his own character, we can justly hold him responsible according to his character. If the designed person is essentially a robot, then we should hold the designer responsible according to what his creation tells us about *his* character. And if the person's character is supressed by brain washing (or some other means), then again we should be holding someone else responsible. Lastly, if the person's character is held hostage by an alien force such as a mental disease or a brain tumor, we don't hold anyone responsible.

Moreover, you're want to say that it is impossible for an agent to be designed yet have its own character, but that is obviously false. When's the last time you ever read a book or watched a movie and thought, "The hero doesn't deserve my praise (or the villain doesn't deserve my scorn) since the plot was designed by the writer"? That scenario is relevantly similar to the existence of a Grand Designer.

Neal,

Regarding the original questions, I think Dean Zimmerman's talk from last year's human and divine freedom conference at Wheaton is relevant. There he argued against the compatibility of freedom and divine foreknowledge. I believe the audio version of that talk is still available on this site. If not, I could find a way to get it to you since I still have the original recordings somewhere on my hard drive.

[Blake]

Mark: The example of a fictional character deserving praise or blame is not persuasive. Last night my son and I were discussing a Superman cartoon and he asked me why Superman didn't just use his heat vision to eradicate Lex Luthor rather than relying on strength which he couldn't use. I responded, quite rationally, because the actions scenes wouldn't be at neat. I often tell my wife, "that character acted that way for dramatic presentation chosen by the author of the book." We often suspend disbelief about the total picture of the fictional character and hold other factors constant. What we say in effect we we attribute praise or blame to fictional characters is something like: "if this person were real in the real world where people have characters in which they had a hand in forming and are otherwise accountable for what they do, I would hold him/her accountable." If I found that another's character were wholly due to some other person or some non-personal agency outside that person's control, I would not hold that person accountable either for his/her character or for the decisions and actions that issue from it (assuming that is the relation between character and action -- tho I doubt that because there is always the chance of acting out of character). If the reason for such lack of control over formation of one's character were global determinism or sufficient explanation determinism for each act, I think that it tortures what we mean by "one's own character." My character is mine because and to the extent that I had at least some control utlimately over its formation. To the extent I had such control, I am accountable for it.

[Tamler Sommers]

Blake,

I just to second Manuel and ask for any suggestions about research in this area. I'm teaching a class right now on punishment and moral responsibility and I don't have nearly enough material about how sentencing works in the real world. I'd be especially interested to know whether there has been a change in sentencing practices over the last 30-40 years (coinciding perhaps with the retributivist revival). Thanks...

[Blake]

Tamler: A good place to start is the Stanford on-line sources here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/legal-punishment/ However, I presume that you already have that.

A history of punishment and whether juries or judges are better equipped to make judgments about mitigating factors and how such factors are weighte is found here: http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dlj/articles/DLJ52P951.HTM

As you probably already know, R. A. Duff has led the movement to restore retributive punishment.

Frankly, the best place to look is the American Psychological Ass'n amicus brief in the Roper v. Simmons case where the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the death penalty for criminals with dimished capacity and what types of things diminish capacity.

Neal Vidmar is a frequent jury consultant who has addressed these issues. His home page is here: http://www.law.duke.edu/fac/Vidmar/framecv.html

An interesting study on how not having alternatives to sentencing influences juries here: http://www.udel.edu/soc/bsteiner/Texas%20Law.htm

The leading U.S. Supreme court case considering research on social attitudes toward retribution and mitigating factors in punishment is Gregg v. Georgia founder here: http://www.justia.us/us/428/153/case.html

There is a lot more. I consult with jury consultants on a case by case basis where we bring in mock juries and present a case. We then poll the jury on what influenced them, what would influence them and then prepare MMPI tests to get a personality profile that we can match against a jury array in a real case. I am interested in how different backgrounds and personality factors lead to differing assessment of evidence and how it relates to willingness to punish criminally and civilly.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Blake,

I don't see how you have established that the reason fictional persons aren't deserving of praise/blame is tied to the fact that they were authored by a writer. Could you can explain why your criticism doesn't amount to saying that fictional persons don't deserve praise/blame simply because they aren't real people?

As I said earlier, the kind of situations you seemed worried about ("If I found that another's character were wholly due to some other person or some non-personal agency outside that person's control, I would not hold that person accountable either for his/her character or for the decisions and actions that issue from it"), can be addressed in the manner established in my reply to yourself and to Kip.

The cases you two are worried about are cases wherein a person's character is somehow supplanted. In every single one of these kinds of cases, we are going to agree. Where we seem to disagree is that I believe it is logical coherent for a person's character to have an origin outside of themselves, and that origin could even be another person, even a Grand Designer -- as long as it hasn't been supplanted, it is the person's and not the designer's.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Blake,

I wanted to add that I am not using "character" in an idiomatic sense to describe patterns of behavior.

I am referring strictly to a person's moral quality -- their moral fiber. If you want a technical definition, I would be satisified to use this one: a person's character at time T is the set of moral properties that are true of that person at T.

[Blake]

Mark: Where we disagree is that any case of a person's character originating wholly outside of themselves is a case where their character is either not their character (because it lacks any indicia of ownership of forming for one's self what one is) or it is a case of a character being supplanted. I assume that by "supplanted" you mean that there was a character that a person once had that was their own and then it was replaced with another character having a causal origin based on the factors we have discussed. I just don't see how the difference is relevant. It begs the question as to what having a character of one's own means. I take it to mean that I, as agent, am at least partially a creator of that character through my choices. However, as I have indicated, I think that the way "character" is usually used in these discussions reifies a concept that is in reality more fluid and not determinative, e.g., we can also act out of character. So I am uncomfortable with the assumptions loaded into your use of "character" and I don't see the distinction between supplanting and forming one's own character that you do.