John Bishop Philosophy Essay

Consider the following passage from Bishop:

“If someone discovered that, throughout a relationship, her and her partner's free choices in forming and maintaining it had resulted from the -- at the time, undetectable -- manipulation of another powerful agent, she would be justified in feeling betrayed and scaling down considerably her estimate of the relationship's value. From this, I think, we may infer that a relationship which results from the undetected or even undetectable continuous contrivance of another person, however valuable it might seem, would not actually be of the highest value.” (John Bishop, ‘Compatibilism and the Free Will Defence’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 71:2, 1993, p.117).

Now do the following:

1. Carefully explain how this passage relates to Bishop’s ‘Upgraded’ Free Will Defence

2. Set out one reason either for agreeing with Bishop’s reasoning in this passage, or for disagreeing with it 

The passage in question is part of an overarching thesis to explain why, if God is all powerful and all loving, would he permit the existence of evil, which is known as the problem of evil. Supporters of free will argue that in order for us to be free beings, evil is an inevitable consequence of our freedom and therefore it is the reason as to why an all powerful and loving God would permit it. Bishop argues in his first and second thesis that the Free Will Defense is in fact flawed from both the compatibilist and libertarian point of view if we regard freedom in the probabilistic sense, as Bishop argues that God could establish the preconditions of our environment and psyche in such as way to ensure a high likelihood of a certain outcome. In the cases in which this outcome is not guaranteed God would divinely intervene in order to make it happen. If the probabilistic theory of action is regarded as the correct view of freedom according to both compatibilism and libertarianism God would have a strategy of ensuring freedom and preventing evil. The only possible counterargument, Bishop states, being the ‘Agent Causation Response’ whereby any divine intervention of God would negate our freedom.

This passage relates to an improved version of the Free Will Defense presenting an argument to explain why even though God does indeed have a viable strategy to preserve genuine freedom, or something essentially indistinguishable from it, and to prevent evil, why he would still not intervene in our actions. The solution Bishop comes up with is to present a higher value than genuine freedom but which is dependent on its existence, Bishop regards this higher value as love. Therefore, this passage relates to how love is: contingent on genuine freedom; how love justifies the existence of evil; and why God would not intervene in our actions to prevent evil as it would devalue our love to other people. Only by regarding love as the highest value does it make sense for God to not intervene in our actions even if he has the ability to ensure freedom and prevent evil.

I disagree with Bishops’ Upgraded Free Will thesis as it is possible to employ the same logical arguments that has used in his first and second thesis to argue for divine intervention while preserving freedom which I argue can be used in order to preserve love while at the same time avoiding evil. In paragraph eight, Bishop states that libertarians should think that the link between antecedent states and ones’ initial mental states should be irrelevant as to argue otherwise would be to state the existence of a self-created agent. Bishop uses this argument to develop an intervention strategy in which God can intervene in our antecedent states as well as our mental psyche to guarantee genuine freedom as well as ensuring a high probability of a certain outcome.

It is unclear whether Bishop recognizes that this strategy of ensuring genuine freedom and a high chance of a certain outcome by intervening in our antecedent states and mental psyche which has been established to be irrelevant, whether it can not be applied to love as well. Bishop argues that the fact that an all powerful being is tampering with our choices would devalue our estimation of the relationship but it is unclear if Bishop is referring to an intervention between our antecedent states and initial mental states, or the initial mental states and final mental states. Assuming he is referring to both I will address the former first and the latter after.

If Bishop regards the intervention of an omnipotent being in our antecedent states and mental faculties as a reason to devalue our relationship, and that the link between antecedent states and initial mental states are irrelevant as stated in passage eight then Bishop must therefore devalue the value of the relationship even without the intervention of a divine being. Our relationships are to a certain extent determined by factors out of our control especially in reference to evolutionary biology which determines our mental faculties as well as socio cultural factors which determine the aesthetic values of a society. If it is irrelevant whether these evolutionary as well as socio cultural values were determined by an omnipotent being or whether it was caused purely by chance, it is therefore irrelevant if an omnipotent being intervened in our antecedent states and initial mental states or not. In this case God has ensured a high likelihood of a certain outcome as well as preserving genuine freedom and genuine love furthermore as Bishop has questioned the Libertarians why there is such as huge difference between genuine freedom and the intervention strategy it can also be argued that if our relationship has already been devalued by factors out of our control why would it matter so much if God intervened or not between our initial mental states and final mental states.