I'm interested in whether the *real* laws are free of such clauses. Some defenders of the possibility of miracles hold that all such laws have such clauses, so that God doesn't have to violate laws of nature in order to perform a miracle. Instead, he only needs to override them. I'm going to grant this point, since my question isn't intended to be about the possibility or nature of miracles. I'll say later where it really is, but it would be rhetorically untoward to give away the punchline so early. So what I want to know is whether laws are ceteris paribus-free from within the natural order itself (rather than from outside, as in the case of intervention by God). Fodor holds that all the laws of the special sciences are required to have c.p. clauses in them, because they can be overridden by more fundamental laws. That leaves open the possibility, however, that the fundamental laws of physics can be c.p.-clause-free. And if the c.p. clauses we're thinking of are from within the natural order itself, then perhaps we should expect them to be free of such clauses. My interest here concerns libertarians who talk in terms of the possibility of "losing one's soul," where what this is intended to mean is that an individual can come to a point where it is psychologically impossible for them to choose an option that used to be possible for them. Some talk as if this is an accurate description of what eternal consignment in hell involves. I'm interested in whether the suggestion makes any sense.
Suppose the impossibility in question is rooted in some law of psychology, as the language of psychological impossibility suggests. If the laws of the special sciences always contain c.p. clauses, the conclusion about loss of libertarian choices won't follow. The laws of chemistry are more fundamental than the laws of psychology, so even if making a choice is psychologically impossible in certain circumstances, maybe the c.p. clause will kick in when you eat more broccoli and the laws of chemistry come into play as well. No one would think that freedom is lost simply because you can't make a particular choice without eating broccoli first. Of course, the broccoli example is just an example--I don't know what exact chemical conditions might be involved in the c.p. clauses of psychological laws. For those whose humor inclines to the dark side, maybe they involve the laws of attention for donkeys, involving contact between a 2x4 and the head. The point, though, is that one cannot glibly associate loss of libertarian freedom with just any kind of necessity to one's behavior. The only kind of necessity that could imply the loss of libertarian freedom is the necessity associated with the fundamental laws, the laws which are c.p. clause-free for factors from within the natural order. So the "lose your soul" theorists will have to claim that it is possible to put yourself in conditions governed by the fundamental laws (of physics, presumably), so that no analogue of eating broccoli can arise, and thus making it nomologically necessary that one can no longer make a certain choice. This is a position, I submit, which no such theorist has even begun to provide an argument. First, we need an argument that the fundamental laws have to be c.p. clause-free in the relevant sense (and this is far from obvious, though I won't take the time to say why here--maybe later...). Second, the arguments such theorists rely on appeal to psychological realities: they appeal to the force of habits, the way in which actions can enhance desires, and the way in which a person can become, as Swinburne puts it, nothing more than a locus of competing desires, with action being nothing more than the result of strongest desire. All such arguments can be granted without drawing the conclusion that libertarian options have now been restricted. Maybe the solution is just to eat your broccoli.
What seems immediately obvious is that we need a distinction between
- one can no longer make a certain choice *unless you eat your broccoli* (or *do* something else)
- one can no longer make a certain choice *unless you are hit on the head by a 2x4* (or something else *happens* to you)
In short, even if a "lost soul" can get their choice-making power back through some non-psychological intervention, it need not be the case that the intervention is something you can choose to do. As an example: maybe you cannot choose to be holy because you are psychologically sunk in sin. You can get your choice-making power back if you receive grace. But you cannot get your choice-making power back by doing anything.
Heath, yes there is a difference between different conditionals, and some of them will involve miraculous divine intervention. Those, of course, don't block the claim that causal determination is present because of the psychological impossibility in question, and that's the inference I'm expressing skepticism about. Regarding that inference, it doesn't much matter whether the condition in question is one about actions you can perform or events that might happen to you. In both cases, the impossibility in question doesn't yield causal or nomological impossibility.
Interesting post, Jon. Couple thoughts.
First, I think we have to be careful what we take the "natural" order to be. We could mean (1) the physical order, which includes the laws of physics and any higher-level laws that wholly supervene on those laws (chemistry, etc.). Or we could mean (2) the created order, which includes both the physical order and nonphysical creations like angels and demons (if any exist), and human souls (if mind-body dualism is correct). Many libertarians hold to some version of agent causation and mind-body dualism. For them, the "psychological laws" relevant to the "lost soul" scenario need not supervene on physical laws at all. We beg fewer questions, then, if we ask whether the fundamental laws (physically supervenient or not) of the created order (whatever it's scope happens to be) that are relevant to libertarian choice have c.p. clauses when considered solely within the created order.
Second, the answer to that last question is, arguably, no. Take fundamental law L and suppose that it has a c.p. clause CP. In that case L can be represented as follows:
(L) If conditions of type C obtain and if none of the overriding conditions in CP obtain, then a result of type R will obtain.
But what could these overriding conditions in CP be? They can’t be anything outside the created order, for we are limiting ourselves to a consideration of the created order. They can’t be more fundamental laws, for that would contradict the assumption that L is itself fundamental. There doesn’t seem to be any way to give CP content, and so it is reasonable to conclude that a fundamental law like L could not have a c.p. clause.
Given the above, I fail to see anything incoherent about the “lost soul” scenario.
Jon,
You might look at Nancy Cartwright on ceteris paribus clauses in 'Do the Laws of Nature State Facts?' Fundamental laws are not exempt from cp clauses, if you *want* to formulate them that way. But according to Cartwright this is not a typical or good way to go for either fundametal laws or subsidiary laws. Cartwright notes that Feynman, for instance, calls the law of universal gravitation "the greatest generalization achieved by the human mind". For him, it's the ultimate example of a fundamental law (something like F = Gmm'/r2). But does the law of universal gravitation explain the way objects actually behave? Feynman says certainly not, and Cartwright does too. As many know electricity also exerts a force that varies inversely as the square of the distance, but this time between charges (this time it's Coulumb's law). So it's not true that for any two bodies the force between them is given by the law of universal gravitation. The force between two charged bodies is some resultant of gravitational force and electrical force. And there are many cases in which electrical force (which is much stronger) just swamps gravitational force (this explains why the floor is composed of mostly holes and yet gravity doesn't pull us through!).
Here's my point. Cartwright points out that the "obvious solution" is to add ceteris paribus clauses to the law of universal gravitation to the effect that it explains the behavior of bodies in cases where there is no electrical force. She claims it's pretty clear that such clauses render the law applicable in cases that are *so ideal* that the law is useless for purposes of explanation. There are hardly any cases in which the cp cause is met. The better solution is by appeal to the composition of causes.
So, according to Cartwright, your assumption that non-fundamental laws are typically formulated with cp clauses is mistaken. You *can* render such laws that way, but it makes them explanatorily useless. So it is not a typical way to go for subsidiary laws. In any case, you might have a look at her paper on this.
Mike, I don't think Nancy's view helps much here. If we're going to talk about laws here, we'll have to assume that the laws in question are true, and she doesn't think they are. The reason they must be true is that we are using them to determine what is causally necessary in the way determinists endorse and libertarians deny. In that context, a conception of laws like hers won't help.
Alan, a couple of points here. The supervenience claim isn't really essential to my concern. Instead, what matters is whether a law is subject to being overridden from with the natural order itself by factors outside the system being described by the law. So if psychological laws, however conceived, require the absence of overriding conditions from chemistry (as they most surely do), that's enough for the worry I raise to arise about the argument from losing one's soul to causal necessitation.
On the question of whether fundamental laws have c.p. clauses, note that the argument you give ignores the possibility of multiple fundamental laws that are capable of conflicting in a given case. If you look at Mike's gloss of Cartwright's views on laws, that's exactly what she's thinking about, I think.
Of course, this leads her to a view of laws on which they are false, so maybe fundamental laws can't be true and yet have c.p. clauses.
Even so, your last sentence doesn't follow from what you say before, unless you think the laws governing human psychology and behavior are fundamental laws. And they clearly are not, since they can be overridden from within the natural order by factors outside the psychological and behavioral system in question. So the question I raised remains: how do we get from the claim that one has lost one's soul, conceived as a claim about what is psychologically necessary, to a claim about causal necessity of the sort incompatible with libertarian freedom?
Jon,
Here's a very quick point. Cartwright does not deny that physical laws (even fundamental laws) are true *if* they are qualified. She denies that they're true if unqualified. Her dilemma is this: either you have true laws (qualified by cp's) that are explanatorily unhelpful or explanatorily helpful laws that are false (unqualified by cp's). I'm not sure this is esp. useful to you, given your aims. But it is a neat dilemma!