The free will defence

• what does the free will defence need to show?

  • humans cannot have free will without the existence of moral evil
  • having free will is worth the cost in terms of suffering
• who is the free will defence presented by?

  John mackie
• first-order good/evil

  • the experience in life of happiness or pleasure, for example eating a delicious meal
  • the experience in life of misery or pain, for example having an accident and breaking a leg
• second-order good/evil

  • we can respond to suffering with kindness, love, compassion, etc- second-order good exists to maximise first-order good and minimise first-order evil
  • we can respond to suffering with cruelty, hate, spite etc- second-order evil exists to maximise first-order evil and minimise first-order good.
• third-order good

  • free will allows humans to choose between two things. pain and suffering are needed to help us develop the capacity for sympathy, etc. and so spiritually and morally 'grow'. but the downside is that many will choose the opposite.
• fourth-order good

  • god created humans with free will, which teaches us to be morally responsible.
• definition of a first-order good

  a good at the basic level of human experience.
• definition of a second-order good

  more valuable and significant than first-order goods.
• mackie set out his example of the free will defence in order to disprove it.his rejection of it was opposed by theologian Alvin plantinga
• Mackie's rejection of the free will defence

  logically it is possible for someone to freely choose good at every point of choice therefore, god could have made people so they have true free choice yet always choose good

  he didn't do so, so he:

  • lacks power, or
  • lacks love, or
  • doesn't exist
• plantinga's three worlds- logical problem of moral evi

  1. world as it is, 'morally significant free will', no causal determination from god, there is evil and suffering- logically possible
  2. world without 'morally significant free will', with god's causal determination to make people choose good, so no evil- logically possible but would make people robots
  3. both 'morally significant free will' & god's causal determination to make people choose good, so no evil- logically impossible- genuine free will (libertarian understanding) is incompatible with causal determination so Mackie's argument fails.
• plantinga's defence of the free will defence- natural evil

  • tied up with the punishment for the fall
  • is logically possible that god created or allowed nature evil because of human sin in eden.
• strength of the free will defence and response

  • planting shows that the free will defence approach is logically possible in relation to both types of evil and that Mackie's suggestion is not
  • but this does not mean that it is true.
• strength of the free will defence and response:

  • the free will defence addresses the issue of natural evil as nature has to be free to follow its laws of operation and the evils that result from this enable the development of second-order goods
  • however, this all hinges on whether or not libertarianism provides the right interpretation of human experience. the fact is: we can neither prove nor disprove it.
• strength of the free will defence and response:

  • a world with genuine free will has much more value than one without it, where humans are in effect robots
  • however, not all would agree with this. even if it is accepted that god's omniscience is simply the knowledge of a being outside time and space and is not causative, the sheer amount of so much evil, coupled with the apparent pointlessness, raises the point made by Dostoyevsky's Ivan: does being free justify such a terrible cost?
• causal determinism


  the idea that every event is caused by preceding events and conditions and by the laws of nature. therefore humans do not have free will.
• libertarianism


  in the free will debate this is the view that although some aspects of human existence are determined by physics, biology and chemistry, humans nevertheless have a degree of free will and so can be held orally responsible for their actions.