Journal Article Review for Research Methods

Christopher Randazzo – Philosophy Journal Article Review

“Free Will and the Problem of Evil”

Author: James Cain

Source: Religious Studies, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Dec., 2004), pp. 437-456

Published by: Cambridge University Press

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20008555

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The central problem of this article is to defend the incompatibilism that is required by the free will defense that allows for the problem of evil to arrive out of a misuse of our free will in a world created by an all perfect God. This article is in response to the objection that determinism can be compatible with free will in such a way that God might have predetermined our free will to be exercised sinlessly.

The way Cain goes about this is first to distinguish between three different types of compatibilism—metaphysical, conceptual, and epistemic—and the logical relationship between them. He explains that to say two statements are “compatible” means they can both be true at the same time, thus he breaks down the three types of compatibilism into representative truth statements. At first glance it looks like a complicated proof you might see in a logic and proof class, but all in all he is plainly using symbols to simplify long statements.

First he defines a statement (S) as metaphysically necessary if it is true with respect to every metaphysically possible world, and (S) as conceptually necessary if it is analytically true in each possible world. Likewise a statement (S) is metaphysically possible if the statement is true in at least one possible metaphysical world, and (S) is conceptually possible if the statement can by proved analytically in at least one possible world. Thus “metaphysical compatibility” is when two statements are metaphysically true at the same time. Likewise “conceptual compatibility” is when two statements are conceptually true at the same time. Cain makes the point that if two statements are conceptually compatible, they must be metaphysically compatible. On the other hand, two statements can be metaphysically compatible but not conceptually compatible. Cain practically skips over “epistemic compatibility” as he refers to it as the least plausible type of compatibilism because it is the most complex and includes the most variables.

Based on this point, Cain spends the majority of time talking about his “difficulties” with metaphysical compatibility because if he can persuade the reader that there are simply too many problems with this kind of compatibility, he has no need is expounding upon the other kinds of compatibility. Cain admits that metaphysical compatibilism is the most plausible for the opposing argument, but he is far from convinced. He does this by using typical arguments for compatibilism—namely paradigm-case arguments, conceptual analysis, and Frankfurt-style examples—and shows that they are poor proofs for compatibilism.

I think Cain’s article is true under the assumptions and definitions he uses, most of which I would agree with. But there are so many terms to define and base assumptions made that one can hardly fully agree. Another sense of this article’s “trueness” is that Cain does not boldly say that one side of the argument is true or false. He does not refute the opposing argument as false, but only shows “difficulties,” and he only spends about a page arguing for his own side, which is no “proof” by any stretch of the word.

However, this article is still profitable to reader because Cain is not trying to convince the reader that his thoughts are irrefutable truths, but rather to think through the issue of free will and determinism in a new, hopefully clearer, way.

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