David K Johnson vs. human freedom: bizarre argument

David K Johnson uses the concept of truth-makers to argue that human freedom is impossible. He sets up his argument by having us conduct a very modest thought experiment. I'll paraphrase it here. Suppose that he predicts that that a bottle of water will be on the table of the room in which he will be lecturing. He might say, "The bottle of water will be on the table at 3pm on Tuesday, July 12th of next year." Suppose also that later events show that this proposition is true. We must maintain, says Johnson, that the proposition is true even before the predicted event happens. Otherwise, we would have to say that it is neither true nor false until the event in question happens. But That's "untenable," says Johnson, because saying that violates the law of excluded middle--one of the most basic rules of logic. In order to avoid violating this law, we must say that the proposition is true even before the the event that it describes has happened. But in order for it to be true, the truth making conditions must already be met: the bottle's being on the table must already exist. DKJ doesn't explain how an event that hasn't yet happened could already have happened: he just tells us that logic demands it.

Once we grant the preexistence of the states of affairs described in propositions about the future, it follows that there is no human freedom. For freedom requires contingency, and there is no contingency in Johnson's theory of truth. The truth of propositions, says Johnson, requires that the truth-making conditions already exist, even prior to the event described in the proposition has occurred. Given the preexistence of those conditions, the truth about them follows necessarily--be it the truth about the location of a water bottle or a truth about how I shall choose to act in the future. Today, the truth about how I shall choose--even though I don't know what it is--is not just true but necessarily so; hence there is none of the contingency that is requisite for liberty.

I find his argument truly bizarre. But let's attempt to argue against the conclusion while accepting as much of his conception of truth as possible. I'll do so in the form of a question, which I hope to respond to in the future. For now, I'll just throw it out there...

Let's try modifying the original proposition about the water bottle to the following: "The bottle of water's ending up on the table will be a contingent event," or "It is contingently true that the bottle of water will be on the table." Is there any reason why contingency could not be attributed to the preexistent conditions in one of the ways we see done in these two statements? If so, then the problem is solved. for if those preexisting conditions are contingent, then the necessity we attribute to the truth of the proposition about the bottle on the table will take on a different flavor. It would be the relation between the conclusion and the premise of a valid argument that has premises whose truth is uncertain. We might even find a correlation between the necessity/contingency of the proposition about the future and necessity/contingency of the truth making conditions. The problem could be solved, in other words, by attributing contingency to the truth-making conditions.

I'm curious about how DKJ would respond to this proposal.

Dembski's "specified compexity" semiotics and teleology (both ad intra and ad extra)

Integral to Dembski's idea of specified complexity (SC) is the notion that something extrinsic to evolution is the source of the specification in how it develops. He compares SC to the message sent by space aliens in the movie "Contact." In that movie, earthbound scientists determine that radio waves originating in from somewhere in our galaxy are actually a signal being sent by space aliens. The scientists determine that these waves are a signal is the fact that they indicate prime numbers in a way that a random occurrence would not. What is interesting to me is the fact that Dembski relies upon an analogy with a sign rather than a machine. Like a machine, signs are produced by an intelligent being for the sake of something beyond themselves. Machines, if you will, have a meaning. Signs, if you will, produce knowledge. But the meaning/knowledge is in both cases something other than the machine/sign itself. Both signs and machines are purposeful or teleological...

particular/universal event/rule

While listening to a recorded lecture on Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism, it occurred to me that every rule is in a way, a fact about the world. Think about baseball: from the p.o.v. of an individual player, a baseball rule is not a thing but a guide for acting and interpreting the actions of others. But this rule, like the action it guides, is part of a concrete individual --i.e., part of an institution that has come into existence at a particular place and time, has endured and may eventually go out of existence. The baseball rule, as a feature of that individual, is likewise individual. The term "baseball rule," on the one hand, links us to a unique cultural event; it can, on the other hand, name a certain type of being. In this way, it transgresses the boundary between proper and common noun. If there were no such overlap, then we might be tempted to divide our ontology between a bunch of facts "out there" and a bunch of common nouns "in here....

continuing the discussion with Tim in a new post

Hi Tim, I am posting my reply here, because the great blogmeister won't let me put it all in a comment. Me thinks I get your point: is it that we can name and chimps can't, so therefore we are of greater value than chimps? Naming is something above and beyond what a chimp can do, right? In other words, you are illustrating the point I am making (if I catch your drift). My argument is only a sketch, but I think adding the ability to name names, as it were, is still not enough to make the argument seem cogent. For one can still ask why we prefer being able to name over other skills had by animals but not by humans. The objector would demand a more convincing reason. The answer I have in mind is, to put it briefly, that there is something infinite about human beings in comparison with the subhuman. That "something" has to do with our ability to think of the meaning of the cosmos. Whereas one might say"He's got the whole world in His han...

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