Folia Theologica 18. (2007)
Zoltán Turgonyi: Compatibilism and Concursus Divinus - A (Hopefully) Possible Approach to the Problem of Freedom
346 Z. TURGONYI If incompatibilists want to argue in favour of free will, they think, they have to demonstrate that determinism is not true. One of the typical ways used by them is the reference to the objective existence of hazard. The oldest example of this is the opinion of Epicurus about the random movement of atoms. Some modern authors, too, try to explain the possibility of free will in a similar way, referring of course not to the atoms in antique sense, but to quantum theory which certifies - according to some specialists - the objectivity of hazard in material world. But is this explanation satisfying? Can we consider such a human act as free, which differs from causally fully determined events only because its happening is brought forth - in addition to (in principle) predictable and explainable factors - by some factor functioning fully at random, blindly? If I have to make a moral decision, for example in the case of temptation, and by all (in principle) explainable factors (by my value system, by my past, by all the effects produced on me during my education and so on, furthermore by my momentary state of mind) I am induced to resist to the lure of sin, but suddenly something happens on micro-physical level, and this change causes - through transmissions - such an effect in my brain, because of which I decide in favour of the sin, in spite of all other factors mentioned above, shall I regard this as a free decision? I do not think so. In such a situation I should rather feel the presence of some external force, deciding instead of me. Does this approach differ in its essentials from mechanical materialism? After all, things in both cases are brought to an issue on a sub-human level. Both blind hazard and blind determinism are indifferent to my moral points of view. Is it better if we choose another form of indeterminism? Let us suppose that somebody thinks that the question of the existence of hazard in the material world has nothing to do with freedom, because our moral and other choices are not decided in the course of events in the material world independently of mind; instead, they are decided directly in processes of our mind, whatever their contact with matter should be. In this case undeterminedness has to be realized in some way on the level of mind: my undetermined decision has to be brouhgt about by such a cause which itself is not an effect of earlier events but comes into existence in my mind, so to say, from nothing.
