Folia Theologica 18. (2007)

Zoltán Turgonyi: Compatibilism and Concursus Divinus - A (Hopefully) Possible Approach to the Problem of Freedom

COMPATIBILISM AND CONCURSUS DIVINUS

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real master of his own activity, and his volitions are nothing but the necessary outcome of preferences without a real act of free will by which he could decide whether he wants to obey his prevailing preference.

Well, let's suppose that there is an additional factor which makes the final decision! What could it add to the whole process? If my preference system decides to perform the act A, but that enigmatic additional factor overwrites this by deciding to abstain from A, what can I answer when somebody asks me, why I have made such a decision?

There are several possibilities:

1) I can say: 'I don't know!', but this is hardly an answer of a free man, master of his own acts.

2) I can say: 'Just because!' In this case (if we suppose that I am sincere) there are some further possibilities:

a) I don't know the reason. This case is identical with that of point 1.

b) I wanted to contradict, l'art your Vart, my preference system, in order to demonstrate my freedom. But this means that I prefer free will as an end in itself. Thus my answer belongs to point 3, presented below.

c) I have some other reason to abstain from A, but I don't want to speak about it. This also belongs to the following point. (This is so even in the case of intuitions, suddenly arising ideas and so on, because the act of obeying them presupposes some preferences, e. g. that I have some irrationalistic inclination, i. e. I prefer inexplainable inspirations to rational motives etc.)

3) I can explain my decision by telling my reason to prefer the abstention from A to the performance of A. But this means that this additional deciding factor also has a preference system, a second one, different from the the first one favouring act A.

How has this second preference system come into existence? Either by interaction with the external factors of the world, like the first one, or independently of them, in its own isolated inner world.