Holy Cyclops

I would like to think that I live in the best country in the world—the country where everyone else would like to live—the country with the highest standard of living, the fairest courts, the most just laws, the best form of government, the most enlightened populace, the best economic and social system to ensure not only prosperity but also social welfare.  I would like to think that.

I don’t expect perfection.  Really, I don’t.

But when I realize that I live in the only major industrialized nation that lacks guaranteed health care for everyone; when I realize that I live in a nation that restricts not only how many people one may marry but also whom; when I realize that I live in a nation that elected a man who deliberately ignores the scientific consensus on global warming president not once but twice; when I realize that I live in a country whose system encourages the working of overtime and the buying of completely unneeded goods while at the same time permitting some children to go to school in buildings that are falling apart; when I realize that I live in a nation whose mass media seem to care more about a presidential candidate’s preacher than about his political record; when I realize that I live in a country where the death sentence is still allowed; when I realize that European countries seem to care more about the quality of life than the United States does; well, my assessment of this “best country in the world” is tarnished.

And when I then read an article like the one in the May twenty-sixth Newsweek about the protests and resignations not of defense attorneys but of prosecutors at Guantanamo Bay—well, should I be pleased that some people are speaking up and refusing to use coerced confessions or to allow their integrity to be compromised, or should I despair because their superiors are trying to get them to do so?  It isn’t just President Bush.  It’s a subculture that says that it’s somehow OK to capture, imprison indefinitely, torture, prosecute on the basis of coerced confessions, convict, and quite happily execute people.  These are human beings, and it is not all right to deny them due process; these are human beings, and it is not all right to mistreat them, or to let their mistreatment go on for months and years.  The dearth of actual charges brought and cases tried should tell us that we’re not dealing with obviously guilty terrorists; as Newsweek puts it, “From the start, [Air Force lawyer Lt. Col. Robert] Preston says, there was a gap between Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s public portrayal of the Guantanamo detainees as the ‘worst of the worst’ and the evidence contained in the files.  Most of the detainees appeared to be low-level Qaeda and Taliban suspects whose prosecution for anything substantial would prove difficult.”  Even if we were, they would still be human beings, and human beings should be treated fairly and decently, whether we like them or not.  Even if they were obviously guilty terrorists, they’re in custody, and once in custody cannot harm us; what is the excuse for our harming them?  We reduce ourselves in so doing to the level of barbarians, who have no sense of compassion for their enemies and who have no sense of decency toward their fellow human beings and who certainly have no sense of due process. 

The entire military-commission system was badly flawed from the start.  It was an excuse to ignore the legal and human rights of detainees, which is simply wrong.  And it’s a horrible idea to show other countries how fair and just the United States is by denying detainees the very rights we publicly tout.  How can we possibly expect other countries to institute the sorts of procedural protections we say we want them to if we don’t respect the human rights of detainees?  It makes our words ring very hollow indeed.  It should have been obvious to everyone right from the start that this was a bad idea.  So, why wasn’t there more of an uproar about it?  How could these commissions not have been strongly opposed right from the start?

And why was the president who instituted them re-elected?  Did half of the American populace just not care—or, worse, agree that these commissions were a good idea?  I have to hope that Americans’ apparent apathy toward the abuse of human rights that the prison at Guantanamo represents is more the result of ignorance or of having a limited amount of energy to spend on social protest than of a lack of moral outrage. 

My only consolation is that the prosecutors written about in the Newsweek story have spoken up and have resigned—which, unfortunately, leaves the people who don’t care as much about human rights to run the show.  I would think that “the best country in the world” wouldn’t commit such abuse of human rights.  I am saddened.

By way of introduction (possibly at too-great length):

Here, I wrote, in part,

“The simple argument for the incompatibility of God’s foreknowledge with human freedom of the will, using ‘Np’ to represent ‘metaphysically necessarily p,’ ‘Pp’ to represent ‘metaphysically possibly p,’ ‘x’ to represent ‘x occurs at time t,’ and ‘Kx’ to represent ‘it is known that x occurs at time t,’ is

1.  N(Kx—>x)    (Premiss—to know that x will occur at t requires that x will occur at t)
2.  Kx—>x          (1, modal axiom M [or T], i.e., Np—>p)
3.  Kx                (Premiss—it is known that x occurs at t [since God has complete foreknowledge])
4.  x                   (2, 3, modus ponens)

Hence, if we assume that event x at t is foreknown, we know that event x at t occurs—and, therefore, not event not-x at t.  But where is human freedom if what is foreknown dictates what occurs?”  I then proceeded to argue that while this argument did not actually imperil human freedom of the will, God’s foreknowledge combined with God’s telling a purportedly free agent what he would do—or, more broadly, God’s initiating any chain of events leading a free agent to choose to do otherwise than God foreknew—would pose a problem:  If God says to person S, “You, person S, will choose to do x at t,” why couldn’t S be contrary and choose to do not-x at t instead?  If he can’t, where’s his freedom?

Chad McIntosh replied, “The simple solution for the defender of divine foreknowledge to the argument as you outlined it is to point out how, even if sound, the argument doesn’t negate creaturely freedom. This is because the necessity in (1) does not carry over to the conclusion, (4). But carrying necessity to x, at least in the argument as you’ve outlined, would be guilty of an invalid modal operator shift. As it stands, all that follows is x, not Nx. In other words, (4) still allows for possibly ~x, which is entirely consistent with creaturely freedom. What you need is an argument that establishes Nx.”

To which I replied, “It seems to me that although Nx is not established, it is also not needed. In every possible world, we have Kx—>x and K(~x)—>~x, so whether x or ~x is foreknown (in particular, which is foreknown by God) fixes whether it is x or ~x that occurs.

“As long as neither Nx nor N(~x) has been established, one may say, as I suggested, that the foreknower’s knowledge is the result of the agent’s freely choosing x or, alternatively, freely choosing ~x, even though there is no escaping the complete correlation between what is foreknown and what is chosen; one may say that although the agent’s choice is temporally fixed before he makes it, it is ultimately metaphysically fixed by his own choice, which in turn makes the foreknower foreknow what he foreknows. But a problem does arise if the foreknower (in particular, God) tells the agent which choice he is going to make. Why can’t the agent, upon being told which choice he’ll make, simply be contrary and choose the opposite? That’s where the problem arises.”

End of introduction.

While I still agree with what I wrote, it has occurred to me that one can rather easily get the conclusion that Chad McIntosh claims I need, with only slightly different premisses:

1.  N(Kx—>x)    (Premiss—to know that x will occur at t requires that x will occur at t)
2.  N(Kx)          (Premiss—it is necessarily foreknown that x will occur at t)
3.  Nx               (1, 2, modal modus ponens)

(Modal modus ponens states that from N[p—>q] and Np, one can conclude Nq.)

Anyone who thinks that God necessarily foreknows all events, including the outcomes of all human choices, will have to endorse the argument.  Of course, we, not knowing whether x or not-x will occur at t, would have to fill in the second premiss as “N(Kx) or N(K(~x)),” but a foreknowing God would know which one he foreknew.  If he foreknew not-x, then we’d simply rewrite the argument with “~x” replacing “x.”  Anyone not happy with thinking of it that way would instead write

1.  N(Kx—>x)             (Premiss—to know that x will occur at t requires that x will occur at t)
2.  N(K(~x)—> ~x)       (Premiss—to know that not-x will occur at t requires that not-x will occur at t)
3.  N(Kx) v N(K(~x))     (Premiss—either it is necessarily foreknown that x will occur at t or it is necessarily foreknown that not-x will occur at t (a consequence of God’s necessary foreknowledge))
4.  N(Kx)—>Nx             (1, Modal Distribution)
5.  N(K(~x))—>N(~x)   (2, Modal Distribution)
6.  Nx v N(~x)             (4, 5, 3, Constructive Dilemma)

Whether Nx or N(~x) is the case will, of course, depend on whether God foreknows that x will occur at t or that not-x will occur at t. 

Naturally, I, not being a believer in God, do not endorse the claim of God’s necessary foreknowledge; but it seems to me that those who do will have to live with human beings’ lack of metaphysical freedom (even though we may very well choose how to act on the basis of conscious deliberation and of evaluation of possible consequences of our actions).