What can God show us? (original) (raw)

Criticises Peter van Inwagen's claim (in An Essay on Free Will) that it is possible to imagine a stone shattering a window and that God subsequently reveals that the window, although caused to shatter by the stone, did not have to shatter. The purpose of van Inwagen's thought experiment is to argue that `it is not part of the concept of causation that a cause - or even a cause plus the totality of its accompanying conditions - determines the effect'. I argue, first, that if a stone is thrown at a window and the window fails to shatter, our natural and reasonable assumption will be that the stone was not thrown hard enough or that the window is impact resistant: in short, we will assume that the window failed to shatter because of the absence of some necessary condition for its shattering. In that case, it is part of our concept of causation that a cause, plus the totality of its accompanying conditions, determines its effect. It is also part the concept of causation that effects are explained by citing their causes, and this is inconsistent with the supposition that, given the occurrence of a cause and the totality of its accompanying conditions, its effect might not have occurred. Therefore, if God were to persuade us that a window that is caused to shatter did not have to do so, this would constitute a revision of our concept of causation. I go on to argue that, in any case, we cannot imagine anything that could count as revealing to us that when a window shatters, given everything as it was at the point of impact, the window did not have to shatter. I argue that even if a case could be made for saying that if we have reason to believe anything, we have reason to believe what God tells us or shows us, there is nothing we can imagine that would give us good reason to believe that it would really be God, and not a hellish impostor, who is doing the showing or telling. Therefore, what van Inwagen invites us to imagine is unimaginable. I conclude that we cannot conceive of any circumstance that can give us good reason for abandoning or modifying our natural and reasonable inclination to say that when causes fail to produce their expected effects, some necessary accompanying condition must have been missing.