This is an attractive and pastoral (Nietzscheian) just-so story, but it is also has the distinct disadvantage of being wrong, or at least wholly misleading. The transformation went far beyond simply shifting the mere locus of responsibility from God to man. Such a story neglects the transformation undergone by the very concept of responsibility itself, which did not emerge from the other side of the shift unchanged.

Specifically, where for the ancients responsibility was action oriented and objective, Christian philosophy reoriented responsibility by interiorizing it within a subject. That is, responsibility was once was a matter of sanctioning a penalty for an action and not a fault to a subject: guilt was objective (proportional to a punishment) and not subjective (proportional to one's intention or 'will'). The difference is roughly between 'you have done a wrong thing' and 'you are in the wrong for having done the thing'. To reuse and expand a quote above:

[The Greek volitional terms] do not have a moral origin and therefore do not refer to subjective conditions that make agents the ethically responsible cause of their actions. Instead we are dealing with juridical categories, by means of which the Greek city sought to regulate the exercise of private vengeance by distinguishing, according to the passionate reactions that they aroused in the citizens, diverse levels of punishability. ...It is not a matter of founding responsibility in the subject’s will, but of ascertaining it objectively, according to the various levels of possibility of the subject’s actions. [In Christian philosophy] the connection between action and agent, which was originally defined in an exclusively factual way, is now founded in a principle inherent in the subject, which constitutes the subject as culpable. That means that fault has been displaced from the action to the subject who, if he or she has acted sciente et volente, bears the whole responsibility for it." (Karman)

It is in fact precisely this reconceptualization of responsibility that allows Christian philosophy to link freedom and the will: by displacing responsibility from an objective to subjective category, it opens the door to a subject mired in sin: delinked from action, responsibility becomes a category unto itself such that only a Christian can say that one is born in sin from the very beginning. 'Free will', in turn, helps explain sin. This is another reason why Hairy's insistence that 'free will' was 'already there' and just needed a bit of a reorganization of terms is so laughably and historically tin-eared: the introduction of 'free will' required an entire conceptual upheaval that could only have been theologically motivated. So yeah, the pop-Nietzschean story you've relayed needs a great deal more to it to adequately reflect the changes wrought by the misery of Christian philosophy.

Or to quote from another source:

"By attributing to the human mind (and hence the human person) the character of voluntary self-control and self-origination, Augustine turned away from a Greek classical conception of the mind (and hence human nature) as characterized by its cognitive capacities of critical thinking and insight, theoretical contemplation, natural discovery, and logical deduction and argument. Augustine’s fateful turn reoriented Western Latin culture away from the Platonic intellectualist conception of human moral nature as either clear-sighted or confused and benighted (and in either case within the natural order) and toward the idea of a human person as fundamentally moral or immoral, responsible or irresponsible, obedient or sinful through choice of action rather than through understanding and character.

In the Platonic tradition, by contrast, the body’s corruption was responsible for the mind being morally clouded; hence moral ignorance—not active sin but the Greek hamartia, “missing the mark”—was the result of the problems inherent in embodiment. Aristotle’s view was a nuance on the Platonic: his was an account of moral action as stemming from moral character. In this theory, early socialization shaped desire, enabling a person to have the capacity for moral discernment and understanding, as well as deliberative reasoning. Augustine, in contrast, explicitly rejected the body as the source of ignorance or error, neither of which, in any case, could in his view ever account for sin. He regarded that view as pagan and said, “Those who suppose the ills of the soul derive from the body are in error.”

...The upshot of Augustine’s reduction of all internal mental operations—thoughts, emotions, feelings, judgments, learning—to acts of will is a new theory of moral psychology. This new theory amounted to nothing less than a shift in worldview—in the conception of the human person and of the universe that human beings inhabit and, hence, in the conception of moral agency—initiating a decisive break with the past by focusing on the freedom of the will and a concomitant demotion of nature. It is this worldview that we have inherited" (Heidi Ravven, The Self Beyond Itself).

Compare Agamben: "Hence the intellectualistic character of ancient ethics, which seems so abstract to modern moralists. According to the Socratic maxim, every evil action is actually ignorance, because no one “does evil voluntarily” (ouden hēkon hamartanei; Protagoras 358b). We are so accustomed to refer the problem of action to the will that it is not easy for us to accept that the classical world thought it, by contrast, almost exclusively in terms of knowledge. As has been effectively observed, one could say that for the Greek person “as soon as the good is known, freedom of action, which is for us in the last analysis the decisive thing, is abolished” ([Julius] Stenzel, p. 173)."

Augustine, in contrast, explicitly rejected the body as the source of ignorance or error, neither of which, in any case, could in his view ever account for sin. — StreetlightX

You presented so much information, I'm not sure what to comment on. But let's start here. What was Augustine rejecting? It's not an ancient Greek conception of responsibility. It's a competing Christian conception. Christianity has always been ideologically diverse because of its origin. That foundational diversity is why Protestants could later embrace a deterministic theology and still be fully within the domain of Christian ideas.

Have you read Augustine or anything about his life? If you have, then you know he was a thorough-going Neoplatonist prior to his big conversion. Neoplatonism is monistic idealism. In it, physicality is an emergent property (in the same way we think of consciousness as emergent). The Neoplatonists became a little foggy when explaining how physicality emerges, but the basic idea is that it's a state in which the divine mind (which human minds reflect) is becoming thin. Since goodness is associated with the divine intellect, physicality is evil. This isn't a condemnation. You're supposed to take it literally.

When Augustine first learned Neoplatonism, this would have been a familiar idea because it's part of Manichaeism, which is actually a kind of Christianity. It's not the kind that Augustine eventually converted to, though.

With my Nietzche-esque take on history (you're right about that, BTW.. in unnerves me a little to read Nietzsche because I do the same thing he does), the picture I'd like to convey is this:

The world Augustine lived in was a soup of religions, cults, and competing ideologies. Christian entities absorbed Neoplatonism and then argued with each other about details. There isn't much that's purely original with Christianity, though. For instance, the moral perspective that comes through in the earliest days of Christianity is Persian in origin. The Hebrews swallowed Persian themes and outlooks in the same way Christians later swallowed Greek and Roman themes.

Christianity as we know it is what grew up out of all of that.

What was Augustine rejecting? It's not an ancient Greek conception of responsibility. — frank

Whether or not he meant to reject it or not, that's what he effectively did, and that's what we were addressing. William Connolly's The Augustinian Imperative is probably the work that explores the concequences of Augustine's renewed conception of responsibility best, if you were ever to bother to look it up. The rest of your post is irrelavent.

Whether or not he meant to reject it or not, that's what he effectively did, and that's what we were addressing. — StreetlightX

I didn't understand that you were that zeroed in on Augustine. I thought you were talking about Christianity in general. See 1 Corinthians 9:27 for a much bigger theological gun talking about morality and the body (the effects of that scripture throughout the history of Christianity are well known.)

Point is: Christianity is pervasively self-contradictory. That's why it's impossible to trace any particular historic trend back to it. For the time that it was a living religion it was a forum for ideas, not a dictator.

RA, I think you may be overlooking the obvious. Would you not agree that raising the ' scientific question' in itself is a necessary part of the evaluation process?

And if so, is that not called human wonderment? But if not, then why choose to evaluate at all?

You don't need a sense of wonderment to raise a scientific question. Military necessity does quite nicely.

"Of course you are joking right (or maybe I misunderstood)? Here's an easy one for you: every event must have a cause."

Are you sure about that?

I'm not exactly sure, are you wondering now?

Clue: physical science theories' always use synthetic propositions because they make statements about the facts of nature that can be tested. In layman's terms, isn't that a sense of wonderment?

"I'm not exactly sure, are you wondering now?"

About every event having a cause? Yeah. If the event in question was the beginning of time and space...

"Clue: physical science theories' always use synthetic propositions because they make statements about the facts of nature that can be tested. In layman's terms, isn't that a sense of wonderment?"

I guess, but it's not a necessary condition for doing science. I can have no sense of wonder and still make statement about nature if my life depends on it.

I'm happy to learn you're seeing a little of that now. I think the salient point to be made is that those characteristics of human nature are unique. Similarly, to answer your concern about whether your life depended on it, I doubt you would spend time working out mathematical formulas,/theories if you were caught up in that.

And oddly enough, the ability to perform mathematics is also unique to us as humans too. Not only does it not confer any biological advantages, the knowledge of mathematical formulas (laws of gravity) are not exclusive to or required for eluding falling objects and avoiding danger.

In summary, my point is that we are unique creatures indeed. It begs the question of why we have these abilities if survival in the jungle didn't require it (?).

Point is: Christianity is pervasively self-contradictory. That's why it's impossible to trace any particular historic trend back to it. — frank

Wrong. You can trace plenty of conceptual innovations back to Christian philosophy, and as lots of authors agree, free will is precisely one of them. Those ignorant of this history still continue to argue over 'free will' and 'free choice' as though these concepts were in any way exhaustive or even remotely adequate to thinking freedom. The irony being that such concepts were invented to all the better subjugate people to the idea of an all powerful, forgiving God. Free will as a tool of extreme unfreedom.

I imagine there's truth in what you're saying. I don't know which part of Augustine's divinity was supposed to be forgiving, though: the One, the Nous, or the Anima Mundi?

It's probably the cosmic return that represents forgiveness, right?

You tell me. If you think these distinctions, drawn by Augustine in different contexts, have any relevance to our discussion, you can explain their relevance yourself. Here's some quotes to help you:

"What you take vengeance on is what men inflict on themselves, for even when they sin against you, they do evil to their own souls. Man's iniquity lies to itself, whether by corrupting and perverting their own nature, which you have made and set in order, or by immoderate use of things permitted to men, or ... by a burning lust for that use which is contrary to nature .... Such things are done, when you are forsaken, O fountain of life, who are the sole and true creator and ruler of the universe .... Therefore by humble devotion return is made to you, and you cleanse us from evil ways, and are merciful to those who confess to you and graciously hear the groans of those shackled by sin, and you free them from the chains that we have made for ourselves." (Confessions)

"The soul, in fact, rejoiced in its own freedom to act perversely and disdained to be God's servant; and so it was deprived of obedient service which its body had first rendered. At its own pleasure the soul deserted its superior and master; and so it no longer retained its inferior and servant obedient to its will. It did not keep its own flesh subject to it in all respects as it could have kept it forever if it had itself continued in Subjection to God." (City of God)

"Every man is separated from God, except those who are reconciled to God through Christ the Mediator; and that no one can be separated from God, except by sins, which alone cause separation; that there is, therefore, no reconciliation except by the remission of sins, through the one grace of the most merciful Saviour, — through the one sacrifice of the most veritable Priest; and that none who are born of the woman, that trusted the serpent and so was corrupted through desire, Genesis 3:6 are delivered from the body of this death, except by the Son of the virgin who believed the angel and so conceived without desire." (On The Merit and Forgiveness of Sins)

I mean, there's no way your question is entirely irrelevant, is it?

In the passages you quoted A is explaining the Neoplatonic God in Christian terms. The image of a fountain is key. Stuff emanates from the One and then returns to it.

The whole fountain is God. Everything is God. That is Augustine's problem of evil. He rejected both Plotinus' solution and dualist solutions.

His solution is vaguely like Leibniz' though obviously that was a different problem of evil.

I just can't make this thesis work. But I did try.

And? Again, the relavence is?

Again, the relavence is? — StreetlightX

First let me say that you can argue that Augustine introduced the idea of free will this way:

Plotinus' view was deterministic in the sense that evil is just an inevitable part if god. Augustine argues that there actually is choice in the system because the whole thing chose to come into being. So the fusion of Neoplatonism and Christianity brings the distinction determinism/free-will into the light of day.

The concept of free will wouldn't have meant much previously because there wasn't anything to compare it to.

Much later when Augustine's metaphysics is gone and the subtleties of his view are overlooked, we have a more personal God who shepards his creatures and hopes they use their free will wisely, but gets really pissed off when they don't. Now forgiveness has become God's mercy (where before it was a journey to union with the One).

So one could endorse the notion that free will originated out of a theological issue.

There is plenty of 'yeah but', but we can leave that to the side and move on.

Take 'choose' out of it, and this becomes a tautology: "We are never able to do... other than what we actually do". — StreetlightX

Does it? To me that's an argument that you need to justify just as much, if not more, than the original one.

But what would it mean to do otherwise than what we do? Say doing otherwise were 'possible'. And then you did otherwise. But then, you could not have done otherwise than that. — StreetlightX

That's a circular argument. The correct conclusion is "and then, you could have done otherwise than that", because it was already set as a premise that the non-hypothetical course of action could have been done.

So, no, obviously, you can't have done otherwise than what you did, or do. — StreetlightX

A jump from "couldn't have done" to "can't have done". I disagree with at least the first one, maybe with both, but even more I disagree with drawing one as a conclusion from the other.

"We are never able to choose or do anything other than what we actually do".

There's alot of weird modal shit going in a statement like this. Take 'choose' out of it, and this becomes a tautology: "We are never able to do... other than what we actually do". But what would it mean to do otherwise than what we do? Say doing otherwise were 'possible'. And then you did otherwise. But then, you could not have done otherwise than that. So, no, obviously, you can't have done otherwise than what you did, or do. — StreetlightX

Of course we can only do what we do, because that is what we do. The issue with moral responsibility is different, though. Moral responsibility is predicated on the idea that we could have done otherwise than we did; that an alternative course of action under the control of the actor was actually, and not merely logically, possible prior to the act. If a murderer never could have refrained from murdering, then there would be no logical justification for holding him or her morally responsible. The act would logically have to be seen as being akin to the act of an animal or a natural phenomenon; that is, completely amoral.

The issue with moral responsibility is different, though. Moral responsibility is predicated on the idea that we could have done otherwise than we did; that an alternative course of action under the control of the actor was actually, and not merely logically, possible prior to the act. — Janus

That's the whole point of what Streetlight is saying though (if I understand it correctly). That there is a logical problem with the proposition "We are never able to choose or do anything other than what we actually do", or rather the argument that such a dichotomy is coherent at all, and yet such a dichotomy is required for exactly the moral culpability reasons you provide.

The argument, then, is that in order to provide a framework for moral culpability (to explain evil), theologians had to introduce a conception of being able to do other than we actually do despite the fact that the entire question of whether we are or aren't able to do other than we actually do isn't even coherent.

The argument, then, is that in order to provide a framework for moral culpability (to explain evil), theologians had to introduce a conception of being able to do other than we actually do despite the fact that the entire question of whether we are or aren't able to do other than we actually do isn't even coherent. — Isaac

The two logical possibilities are that we could have done differently than we did or that we could not have done differently than we did. Whether we could have done differently than we did is a question the answer to which, for obvious reasons cannot be empirically determined, but I don't see why that should lead us to think the question is incoherent.

Moral culpability is logically based on the premise that we could have done differently than we did, so we must for practical reasons assume that to be so, unless we wish to either dispense with moral culpability, or dispense with the requirement to have a rational justification for holding people morally responsible.

The two logical possibilities are that we could have done differently than we did or that we could not have done differently than we did. Whether we could have done differently than we did is a question the answer to which, for obvious reasons cannot be empirically determined, but I don't see why that should lead us to think the question is incoherent. — Janus

We could have done other than we did is a different proposition to that we are able to do other than we did (which is the actual quote). The former might be read as ignoring our personally capabilities, only being a statement about our understanding of parameters within physical systems. The latter is making a claim about capability, that we had it within our power to do other than we did. This is very much moving away from the topic of conversation here, but that's the point about moral culpability.

unless we wish to either dispense with moral culpability, or dispense with the requirement to have a rational justification for holding people morally responsible. — Janus

I don't see why removing moral culpability removes all rational justification for holding people morally responsible. If anything, it weakens the argument. The less directly we assume other people's actions to be determined by their social environment, the less reason we have to believe that punishment and morals are going to make any difference at all to their behaviour. The whole reason behind setting clear societal rules of membership is that we presume such rules will have determining influence on the behaviour of others. We can't then say that someone brought up in an environment where the rules are different is then responsible for their actions as if their different upbringing made no difference, that would undermine the justification for us making public statements of morality by punishing offenders.

If we were to conclude that one's behaviour is entirely determined, then it would follow exactly from that the we should create circumstances (including deterrents to crime) which become those very determining factors for the behaviour we desire.

If we conclude the opposite end of the spectrum, that people are entirely free-willed and make their own choices without determining influences, then there's no point in punishing them at all, it's not going to determine any better behaviour in those observing the punishment.

That an alternative course of action under the control of the actor was actually, and not merely logically, possible prior to the act. — Janus

There's an interesting short-circuit here isn't there? An actual possibility. A possibility whose status is - actual. A possibility which is not merely "possibly possible" but actually possible. A transcendental question in other words, a question regarding the modal status of possibility itself. And I agree that this is precisely where moral considerations play out. But note the specificity of this: it's an issue not merely about the sheer 'existence-or-not' of possibility (possible vs. not possible), but the status or 'kind' of possibility (actually possible/not actually possible) at work. Morality deals with the "real conditions of possibility", as it were.

But this is precisely what vulgar thought experiments like the garden of forking paths do not deal with. The possibility involved with such thought experiments are always 'possible possibles'. This is reflected in the very metaphor in which the (possible) paths are laid out in advance, and the question of 'choice' turns upon the possibility on taking one (possible) path over another (possible) path. 'Possiblity' here is ramified to the second degree. This is how it has to be in order to be coherent at all: otherwise the whole problem falls into the stupidity of asking if the actual could be otherwise: but the very definition of the actual is that "it is as it is" (and not otherwise). "We can only do what we do, because that is what we do".

So it's only by de-realizing the actual and treating it in the mode of the possible (one among others, this possible path rather than that possible path) that the question gets off the ground in the first place. But this vitiates any analysis of what you rightly referred to as 'actual possibility'. Understanding the 'actuality of possibility' - which possibilities are open for the taking in the here and now - requires what one might call 'material analysis' (and not mere logic chopping): what are the concrete, 'on the ground' conditions which enable, influence, or prevent choices? What factors are operative in self and environment, and how and in what manner are they apprehended and practised and modified in various contexts? All of this informs choice, informs what we even count as a choice (informs who and what we are), and makes choices meaningful and evaluable.

Yet for Augustine and a bunch of shitbrains in his wake, all of this is condensed into a single, utterly emaciated question over whether we have some pseudo-psychological faculty of 'will', over which a single, snivelling, binary question is meant to answer whether or not we are free: 'do we have it?' (herp derp). The 'thinness' of this question merely reflects the thinness of the concern it was formulated to alleviate: how can God be Good when there is evil in the world? That's it, that's all that 'free will' is meant to secure, the innocence of God - at the price of the guilt of man. It only incidentally has anything to even do with humanity, let alone freedom, and one of the biggest philosophical swindles of our time is that anyone thinks it does.

@Isaac is entirely right that 'free will' is destructive of responsibility, and not in any sense an enabling condition.

"Love, and do what you will." -Augustine

Notice how this could have been uttered by Marcus Aurelius.

Isaac is entirely right that 'free will' is destructive of responsibility, and not in any sense an enabling condition — StreetlightX

What is a puppet responsible for?

If we were to conclude that one's behaviour is entirely determined, then it would follow exactly from that the we should create circumstances (including deterrents to crime) which become those very determining factors for the behaviour we desire.

If we conclude the opposite end of the spectrum, that people are entirely free-willed and make their own choices without determining influences, then there's no point in punishing them at all, it's not going to determine any better behaviour in those observing the punishment. — Isaac

If behavior is entirely determined then we either will or will not create circumstances which become those very determining factors for the behavior we desire.

I don't think many would say that free will involves making "choices without determining influences". It is one thing for choices to be influenced and another for them to be entirely determined. It seems you're thinking in overly 'black and white' terms here.

My point was simply that moral culpability or responsibility is logically predicated on the idea that moral agents could have acted other than they did. It is only on that basis that a coherent and consistent distinction could be made between moral acts and merely natural events. If the murderer could not, actually as opposed to merely logically, have refrained from murdering, then the act of murder is logically no different than a natural event.

Assuming that kind of strict determinism of course we would probably (that is if we were determined to do so) still punish people for performing certain acts in order to deter others from doing likewise; but there could be no rational moral justification for such punishment, there could only be practical justification. More than that, the whole idea of justification becomes irrelevant if we consider human actions to be entirely determined.

there could be no rational moral justification for such punishment, there could only be practical justification. — Janus

The protection of society would be moral, making the lock-up necessary for other than punishment, although somewhat 'punishing', hoping for learning.

I agree with pretty much everything you said there, which to distill it, seems to be that the idea of absolutely unconditioned free will is not merely incoherent, but pernicious.

So, I have not been saying that the idea of moral responsibility is founded on the idea of absolutely unconditioned free will, but merely that it is justified by the idea that one actually could have done other than one did, and that this idea can never be empirically confirmed or dis-confirmed. In that sense it is an absolute presupposition.

Unfortunately, as humans, we live with a great deal of inevitable ignorance.

The protection of society would be moral, making the lock-up necessary for other than punishment, although somewhat 'punishing', hoping for learning. — PoeticUniverse

Sure, but that is more a practical than a moral matter, at least as far as moral responsibility is ordinarily conceived.

It is one thing for choices to be influenced and another for them to be entirely determined. — Janus

Is it? Explain to me then the mechanism, the neurological difference between being influenced by something and being determined (in part) by that thing. How does an 'influence' have a non-deterministic effect on our neurology? You sound like you're confusing deterministic with sufficient. For something to have a deterministic effect doesn't require that it and it alone causes the consequence. Only that it is one of an exhaustive set of factors which together result in the consequence.

So choices being only 'influenced' rather than determined implies that when one adds up all the factors having a deterministic effect on one's final action, there is still a gap, the set is not exhaustive. So what fills this gap, if not yet another influence?

This is the 'free will' problem that I think Streelight is referring to. We have to invent a magical force to make up the last bit of this process simply to account for Evil. It is not sufficient for us to admit that the brain is so unbelievably complex that we couldn't possibly work out how people will behave in response to factors with any accuracy. That should be sufficient to explain the unpredictability we see in human nature. The only reason it's not sufficient is if you invent a higher mind, capable of seeing all complexity. A mind that should have known better. Then you need a quick fix of magic to paper over the crack.

My point was simply that moral culpability or responsibility is logically predicated on the idea that moral agents could have acted other than they did. It is only on that basis that a coherent and consistent distinction could be made between moral acts and merely natural events. If the murderer could not, actually as opposed to merely logically, have refrained from murdering, then the act of murder is logically no different than a natural event. — Janus

Yes. But again, the point I think @StreetlightX was making (please correct me if I'm wrong) is that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with it being a natural event. Floods are natural events. Doesn't stop us from trying to prevent them. It's only for the problem of Evil that we need to place some 'free-will' type of culpability on the individual, rather than simply a pragmatic culpability. Otherwise, what exactly is the problem with there being no moral justification for punishment? There's no moral justification for plumbing, but we still have it.

A quick and dirty way to understand determination and freedom together is freedom as self-determination. They'd be a bit to unpack here but one upshot is a reversal of the usual free-will conceptual gambit: extracting the self from a causal network (network, not chain, mind you) is the only sure-fire way to deny self-determination and destroy freedom entirely. The complication is the need to understand both 'self' and 'determination' in a way freed from both Cartesian notions of the self as some zero-point of immaterial effervesence, and Newtonian notions of 'determination' as some linear fatalism where causality ironically plays no role whatsoever.

The need to revamp and demolish almost all of our 'spontaneous' modern philosophical intuitions, in other words. Putting religion in the ground once and for all would be helpful too, but these are two sides of the same miserable, rotten coin anyway.