scientia media and Jonathan Edwards on the will

“Thus an act of the will is commonly expressed by its pleasing a man to do thus or thus; and a man’s doing as he wills, and doing as he pleases, are the same thing in common speech….I trust it will be allowed by all, that in every act of will there is an act of choice; that in every volition there is a preference, or a prevailing inclination of the soul, whereby the soul, at that instant, is out of a state of perfect indifference, with respect to the direct object of the volition. So that in every act or going forth of the will, there is some preponderation of the mind or inclination, one way rather than another; and the soul had rather have or do one thing than another, or than not to have or do that thing; and that there, where there is absolutely no preferring or choosing, but a perfect continuing equilibrium, there is no volition.”
-Jonathan Edwards, A Careful and Strict Inquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions of that Freedom of the Will, Which Is Supposed to Be Essential to Moral Agency, Virtue and Vice, Reward and Punishment, Praise and Blame (1754), I.i

If Edwards has identified the will aright, the will just is one’s preferring more to have or do a thing than not to have or do that thing, and Leibniz’s Law holds, then it would seem that the multiplication of possible worlds, scientia media (i.e., middle knowledge) and all the rest are ultimately irrelevant for the question of free will. Leibniz’s Law, according to Alvin Plantinga, is “For any property P and any objects x and y, if x is identical with y, then x has P if and only if y has P.”[1] It follows from this Law and the principle (x)  (x = x) that for every object x and for every object y, if x is y, then necessarily x is y; (x) (y) (x = y ⊃  x = y).[2] Thus, if the will is one’s strongest preference, then necessarily the will is one’s strongest preference, ergo, in every possible world the will is one’s strongest preference. If your strongest preference is part of your nature or your disposition, then it would follow that your preference or will is causally determined in every possible world because your nature is causally determined in every possible world. Nobody causes their nature to be, ultimately.

I've never seen a more persuasive analysis and definition of what the will is than Edwards' and so I've never been able to see how all this talk of middle knowledge is at all relevant to the question of predestination. I can appreciate the impulse behind definitions like that of Alvin Plantinga, "If a person S is free with respect to a given action, then he is free to perform that action and free to refrain; no causal laws and antecedent conditions determine either that he will perform the action, or that he will not."[3] But being able to appreciate the impulse behind such defintions is not the same as being able to make sense of them. Such definitions never really grasp the nettle of why it is that a person S actually wills one thing rather than another. Edwards answers that question: S wills a thing x if and only if S prefers the having or doing of x to the not having or doing of x. In that case, one's nature, one's preferences, one's predilections and so forth are the antecedent conditions that causally determine what S wills. Freedom, or "significant freedom" as Plantinga and others like to call it, most naturally refers to the ability to do as you please (i.e., to act according to your preference). If you don't prefer one thing to another, you won't act. And that goes for every possible world. In every possible world S's will is causally determined. [4]

I can appreciate the impulse to shy away from definitions of the will like Edwards' because I suspect that it comes from a certain trembling introspective awareness of our own sinful nature. So often we look into our hearts and see that we prefer evil to good. If our will is bound to our sinful nature, to our evil preference, what hope can there be that we might do good and repent? That's easy. All you need is a new nature.

[1] Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity, p. 15.
[2] Kripke, Naming and Necessity,p. 3

[3] Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity, p. 166

[4] I cannot help but feel that it is necessary for me to express that Alvin Plantinga is one of my heroes and that I am greatly indebted to him for his writings. This is one of the very, very few points on which I am bold enough to differ with him.