ABSTRACT
This chapter is an exercise in ‘applied Frankfurtianism.’ Interest in this piece can therefore be expected to vary with interest in the application; and on this subject I have both good news and bad news. The bad news, for what I presume to be the majority of this volume’s readers, is that the application is to theology, and that the only problem to which I claim to offer a definitive resolution is an ancient puzzle involving the theistic concept of God. The good news — which I hope is enough to keep religious skeptics reading past the first paragraph — is that belief in the existence of the theistic God is no more essential to the argument that follows than is belief in the existence of mind-readers and -manipulators essential to Frankfurt’s original argument. There might even be some positive advantage to trying out a thought-experiment involving God, inasmuch as thinking about free will in light of a theological threat to alternative possibilities can offer a fresh perspective on familiar questions more often considered in the context of the scientific threat posed by universal causal determinism. (And for readers still unpersuaded, I have included a section on ‘blockage’ counterexamples which is not strictly necessary to my theological thought-experiment.)
