I have read the following arguement as proof that if God can see the future, free will does not exist.
Does this arguement hold water?
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Great Debates is a good place to find out if it will hold water.
I’ll slosh it over there for you!
Hey dudes! Surf’s up!
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There’s a typo in your thread title. You misspelled “would” as “does.” That’s a very strange mistake.
Anywhistle, since we’re arguing hypotheticals, I say nay, for reasons given by the precognitive Dragon in John Gardner’s Grendel twenty-five years or so ago. Knowledge is not the same as causation. That is, the omniscient being–let’s call her Smurfette–may exist on an entirely different plane of being & time than you do. Smurfette, perceiving time as a piece, is cognizant of all events that make up the history of your timeline, even though she has not caused any of them. But you, in a linear time frame, are faced with various decisions you make over the course of your life entirely freely.
Of course we’re only arguing hypotheticals. What really interests me is whether you’re ever going to answer the questions asked you in this thread on the Deluge or this on on evolution. Also, do you have any arguments to support the existence of this hypothetical omniscient being?
What about it is a mistake?
How about if this being didn’t exist on a different plane? What if the being was a human who was psychic but always sees the future accurately. If he sees that you will choose to eat an apple tomorrow at 5 o’clock, and he’s always correct and always will be correct, since you must now eat an apple at 5 o’clock, can it really be your choice to eat the apple?
Mostly I was being a smartass, but I was pointing out that, by writing “does” rather than “would,” you seemed to be asserting that the existence of an omniscient being is proven, which I would say is not the case. “Would the existence of an omniscient being prove that free will is non-existent?” is conditional; “Does the existence of an omniscient being…” is not.
Nope. Foreknowledge is not causation. The precognitive dragon in Grendel existed on the same plane as the title character, but he went to great pains to point out that its knowledge of Grendel’s actions did not cause them.
by the way…
Using the word “does” rather than “would,” shows that the argument brought forth already exists, not an omniscient being. I didn’t say “Does the existence of an omniscient being…”, I said “Does this arguement…”
I didn’t read the book. What’s the proof that he gave? I don’t think that the arguement is that foreknowledge is causation. It’s that if ‘A’ will occur because it was foreseen, then it must occur and the person can not change his mind, therefore does not have free will.
a stubborn jerk can go ressurect those threads and ask there, not here.
Okay, so I used “Does” in the title, whoopee!
Foreknowledge may not prove causation, but the question isn’t whether the existence of an omniscient being causes the lack of free will, but only whether the existence of an omniscient being demonstrates the lack of free will. Perhaps the omniscient being is an utterly powerless observer, helpless to alter events (we haven’t added omnipotence to the mix yet); nonetheless, the existence of a being capable of knowing in advance your every action indicates that when you “decide” whether to choose course A or course B, the “deciding” is an illusion, since it can be known eons in advance which course of action you will choose (and there’s no way of double-faking out an omnscient observer: “God expects me to do A, so I’ll do B instead! But wait, He’ll have forseen that as well, so I’d better do A…But then…Curses!”)
As to a being “outside time”, it’s not at all clear that is possible, or even really means anything. It seems to me that if a being “outside time” is possible, then free will would have to be an illusion.
Of course free will may be an illusion, whether or not there is a God. For what it’s worth, I think modern physics says that certain events on the quantum level are random and cannot be predicted, but I am certainly not a physicist, nor is it clear if quantum randomness has anything much to do with human thought and decision-making. There’s also chaos theory, which I gather offers the possibility of events which are unpredictable for all practical purposes, and thus might allow for a sort of might-as-well-be-free will.
I realize that there are lots of arguements why free-will may not exist, but why is being outside of time one of them?
Let’s say I’m psychic and part of my brain works in the future. If I can see all actions 5 minutes in the future and I see that you will choose to eat an apple in a fruit bowl, does that disprove the idea of free-will?
If I were wiser I’d take that as a no. But, alas, I’m an optimistic fool.
Here’s a link to the thread you started on evolution. I posted a question to you at the end of it.
Here’s a link to the thread about the flood, to which I am also appending a question.
I’m saying that if a being can exist “outside time”, in such a way that it can perfectly foresee your every action, this implies your free will is an illusion.
It seems to me the essence of free will is change. Free will means being able to “change your mind”. From the persective of someone or something “outside time”, we aren’t really changeable beings at all; we’re just static, unchanging, four-dimensional pink worms. The four-dimensional pink worms can no more change their minds than a line on a piece of paper can change what direction it’s going in.
But of course I don’t know if it’s even possible to have a perspective from “outside time”.
Let’s assume that it is possible for this omniscient being. Do all of the following points still add up as proof that free-will doesn’t exist?:
Me either, and I’m the one who brought it up. But one might imagine it as being analogous to our knowledge of the past. The fact that we know who won the Civil War does not mean that Lee and Grant were not free actors, just that we have a different perspective than they did.
Yes, Interest, I would say if you accept the assumption in point 1, then free will cannot exist. (Interestingly enough, I would say God cannot have free will either, if he is truly omniscient.)
That’s an interesting point. Can one have free will about things that happened in the past? Once you’ve exercised your free will, it’s proverbial that a decision that’s been made, an action taken in the past, is no longer something you control–you can’t undo what’s already been done. Grant and Lee had free will while they were still alive (if anyone has free will), but once they took an action, however much they might regret it, they could no longer undo it. Now of course, they exist only in the past, so all of their decisions and actions are already made; their wills died with them.
But if someone or something can view us “outside time”, and see the whole course of our lives from birth to death, then all our decisions, the ones we made years ago, the ones I’m making right now as I type this post, and the ones we’ll make in the “future”, are equally undoable. Hence, no free will.
As far as I’m aware, and my physics is of the armchair variety, quantum effects would definately seem to be able to “trickle up” to the level where they would be pertinent to human will and decisions. AFAIK all mundane atomic interations are subject to statistical uncertainty according to our understanding of quantum mechanics. If uncertainty is in fact the way the universe interacts on the basic level it’s hard to think of a situation where it wouldn’t be involved quite directly in the process that we think of as “Will.”
Personally, however, i’m a fan of attempts to return to subatomic determinism. There has been at least one idea seriously put forward in this vein that I can think of, and likely more that I’ve not run into yet. Quantum theory, IMHO, is quite bizarre and disconnected from the world we know and understand, despite the fact that it does a great job as a physical model.
If the universe is subject to uncertainty then free will exists. If the universe is deterministic then free will does not exist, even in the absence of an omniscient being.
Here’s a doozie of a follow up question. In an uncertain universe can and omniscient being even exist? Wouldn’t said hypothetical being’s information have to be conditional, and therefore, limited (non-omni)? If so, would evidence “proving” quantum mechanics be proof that no omniscient being, or omniscient god, exists? Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche just rolled over in his grave in anticipation.
Aren’t you contradicting yourself? The fact that we can’t change actions in the past, and that I can remember the past doesn’t disprove free-will. So why does someone who can remember the future from “outside of time” disprove free-will?
The fact that we can’t change actions in the past doesn’t disprove free will. I would say that I no longer have free will with respect to things that have already happened. I can freely choose what I’m going to do tomorrow (or at any rate, so it seems); but I obviously have no free will to choose what I will have done yesterday, and (unlike the future) I can’t decide to have done something differently in the past than I actually did do.
We can say our wills with respect to the future are free precisely because they aren’t pre-determined (whereas what was done in the past is determined). We can of course guess what a given person will do in the future; we can even make extremely acccurate guesses. Given that I’m scheduled to go to work in a little less than fourteen hours, that in the past I’ve been a generally pretty reliable employee, and that my need to consume food for which I must pay money (which I obtain by being employed and not being fired) is not real likely to change, it’s a fairly safe bet that at 4:00 P.M. later today I’ll be at work. But in principle, I could decide to just blow it off, tell The Man to shove it, leave my colleague on the 8 to 4 shift dangling, and book a flight to Mexico. I almost certainly won’t–I’m not going to make major life-altering decisions just to make a point on an Internet message board–but I could. Or so I tell myself.
If someone can “remember” what I’m going to do 5 years or 5 minutes from now–not just guess or surmise or extrapolate, but know, in the same way one could know what I did yesterday–then events in the future are as unalterable as events in the past, and any feeling I have that I can decide my own destiny to any extent at all is just an illusion, and makes no more sense than saying you can decide what your past will have been.
Worse; quote a lot of subatomic physics depends on quantum uncertainty. Assuming an omniscient being actually existed, actually “looking” at the universe omnisciently would destroy it, at least as we know it.
Use the time machine analogy.
If I offer you one of two pies, one apple, the other pecan, you’ll choose one of them. Now imagine I take you back in my invisible time machine to the moment before you make that decision. You see past-me offering past-you the two pies. What decision will past you make?
The same decision you made before, of course. Nothing’s changed between the two decisions. We could go back any number of times and as long as we don’t interact with the past at all the version of you that’s making the decision will make the same choice every time. And we aren’t stopping past-you from making the choice, or affecting it, so free will remains intact.
An omniscient being certainly could alter free will, but that’s not a given; since we ourselves aren’t omniscient, we can’t predict what an omniscient being would do.
The idea that the proported being is “omnicient” does not negate free will. IF the proported being was omnicient, omni present, omnipotent, and a constantly interacting creative force with those exercising the “will”, then free will is seriously comprimized, but could still exist to some extent.