Could you explain this using an example? To what extent do you mean? How is it that an omnicient being can have an upper bound to the extent of will that it can negate?
Because it’s omnipotent? Therefore, it can negate as much or as little will as it “chooses”.
Attributing Omni-anything to a being is a pretty foolish assertion. There’s no effective method of visualizing the implementation of these omni-attributes, which strongly suggest that they are probably just imaginary, and at best are a thought experiment in semantics.
To say it differently, how is omnipotence applied, where is omniscience stored, and how is omnipresence and omnibenevolence achieved? Oh, that’s right, i forgot, this particular being is un-knowable. Never mind then.
Touché.
Good points.
Another thing I’ve had trouble understanding is this idea that quantum uncertainty is the means by which we achieve “free will”. How can it be argued that I have control over my decisions or that I determine the outcome when the underlying nature is random? Isn’t that sort of like saying that a coin used its will when flipped and decided to land on tails? Or am I misunderstanding what people mean by ‘free will’?
Yes that is exactly what it would mean. It is a contradiction which causes religious backers to dive into redefining and quantam to explain away. They are trying to conjur up a way out. There is none.
Nah, as far as I can tell it’s just the kind of concept that seems to defy the application of reasoned thought because it isn’t the result of reasoned thought. The concept “free will” is a mystical concept that isn’t derived from observing the world around and objectively asking “what’s going on”, but rather by appealing to our “feelings”. We feel like we are making a choice, therefore all choices must be makeable, right? Sorry kids, that doesn’t follow. Only the choice we actually follow through on is real, everything else is hypothetical, as far as i can tell.
So, whether the universe is certain or uncertain doesn’t make much difference in regards to our lack of “free will” but it certainly does have hypothetical effects on the predictive capabilities of an omniscient being/machine.
Just because we make a choice, and that we will continue to make choices in the future, and those choices can be seen from further in the future, does not mean that we did not fail to have free will when we made that choice. We will make these choices from our free will. How can it matter that they can be observed externally, when the choosing is internal?
Besides, Interest assumes that there is only one future. There is only one past, perhaps, but what says there is only one future? The possibility of alternate or divergent timestreams is a well-worn one in science fiction, after all. Perhaps from outside, there is a nigh-infinite amount of timestreams diverging from the Big Bang onwards, and we are merely at a point on one. What further branches of all possible choices made we travel down is dependent on our free will.
IMHO this particular line of reasoning fails on two very important counts. It is ludicrous when visualized and it is presently entirely unfalsifiable. I ask on what hypothetical grounds could you prove or disprove an alternate timestream (or myriad timestreams)?
A single river of time seems the obvious choice. Therefore, since it is the obvious choice what is the compelling evidence that suggests it is misleading or false?
How about this? Perhaps this “omni-being” is not truely omniscient in the sense that they will know for certain that event A will occur, but rather they will know the probability of whether the next event will be A or B or C or, etc… In other words this being knows the probability that any given event will happen.
In such a case this being cannot know the outcome of any particular event for certain. On the other hand it is the nature of probability that when many similar events occur the overall outcome is almost definitely certain. An infinite number of events would declare absolute certainty in fact.
So what I’m suggesting is this highly knowledgable, but not truely omniscient being would know what would happen to mankind as a whole, while not being able to determine what the life of a specific person would be like. In this way the destiny of each person would be uncertain, but the course of history for all of mankind would be certain.
I’d argue that with perfect knowledge of the future, the only person without free will is the seer.
We all live in the present, from our perspective, the past is unalterable, but the future is presents infinite possibilities. We can choose to take whatever path is possible.
Now, introduce the seer. The seer knows what’s going to happen in the future, and is always right. But, we cannot know that. She’d only need to be wrong once, after all. She may lie, or we may misunderstand her pronouncements. We still experience time linearly. The seer’s prophecies only have as much power over society as we let them. We can choose to ignore them, if we’d like. Of course, the seer knows how we will react, but that doesn’t matter to us unless we let it. From the perspective of the human experience of time, the future is a mystery and our reactions to it are choosen freely. They aren’t restrained by any outside force, and are thus free.
The seer is unique in that she does not have free will. She knows what she’ll do, and is powerless to do otherwise. She is a slave to her own foreknowledge. She alone is bound by the future because she alone has already experienced it, just as we are bound by the past because we’ve already experienced it. If she predicts that she will be ambushed and killed by an angry mob, then she will be, even if she already knew she was going to be ambushed. She knows what will happen, and she knows what she will think about it. She alone is acting from a script. The rest of us are improving.
A single river of time is clearly evidence of a complete lack of free will, and therefore presumes the conclusion. I simply adapted the Copenhagen Many Worlds theorem to a point at the beginning of time, and theorized from there. You are familiar with the Many Worlds theorem, and the concept of branching timelines, are you not?
On what grounds can you deny multiple possible futures, from any arbitrary point in time and space, ranked in terms of probability of occurance? If you can not comprehend this, then simply tell me where an electron will be, two seconds from ‘now’… and what speed it will be going at.
If all you have is a single river of time, then there is no free will, by definition. If you have a branching river of time, then there may well be free will.
A branching river of time seems to be a possible explanation for the world we see around us, and thus it is possible free will exists.
Your thinking is far too Newtonian, sir. We are not in a mechanistic universe.
But not pre-determined. It wasn’t determined at the time the choice was made, from the point of view of the chooser.
I think you’re working under a definition of free will with which I (and apparently some others) differ. You’re saying (if I understand correctly) that in order for free will to exist, there has to be a choice yet to be made, a possibility for something to be done in more than one different way, and that once a choice has been made, free will vanishes, kind of like a sandwich vanishes once I have eaten it. What you’re saying strikes me as like saying that, to a being outside time, sandwiches can’t exist.
That might not be as tough as you meant to make it sound. I deny multiple futures on the grounds that it is primarily useful as a sci-fi plot device and doesn’t jive with our human collective experience. I am familiar with the copenhagen interpretation, and am uncomfortable with the separation of reality into two different “realms”, of quantum effects and large scale effects. Reality certainly seems to be made of whole cloth. Much more likely to me, and more elegant are theories like the Bohm Interpretation. IMHO classical quantum mechaincs defies common sense in too many of it’s particulars and is therefore a theory in progress. Predictions that do not gel with reality, like the emergent idea of many universes, can be regarded not as valid data, but rather as benchmarks to tell us that something is fundamentally wrong with heisenberg’s theory and the copenhagen interpretation.
determinsim and non-local variables ceratainly seem to be at the forefront of unifying gravity with elementary particles. Do a google yourself on the subject and check it out.
Sorry about the additional post.
I forgot to mention the profound effect that Bell’s Theorum has on the overall state of quantum theory. It’s worth a look.
Before you can debate the OP’s question you need to have a clear definition of “free will.”
Is there a definition of “free will” that has been agreed to by philosophers?
Oh, I agree cheerfully about what you say, Stalky, and I doubt sincerely that we will able to go all ‘sliders’ and visit any of these theoretical parallel spaces. My point is that since the universe appears to be probabilistic in nature, the best answer we can give to this question is ‘Mu’. We are trying to describe a being with certain qualities that exist outside space and time, and thus, we have to try to envision this outside of space and time. The nearest I can come to conceptualizing it is the forked river, rather than the single stream. The past may appear linear to us, but that is because it is the series of branches of choices made. If free will exists, the future is a network of potential branches. That a subset of these branches are choosable, have and will be chosen, does not eliminate the free will of the man who chooses it, because the potential for any one of those branches to be taken still exists until then. (Ref: observer effect, slits experiment) If there is no free will, the river of time does not branch, of course, but it’s hardly worth discussing that… it’s a trivial example of the issue, where forks equal zero.
Rereading what you say, you deny multiple future universes. But can you deny multiple possible future universes, from any arbitrary point? It seems you can. But you can’t tell the difference between the Bohm and Copenhagen, so from our point of view, it is essentially impossible to choose one or the other.
So it remains impossible to know if we have free will or not. If we are not in a deterministic universe, then it is possible to have free will, even with an omniscient being. If we are, then even without an omniscient being, it seems likely that we, at least theoretically, may not have free will.
On the other hand, we’re really complex emergent systems, so it’s hard to say either way. For the purposes of this discussion, I will come down on the Copenhagen side, simply because it gives a more interesting answer. Shall we work with this? It doesn’t matter if you believe we have free will or not, the question, as I restate it, is, assuming free will (nondeterminism), how does an omniscient being introduced into the equation change things?
For that matter, many-worlds and Bohr through nonlocal variables are not the only interpretations of quantum mechanics. They’re just the simplest to discuss.
I think conciousness-causes-collapse is the best way to examine the omniscient outside, but that’s just me.
No, it doesn not hold water IMO. Because the presence of a being is immaterial to the logic involved here, we can cut it right out and say, assuming determinism:
- ‘A’ must occur. [Definition of infallible]
- I cannot choose to do any action not ‘A’.
- I lack free will. [Point 4]
So the real underlying question is not one of the existance of omniscience but rather one of the nature of nature. If reality is determined no external being changes this effect, the same hold true if reality is probabilistic.
Right, this is the only instance where an external consciousness would make a difference. If the act of recording/measuring collapses the probability to 1 then an external perceptive conciousness does rob us of freewill, but at the same time HE changes our universe from one that is uncertain into one that is determined. Such a universe, even if uncertain in theory, is determined in practice and therefore subject to the above simplification.
above should say
- ‘A’ must occur. [Definition of determinism]
Does the collapse of the probability wave truly rob us of free will? Like the past, assuming we had free will, any decision we made was one made of free will. That our decisions are all made from the external perspective, does not mean that we do not have free will any less than my grandfather had… it simply means that the free will has been expressed.
… Hm. That make sense?
IMO it would depend on the fundamental nature of the system to determine the “freeness” of will. I’m not arguing that those actions aren’t the result of your will, but rather that in a determined system your will isn’t truly free.
Free(dictionary.com, selected entries):
5. exempt from external authority, interference, restriction, etc., as a person or one’s will, thought, choice, action, etc.; independent; unrestricted.
6. able to do something at will; at liberty: free to choose.
7. clear of obstructions or obstacles, as a road or corridor: The highway is now free of fallen rock.
9. exempt or released from something specified that controls, restrains, burdens, etc. (usually fol. by from or of): free from worry; free of taxes.
30. not subject to rules, set forms, etc.: The young students had an hour of free play between classes.
I suppose there are 2 standards for free will, which makes it a bit of an ambiguous phrase. The first, which I obviously mean when i say “free will”, is the stardard of “could another choice possibly have been made.” With this standard it is possible to have a hypothetical universe where free will is present (Multiverse/Probability kind) and also one where it is not (Determined/Causal kind).
The second standard is “A choice made intentionally from among options”. From this standard I cannot see how a system could exist within which exists any animal of decent brain function which lacks this particular type of “free will”. Both standards seem reasonable, i’m just wondering which the OP feels would constitute his opinion of free will and also what standards other posters are using. It might clarify the debate.
Most living things have some sort of will. From simple insect brains onward intent drives many actions. The question here is the freeness of the will, and does our intellectual state allow us to make more choices than the determined one.
I would argue not. We are in much the same boat as ants/wasps/jellyfish in this regard. The process is much more complicated but the outcome is still entirely dependant on stimuli and conditioning.
Reprising my post from this thread , in which the freewill issue is also discussed.
I’m rather amazed that folks are arguing for free will - the idea that it doesn’t exist is something that I would consider obvious. There’s nothing about our biology that allows anything other than an inevitable progression of chemical states as far as I’ve researched. Is there an argument for free will that doesn’t boil down to the rhetorical?
Drop a ball and it falls, then bounces. It’s trivial to predict the result. Ditto with a nerve cell firing based on its synapses - if one knows enough information a priori it’s just a matter of physics and chemistry as to what happens next. On the nuts and bolts level, this is how it works; from the flow of water and energy to virii, cells, and the eerily Turing-like actions of DNA molecules.
For large n it’s computationally infeasible to make a direct prediction, but if it’s a quantum universe where all measureable quantites are granular (and indications point that it is), then it’s possible to have all the information in principle - although it would take a machine the size of the universe to store it all.
Quantum tunneling may seem like an issue against a physical argument for determinism and it is, but one would have to demonstrate that it can be controlled to use it in support of free will. Stated another way - random influence (if indeed it is random - and indications point that it is) is not the same as choice.
Apologies for the re-post, but the discussion sort of petered out in the other thread.