Interesting; I’d say the same (about semantic quibbling), but from the opposite side. This points to a fascinating tension between omnipotence and omniscience; it seems to me that you can’t have it both ways. Cutting to the chase, is God powerful enough to make it such that even He does not know the outcome of events? If so, He retains omnipotence but loses omniscience (and vice-versa).
Relying on absolutes in an argument does tend to put one in the waters of logical inconsistency…
Just to confirm that this is only a problem with language - how do you define “necessary” and “possible”? Please bear in mind that we need a definition of “possible” before we start talking about “possible worlds”, and that “not impossible” isn’t an adequate definition. 
Actually, I don’t think it is only a problem with language. Rather, it is difficult for me to attempt to remove myself from the human perspective (i.e., “modalities are tricky”); it has crept in when and where I didn’t expect it. So, I suppose the easiest (but not necessarily the best or most descriptive) way to define “possible” is in terms of finite state machines (FSMs, me being a computer scientist and all). That is, given a particular state, “possible” implies that the next state is “reachable”. Now, in an attempt to head off one possible objection, it seems to me that FSMs are finite only in application; in principle, there can be an infinite number of states and transitions among them.
So, I believe that highlights the issue very nicely; thank you very much. If God knows the sequence of states (that is, the transitions between states are known), they cannot be any other way. Again, if there was even the possibility that they could be different, He would not know the sequence. To me, positing otherwise weakens (or redefines) the term “knows” so as to lose its meaning.
But this is not the point we are discussing here. We are discussing whether it is posisble for an omnipotent and omniscient God to know something will happen as the result of free will while that event still reuslts from free will. And as I say, i can’t see any problem here unless we specifically don;t use anomnipotent and omniscient God.
But not if we stick to discussingthe topic at hand. It ionly occurs when you seek to overextend the discussion well past its starting grounds.
I see.
It would be my contention that “free will” is nonsensical (that is, there is definite a “conflict”) when the terms “omniscient” and “omnipotent” are given proper semantic content. Why, yes – I suppose it is arguing semantics. But if I use the word “green” to denote what you refer to as “blue”, there’s not much (meaningful) debate to be had about the color of my front lawn. Furthermore:
If you do not accept that their are limits to God’s omnipotence (I think the omnipotence example is more readily understandable than anything I could cook up for infallible and omniscient), then how do you answer the question “Can God create something so heavy/big/unwieldy/etc that He cannot move it?” Oh, drat – skewered on a logical fork.
To avoid the terrifying (or perhaps simply banal?) pit of “semantic quibbling”, I would ask you, as I asked Tevildo, to supply meaningful (and consistent) definitions of “know”, “belief”, “possible”, “necessary”, and “omniscient”. Might as well throw in “free will”, “omnipotent”, and “infallible” also.
Hmm. OK – you’re not willing to discuss the foundations of the argument you brought up. I give; you “win”. Tip top and good show, old chap.
I’m not sure if the party’s over, but I have a couple cents to throw into the pot.
I suppose I’ll start with terms, to avoid ambiguity…and to stave off the claim that I’m making a semantic argument.
Knowledge: For this duscussion, whatever is ‘known’ is absolutely true and certain. Period. There is no flex in this. Knowledge (in this argument) is never, ever wrong or inaccurate, and there is never any uncertainty or probability involved. If you know something happened, then it DID happen.
Belief: This is what we call any fact or detail that is not actually ‘known’. This could be because it’s flat wrong, or because the answer is not known with perfect certainty. For example, we (most of us) believe that the sun isn’t about to explode at random. But it could happen. Regardless of how unlikely it is that we are wrong, if there is the slimmest chance of it, then we’re talking about a belief.
Possible: I don’t know much about the ‘possible worlds’ stuff, so here it’ll have the english definition. The same thing goes for ‘necessary’.
Onmiscient: Having all knowledge, about all things and events in the past, present and future. Note that this (by our definition of knowledge) means that the being is never, ever wrong about anything it knows. (Which is to say everything.) Also note that no omnipotent being can ‘choose’ not to know everything, without ceasing to be omnipotent for the duration.
Free Will: The ability to act in an unpredictable manner, in the future. You do not have to act in odd ways to possess free will, but the choice must be there. If it’s not, then you have no free will. To put this in the terms of the above definitions, if you have free will, then people may have beliefs about your future actions, but they may not have knowledge about your future actions. If they do have such knowledge, and therefore cannot possibly be wrong in predicting your actions, then you clearly cannot act in an unpredictable manner, and therefore you have no free will (see the starting sentence of this definition).
As you’ve probably noticed, with the above definitions (which I believe to be basically consistent with the english use of the words) the logical argument gets extremely short. Simply:
Note that this argument is solid if anybody, anywhere, at any point in the past, had even a momentary flash of omnipotence, or even the capability of being omnipotent. After all, if you’re inherently predictable, then you are wether or not anybody bothers to recite your life story, and you still are even if the omnipotent one has ceased to exist. Once we’ve proved you haven’t got free will, you don’t get it back just because they turn the camera off.
You will find that mommys ‘knowing’ what their children will do is not an acceptable analogy, because they actually have no future knowledge; they have only beliefs. They might be right 99.9999999999% of the time, but they might be wrong.
Also, you’ll find that the analogy of the recorded coin flips are not an acceptable analogy, because there’s nothing inconsistent with free will and having your past events known. (By definition).
One possible way to think of this situation is that, to God, our reality is like a book already written, or a movie already filmed. The characters may think they have free will, but they don’t; their actions and decisions are frozen in print and no alternate choices can possibly occur.
If you don’t like this, then too bad; you’ll either get over it or not, depending on how your inevitable story plays out. Unless of course God’s not omnipotent (or there’s no God); then maybe you still have free will. There’s no way to know even then, of course; just because nobody’s come along with the ability to predict your avery decision, that doesn’t mean that you’re actually unpredicable. Just that nobody’s got around to predicting you yet.
(I can address the problems of wether God can create unliftable rocks or if he himself has free will, too, if you like. But I think this is enough for the moment.)
That is illogical and ignorant. It is nothing more than a variation on that standard Creationist argument that since science can’t explain where life or even the universe came from we can discount evolution. After all the scientists aren’t willing to discuss the ‘foundations’ of their argument.
This is ridiculous. It’s and argument from absurdity. No argument can ever be held up consistently if you wish to extend the foundation back to the very act of creation, as you now seek to do. Stick to the argument as presented and don’t attemtp to extend it back to some ultimate foundation and it is fine. This is equally true of any true argument. No argument can be extended backwards infinitely as you are attempting to do.
Very poor show Digital Stimulus.
And if you want defintions of those words, I am happy to accept and utilise any defintions in any standard dictionary you would care to name. I can’t see any point in my copying defintions out of a random online dictionarty and posting them here verbatim.
Yes, I think that your unwillingness to probe the foundational semantics (that is, to properly settle on definitions) is illogical. I don’t know what you’re prattling on about as far as “scientists” go; a scientist unwilling to discuss his definitions is not worthy of the moniker and is most likely a fraud.
How very odd. I was thinking something eerily similar…
Bleah. I expect better in GD. Of course, many arguments can (see the previous point concerning the “waters of logical inconsistency”). If we settle on appropriate definitions of “mortal” and “man” (substitute “human” if you’re feeling politically correct) and agree that “Socrates” denotes a mortal, the usual modus ponens example of “All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.” is perfectly legitimate and consistent. Perhaps you need to read up on “analytic a priori” (I know I could use more, as I’m not qualified to be a logician). Perhaps, in your case, a cursory examination of any logic textbook would help. Baby steps, after all, seem warranted.
I’d say that begbert2 did a fine job of defining terms (at least, I see little I’d disagree with as put forth, outside of applying the notion of “time” to a timeless set of events) and setting out an argument. Now, if you’re positing different definitions to use, I would more than likely either argue them (as nonsensical) or walk away from the debate (see earlier point above about “blue” and “green”). However, I’d certainly concede if it were warranted or, at the very least, ask for more time to ponder a good point.
Seeing as how I’m not allowed to touch your conceptual tinker toys, there’s not much sense in attempting to play. Run along, little boy, or I may decide to taunt you further.
A good argument, and thanks very much for defining your terms beforehand. So many of these disputes are due solely to people having different meanings for the words they use.
This may be a semantic point, but “predictable” doesn’t imply “predicted”. I think, though, we can develop this further even if we change “predicted” to “predictable” in the above.
Now, I know your definition of “free will” means that we can say that it’s disproved if our actions are predictable. So I’ll go back to the definition:
The critical word is “future”. To God, as has been said, there’s no “future” or “past”, so God doesn’t know what your future actions will be; He knows what your actions are. Now, if He were to communicate His knowledge to you, or someone else in the physical world, at time T, then your actions would change from “predictable” to “predicted”, and Point 7 of your argument becomes valid - for those specific actions, at least. However, if God doesn’t make such a communication, then there’s nobody to whom “future” is applicable who knows your future actions; and, indeed, could we say that communication from God counts as “knowledge”? Many people over the millennia have believed that God has communicated with them - some of them post here. I don’t think we can say that they know God has communicated with them, even by less rigourous definitions of knowledge than yours.
I think you mean omniscience, but I accept this point as valid. My counter-argument is that God isn’t “anywhere” or “at any point in the past”.
I would adjust your definition of free will to include something like “predictable, in theory, by some entity subject to the same causal rules as the subject of the prediction.” Your definiton relies on the future depending causally on the past; if there’s no such dependency, then no predictions can be made. I accept that, for beings in the physical world, such dependency exists, or at least appears to. But God isn’t such a being. Your analogy with a book is a good one, but I think a better one would be; the universe is a book that God writes, rather than one He reads. He keeps the events of the book consistent with each other (although I would argue that He’s not constrained to do so), but the “text” isn’t fixed; the analogy begins to break down a little if we start trying to decide whether or not the “characters” can alter the text, but all analogies have that disadvantage.
Now, obviously, if a non-divine, non-omniscient person comes up with a method of reliably predicting human actions, then this criterion will be satisfied, and we can say that free will has been scientifically disproved. But, until that day comes, I don’t think we can dismiss free will by purely logical reasoning.
I put off posting in this thread to give begbert2 some time to respond; I hope nigh on a full day was adequate.
I figured (as noted in my response to Blake) that time would become an issue with the definitions he provided. My question is, does it make sense to impose a “time framework” on what you’ve just stated explicitly does not have one? I don’t think so; it’s akin to assigning color or action to ideas (as in “green ideas sleep furiously”).
Given my above point, I think this is categorically wrong. Again, I would grant that it may appear, from the “entity”'s viewpoint, that there is choice. However, there actually isn’t; there is only one possible sequence of events, hence no “free will”.
I don’t see how you can justify this; if knowledge – at least as concerns infallible omniscience – cannot be otherwise, then the “text” is fixed. To say otherwise is to violate the definition of “knowledge” that you already accepted.
Hmmm. It seems I’m rather cross recently when waking up, which affects my decision making. So be it:
For Blake, an Illustrative Dialogue In One Tale:
(with apologies to the creators of Drawn Together and Lewis Carroll)
Blake: I have omni-vision. I can see in all ways with perfect clarity.
Captain Hero: Cool. Let’s go spy on Foxey using our X-ray vision. She’s in the shower.
Blake: Oh, no; I don’t have X-ray vision.
Captain Hero: But you said that you have omni-vision; surely “seeing in all ways” includes X-ray vision.
Blake: Don’t be ridiculous; that’s absurd. You’re not sticking to what I’ve said.
Captain Hero: You’re a nutjob, Humpty-Dumpty. I’m outta here.
Fin.
DigitalStimulus, we’re really just arguing past each other at this point.
You’re demonstrating that free will isn’t possible in a deterministic universe. Fine. I agree with you.
I’m attempting to demonstrate that Divine omniscience doesn’t imply that the universe is deterministic. Which, if any, of the following statements do you disagree with, and why do you disagree with them?
A universe where there isn’t always causal connection between past and future events isn’t deterministic. (We can take this as a definition of “deterministic”, if you like).
As far as God is concerned, God being (a) omnipotent and (b) outside the universe and not subject to physical law, the universe does not have to demonstrate such causal connection.
An omniscient God can know everything about the universe, but such knowledge, not involving intervention in the universe, does not force the universe to demonstrate such causal connection.
That may very well be. Certainly not uncommon.
No, I think there’s a more fundamental issue here. I’d say that “deterministic” does not necessitate causality as you’re using the term. That is, events do not necessarily follow one from the other in a way subject to time or space (as humans understand them). Rather, causality can be suspended (a la Hume), but events can still be (pre)-determined. And here is where my use of FSMs for describing “possible” falls somewhat short; “next states” and the transitions used to reach them define “possible” (and are subject to causality from a human viewpoint). But, in the case of God, no such restriction is in place. Rather, the restriction is found elsewhere: “possible” is limited by “omniscience”; what is possible coincides exactly with what is necessary, permitting only a single transition from one state to another.
This exactly (I think) matches my objection to point 1, which you have conceded by placing God outside the universe and positing that He is not subject to physical law (or time).
Disregarding causality and intervention as misplaced here, this nonetheless highlights the issue (which I hope I express correctly): if knowledge is granted as necessarily true, omniscience is taken to mean “knows everything” (which entails no falsity or contingency), and God is accetped as omniscient, then God cannot know anything false or contingent (in other words, there can be only a single set of events – again, that need not be causally related, but that are both true and necessary).
Now, “free will” requires contingency; a choice among options must be available. But, if there is only one sequence of events, there is no choice. Either free will must be rejected, or God cannot be omniscient. You choose (heh).
You do know what “FSM” usually means in this context, I assume?
To more serious matters. I appreciate your point about causality; you’re not in fact running the classical Master Argument (facts about the past are necessarily true, the future is causally dependent on the past, therefore facts about the future are necessarily true), but there are still a couple of points I would make.
Why is there only a single possible transition, given an omnipotent God? We seem to be heading towards occasionalism, so we might as well make it explicit. What objection, if any, do you have to the occasionalist point of view - the idea that, although the universe on its own is determined (by your definition, in that there’s only one actual world), God can intervene to change the universe from one state to another in more than one possible way, so as to implement free will?
In other words, at time T1, God may know that the universe will be in State A at a future time T2 if a creature with free-will chooses one path, and that it will be in State B if the creature chooses the other path. At time T2, the creature makes its choice, and God puts the universe into the appropriate state.
It might be argued that this approach means that God isn’t omniscient regarding the choices that creatures with free-will make. I would personally say that this is an acceptable limitation to omniscience, in the same way that the physical universe puts limits on omnipotence. “Can God make a stone that’s so heavy He can’t lift it?” requires us to introduce the concepts of “heavy” and “lift” from the physical world, after all.
A second objection is that, if we agree that there might be events without causes, the universe behaves, as far as we’re concerned, in a way that’s exactly the same as it would if we did have genuine free will - a universe without rigid causality is identical to a non-determinstic universe, for inhabitants of that universe. It may be deterministic from God’s point of view, but not from ours.
It honestly hadn’t occurred to me. Thanks for pointing that out. 
Alas, I’ll have to wait until later this evening to respond more fully; I’m preparing a paper that (hopefully) will be completed around dinner time.
This article (posted by aldiboronti in the “agnostic” thread) covers the philosophical bases far more comprehensively than I can.
So, I don’t think I’m going to have time tonight to do the reading from the link you supplied. We’ll see. But I’ll respond to your post…
You answer this question later; I’ll put things out of order, assuming you’ll allow me the liberty.
There you have it. If “knowledge” is necessarily true and God is omniscient, there can be choice and hence no free-will. Jumping back…
I’m unfamiliar with “occasionalism”, but there’s something missing (that is, that doesn’t describe my position accurately) in the above – there is necessarily only one actual world due to God’s omniscience; if there were no God (or He was not omniscient), I don’t think I’d take issue with the idea of free will. (It would depend, of course; I’m sure there other axiomatic constructions that would violate the concept also.)
I’ll think on that; my immediate objection is that, while “heavy” and “lift” are concepts from our physical world, the logical relationship expressed does not have to be. That is, there’s what I’ll term logical isomorphism at work; the best way I think I can put this is to ask (as I did earlier of Blake): Given a God who is defined to be omniscient and omnipotent, can He make the “world” be in such a state that He will not know something about it? If so, He is not omniscient; if not, He is not omnipotent. In fact, I don’t need to think on it; there it is.
Well, I’ve already conceded that free will may appear to be part of the universe from the human point of view. But, predeterminism is predeterminism, and is not dependent on our ignorance.
To sum up: I don’t have an issue with the claim that the universe is predetermined. Nor do I have an issue with the claim that humans have free will. I do take issue with both at once. Furthermore, it seems to me that with meaningful definitions in place for “knowledge” and “omniscient”, the existence of an omniscient God entails predeterminism (so there can be no free-will, due explicitly to the nature of God). As I said way back at the beginning of this thread, if the ideas are applied consistently, I don’t see how one can escape this conclusion.
I think we may have reached a mutually-acceptable compromise - although I still think you’d find the article interesting.
Omnipotence is the ability to do anything that can possibly be done. If we constrain God by the rules of logic, or the rules of the physical world, then the set of “possible actions” is reduced, and with it God’s omnipotence within those rules and that world.
Omniscience is the ability to know anything that can possibly be known. If we constrain God to the definition of knowledge in begbert2’s post, by which “known” implies “necessary”, then the set of “possible knowledge” is reduced - and excludes knowledge of actions undertaken through free will. We’re not limiting God’s power to be aware of actions, just asserting (with justification) that such awareness can’t be called “knowledge”, and therefore that (by the definition of “omniscient”) God isn’t omniscient.
So, I would agree with you if you’re saying “Either we have no free will, or God isn’t omniscient by this definition of knowledge”. We’d need to find another word to describe God’s awareness of our actions, if our definition precludes us from using “knowledge” to describe it, but it then - I hope - just becomes a linguistic problem.
Yes. But I think you step a little too far there at the end – it doesn’t matter how we describe God’s awareness. This is due to infallibility, which is part of the definition we’ve been using for knowledge (i.e., necessarily true).
Now, if one were to grant that God is not infallible, omniscient, nor omnipotent (or some combination thereof), we’d be removing the foundational attributes of God and thus no longer have a God, but merely a god (Neil Gaiman, anyone?).
Really, that’s it for me until much later. I need to get stuff done…it’s just that this is such an enjoyable distraction…brackin’, frackin’ SDMB…grumble, grumble…
Can you not just say “God is omnipotent, by any definition of omnipotent which is not logically absurd” (definitions of omnipotence which imply the ability to make a beef burrito so humungous that God cannot scarf it without hurling are not useful definitions), and “God is omniscient, by any definition of omniscient ditto” and take it from there?
F’rinstance, an inability to know the last digit of p is not a restriction on omniscience; an irrational number has no last digit. Whereas God not only knows the last digit of Graham’s number but could recite the whole darned thing for you (if only you had the time to listen), or tell you how many fives there are in it, as Graham’s number is quite rational, just unfeasibly big.