PeeQue, just because we don’t have free will doesn’t mean we don’t feel like we do. We reason things out, make decisions, and act accordingly. All I’m saying is that the whole process is preordained by cause&effect or God or whatever. As for whether people should be punished, my response was from a practical standpoint in regards to the effects on society. The desire to stabilize society is also preordained, although such a generally held goal as this is easier to analyze from a cause and effect standpoint. It’s like Asimov’s whole psychohistory idea, where society wide trends could be mathematically predicted but individual actions could not. I guess you’re asking if it’s fair to punish people if their actions are preordained, and maybe it’s not, but the laws of society are based more on practical considerations than on musings about the nature of the universe.
dill:
No. The future in a free universe never collapses to one possibility. Terminology is important. I did not stress it above because I thought it would be unnecessary, but that is obviously not the case. Examine 2 models:
Free Universe
Nothing is predetermined.
The furute consists of numerous possiblities.
The past is set.
I make choices in the present.
After I make a choice, that particular path is now set and in the past.
The future remains unset and full of possibilities.
Predetermined Universe
The past is set.
The future is set.
I act in the present, but I am powerless to take any action which would contradict the set future.
The two models are not identical. You can say that they are as many times as you wish, but that will not make it so. Having a field of possibilities collapse into one after I make a choice is not equivalent to having only one possibility before I make my choice. Giving you a menu from which you choose steak and potatoes is not the same as telling you that you must eat steak and potatoes.
Spriritus:
**
Ah, but you see, I am not telling you that you must eat steak and potatos. I gave you the menu of all the options, and I knew that you would choose steak and potatos. That is an perfect example of how my foreknowledge does not restrict your choice (free will) in any way.
As for your two universe models, I agree with your second universe completely. But I do not agree that that universe restricts free will. It is true that the future is set (after all, only one will take place, we already agreed to that). However, free will is already a condition of that future that is set. It has already been taken into account. Therefore a set future, and foreknowledge of that future, does not restrict free will.
Am I making sense to anyone else on this board?
Dill:
You confuse the illusion of choice with the reality of choice. If the future is set, then no choice exixts. No matter what I “think” might be occuring, I have no will. If I cannot possibly make any decision other than that which has been predicted beforehand, then I have no choice. Whatever “decision” I might imagine that I make has, in fact, been determined before I ever reach the point of decision. It follows, therefore, that I am an automota reacting according to patterns which require no free will. Where, in such a system, do you see any point for the exercise of will? There are no decision ponts – the outcome is ordained. No deviation is possible.
If I know the outcome before you make your decision, then your decision is an illusion. In fact, the path was ddetermined prior to and independent of any choice on your part. Therefore, your “choice” does not exist. You have no possibilities from which to choose – their is only one possible path. You may feel the illusion of free will, but in fact no decision you can make is meaningful. You dance to strings you do not see, and you are powerless to move except as the strings propel you.
**
The future is set by our choice. Whether or not our choices have taken place yet is irrelevant.
**
No, that does not follow because the future is not “determined” by anything other than your own choices. Let’s try this: Your future is set, but it is set by YOUR choices. Your choices are real, not illusions. An omniscient being’s foreknowledge of your choices changes nothing.
**
Nope, this is where we seem to be at an impasse. Consider this: I know my brother loves ice cream and hates broccoli. Therefore, if I give him a choice between ice cream and broccoli, I know with absolute certainty that he will choose ice cream. Does this mean that his choice was an illusion? Not at all, he had a real choice. He could have chosen broccoli! But he chose ice cream, just like I knew he would. And yet he still had the freedom to choose whatever he wanted. In the same way, omniscience does not restrict free will.
Now you are getting into omnipotence. Remember, we are only talking about omniscience here and that has nothing to do with control.
Spiritus Mundi
Thank you for taking the time to “clarify” matters; I appreciate it. However your presumption that I did not understand your views was incorrect; in fact I was responding to them. The reason that I only skimmed this debate was that I found your views (and everyone else’s) rather early on and yet failed to notice any historical context for this argument; the Calvinists already started it a while back, and I wished to point this out.
Now as to your assertion that an omnipotent being cannot have free will in a predetermined universe, I refer you to my earlier argument about eating your cookies all at once. If God exists beyond and outside of time, my first assumption is that there is no time whatsoever with relation to this God, and thus the instant in which he eats his cookies is essentially eternal; if you wish to postulate that this God also has his own personal time scheme, you may, but he still eats his cookies at some point.
It is an interesting semantic game you play, but ultimately I side with Dill. He has spent quite a long time trying to point out that just because you yourself may know the outcome of a choice does not negate that choice, whereas you claim that in order to know the outcome of a choice, there must not be any choice at all.
I think you are wrong because I do not see things from your temporally based stance. Let me present this scenario: The future rests on a choice of mine to commit suicide or to live. You, being born a few years before me and receiving absolute foreknowledge of my entire life and every action I would someday take as soon as I came into being, know the outcome of this decision of mine, yet you are unable to contact me or affect my life in any way. This is my viewpoint: You do not know in the past that I will commit suicide in the future until I have already chosen to commit that act in the future. Your knowledge depends upon my choice, not vice versa, since you have no influence on my life whatsoever. What if you were born after I had already died, and not before that time? I see no reason for the situation to be any different.
In other words, I think that you are saddling yourself with the notion that cause must come before effect, a notion with which I disagree.
I think this is the fundamental difference between the arguments. Spiritus’ argument (If I’m understanding it correctly) maintains that Omniscient knowledge does not depened upon your choice. Namely, because all possible factors which could influence your choice were established by the omniscient force.
It’s not a matter of simply know whether one person will consider suicide at a particular point in their lives, or whether another likes broccoli flavored ice cream ;). It’s a matter of having a complete understanding of all factors which can influence any event, any action, and thought, from the physical to the metaphysical, resulting in an absolute knowledge of what will occur - not the highest probabilitiy, best likelyhood, or anything short of complete certainty.
To this sort of omniscient force, you have no free will. Because even that, your consciouness, your willpower, is defined by a set of rules which cannot be broken. Can these rules be defined? Not by us. Are they set in stone? Probably not. They may well be redefined entirely moment by moment by every other factor outside our consciousness. Even so, Omniscience implies a complete understanding of all this.
Omniscience, as has been defined, is an absolute. It says that everything can be known and understood. So is Free Will. It says that no one’s will can be bound by physical or divine forces. No one is “mostly” omniscient, or “partially” free of divine influence, and while an omniscient force may not directly interfere with a person’s choice, the act of observation constitutes a type of intervention (ask you quantum physicist about this sometime).
inkblot, hoping to make things clearer.
/b]
I still don’t see why you guys insist on making the jump from knowledge to control. Omniscience “establishes” nothing, it just knows. Once you start saying that omniscience has any effect on anything you are talking about a power that is beyond omniscience.
I have tried to demonstrate, through many examples, that you are making a leap of logic by equating knowledge with control. If you still do not understand this, then it is beyond my abilities to make it clear to you.
One more example, and then I am giving up:
What if I invented a time machine, and travelled forward 25 years into the future. While there, I learned all about your life and the choices you made that made major changes in your future life. Then I got into my time machine and travelled back 25 years. Have I taken away your free will?
Now I know you will have problems with this because of the time travelling to the future, but we have already agreed that only one future will actually unfold. So lets just pretend I have access to that future. Does that take away your free will? The obvious answer is no.
Oh, and and Inkblot:
Sorry, but the degree of foreknowledge (with perfect foreknowledge being omniscience) has no effect on this argument. If I know just one choice you will make, I have taken away some of your free will, according to Spiritus and others. My assertion is that perfect omnisciensce (redundant, I know) and complete free will are not mutually exclusive.
No we’re not. Omniscience itself is a power. Whether you use that knowledge to effect change or not, merely possesing changes things.
**
Essentially, yes. Just your presence in my present with knowledge of my future changes things. Whether you mention anything to me, or not. Whether you simply watch me from a distance to see what happens. Even if you go to the other side of the world to get as far away from me as possible, your foreknowledge changes things.
Cecil wrote an article on Schoredinger’s Cat which might help explain things better http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_122.html. What Einstein and Schoredinger were talking about is that the act of observation changes the event at any level. Yes, the cat experiement is silly on the face of it. It’s right up there with the butterfly who flaps it’s wings and causes a storm half way around the world. But this is the way it works. It may not be very probable, but it is still possible.
The degree of foreknowledge does have an affect on this argument. Only a complete omniscience has an impact on free will. Because once you have total knowledge of a system, you’ve changed the system. Once the system has changed, your prior knowledge is useless - unless you’re talking about omniscience. Then, your knowledge is complete no matter what changes occur in the system, therefore no changes occur freely.
Going back to the OP then, the existence of God with Ominscience robs us of free will, because regardless of omnipotence, God’s omniscience was established before we were. So nothing we do can run contrary to that omniscience, whether God ever interacts with us or not. God’s omniscience was part of Him when he made the universe and had an influence.
I can’t see any way around this that doesn’t run counter to the definiton of omniscience.
inkblot
Dill:
I am not confusing omniscience with omnipotence. It is unimportant whether the being with the knowledge also has the ability to change the course of events. I do not say that the person with the knowledge controls the events; I only say that the events must be controlled for the knowledge to exist. The point wher we differ seems to be this:
You say that the future is set by our choices but can be perfectly known before those choices take place. Mt question, then, would be how? If I know the outcome of your choice before it has occured, then I know the outcome independent of your choice. You have not yet chosen, yet I know the outcome. If my knowledge is infallible, then your choice cannot be free to violate my knowledge. Your choice is constrained by my knowledge.
If I know the outcome, then this is a reversal of causation. Are you arguing that omniscience can exist without violating free will in a universe where causation can be reversed? That is quite an interesting hypothetical, actually, but since you did not address it directly I hesitate to assign it to you.
This is an example of a prediction based upon familiarity, not absolute knowledge. Consider instead a choice between two things that are equally desirable. Now imagine that you can predict absolutely, every time, exactly what your brother will do in each case. What free will does he have to change his mind?
I think you are misunderstanding. I say that the knowledge cannot be perfet unless the choice is controlled. I do not sayt that the knowledge is the control or that the agent with knowledge has the control. I only say that the knowledge is not possible unless the choice is controlled. There is no place for free will in a determined universe. To say that our “choices” set the path is like saying that the dice “choose” how to roll.
No. But if your knowledge of my life remains perfect in every respect then you have made a persuasive demonstration that I do not have free will. This is one of the paradoxical ideas that has long been a part of speculations on time-travel. Remember, once you travel back your knowledge is no longer “after-the-fact”. The knowledge now exists before I make a choice.
Actually, we have not. We have already agreed that only one past will be created. You maintain that this is identical to saying that only one future will unfold. I maintain that it is not. The transition from potential future to actualized past is crucial to the question of free will. If the “future is set”, that moment is meaningless. If that moment is meaningless, then we have no free will. There is no other “place” for free will to be exercised. To say that my choice has an effect at a time when my choice has not been made is an extreme violation of causality.
Harkenbane:
Thus far, your contributions have consisted of veiled insults, repeating one part of a multi-faceted discussion without demonstrating an awareness, much less a comprehension, of what had been said before, and a somewhat fatuous discussion of Calvinist theology. I will happily re-examine my presumption should you demonstrate the understanding you claim.
Why? Calvinists were neither the first nor the last Christian thinkers to discuss issues of omniscience and predestination, and your later expression of “the Christian standpoint” dismisses their ideas altogether.
I have not made any assertions about an omnipotent being. I am surprised, given your understanding of my previous posts, that you seem to neglect the fact that I have discussed several different possibilities for the relationship of an extradimensional being to a universe of which it enjoys omniscience.
If the being changes (eats his cookies) then it must exist in a “time”. That time need not have any relationship to our own, but no change is possible without time. You may as well speak of growing taller in a world without “height”. I will not repeat my earlier discussion of the ramifications of omniscience on teh free will of an omnipotent being since I am assured that you understood them the first time.
You are, perhaps, free to do so. However, the distinction between a set future and a set past is not a “semantic game”. It is extremely relevant to the questions we are discussing. Of course, you understod that already, too.
This is my viewpoint: you have contradicted yourself.
- I have the knowledge in the instant you come into being.
- I do not have the knowledge until you make the decision.
Then there is no question of foreknowledge.
One involves foreknowledge. The other does not.
This, of course, makes your decisoin to mention Calvanists even more puzzling. Historical contaxt is an absurd concept in a universe where causality can be reversed. Why should I mention the Calvanists when their musings on this matter were quite likely a simple effect of my own?
First to Dill-
who said
You are right that omniscience establishes nothing on it’s own. Omniscience doesn’t change anything. But… in order for one to be onmiscient then free will must not exist. If someone knows exactly what you will do then you cannot choose to do otherwise. But that isn’t really why I posted. I really just wanted to hijack this thread with the following. =)
If God is omniscient what is the purpose of us living our lives. Why doesn’t God just send us directly to hell or heaven since he knows exactly what choices we are going to make?
I agree with Beeto…I think that possessing free will is what makes humanity vibrant and fascinating. My personal ideas on God are a bit fuzzy, but I think if he/she/it bothered to set up the universe, it would not involve direct intervention (so I suppose then in my vision, god is NOT omniscient). I suspect part of the joy for God(s) would be seeing what we do with what he gave us.
Those points are from my memory of History of Philosophy : Augustine to Scotus by Copleston. Not a primary source, admittedly, but no slouch, either.