Debate: A formal contest of argumentation in which two opposing teams defend and attack a given proposition.
As I surmised earlier, this has become a debate rather than a discussion. (Some say a debate is what happens when a tango goes bad.) I've never seen a debate where one side conceded any major points, or where concession was other than a strategy for winning over the judges.
Certainly the participants cannot be relied on to judge each other. And we did not agree in advance to accept any judgements we didn't otherwise agree with.

But I must nevertheless end my presentation with the following summation: There is no conceivable way that the convoluted arguments of my opponent could have been fashioned in advance except by some chaotic roll of the dice, or even by a roomful of monkeys with typewriters. If that doesn't demonstrate free will exists, and omniscience only in myth, I'm a monkey's uncle. (But I could be a monkey's cousin, of course.) :icare:

Since you have thus far resisted any inclination to provide or clarify your own definition of omniscience for the sake of this discussion, I've been keeping things open and providing various interpretations (E.G scaled up version of common knowledge or a mystical/atemporal knowledge) and then going on to demonstrate (or attempt, anyway, I'm sorry if it confused you.) that in any case free will is not precluded by omniscience alone.

To not craft your argument to fit the definitions (or to craft an argument in the absence of definitions) is an exercise in meaninglessness (or mental masturbation). There can be no understanding if we do not explain what we mean by the words we use.

FYI:
[ QUOTE=$username ] $quoted_text [ /QUOTE ]
Remove the spaces around the square brackets.

Based on this and your subsequent post, I take it you're bowing out of the discussion? Up until you lapsed into bald assertions, appeals to popularity, and ad hominem it was actually interesting. If you ever wish to resume presenting substance for your stance, feel free.

Actually my previous posts will show I've always been using pretty much the same definition you claimed you were using, except for the part that "it has no impact on our free will," which is the basis for a long running dispute between theists and non-theistic philosophers, and the very basis for this whole thread. And thus clearly a bald assertion on your part (and not a caveat usually added by non-theists)..

As to such bald assertions and ad hominum arguments (assuming they are always sins), I would propose that the guilt should be shared equally between us.

As to bowing out, I've been interested in a discussion but not a debate - and I've already said why and commented on what I see as the difference.

And at the risk of seeming to use a further ad hominum argument, I offer the following not as a certainty but as opinion and as explanation of my own position:

I am admittedly an agnostic and have come to terms with living with uncertainty.
But I also feel that makes me more flexible in my ability to learn new things, as one can seldom learn without changing some aspect of our previous opinions and assumptions.

My feeling is that in this particular area, you are much less flexible. What comes through in your posts is that you are one of those persons with faith in a supreme being who have the continuing dilemma of trying to reconcile the proposition that this deity knows what we will do in advance, with him nevertheless advising us what we should and should not do, and with the belief that he will admonish or otherwise punish us for doing what he has ordained that we should not do, on the infinitesimal chance that we will not do what the deity knows we will do, because, as you propose, we theoretically could avoid doing it, and know we could avoid it, even though, paradoxically, we will inevitably do what the deity already knows we will do in spite of his instructions to the contrary (the futility of which he doesn't seem to see as a mitigating factor).

Does that about cover it?

Now perhaps you will counter that my agnosticism is as dogmatic a stance as is your faith. And I will not agree. And you will not change, and I must admit I will resist any such change in my mindset as well.

So the probabilty that we are at an impasse here seems high, and I gave up arguing about religion long ago (or so I thought). I'm sure there are many things you know that I don't, and many things you have learned that I could learn from you in turn. But instruction in religious dogma is not going to be included in that category.

The central question in free will is not, as you maintain, whether or not we have the ability to do otherwise. The central question is whether our actions are up to us -- this is why randomness is incompatible with free will. The question of whether or not we have the ability to do otherwise comes up because it seems like, if an action is up to us, we could have done otherwise. But this definition itself has its problems. In any case, I think it's easier to see how omniscience, which does not entail any influence on our actions, fails to conflict at all with free will. (Whereas Omnipotence might, but probably doesn't, and Providence gets really tricky).

You have made a distinction which is essentially without a difference. And certainly either "definition" has its problems. And to counter your bald statement with my own, omniscience, a priori, conflicts with the exercise of free will, as well as any theory that we have free will even if we don't exercise it.

And "randomness" would be incompatible with omniscience, but if you use the term as it relates to the chaos theory, which is how I and others have used it, it certainly is compatible with free will, and a prerequsite.

But as you once pointed out, all of this has pretty much been discussed before. (And why dance around the term omnipotence, as if it were not the real elephant in the room?)

In any case, I think we, too, are at the point where we need to agree to disagree.

I'd describe myself as agnostic and atheist. Nobody knows if gods exist and I don't believe any do.
This whole conversation is purely a hypothetical enterprise for the purposes of edification and entertainment as far as I'm concerned.

To go on a bit, this free will v. omniscience question is not a moral one, because at no point is the omniscient being described as anything other than omniscient. It is not judgemental, merely all-knowing. It's all very straight forward: If an omniscient being exists, can we have free will?

I say yes, and I've tried to illustrate it several times with the "Bob can chose vanilla, but he won't." type examples. Thus far your response has been "No, he can't." Not a whole lot to work with in that response.

Well, I did suspect you were playing a game, so it seems I have smoked you out (but game theory would dictate you have yet other layers of deception in wait). And now you say, "It's all very straight forward: If an omniscient being exists, can we have free will?" But the following illustrates you have never been straightforward in posing such a question, which was NOT the initial question, and given your record of dodging about, this is likely another aspect of your deceptive strategy.
And your attempt to illustrate whatever you thought you were illustrating by your Bob and his Vanilla gambit has fallen flat and would have been more appropriate as a lesson in your favorite Sunday School. One thing is clear through your smoke and fog screen: Agnostic or not, you still yearn for that childhood comfort zone that offered something magical to believe in, and you are still tormented by self-doubt.

Obviously I had much more to say than "no he can't," but as it turned out, all you ever really said was, "yes, he can," so there wasn't a whole hell of a lot to work with there either.

And of course this free will v. omniscience question IS a moral one. The "debate" has always been about man's freedom to make moral choices. It's never been a debate between different aspects of agnosticism, now has it, Bob?

Look up the etymology of the term omniscience, what don't you? It's always been entwined with finding, knowing and promulgating a universal set of moral laws.
I say this not for your benefit, but for that of those who might otherwise be taking you seriously.
Incidentally, one aspect of the art of deception is to acquire enough skill so that you don't get caught at it. You're not there yet.
____________________
Envision a faux Socrates, hoist on his own petard!

Quick distraction:
Saying something is a possible outcome to a given situation is to say that were you to go through the situation an infinite number of times, at some point that thing would occur. To use previous metaphors, if Bob could choose chololate, then at some point, bob would. If Bob choses vanilla 100% of the time then he never will, and thus cannot. Will not is the same as can not.

Why do you make the choices you do? You make them based on previous experiences. If you are asked to choose vanilla or chocolate, there will be a reason. Maybe you hate chocolate. Maybe you hate chocolate, but are willing to try it for some reason. The point is, you will have a reason. If you hate chocolate, there will be a reason for that too, maybe it brings back traumatic memories of your childhood. But there will be a reason you childhood memories are so traumatic.

Free will is an illusion, God or not.

Well, I agree that, in effect, "Will not is the same as can not." And I think I understand why you believe free will is an illusion. Quite possibly it is. Certainly our choices are not completely free. There seems to be no way to be sure, however, or to rule out the possibility that it's not all an illusion.

If you can not ever do anything but what is already predicted, then you do not have free will.

Can not being equal to will not, if you will not ever do anything but what is already prediceted, then you do not have free will.

And given the same conditions for any situation, the same person will do the same thing, not matter how many times it you run through it, i.e. he will not do anything different.

The main argument being made for free will as an illusion hinges on the assumption that free will would necessarily violate the infalliability of omniscience.

The flaw in that reasoning is that free will only requires that you can choose an option, not that you actually will choose the option... while violating the infalliability of omniscience requires that you actually do choose the option. There is no internal inconsistency in saying that an agent can choose something (and thus has free will) but the agent won't choose it (and thus maintaining the infalliability of omniscience).

Oddly enough, I, too, would agree that, in effect, "will not" and "can not" are not significantly different. Operationally they're the same. Just as, from our perspective, fatalism would be indistinguishable from free will!

The only way for the discussion to proceed is to set up a hypothetical situation and see how free will plays out in a given scenario. To point out that one scenario would be operationally equivalent to another scenario (i.e. "in effect") is to utterly miss the point.

The problem with that "proof" is that we are almost never faced with exactly the same situation twice, so at some point we will have to do something we haven't done before. So was that newer reaction our choice or does the situation always dictate our actions and reactions? Is not the need to examine the possible consequences of alternate responses to a new situation, and make a decision, an act of free will, or are our responses always going to be dictated by the particular situation, regardless? And even when faced with the same situation twice, if we have learned new ways of dealing with problems in the interim, will the different reaction the second time around still not have been an act of free will (all other things being equal, no omniscient or omnipitant being involved, etc.)?
And if we don't have free will, should we even try to learn new ways to react to new situations? And is the attempt to answer to that question an exercise in free will in itself?
Ridiculous. A belief in fatalism inevitably leads to a different outcome than belief in free will, especially from our perspective.

What does belief in fatalism or belief in free will have to do with my comment? You may benefit greatly from re-reading the post to which you are replying to verify that key words and tricky phrases that appear in your reply are relevant... as opposed to being some fabrication of your own misunderstanding. Here... I'll incorporate your comment about beliefs into my previous comment, and use easy to understand sentences.

Someone who believes in fatalism will act the same whether they have free will or not... because they have no way of distinguishing if they have free will or not from their perspective.
Someone who believes in free will will act the same whether they have free will or not... because they have no way of distinguishing if they have free will or not from their perspective.
Someone who believes in fatalism will probably act differently than someone who believes in free will... but this tells us nothing about whether or not free will exists.

To the contrary, I think we can pretty clearly make a distinction. Consider two men in a locked room. Neither can leave. One man wants to be there, the other does not. Do we really want to say that there's no difference between these two men?

Just as another comment, I think the idea that we might have "completely" free will is generally a red herring. Next to no one really thinks our will is completely free, that is, completely unfettered as to its choice between two alternatives. We always make choices within a situation, and while some people want to say that this situation doesn't determine our choice, almost no one wants to say that it doesn't affect our choice.

Will there be any way to tell which is which without special knowledge?
If not, then, in effect there is no difference between them.

As for the point you're trying to make, Francisco has shown some trouble grasping the concept. You may have better luck, since I don't believe he suspects you of being a cryptotheist with sneaky ulterior motives.

To 1010011010: It's a bit weird to be patronized by an idiot. But that's one way you spot an idiot, I suppose. What happened to the key word: "operationally"? Are you using alternating definitions again?

To Asaris: There's a difference between the two men, but no difference in their situation when it comes to leaving the room. Neither can. Neither will. That's why I added the caveat, "in effect."

And you could be right about the "red herring." There have been some very fishy statements made recently. The argument that you have no free will because you obviously have limited choices is a non sequitur worthy of our faux Socrates. It doesn't do much to prove we have any degree of free will either. It's just a bad example of an argument period.

Well, I think that's exactly the difference. It might be true that 'in effect' there is no distinction, but I'm not sure that that's relevant. You've noticed, I'm sure, that there's a difference between how we treat free will as a matter of law and how we treat it as a matter of morality. That's because free will is not exactly an observable phenomenon -- an act can look free, but not actually be free, and vice versa. What we're concerned with in this thread is whether or not an act is actually free. So we're allowed to presuppose special knowledge that we would not, practically speaking, ever have.

Yes, it is. Substandard reading comprehension is a pretty good one, too. The key word was "belief" actually, and it did not appear in the post to which you replied with an argument about beliefs. The key word did not appear because the post to which you replied was not about beliefs. Thus my suggestion you actually read the posts to which you reply. Allow me to urge you again to read and comprehend what another poster is actually saying prior to making a reply in the way of argument.
I'm sorry if I didn't realize you couldn't follow several seperate-but-related arguments simultaneously without becoming confused. I could explain again what was going on earlier in the thread using smaller words and simpler sentences if you think it would help you understand this time around.

To Asaris: We've admittedly strayed from the initial question, which was essentially a theoretical one, and which, it appears, can only be answered by expressing an opinion, as there seems to be no way to put known or established "facts" together with a known or established logical system that will convincingly resolve the issue one way or the other. So on to addressing your latest contention, by expressing oponion only.

I'm not sure there's a difference that bears on the initial question. Both "matters" serve the same purpose, often come from the same source, apply to the same behaviors, often have the same penalties. The enforcers involved may be different and there has never been any agreement as to a universally just or equitable set of these laws, civil, criminal or moral. But all, as far as I'm aware, rest on the assumption that there is some degree of free will, and that we all have some degree of control over our actions, and therefor bear responsibilty, even if in varying degrees, for the consequences of our actions, which all of these laws in some way attempt to quantify and codify in the name of justice, fairness, just plain good versus evil, or in the name of your preferred diety.

So I'm not sure what you're getting at, except that if the difference is that morality comes from a diety and "laws" come from society, there is no clear distinction there either. Or is there?

To the idiot: Bite me.

So, what then is the essence of a free act?
I'd say it's that you could have acted differently than you did.

It's not, as some posters have suggested, that you do act differently than you did... such a demand is incoherent.

To make things intresting ;)

The obove illustrates physical bondage. Yet both men retain freedom of their conginitive process.

There are clearly various degrees of freedom. In the extreme, we will not be able to tell the diference between a person who is phisically free and one who is under total physical control. Same goes for the mind. Yet as we step away from total control signs of individual freedom show. It is admited by most that freedom is never total. We are always pushed this way and that. So the question is, how much/or little freedom is requred to say that a person is acting on freewill? Where do we draw the line between freedom and bondage, and can we?

As far as I know, no one thus far has ever acted differntly then they did. So both requisites are incoherent :crazy:

What are you referring to as "both requisites"?

No one has acted differently than they did. The way you acted is the reference for determining what is different. Different actions are, by definition, not the way you acted. That's why the second standard is incoherent.

"Could have acted differently" doesn't have that problem.

Encyclopedia, Columbia University Press: "Free will, in philosophy, the doctrine that an individual, regardless of forces external to him, can and does choose at least some of his actions."

Can and does. Not could but didn't.

(But then philosophers in general do sometimes appear incoherent, especially to their fauxs, no pun intended.) :D

"Could have acted differently" - No person would act any differently in the same situation, becuase whatever their reasons, they would be the same, and thus, the thought process that leads them to that decision will be the same.

Francisco: You seem to have interpreted my idea of running through the same situation many times, as being to run through the situation once, then go back and run through it again. I put "given the same conditions" there on purpose. I mean the same in all aspects, down to the knowledge that the person has. Given one set of variables, there will be one outcome. Sure, the variables are the position and velocity of every particle in the universe, but that doesn't matter.

With regards to the locked room, I would say that in terms of freedom, they are the same. They are both restrained from leaving. One by walls, one by his own desire.

10100 etc: I agree with you to the extent that I think the ability to act otherwise is necessary for free will. But I don't think it's the essence of free will. I come to free will through morality. We tend to believe, and I think rightly, that we are morally responsible for some of our actions but not for others. So my most basic definition of free will is "whatever it is, the presence of which makes us responsible for some actions and the absence of which makes us not responsible for others". As a note, this is all I want to stipulate to when talking about free will. I claim to have arguments for the rest. Anyway, given this, it seems clear that the essence of free will must be that our actions are up to us.

Francisco: I mentioned that difference just to elucidate the necessity for a theoretical, rather than a fact based, approach to free will. The fact that the law, which of necessity uses the fact-based approach, is so clearly inadequate in discerning free will, is at least evidence that a fact-based approach would be inadequate.

You keep saying that you don't think we can argue about this, but I've in fact given arguments for my position which you've never adressed. Perhaps you should try arguing, and not asserting that it's impossible.

You seem to misunderstand the article. It's not saying that, at some point, we have to choose P and not-P. It's saying that, given that we chose P, we could have chosen not-P.

Zyr: you're begging the question. Your answer to the thought experiment presupposes we don't have free will. In any case, I want to maintain that even if we always do the same thing given the same set of circumstances, we can still be free. Remember that free will just means that something is up to us. It's hard to see without further argument, how just because we always do the same thing, that that's not up to us.

Sorry if I've not addressed something that I could have or should have addressed. It wasn't out of any disrespect. But as to not trying arguing, I think you'll find that I have argued until I'm blue in the face, as the old saying goes. My assertion is not that it's impossible, but impossible to argue further with any expectation of a further meeting of the minds. We all pretty well know now what the other thinks, why he thinks it, how he goes about doing that thinking, or if he is thinking at all rather than just playing games for some juvenile or ultimately masochistic purpose.

Anyway, it seems we are now down to kicking the horse to see if it is dead. Unfortunately, the kicking itself has been the cause of its death.

I believe we have free will, but because we are social animals and strive to be accepted we do not use it that often, for fear of being excluded. It's what we are taught from the second we start school throughout life, work, relationships and so on.

Those that can use their freewill are called ecentric and strange.

But this is common throughout history, people are taught, threatened and cajoled into following.

Faced with your beauty, my free will would be severely compromised. :icare:

I see you're still having trouble comprehending what you've read. It's equally important that the individual can choose, but does not choose, what he does not do. If an individual cannot choose anything other than the actions they actually do choose, they do not actually have a choice, because they could not have chosen to act differently.

So your observation that an indiviual can do actions and does do actions doesn't reveal anything about wether the individual is doing those actions by choice. Choice requires multiple actions that can be done, of which some are chosen not to be done. If you could not have actually done anything other than what you did do, you never had a choice.

Here, I'll try to make it easier.
I take no issue with the statement that a free individual can chose and does choose some of the ways he does act.
This is because it in no way contradicts the statement that a free individual can choose but does not choose some of the ways he does not act.

As a style tip, encyclopedia are not the best source for an appeal to authority-- especially general encyclopedia billed as authority on a specific subject.

Even if someone will make a given choice when presented with a given situation, the part that makes the choice a free one is that they could have chosen differently. They won't choose differently, but they can. The conflation of "would" and "could" is a significant error.

I'd agree with that, but "up to us" is too ambiguous for philosophical analysis.

I believe I have free will because I'm either right, or if I'm wrong I'm forced to believe it anyway. :D

Must be why 1010011010 believes what he writes is rational, and it's irrational to consider it gobbledygook.

He seems to believe an encyclopedia should look to him for authority rather than vice versa.

Here's a style tip: Boolean logic works best on computers, because computers don't actually think without assistance from a supreme being. But ask one if it has free will, and it will say it does, and will disavow it's creator. HEY, maybe 1010011010 IS a computer!

NO! WAIT! It's a computer controlled by the DEVIL! :eek:

Don't drag me into your argument. :hmm:

Sorry, I thought your participation in the thread was voluntary. Must have been one of those illusions I've been forced to believe. :confused: :o :eek: ;)

Considering your prior attempts, you really should stop making assertions about what other people believe.Encyclopedia are meant to give one a general overview. They are a starting point for familarization and for planning further research. They are not primary or authoritative sources by design.
In practice the content of an encyclopedia can be haphazard in quality an can vary greatly from article to article.Boolean algebra was invented/created/discovered in the mid-1800s. Its application to computers or mechanical systems really only got started with Shannon's work at Bell Labs in the 1940s and '50s.

Yes, I know, you old nit-picking devil, you. I read Fortune's Formula too. (And Shannon was a friend of a friend at MIT.)

So what's your point? Statement too literal? Not literal enough?
Try to say something material or germane this time.

Concepts can be accepted and even applied to the world around us without their actual existance. People simply have faith that freewill exists. Thus it allows us to judge people based on their choices. This is important because it absolves in administering a punishment/judgement. The concept of freewill allows us to become intruments of justice. Thus the guilty party is throwing themselves on the spear of justice by making a "choice" to act as they did.

The system works to a large degree. Yet whether we judge others based on morals, laws, cocial codes, etc. the existence of freewill is a faith based belief. So I have to say Asaris, that you will find no freewill in watever it is the "presence of which makes us responsible for some actions and the absence of which makes us not responsible for others". That presence might not even be there.

Sorry, I didn't explain well enough what I meant by "morally responsible": that we're actually responsible for some of our actions outside of any legal or societal system. I think that's enough to get me there? I'm not sure how to explain it better, though I might be able to tomorrow morning.

You have an obsession with sources... It would not have even occurred to me to think that someone might imagine that there was only one source, but you seem to have rattled one off with such conviction. Your guess is, true to form, incorrect.Irrelevant and misleading, mostly. Even if you honestly did think that Boolean algebra's only use was in constructing logic gates, maybe you'll check to see what happened in the 100 years between the two events.You're not even trying. Good day to you, sir, may you achieve mediocrity beyond your wildest dreams in your future ramblings.

If we do not have free will, that would also absolve us in administering punishment/justice. We would have no responsibility for our actions to punish a man not responsible for his crimes.

As you know, and what has pissed you off like nothing else so far, is not any reference to its "only use," but reference to it's present use, and to the illusion you "seem" (conjecture, not assertion) to have that what you are doing in your gobbledygeek and remarkably Boolean-style rambling is actually thinking outside your own little matrix. Sort of a common delusion among you hacker types, and clearly a touchy subject.
Who was it that said: "Alchemy plus inscrutable laws of self-organization will ever remain alchemy." Or: "A computer model is a computer model is a computer model." Oh, it was Gertruce "The Beast" Steinlager in her Ode to Number 666.

As to Shannon, you dropped the name, I didn't. Was there some hint there that you and he had something in common, Brain-wise? You don't (confident assertion, not conjecture). :lol: :crazy: :D

I think we are arguing on different terms. I was (and I do mean was; see below) arguing on the basis that free will was to be able to choose differently in a situation, while many others were assuming that free will is being able to choose. Period. However, most of those on the other side to me, are saying that you can choose a different outcome to a situation. This is, as I've said, impossible. You will always choose the same. You can not do anything different.

Now the important thing, is that I'm willing to concide that this is not a restriction on your free will. The fact that you can choose, that you go through your own thought processes to reach a conclusion, without being guided in anyway by external forces other than your own observations and experiences, is what is important to free will. Sorry for the complete about face.

So back to the topic at hand. So far the best argument of omniscience vs free will, is the idea that to do something other than that which the omniscient being knows you will do, it would deny it's omniscience, thus you can not do this. However, you won't, so is it actually restricting you? It's stoping you doing something you can't do. Is it a restriction?

Zyr,

A "choice" is a mental process and thus an action. One cannot think differnt anymore then one can act differnt. Where is this ability to make a choice?

Be careful of drifting into the kind of Boolean tautology that was posted by someone earlier: "If an individual cannot choose anything other than the actions they actually do choose, they do not actually have a choice, because they could not have chosen to act differently."
That way lies madness.

This is true, but people believe they have freewill. The concept reinforces itself because we built a whole system on it.

If you didn't have free will you wouldn't be absolved of anything because you wouldn't have been under any obligation, or have had any duty, to act to begin with.

Otherwise, Mantus, you are quite correct. Try deciding in the real world that you don't have free will, and therefore no responsibility, and see what happens.

That's not really correct. One's responsibilities to society would remain. Moral and social delinquents would be treated as poor executions of our social program. So the obligations and duties to uphold morals, laws and social contracts would remain because the consequences haven't changed. One would still be held responsible, not because one made a choice but because one's actions still effect other people.

You wouldn't be absolved, as it was otherwise claimed in the scenario presented by the other poster, because in that imaginary scenario you also wouldn't have had any obligations. That was my point, and you have agreed that you wouldn't be absolved.
My last point was exactly that in the real world, whether we believe in free will or not, we are still going to be held responsible. Which is essentially wnat you said as well.

I used "real world" because the hypothetical example had no correlation to any conceivable real world situation.

I have a slight disagreement with what you said, Mantus. I think that you would still be treated as responsible, because society has an interest in discouraging certain sorts of behavior. But that's not the same as saying that you would be responsible to society.

Why can't you each be right as to why one would both feel responsible and be held responsible?

How does knowledge of what you will choose stop you from choosing something else?
So far no one has been willing to explicitly state the jump from "You won't choose A." to "You can't choose A."

To do something other than what which the omniscient being knows you will do would deny its omniscience. To be able to do something other than that which the omniscient being knows you will do, but not do it, would not deny its omniscience.

This has never been about the mere ability to do something, but about the ability to choose to do what you were presumably able to do regardless of who or what chooses for you to then do it.

The omniscient being knows you won't choose A. That knowledge presupposes that you don't have a choice in the matter. You have not been stopped from choosing something else because you didn't have the option of making that choice to begin with. You won't choose A because you have no such option. You can't choose A because you have no such option. The key here is that in this imaginary scenario, it's the omniscient being that has the knowledge of what you will do, not you. Simple enough for you?

Francisco,

So what you are saying is that the process is rigged. How does an omniscient being actually influence the process?

Yet one would go though the cognitive process of making a choice.

Yet one never has knowledge of what one will do until one makes a choice.

;)

IF there were an omniscient being, then the process would have been rigged. How it was rigged would depend on whether you believed in a creator, or in a more mechanical process, and of course most who believe in an omniscient being also believe this being was also the creator who rigged the process. Which would make it a lot easier to be omniscient. And some have argued that it eould be inaccurate to call this hypothetical being omniscient if it also influenced the process.

As to one going through the cognitive process of making a choice, we get back to the basic question of whether any of that process, if other than just putting a pre-programmed biological computer to work, involves freely made choices, or choices predetermined by an outside force or entity.
Exactly. We can predict from past experience what we will probably do, but won't be sure until we take the initial step to do it. Only the hypothetical omniscient being would have that prior knowledge, and what we're talking about here is of course a hypothetical situation or scenario. And we presumably are talking about it to see which, if any, of these various scenarios might explain what happens in the real world, what our purpose is in being here, etc. - rather than talking about it just out of curiousity or for purposes of winning an argument.

What's important is that we don't have to ultimately agree on any of these things, because I personally don't think such a thing is possible. No two people will ever have exactly the same point of view, nor should they. What's ultimatrely right for one may be ultimately disastrous for the other. But that's a subject for a whole other thread.

'Free will' indeed.

Spinoza says a tennis ball, if it could think, would believe itself to be moving of its own free will. Schopenhauer adds that the tennis ball would be right.

As usual with philosophy people ignore the question of what truly, and not allegedly, hangs on the answer; ie. what actual difference to anything does the answer make?

None.

People would still act like they do, for reasons that they do, and still be responsible.

The only problem case for us asises in law with the possibility of coercion, which may mitigate a person's free but unlawful action. But if the bank manager was forced to open the safe at gunpoint it was not as if he had no choice: he acted of his 'free will' all the same.

Nothing would be affected by introducing some metaphysical principle of free willing at all - it merely seems necessary to Theists to separate man's will from God's in the light of evil. It has no consequence for us who live life, as opposed to them denying it.

We are all of us affected by causes and motives - this is what it means to will something at all. And so long as that willing is unobstructed, it remains free.

Like a free-falling weight, or any freely standing beam. Free as the driven cockroach.

Perhaps a little too much cannabis there, Joe, but you tend to prove my point about different points of view requiring different strategies.

Strategies for good or for ill though, my man, you neglect to say...

The omniscient being is one who does have that knowledge, by definition.
Some have said, more or less, the omniscient being knows what you won't do because you can't do it.... if you can't do it, you can't choose it, thus you can't make a choice, thus no free will. So far the no one making this argument has explained the basis for the "won't because you can't" presupposition.

Is anyone going to step up to the plate and attempt to justify the assumption that knowledge that you won't do it requires that you can't do it?

Usually somewhere in between. Doing too much good can have the same consequences as doing too much bad. That's why you should never leave your daughter alone with the preacher.

I really don't want to read through all of those posts, so let's get out what we know:

- There are two possibilities: strict causality or randomness
- In randomness you have no control over what is going to happen, and so you do not have free will.
- In order to make a choice there must be multiple possible courses of action. In strict causality there is only one possible outcome, and so there is no choice.
- No choice = no free will

That's about as simple as it's going to get. Criticize from there if there are any faults.

The old mix and mis-match false premise gambit. Read it backwards and it would make more sense - on the scale of "more or less" in any case.

FYI: Straw Man Fallacy
The Straw Man fallacy is a rhetorical technique that caricatures the opponent's position to make it easier to attack. The metaphor is of someone who builds a straw man or scarecrow and then knocks it down and gloats over his accomplishment. This is not much of an accomplishment, though, because the idea attacked is not the idea the opponent held in the first place. The one using the straw man ploy attacks his own understanding of his opponent's opinion -- not his opponent's actual position.

In the present example, the attacker has done more than caricature the opponent's position, he has deliberately mis-stated it. It's a switch in the usual attack method, and even less of an accomplishment.

Francisco,

You are being counter-productive.

I'm going to quote something for you from another message board I visit:
"It's not necessary to view all disagreement as an adversarial process in which there must be a winner and a loser. You can instead view it as a process where people seek to understand each other. Everyone can win in those situations, even if they still disagree at the end."

I said much the same thing myself in at least one earlier post. But using deception to appear to discredit someone you disagree with is most certainly an adversarial strategy. Pretending to advise me as to something I already attempted to point out to you is just more of the same deceptive stratagem.

Every one of these propositions is false sadly:

1) there are more than two possibilities (but of course only one actuality). There is ideterninacy, hard/soft determinism, necessitarianism, fatalism, and all imply, and assume, different things. See any decent intro to philosophy.

2) It has yet to be shown that randomness isn't compatible with control. Perhaps that's what control means, randomness attributed to the body...

3) To make a choice there must be multiple courses of action yes, but which one of these is taken will obviously have to have been caused (or motivated; same thing). This doesn't bring causation and choice into conflict at all. Choice describes a state prior to action with its possible outcomes, causality manifests itself afterwards with the actual act that does occur.

No choice = no free will is about right. But choices can be caused and still be examples of a freely willing being. I choose this BECAUSE of that. I am still acting freely on a motive.

How exactly do any of you expect to determine the existence of free will through debate, when it is our universe under scrutiny? If free will does not exist, your arguments are forced, regardless of the content. All your actions will feel and appear as though they were free. Your ability to expose your lack of free will would be dependent on the wishes of whatever is controlling your actions.
You might even be forced to conclude free will does exist.

So, how is the process rigged? You don't answer this question.

I don't claim to know HOW it was rigged, since these are hypothetical questions about imaginary scenarios. Rigged was the word used by the previous poster, and I took it to mean predetermined. You believe in a creator as I recall. What does that belief or faith tell you about the process of creation? Is your creator omnipotent and/or omniscient? I personally don't believe in such a creator, nor do I believe the process is rigged in any "predetermined" sense. So in the paragraph that you quoted, I answered the questioner's question as best I could at the time.

Incidentally, I like what joe_eschaton posted just before yours. It makes me think more than most prior posts have done, and that's really what this is all about (not that you aren't a worthy contributor as well).

Okay, let me ask you a different question. You say that "if there were an omniscient being, then the process would have been rigged". Why do you think this is true -- why couldn't there be an omniscient being who just watches things?

I don't know why he couldn't just watch. But remember, the being you are describing knew what he is watching was going to happen before he is now seen just sitting there "watching things" happen, as you put it. Why he is watching, I don't know. It's your scenario. But I presume he could be just making sure he hasn't lost his omniscient powers. Or for some reason he himself, not being the creator (he's not, is he?), has no choice but to sit and watch. But these kinds of musings lead us to a sort of absurdism philosophy.

To get to the other part of your question, it would seem that if the being knows what will happen, then it is inevitable that thing will happen, and if it is inevitable then the inevitablity was "rigged" (remember I didn't choose that word, because it means different things to different people), except I have no way of knowing who or what rigged it. Only you can tell me that, as you created this scenario - but I don't think this script holds together unless there was a rigging apparatus somewhere in the back-story. But I could be wrong. It could just be a bad movie.

Or perhaps one by Ingmar Bergman, the deeper meanings of which, I'll confess, I never did fully appreciate.

Well, how about an omniscient being that just watches what you do with your life... and then takes you aside after you die and tells you all about the good and bad things you did during your life, how they all balance up, and how you're going to spend the rest of eternity.

That sounds vaguely familar, to me... Huh, maybe that thinking about "an omniscient being that only watches" isn't limited to a sort of absurdist philosphy?

Yes, I can see where you might be a bit concerned about that possibilty. :D

You are a turnip. :thumbsup:

A well rounded root has it's admirers, I see.

If you're seeing fraggles, you really should cut back on the drugs, man.

Fraggles almost always come in pairs.

Ah, here's a pair right now.

No, wait, not Fraggles, what's the word for off topic people? Oh never mind.

(Also, I believe Fraggles eat radishes, not turnips)


1010011010: You keep asking for a direct jump from will not to can not. I, as you say, "stepped up to the plate", in my very first post in this thread:

Note to self: Do not post while drunk.Does Bob not choose chocolate because Bob cannot choose chocolate... or does Bob not choose chocolate because Bob doesn't like chocolate?

I think joe_eschaton said it better:
Also, your scenario does little to answer the question within the original context of an omniscient being knowing what would happen. There is no problem with, some of the infinite number of times, Bob choosing chocolate rather than his usual vanilla... and the omniscient being knowing chocolate's what he would choose that time around.
That is a disgusting mental image, you pervert.
I'll never be able to eat even an apple after reading that.

To Zyr:
Good On Ya Mate! In repeating your previous answer, you put the original question back in its right order, and explained your position quite nicely.

To By the numbers:
The fraggles that I'm thinking of are not primarily for eating, and only a pervert would be put off by their image. Hint: Think Rubens or Goya.
My definition of a pervert is anyone who thought Eve shouldn't be eating those apples (in case that's your reference).

Well, if the other option was a pear full of fraggle semen, I'd probably eat the apple, too.

Strange how your mind runs to certain mental images involving strange phallic like produce. I thought God didn't want either Adam or Eve to eat the apples because he didn't want them to know what they were doing naturally was supposed to be fun. The option Adam and Eve had was to partake of each other without considering that a source of enjoyment. Adam, for example, asked God what those things were that made Eve different, and God said they were fraggles. The word had a deliberately unappetizing sound.

The omniscient being in the apple tree (which had taken the form of a serpant) said, "I just knew he was going to say that!"

If you think brassica are phallic, you should see a doctor immediately.

I guess you never heard the one about about the girl who, when asked about use of a turnip, explained she had run out of carrots.

Or the city girl who went out to the farm to pull up some roots and caused some consternation among the field hands when she did.

Or the one about the omniscient rutabaga ---- ?

I'm not sure what you think of when you imagine a turnip and a radish, but, in my mind, they're very similar in appearance to each other and very different in appearance to a phallic object.

If you say so, but what's with that pear you mentioned?

(To stay on topic, the pear was omniscient.)

And this turnip looks remarkably like a pear (or a well-known toy): :eek:
http://home.comcast.net/~holachapuli...es/turnip2.jpg

Fraggles almost always come in pears. :crazy:

  :o
:thumbsup:

How do we know that's really its thumb?

Good one. For whatever reason, I don't "choose" to find out.

(Must stay on topic.)

Both.

If not liking chocolate is his reason for not choosing it, then he can't choose it because he doesn't like it. Incidently, I also said (in a later post) that this doesn't nessesarily deny free will.

Do Fraggles have opposible thumbs?

Clearly,

http://www.londonist.com/image/fraggle.jpg

You were doing OK until you said that. Suppose he was allergic to the alternative choice, for example? You were posed with a trick question, which implied that this was another way of posing the original question, and you bit on it. Nothing was proven by the questioner about the accuracy of your original answers, except that you were capable of making wrong answers at times.

What is making it so he cannot choose chocolate? If he doesn't like chocolate, he probably won't choose chocolate... but there's nothing preventing him.

ANd if you have any insight into how that was supposedly a trick question, feel free to share.

If you can show me why the present question had anything to do with the correctness of Zyr's answer to the previous question, I will be unable to tell you why this one was a trick question. (What would bother me even more is the possibilty that you, yourself, didn't know it was a trick question.)

His thought process is stopping him from choosing it. When he decides on the flavor, he would go through a process of deciding, weighing up his dislikes/likes, his dislike/like of having an allergic reation, and then would make his choice. However, the fact that he is allowed to go through that process is what means he has free will.

Zyr, I think you've been tricked into forgetting that the key word in this discussion (fast deteriorating into a debate) is omniscience. If it is known in advance what someone will choose, then it's a fact that he can't do otherwise and that he won't do otherwise. "Can't because he won't" is only true if omniscience is a factor or a condition in the equation. "Won't because he can't" is always true regardless of whether omniscience is part of the equation.

When you switch a question from the "won't because he can't" proposition to a "can't because he won't" supposition, and leave out omniscience, it becomes a trap for the unwary. You have fallen into the trap and are using arguments that do not include the omniscience factor to defend a proposition that can't be defended without the inclusion of that factor. The defense you are using is irrelevant in the one case and just wrong in the other.

Francisco, I have no idea why you think omniscience changes the equation. I explained earlier in this thread why the entailment you're trying to make (God knows ahead of time what we're going to do -> we have no choice in what we're going to do) is invalid. It's a confusion of de dicta modality with de re modality. Can you explain how your position is different from this, or, failing that, why my argument are bad?

FWIW, I think these arguments are on page 2.

What I was trying to say was that omniscience is a part of the equation, and leaving it out changes it. And my examples were to show why in some specific cases it was the omission of that factor that appeared to change the equation.

I wasn't attempting to reexamine any other arguments previously made, and I don't think there was otherwise any relevance to your past positions. If so, it wasn't my intent to highlight any such relevance.

And I asked why you think leaving out or putting in omniscience changes the equation.

We don't think that, just because *I* know you're going to do something tomorrow, that I'm somehow forcing you to do it -- why is it different when omniscience is involved?

Because if the omniscient person knows it's going to happen, then it's going to happen. He's not forcing you to do it. He just knows that you cannot NOT do it - you cannot do otherwise and you won't do otherwise. Neither can't or won't is caused by him. We deduce this from knowing (or proposing in this instance) that he's omniscient. We don't have to know how he knows these things, what makes him certain, what other forces are involved, etc., to make this deduction.

Taking him out of the equation takes the unknown cause of his certainty out of the equation. Without that certainty, saying "if you can't do something, you won't," is still logically correct. Saying "if you won't, you can't," is not logically correct.

But there's no difference between my knowledge and the knowledge of an omniscient being.

Well it seems to be your turn to explain what your remark means, or why it's accurate. I would say it's accurate only if you are in fact the omniscient being that we have so far been treating as a hypothetical entity, OR if he's sharing his knowledge with you in some fashion.

But I await your elucidation regarding this revelatory announcement. :)