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. :)