Mantus

Human beings cannot obtain pure knowledge. All our knowledge is based on faith.


Omniscience is the concept of (knowledge)x(infinity) or (knowledge)x(everything). While it seems simple enough on the surface (like freewill or purpose) the fact is that omniscience is a rather abstract concept. How can any one being have full knowledge of anything that can or could happen? Even if find a way store all this information sift thought and access it all. The only real possibility for omniscience would be total knowledge, which would require the universe to be finite, yet if knowledge is finite then it's based on faith. In this case, the omniscient being would have faith that his sum of knowledge equals to the sum of all events in the universe. Omniscience is quite absurd.

Something doesn't seem right here. You say the equasion changes. Yet the only changes I see are those in gramar. One's desicion making process is not being effected by an omniscient being. The only difference is that someone/thing knows the choice you will make but that fact is not a not a causal effect. Like I said earlier, I just do see how the process gets rigged against a free choice with the introduction of omniscience.

Mantus

nothing like quoting yourself

asaris

I'm not sure why the onus is on me. I know things, the omniscient being knows things. The difference is that the omniscient being knows all things, but I'm fairly limited in how many things. But as far as what it means to say that we know things, it seems to me to be a basic philosophical principle that when we say "I know something" and "X knows something", the assumption ought to be that we mean the same thing by 'know' in both cases.

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Zyr

Francisco: "Can't because he won't" is perfectly fine, if you assume that the universe is mechanical, that one thing leads to another. Like I said, if you will never do something, then it's not an option, it's not a viable outcome to the situation, it's impossible, you can't do it.

Mantus: You say this, then use it a paragraph later to prove the absurdity of omniscience. Would you like to back this up before you use it to prove things? I'm not saying it's wrong, but it's kinda, out-of-the-blue.

asaris: I guess there is no difference between you knowing something and an omniscient being knowing it. This does mean that if you know something, then you are stoping something else from happening though.

If we assume that something knows A, and that this knowledge is infallable, then A has to happen. If it didn't, then our premise is wrong. If this thing is ominscient, then proving it wrong would prove that it wasn't omniscient. If we mean that something is truely omniscient, then it cannot be proven wrong. To prove it wrong would be to do anything other than what it know's will happen.

__________________
"Oh, irony! Oh, no, no, we don't get that here. See, uh, people ski topless here while smoking dope, so irony's not really a high priority. We haven't had any irony here since about, uh, '83 when I was the only practitioner of it, and I stopped because I was tired of being stared at."

Omnia mutantu, nos et mutamur in illis.
All things change, and we change with them.
- Neil Gaiman, Marvel 1602

Mantus

Zyr,

Because our knowledge is limited there is always a possibility that we are missing a key piece of information and our conclusions are incorect. Even something as basic as tomorrow's sunrise might not happen because we are not aware of a certain sircumstance that will prevent the event. So the best we can do is have faith that what we observe and conclude is true.

Omniscience, hints at the idea that the being has absolute knowledge, they cannot be wrong. This is why I stated that any being which has finite knowledge must rely on faith. Even if the being thinks that its knowledge is accurate, they might be wrong.

So there is a difference between omniscience and our limited knowledge.

1010011010

Quantum probability breaks determinism. The universe is not mechanical. The assumption is invalid. One things leads to another in a vague sense, but knowledge of the starting conditions, no matter how perfect, will not allow for perfect prediction for an indefinite period of time....

"won't because you can't" I take no issue with this direction of flow.
"cant because you won't" is the direction I take issue with.

Sure.Okey-Dokey.Unless, of course, the omniscient being knows you CAN not do it - you can do otherwise, but you won't do otherwise.

Since you won't do otherwise, the infalibility of the omniscient being remains intact.Especially the "can't". Since the "can't" is the part that's relevant to the making of choices and freedom of will, that you've apparently conjured it from sources unknown doesn't help move the discussion along.

__________________
Simple Machines in Higher Dimensions

Zyr

Sure, my assumption is wrong if your assumption is right, I agree with that...

(In case you can't tell, I'm trying to get you to back up your assumption.)

__________________
"Oh, irony! Oh, no, no, we don't get that here. See, uh, people ski topless here while smoking dope, so irony's not really a high priority. We haven't had any irony here since about, uh, '83 when I was the only practitioner of it, and I stopped because I was tired of being stared at."

Omnia mutantu, nos et mutamur in illis.
All things change, and we change with them.
- Neil Gaiman, Marvel 1602

asaris

Way to bite the bullet, but doesn't this seem rather counter-intuitive?

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

1010011010

It's not really an assumption so much of a statement of the observation of various physical experiments. I'm not talking about Heisenberg Uncertainty, since that would not apply to instantaneous omniscience.

But even if you had perfect knowledge of a single instant in time, you would not be able to predict all that followed infallibly, simply because there are processes that are by their nature probabilistic. It might take a while before the accumulated error actually reached a visible/practical scale, but technical difference (I.E. which of two radioactive atoms decayed in one half life, where in a diffusion pattern a given photon ended up, etc.) would occur almost immediately... simply because these procese are not mechanical, their outcomes cannot be predicted from their starting conditions.

I suppose the unspoken assumption would be that the way we look at things is correct. There might be some other way to describe the universe that would make such events predictable with perfect knowledge of the initial conditions. But since the computer I'm using depends on those quantum physicist guys being right...

__________________
Simple Machines in Higher Dimensions

Mantus

It should be noted that the presence of an "omniscient creator" being would re-introduce determanism since random events do not exist for an omniscient being.

1010011010

I think you mean fatalism, not determinism.
Agreed on the basis of the addition of the "creator" quality.

__________________
Simple Machines in Higher Dimensions

Mantus

Yes fatalism is the word, thanks 101.


Not in reply to you 101 but just a point in general,

It's intresting to note that an omniscient being cannot pass on "pure" knowledge to any non-omniscient being. This is because we can never be sure that the information being passed on to us is correct. So in relation to the earlier argument regarding the influence of an omniscient being on the rest of the world, the world would be fatalistic only from the omniscient being's point of view.

Zyr

Well it's lucky we're talking about an omniscient being then isn't it? If the omniscient being see's the world as falalistic, then he know's what's going to happen, and to him the world is mechanical. With the introduction of an omniscient being, won't becomes can't, whether you know it or not.

But, as I've said, a few times now, depending on your definition of free will, this may or may not restrict it.

__________________
"Oh, irony! Oh, no, no, we don't get that here. See, uh, people ski topless here while smoking dope, so irony's not really a high priority. We haven't had any irony here since about, uh, '83 when I was the only practitioner of it, and I stopped because I was tired of being stared at."

Omnia mutantu, nos et mutamur in illis.
All things change, and we change with them.
- Neil Gaiman, Marvel 1602

asaris

Sorry Mantus, I missed one of your posts. There are two reasons why my knowledge is the same as that of an omniscient being. One is the simple observation that if we're going to be consistent here, the word 'know' is the two sentences "I know x" and "An omniscient being knows x" has to mean the same thing. The second is that a necessary condition for something's being knowledge is that it has to be justified true belief. But it's the true belief part that's the sticking point here, so we don't need to worry about whatever else it is that makes something knowledge. Of course, the omniscient being knows a lot more than I do, but that hardly entails that I don't know anything.

Of course, God also has a whole lot more second-order knowledge than I do, especially about the future. He not only knows everything, he knows that he knows everything. But if we postulate that I know some things about the future, this isn't really a problem for this discussion.

You write in another post that I missed "The only real possibility for omniscience would be total knowledge, which would require the universe to be finite, yet if knowledge is finite then it's based on faith." It's probably worth saying that omniscience is simply knowing everything there is to know. If there's no such thing as middle knowledge, it hardly impeaches our hypothetical being's omniscience that she doesn't have it. But further, I don't know why omniscience requires the universe to be finite. We've traditionally said that God is infinite, and he's omniscient, so he could presumably know an infinite amount of things. But then it must not be impossible for a being to know an infinite number of things. But even if this isn't true, I was under the impression that the universe was in fact finite, so the omniscient being doesn't have to have infinite knowledge. And I have no idea why you say that if knowledge is finite it has to be based on faith.

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Mantus

Thought: Even with the introduction of the uncertainty principle our choices are still based on causality, because a choice must have meaning and a cause gives meaning.

I could be wrong but so far I cannot find a viable alternative for causality that will give us the ability to make a meaningful choice.

As I stated earlier, it seems that the transition from "won't" to "can't" is more gramatical then anything else. I just don't see any strings being attached to our actions with the introduction of the omniscient being.

What is cause of fatalism with the introduction of an omniscient being?

Even though I stated that an omniscient creator might introduce fatalism I am not alltogether conviced of that idea. If the omniscient being is a creator, it seems that we don't have a choice.

Yet if we eliminate the being and simply state that the world started at some point what changes? What causes us to be free or bound to fatalism?

If the execution and the result are identical in both cenarios why does it mater?

Your attempt to be "consistant" results in x = y. As I stated earlier, ultimate knowledge is actually knowing that you cannot be wrong. The only way to achive this level of knowledge is to be omniscient.

"He not only knows everything, he knows that he knows everything." - this the the key idea.

Our knowledge is finite and limited. Our experiences can be flawed and missleading. Even if you went back to the past with knowledge of the pressent your knowledge of events could be flawed and it would most certainly be incomplete. Thus if you wen't back in time you would not be 100% sure of future events. You will have a faith that things would repeat themselves.

What this means is that your knowledge of future events will always be akin to a prediction. Thus our limited knowledge will never cause fatalism. Even if we predict something a great number of times and we are never wrong there is still a chance that we will be wrong next time.

Now suppose we have a finite world. Suppose we have a God that knows everything there is to know of the finite world. Which means that this God's knowledge is finite as well. How would this God know that she is not missing some piece of information?

asaris

That's true, and I admitted as much when I was talking about second-order knowledge. But there's a flaw in your reasoning.

Sure. We don't know what it is that we know. But we know some things, and we know some things about the future. We could be wrong about what it is that we know, but it seems to me to be clear that, among the set of beliefs I have about the future, some of these beliefs are knowledge.

Because the omniscicent being (I'm trying to maintain the fiction we're not talking about God) knows everything there is to know. So she knows that she knows everything there is to know. (Note that, if you really want, this could mean that she also knows that she knows that she knows etc., so her knowledge is actually infinite. But that's just silly.)

You ask what it is that makes our choices meaningful, when it seems like they have to be either determined or random (at least, I think this is what you mean by your opening statement). My position is that what makes our choices reasonable, what makes them 'free', is that we chose them, that we caused ourselves to act in that way.

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

1010011010

Not an omniscient creator being, though. That's why I specifically commented on it.The omniscient being might look at a radioactive atom and know that in a given half-life it has a 50% probability of decaying... thus the universe is not mechanical. It also knows whether the atom is going to decay during this half-life or not, but that's because it is omniscient, not because the universe is mechanical.Omniscient creator, yes... since it knew all possible outcomes, all apparent choice made in the universe are subordinate to the omniscient creator's choice to create this universe.

Merely omniscient, not so much... or at least no one has been able to explain it.
By my definition of free will, if you can't choose something, it's not actually an option. If your only option is what you will choose, you only have a single option, and so you're not really making a choice. If you're not making a choice you do not have free will.

__________________
Simple Machines in Higher Dimensions

Zyr

To know everything would be to have an answer to every question. My interpretation of that definition would have an omniscient being know which atom was going to decay as well, creator or not.

__________________
"Oh, irony! Oh, no, no, we don't get that here. See, uh, people ski topless here while smoking dope, so irony's not really a high priority. We haven't had any irony here since about, uh, '83 when I was the only practitioner of it, and I stopped because I was tired of being stared at."

Omnia mutantu, nos et mutamur in illis.
All things change, and we change with them.
- Neil Gaiman, Marvel 1602

1010011010

Sure. It knows that there's a 50% chance of atomic decay over one half-life... and would also know if a given atom was going to decay during a given half-life. What is your point?

__________________
Simple Machines in Higher Dimensions

Zyr

Ah, but he would know why that particular atom was going to decay, rather than the one next to it.

__________________
"Oh, irony! Oh, no, no, we don't get that here. See, uh, people ski topless here while smoking dope, so irony's not really a high priority. We haven't had any irony here since about, uh, '83 when I was the only practitioner of it, and I stopped because I was tired of being stared at."

Omnia mutantu, nos et mutamur in illis.
All things change, and we change with them.
- Neil Gaiman, Marvel 1602

asaris

Not if there's nothing there to know. Your definition of omniscience is a bit off; an omniscient being doesn't know everything, she knows everything there is to know.

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Zyr

Fair enough.

__________________
"Oh, irony! Oh, no, no, we don't get that here. See, uh, people ski topless here while smoking dope, so irony's not really a high priority. We haven't had any irony here since about, uh, '83 when I was the only practitioner of it, and I stopped because I was tired of being stared at."

Omnia mutantu, nos et mutamur in illis.
All things change, and we change with them.
- Neil Gaiman, Marvel 1602

maskedrider

I think we just have free will to some extent, but we are definitely not totally free. As Baruch Spinoza said, God controls us through the laws of nature.We cannot go beyond the limits of our human nature.

Zyr

1. If you are controled in any way, you're not free are you? (Just symantics)

2. What is controlling us? The laws of nature? In what way? Why do they only control some of our choices (if we have some free will) ?

__________________
"Oh, irony! Oh, no, no, we don't get that here. See, uh, people ski topless here while smoking dope, so irony's not really a high priority. We haven't had any irony here since about, uh, '83 when I was the only practitioner of it, and I stopped because I was tired of being stared at."

Omnia mutantu, nos et mutamur in illis.
All things change, and we change with them.
- Neil Gaiman, Marvel 1602

1010011010

I think he's basically saying free will is bounded by what's physically possible or sensible.
So you still have free will, it's just not "totally free"... whatever that would mean.

To revisit the recurring example... Just think of it like someone asking "Do you want Chocolate or Vanilla?" Your will is not "totally free" because you can't choose pistachio or rocky road or strawberry or squirrel hair. Your choices are limited to Chocolate and Vanilla, but you are free to choose between them.

__________________
Simple Machines in Higher Dimensions

IamtheSuffering

I don't personally believe in an omniscent being, but here's what I understood when I was brought up(as a Christian)...

Basically, God does know if you will eventually choose heaven/hell(or whatever you udnerstand those to be..), but he doesn't make you do anything...he gives you the power to make your own choices..he just knows the outcome. So I guess you do have free will to an extent , but if you believe in any form of a god how can you have complete free will? IMO just the phychological effects of that belief stop you from having free will. If you don't believe you have it, you won't. If you let anything control your life, it will.

I guess what I want to say is god doesn't control us, he just knows what we will turn out to be...he leaves the opportunity for us to change ourselves for the better. But again, I believe that if you think he has control over you, your actions will resemble that theory.

SERPENT7

The closest I can get to 'free will' is an idea advanced by BF Skinner. He essentially said that all men desire to be ruled by a just master rather than desiring real freedom. (Kind of paraphrasing there.) This is because having real freedom means having to take responsibility for your actions and the consequences of them. Most people would rather stay asleep, and blame an authority figure when things go wrong, rather than stay in control of thier own lives.
Skinner proposed that society is very tightly controlled by the power elite for the benifit of all, including (and especially) themselves. This control mechanism is sometimes obtuse, and sometimes very difficult to detect. Take western society for example. We live under the illusion of total freedom, yet most people obey traffic lights. Crime rates go down in well lit areas, even when there are no cops around for miles. If someones boss tells you to do something, they do it. Often times even if it is not related to thier job. We are born to OBEY. This is the result of generations of social conditioning. This need to obey is strengthened by several social institutions like having a monotheistic religion, single teacher led classrooms, one boss, ...etc.
In short, people like to think they are free, but they are not, nor do they really want to be.