Rather fetching in a tuxedo.
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Interesting thought about omniscience.
- Thread starter rageoftyrael
- Start date
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
People often get bogged down in the concept of perfect, future knowledge invalidating choice, or "free will." More fundamentally, it doesn't even matter if anyone/anything knows - only that it is potentially knowable. If an envelope contains, with perfect and unalterable information, everything that I will do tomorrow (or a metaphorical envelope), I will have no ability to do otherwise, even if there is no one to read it.
An omniscient god with perfect future knowledge doesn't invalidate free will. The existence of the knowledge it can observe does.
An omniscient god with perfect future knowledge doesn't invalidate free will. The existence of the knowledge it can observe does.
Well, it's personally a bit irrelevant to me since I don't believe in a creator deity. I also think an eternal universe is more logical than the big bang theory or a cyclical universe. (So that knocks the Abrahamic religions as well as Hinduism out of the running for me.)
The Emperor of Mankind
Currently the galaxy's spookiest paraplegic
Are the concepts of 'eternal universe' and 'cyclical universe' mutually exclusive? Couldn't the universe have gone through cycles of creation, expansion and destruction & contraction again and again?
*psst* Gnosticism.
Perhaps not. But when you bring a deity into it, you end up at a philosophical dead end, like with Advaita Hinduism (sorry, but I think its explanation for things is laughable rubbish that makes Brahman sound like it has psychological issues with itself and reality an ultimately meaningless sadistic game).
But even without a creator deity, a cyclical universe still has issues, imo, such as where do the souls go and where do the Gods go when it ends over and over? Also, what is facilitating this cycle? Is it the universe itself or a external agent?
I don't know, I just don't find the big bang theory or a cyclical universe to be philosophically satisfying. I'm no expert, though. This is just my personal opinion as it is now.
The Emperor of Mankind
Currently the galaxy's spookiest paraplegic
I can see your point. If you hold to the Norse belief that the universe is finite and will end, only to begin again then I suppose that could be an acceptable explanation - the same could be said for any 'Universe from chaos' creation stories. I actually think those stories are perhaps - unintentionally - closest to the truth even if they are only metaphors.
Utterly wrong and completely without logical basis. One might as well assert that the future tense entails determinism and fatalism.
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
You'll have to do more than make a bare assertion if you want me to take your objection seriously.
I've never known you to make a serious argument, but in the event that you actually thought you had asserted something of import that is defensible, you might want to re-read, say, an argument to the contrary made some ~2,500 years ago by a little known individual named Aristotle, and the countless arguments since. Also, I addressed this idiotic claim in this thread before you made it:
Forget Bob! I pray to Joe Pesci because he gets things done!
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
Apart from not merely making a bare assertion, you'll also have to directly provide some type of logical refutation that specifically addresses the points of my post. My bad for assuming this was understood without me saying it. A good start would be to give some sort of indication that you actually understand what it is that I'm arguing. I have no indication of this at this point. Protip: name dropping or providing references to other people's works doesn't actually provide evidence of anything other than you know how to make topical footnotes and a bibliography. Admittedly, something that has its value, and something I would have found very impressive in 6th grade when I did my first "research paper" using formatted citations.
It does, but only where knowledge is some form of "true belief."
Knowledge wouldn't be causal power.
The very existence of inerrant total knowledge of the future means that the future is a fixed thing.
In a sense, it has already happened from the perspective of the omniscient being.
It is history....but in the other direction.
But remember that I'm not right...I'm not even wrong.
rageoftyrael
Veritas
Hey, let's strive to keep things civil. You think an idea is stupid, and that's fine, but we don't fling mud around here.
So, first, i'm just gonna say, change "tomorrow" to "today" and you might see your argument collapse. Mainly, I feel this argument only holds up(if it in fact does hold up) because of the nature of the word tomorrow. Once you get rid of this nebulous word, and put in more specific dates, your idea that time is a truth granting mechanism kind of falls on it's face, near as I can tell.
Now, I feel like you are arguing something different than we are arguing in your second paragraph. You say that knowing something is going to happen doesn't cause that thing to happen. I don't have a problem with that statement and I doubt any of the others would either. We aren't saying that knowing something is going to happen is what it causes it to happen. We are saying that if it the future can be known, then that invalidates free will. If you know, with certainty, all I will do over my entire life, then even though I may believe I have free will, I clearly don't, because you knew every decision I would make.
Okay, here's a scenario. I can see the future with perfect clarity, at will. So, to prove a point, I look at your future for the next month and write a paper. I get every single detail of what you will do, down to every movement, word and action. Heck, I could add thoughts on there as well, and I do every now and then, just to prove that I can, but not to much, cause it would be way longer than necessary putting every thought you have over the next month on paper. I'll also put what you are feeling as well on any "major" point or decision, since that seems pertinent on any given scenario. Now, it doesn't matter if you read the paper or not, what does matter is that it is correct. Everything in that paper is entirely accurate and everything you do over the next month is detailed perfectly in the paper. Now, we know you made decisions, but since we know, because of the paper, that everything you did was 100% guaranteed to happen, that you didn't have a choice in those decisions. That's the argument we are having when we talk about this. Free will is entirely about choice. It's about having decisions and choosing them. The problem is that even when you think you have a choice, if the knowledge can be known, regardless of whether it is or not, it takes the actual choice away. Not the illusion, no, but it takes any actual choice from you. This is what you need to refute if you disagree with us.
So, first, i'm just gonna say, change "tomorrow" to "today" and you might see your argument collapse. Mainly, I feel this argument only holds up(if it in fact does hold up) because of the nature of the word tomorrow. Once you get rid of this nebulous word, and put in more specific dates, your idea that time is a truth granting mechanism kind of falls on it's face, near as I can tell.
Now, I feel like you are arguing something different than we are arguing in your second paragraph. You say that knowing something is going to happen doesn't cause that thing to happen. I don't have a problem with that statement and I doubt any of the others would either. We aren't saying that knowing something is going to happen is what it causes it to happen. We are saying that if it the future can be known, then that invalidates free will. If you know, with certainty, all I will do over my entire life, then even though I may believe I have free will, I clearly don't, because you knew every decision I would make.
Okay, here's a scenario. I can see the future with perfect clarity, at will. So, to prove a point, I look at your future for the next month and write a paper. I get every single detail of what you will do, down to every movement, word and action. Heck, I could add thoughts on there as well, and I do every now and then, just to prove that I can, but not to much, cause it would be way longer than necessary putting every thought you have over the next month on paper. I'll also put what you are feeling as well on any "major" point or decision, since that seems pertinent on any given scenario. Now, it doesn't matter if you read the paper or not, what does matter is that it is correct. Everything in that paper is entirely accurate and everything you do over the next month is detailed perfectly in the paper. Now, we know you made decisions, but since we know, because of the paper, that everything you did was 100% guaranteed to happen, that you didn't have a choice in those decisions. That's the argument we are having when we talk about this. Free will is entirely about choice. It's about having decisions and choosing them. The problem is that even when you think you have a choice, if the knowledge can be known, regardless of whether it is or not, it takes the actual choice away. Not the illusion, no, but it takes any actual choice from you. This is what you need to refute if you disagree with us.
Guy Threepwood
Mighty Pirate
Apparently that's debatable- hence this forum! The majority of humanity has always concluded that there is a higher purpose- that doesn't make them right of course, but the point as above-
is that there are different conclusions- there is no 'default' explanation here.
If a person believes that the universe, our lives, have no meaning, by extension they believe in the existence of a purposeless automated mechanism needed to bring it all into existence. Some call it multiverse, M Theory, etc
I think that is certainly a possibility, it's what I was brought up to believe, but I no longer believe it's the most probable explanation.
In short, we all believe in something, and it's always easier to critique others' beliefs than our own right?. But we cannot even begin to question our own beliefs if we don't even acknowledge that we have any.
"blind faith is faith which does not recognize itself"
In which case it cannot make anything determined and is entirely consistent with omniscience.
Not necessarily. Or rather, if we interpret spacetime ontologically (or as ontic), then the future is only locally defined anyway. Even if we interpret it as a useful, epistemological model to describe reality but distinguish time ontologically from space, we are still left with instantaneity being locally defined and therefore time as universally describable only via Lorenz (or equivalent) transforms which treat time as non-fixed (and therefore, once again, a future defined locally). Thus all that we require is a restriction to a strict separation between past and future exactly like that used in modern physics: defined in terms of light cones or some similar causal constraints. As omniscience is not causally efficacious, it no more determines the future or even describes the future than does the fact that there are stars which exist that we don't know of because there light hasn't reached the earth and those we believe to exist although they are long gone because light they emitted when the existed is still reaching us.
We aren't very good at understanding this distinction of future/past from a local sense (it is an intrinsic feature of language), but the "box universe" of an ontic 4D-spacetime entails that everything which happens both hasn't happened and will happen (is in the future and the past) simultaneously. Switch "spacetime" for an entity capable of viewing time as similarly static or as "outside" time (so to speak), and we allow for the logical possibility of an omniscient entity without a strict division into future and past and therefore without even fatalism, let alone determinism.
Yes. But in certain formulations, it is possible for the omniscient being to know everything that happens because time is linear and unidirectional only locally and the being is able to "see" the global "picture".
Or without a direction.
So substitute "in 24 hours". All words are nebulous. I can at least define precisely increments of time.
Not unless you feel it is impossible to make statements about the future. The classical answer to the question is that Aristotle's response didn't really hold but rather that statements about the future aren't truth-bearing. In other words, to define a would-be proposition like "there will be a sea-battle at 6:00 AM on 12/21/2030" as lacking truth-value.
That's one thing I've said.
Free will concerns causality. If nothing about your knowledge is capable of causally effecting what I do, than it cannot impinge upon my free will. Every action for which I am capable of exercising my "free will" (I am assuming here that "free will" isn't defined as "free of any influences all of the time" but rather closer to self-determining future states or to make choices such that at least part of your choice is caused by you) results in a future state which I have determined at least in part by exercising free will or (equivalently) by my self-caused choices.
Let us assume that there exists a strict (global) division between past and future. It therefore necessarily follows that knowledge of the future means that whatever choices I make in the future are known, and thus either that this knowledge is causally efficacious, or that I am still free to make the choices I do. Even if the results of future choices are known, I am able to make them so long as knowledge of them doesn't have any causal influence. Similarly, fixing the truth-value of statements about future choices doesn't at all limit my ability to make them.
If we assume, as is more consist with empirical findings and modern physics, that no strict (global) division between the past and present exists, then things become even easier. In both special and general relativity, there is only a strict division between past and present when causality becomes important (and actually, in GTR, not even necessarily then), and therefore locally. Thus knowledge of the future is nothing other than knowledge of the past, because everything that happens is both in the past and future.
By this logic, everything in the past is necessarily determined by the future, since we have knowledge of it. It is to mistake knowledge with what is required to limit free will: causal mechanisms. You are asserting that somehow the knowledge of my choices means it impossible for me to exercise my will when making them. THAT I will make the choices I will because I exercise my free will in doing so is compatible with your advanced knowledge of these choices (this is one form of compatabilism, so long as "determinism" is understood as including self-determined future states or self-caused future states). Your knowledge, lacking any causal efficacy, cannot and does not have any impact over my free will.
If I didn't have the choice, then something cause me to think I did. More specifically, any and all actions I made are determined by a series of causal mechanisms which I have no causal efficacy in making (if I could determine which choices I made, then I would at least in part cause my own choices, whereas if I had to make the "choices" I did, then I didn't actually choose anything because something not me caused everything which led up to and includes my "choice" as well as the resulting future states that I attribute as being in part caused by my choice). However, your writing down my choices is causally disconnected from them. Thus I am free to make choices other than those I did, all you know is the truth-value of various statements about the future, your knowledge can't influence my ability to make choices that I do not at least in part determine by being able to actually make choices, and to the extent I am fated to make these choices it is only because you know future states as if they had already happened. That is, your knowledge determines the future no more than knowledge of the past.
You aren't a truth-maker with respect to statements about the future, they just become truth-bearing and you know their value, but your knowledge makes the future no more determined or fated than if these values were unknown but still existed.
And unless are choices aren't at all self-caused or self-determined such that we can't say we exercised free will, then we are able to actually choose (exercise free will). Your asserting that mere knowledge causally effects decisions I have not made (providing you are not arguing for Laplacean determinism but rather that knowledge of my choices entails I cannot exercise my free will making them). However, you also assert that "knowing something is going to happen doesn't cause that thing to happen". Now, unless there is something about knowledge of the future that does cause the future, then knowledge of the future can't restrict my ability to exercise free will (to determine by choice future states, or to cause future states by choice).
The apparent logical incompatibility can be resolved in several ways. For example, we can suppose the error is in thinking that a being with perfect knowledge should be considered as "within" time but rather more akin to knowledge from the perspective of an entity which exists outside of time and sees everything unfolding within time statically (again, like the "box universe" model of spacetime or any ontic spacetime). Alternatively, your knowledge selects from a set of binary (true/false) values from what is really a many-valued set of truth-values (and therefore rules like the LNC and non tertium datur don't hold). Yet again, we must conclude that knowledge of the future which doesn't require Laplacean determinism and the perfect knowledge of Laplace's Intellect MUST therefore exercise causal power on future events. Or we could side with (some of) the compatibilists and conclude that there isn't any logical inconsistency or incompatibility between you knowing exactly what I will do, feel, and think in the future and my free will (that because your knowledge is vacuous and ineffective and cannot influence my free will it can't possibly constrain it, let alone negate it). These don't by any means exhaust the set of solutions (or even arguments as to why no solution is needed), but they are some examples.