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Post by QWcanary on Sept 30, 2011 20:49:47 GMT -5
Our environment (pre-determined) sets our range of those things we can freely choose. So we kinda have free-will, but only in the bubble of pre-determination, god or no god.
Many times, I have to ask the fundy just what they mean by "free will" - is it just making choices? Well yeah, then we have free will. But can we have complete free will? No -I don't think. We don't have a choice about a great many things (like, we don't get to choose what language we learn first, for example). I think, for a fundy, the fact that they have cognition at all (well some of them) means, to them, that they have free-will.
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Post by m52nickerson on Sept 30, 2011 20:56:54 GMT -5
And yet we can approach problems from a universal perspective. And that's ignoring that our perspective may be invalid, even if we are unable to see past it. And, ultimately, we still have a situation where our actions are predefined by external factors. We may be physically capable of pressing "p" instead of "k," but we don't and if it is possible for a being to know what we will do before we do it, we do not have the ability to do anything but what has been predicted. The whole perspective thing you're talking about is not true free will, but the illusion of free will. Don't is different then can't. I would also submit that having only one possible outcome does not preclude free will. This ideas is laid out by Harry Frankfurt. Black, an evil neurosurgeon, wishes to see White dead but is unwilling to do the deed himself. Knowing that Mary Jones also despises White and will have a single good opportunity to kill him, Black inserts a mechanism into Jones's brain that enables Black to monitor and to control Jones's neurological activity. If the activity in Jones's brain suggests that she is on the verge of deciding not to kill White when the opportunity arises, Black's mechanism will intervene and cause Jones to decide to commit the murder. On the other hand, if Jones decides to murder White on her own, the mechanism will not intervene. It will merely monitor but will not affect her neurological function. Now suppose that when the occasion arises, Jones decides to kill White without any “help” from Black's mechanism.In this case Jones had one ultimate course of action, but still had free will. She still had a choice.
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Post by Admiral Lithp on Sept 30, 2011 21:12:25 GMT -5
I like the "parallel universe" cop out. It doesn't actually solve anything, it just means that now instead of 1 Lithp with no free will, there are an infinite number of Lithps with no free will.
There are all kinds of problems with this. Firstly, he did NOT have the choice about whether or not to kill the man, as if he had quote-unquote "chosen" not to, his mind would have automatically been changed for him.
Second of all, the analogy doesn't provide enough information to be comparable. Does the device affect how he feels? Et cetera. These things are important because they determine precisely what choices he does and does not have. For instance, even though he doesn't have the choice to kill the man or not, he may or may not have the choice to regret it later, depending on how the device works.
Thirdly, this is different from the omniscience problem. With the omniscience problem, there would never be a time where you might do something "outside of the plan," so there is no need for a device to control your mind.
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Post by m52nickerson on Sept 30, 2011 21:29:07 GMT -5
There are all kinds of problems with this. Firstly, he did NOT have the choice about whether or not to kill the man, as if he had quote-unquote "chosen" not to, his mind would have automatically been changed for him. She did have a choice, that choice would in the end not affect the outcome, but it did affect if the device had to work or not. Second of all, the analogy doesn't provide enough information to be comparable. Does the device affect how he feels? Et cetera. These things are important because they determine precisely what choices he does and does not have. For instance, even though he doesn't have the choice to kill the man or not, he may or may not have the choice to regret it later, depending on how the device works. Thirdly, this is different from the omniscience problem. With the omniscience problem, there would never be a time where you might do something "outside of the plan," so there is no need for a device to control your mind. The analogy is not meant to take on the entire problem of free will and foreknowledge, but only to show that it is possible to have a free will, but only have one course of action possible.
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Post by Shano on Sept 30, 2011 21:38:49 GMT -5
M52, the issue with your analogies is that they use limited devices. The case of a god is quite different - it is omniscient and omnipotent. One could say that the difference between your examples and a god is similar to the difference of a suffciently large number (your device) vs infinity. Infinity is not a number - it is incomparable to any number. It has qualitatively different properties.
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Post by m52nickerson on Sept 30, 2011 21:43:24 GMT -5
M52, the issue with your analogies is that they use limited devices. The case of a god is quite different - it is omniscient and omnipotent. One could say that the difference between your examples and a god is similar to the difference of a suffciently large number (your device) vs infinity. Infinity is not a number - it is incomparable to any number. It has qualitatively different properties. That would also be true for any analogy regarding God. Without such analogies or thoughts experiments you are left with what the fundies like to say, God is beyond our understanding. In the end, all this really is is a mind exercise. To very interesting articles regarding this: www.iep.utm.edu/foreknow/#H6plato.stanford.edu/entries/free-will-foreknowledge/
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Post by Admiral Lithp on Sept 30, 2011 21:55:53 GMT -5
It doesn't do that. At all. Because free will isn't a binary system, some choices you can not make, and so your free will is limited. As a result, there is more than one choice being made in a given scenario.
What this analogy does is assert, "See! She decided not to kill him, but yet she did, so it's free will!" but what actually happened was that she decided she didn't WANT to kill him and had the decision TO kill him made for her.
No. Many concepts of God are literally impossible, but Fundies try to twist the concept until it's so hard to compare that they can just go, "It's beyond our understanding." This is not true. I can point out that their analogy is flawed because it doesn't take an important concept into account & they will do nothing to fix it. It's not that I "don't understand," it's that they're trying to obscure the real problem.
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Post by Vene on Sept 30, 2011 22:31:04 GMT -5
The analogy is not meant to take on the entire problem of free will and foreknowledge, but only to show that it is possible to have a free will, but only have one course of action possible. Which is so far beside the point it's funny.
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Post by Napoleon the Clown on Oct 1, 2011 0:40:02 GMT -5
Probability has absolutely nothing to do with an event that has already come to its conclusion. Please use words correctly. Probability is about what might happen. There's a difference.
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czechmate
Full Member
Czech Republic / UK
Posts: 123
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Post by czechmate on Oct 1, 2011 4:04:34 GMT -5
Excuse me, but isn't "fundie thinking" an oxymoron? Generally the only function the fundie brain serves is to keep thier ears apart. ;D
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Post by brendanrizzo on Oct 1, 2011 11:40:08 GMT -5
Excuse me, but isn't "fundie thinking" an oxymoron? Generally the only function the fundie brain serves is to keep thier ears apart. ;D Well, if you want to get technical, we'll just ask, "Why do fundies keep believing you can have free will?" Okay?
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Post by m52nickerson on Oct 1, 2011 12:39:40 GMT -5
Which is so far beside the point it's funny. It goes to show that even if an outcome is known, the person who brings about that outcome can still have free will.
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Post by m52nickerson on Oct 1, 2011 13:22:45 GMT -5
Probability has absolutely nothing to do with an event that has already come to its conclusion. Please use words correctly. Probability is about what might happen. There's a difference. If there is no free will because God has perfect foreknowledge it also means that every events probability becomes 1 or 0. They will either happen or they won't. The same type of thing happens as event occur. So using probability to illustrate that point is perfectly fine, ad has been done before. I'm sorry that does not suit you.
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Post by Vene on Oct 1, 2011 14:03:28 GMT -5
Which is so far beside the point it's funny. It goes to show that even if an outcome is known, the person who brings about that outcome can still have free will. It's not even comparable to what we are talking about. For whatever stupid reason you are hung up on the external agent causing the choice. This does not matter. This is not a question of forcing somebody to do your will, this is a matter of an external agent predicting your actions with zero coercion. An omniscient god knows for an absolute fact what you will do and there is zero chance of you not doing it. When the probability of you doing something is 1 or 0, then you have no will. And before you repeat what you threw at Nappy, this fact is why it took a long time for somebody in the Christian world to examine statistics, if there is an omniscient being, then probability is a joke as absolutely everything has been predetermined. You simply cannot make choices in a predetermined world, but you can think you made a choice.
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Post by m52nickerson on Oct 1, 2011 14:24:11 GMT -5
It's not even comparable to what we are talking about. For whatever stupid reason you are hung up on the external agent causing the choice. This does not matter. This is not a question of forcing somebody to do your will, this is a matter of an external agent predicting your actions with zero coercion. An omniscient god knows for an absolute fact what you will do and there is zero chance of you not doing it. When the probability of you doing something is 1 or 0, then you have no will. And before you repeat what you threw at Nappy, this fact is why it took a long time for somebody in the Christian world to examine statistics, if there is an omniscient being, then probability is a joke as absolutely everything has been predetermined. You simply cannot make choices in a predetermined world, but you can think you made a choice. It is for one of the reasons you just stated. "An omniscient god knows for an absolute fact what you will do and there is zero chance of you not doing it." That is exactly the type of thing that example illustrates. It is a certain that Jones will kill white, yet she does maintain her free will. That goes to show that your next premise "When the probability of you doing something is 1 or 0, then you have no will." is not always true. The device in her head is merely a mechanism in demonstrating that point. So just because you will do something does not mean you did not have a choice.
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