God, Free-will, and the knowledge of God - Is his knowledge causation?

[danieldemol]

You don't control outcomes. That's a common misconception about what free will actually implies. What you have is a degree of freedom over which actions you take; the outcomes are always beyond your control.

Wouldn't an action be an outcome of sorts?

 

[RestlessSoul]

Wouldn't an action be an outcome of sorts?

The boundaries between one and the other might be blurred, certainly. We might say the process begins with intent; intent leads to action and action leads to outcomes. Most of which would seem to be beyond our individual control.

 

[Koldo]

You don't control outcomes. That's a common misconception about what free will actually implies. What you have is a degree of freedom over which actions you take; the outcomes are always beyond your control.

The action you take is an outcome in itself of your choice.
Nevertheless, my question remains. You did say we have a degree of control over which outcome occurs in our experience.

 

[sayak83]

A universe that appears to be on autopilot is just as well explained by leaving gods out. And yes, the world is so much more comprehensible from that perspective. The belief in a tri-omni god that judges and punishes creates philosophical problems like the one this thread is about - is free will compatible with omniscience? - that only exist for those committed to concept that man has free will.

In the case of the Abrahamist, whose god fits the above description, he needs his god to be all-knowing and fair at the same time, but that's not possible if one describes a god that foresees everything before he creates it and then punishes its creation for being whet it made them and always knew that they must be. And so he is forced to simply say that man has free will anyway even if that is incompatible with perfect omniscience. He says that they ARE compatible and calls that position compatibilism, but that doesn't help the argument.

But for the atheist, there's no insurmountable problem here at all. Maybe there is free will and the universe is not compelled to unfold one way. Or maybe the opposite is the case. It may be difficult to decide between these, but they're both coherent positions. The theist who wants to keep both omniscience and free will is forced to take an incoherent position and simply insist that it's possible anyway without an argument, or with spurious arguments:

Why do you want to make that point? Nobody seems to be arguing it. Suppose this god exists and does know the future perfectly. Suppose it could download that knowledge to you or me. Now we know the future perfectly, but we are not claiming to be the cause of that future - just that it IS caused deterministically.

According to Abrahamic religion, unlike for you and me, that god is ALSO the cause of what happens. But none of that is relevant to whether free will and omniscience are compatible. It's a deflection from that discussion that doesn't help resolve it.

There it is again. This is standard in the toolbox of those making your argument.

This does not follow from your last comment.

That doesn't strengthen the argument. Nobody should be arguing for compatibilism. It indicates to me that such an atheist has an irresistible intuition that his will his free while understanding that even quantum indeterminacy cannot generate free will. He has the same problem as the Abrahamic theist, but his barrier is not an ideology, but rather, a psychological state that he cannot transcend.

Let's take a moment about what we're claiming is the case when we say that man has free will. Most people mean that they have desires and if able, will freely make them reality. Thus, my hypothalamus detects relative dehydration and sends a message of thirst to the subject of consciousness, which then goes for a drink. If that's what you mean by free will, THAT is compatible with determinism, but it's what some call the illusion of free will. We don't know whether we could have had any other will, nor whether we could have acted any other way.

But if we mean that the self is the author of that desire rather than a passive recipient of unseen brain circuits like the hypothalamus and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, and that it actually could have chosen otherwise rather than that it feels like it could have - that's what I mean by free will - then we may not have that. That may not be possible.

But some will simply insist that they have free will anyway because their will feels free and because their theology or intuition cause them to insist that free will must exist even if they also believe a god knows every desire and every choice before they do.

We may in fact be those robots that many theists say that their god doesn't want and didn't create. If so, we're blissfully unaware of that as we deterministically go about fulfilling a preordained destiny feeling fully free and feeling as if we are the author of our desires and could have acted otherwise. If that's how reality is, then I'm good with that. But the Abrahamist cannot accept that for ideological reasons, and apparently, neither can the atheistic compatibilist, apparently because his intuition rejects the possibility that his will might not be free.

This is just an explanation for omniscience, not an argument for the coexistence of free will.

I think there is a huge confusion about what free will means.
One side says free will means a person can act differently even if everything in the universe to that point, including his mind/brain states were the same till the previous instant. This IS possible: but only if quantum mechanics is truly stochastic (as seems to be the case) and/or mind is not deterministic and not constrained by physical determinism.
Another side (usual PPL) believes free will to be merely the difference between choices made by self volition and choices made under duress(gun on my head type). This defn is compatible with determinism as it differentiates the case between the most relevant factor determining an action to be either internal mind states (ie my will) vs a case where the most relevant factor is external (the gun on my head).

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I think there is a huge confusion about what free will means.

Agreed. What some call free will is what others call the illusion of free will, which as you described, is the feeling that one had a desire and was free to act on it when in fact perhaps he didn't have a choice. What I am interested in is whether that "choice" could have been otherwise, and I've decided that the question is unanswerable not just for now, but unanswerable in principle. What test would resolve that matter? Even if we had the power to go back in time and relive that moment with those same precise parameters of all of the contents of spacetime, we wouldn't answer the question any better than the last time we were at that point in time. We wouldn't be there the second time with a memory that we had been there once nor how we chose before.

I can't think of another means of resolving this issue, and that one doesn't work.

You don't control outcomes. That's a common misconception about what free will actually implies. What you have is a degree of freedom over which actions you take; the outcomes are always beyond your control.

Sure we do. That's the value of knowledge. We don't control all outcomes. We might not be able to stop the rain from falling, but we can be sure that the outcome is that we remain dry.

The omniscient God can and does know the future even though it is not predetermined.

That's the claim. Others find it incoherent, that is, internally self-contradictory. Skeptics don't accept the claim, but we can stipulate to the possibility and fact of perfect knowledge in a deity.

God has perfect foreknowledge, so everything that will ever happen to each and every person in their lives is written on the Tablet of Fate. Whatever we end up doing will be what God knew we would do, because God is all-knowing.

That's a statement of what omniscience is and a description of a deterministic world - one in which the future can in principle be predicted perfectly from a perfect knowledge of the present.

Humans have free will and the ability to choose what we will do throughout our lives, over the course of time.

That's the other claim. We don't know that that is the case. Skeptics of Abrahamic theology say the two claims are incompatible.

These events have not happened to us yet since we exist in linear time

Here's where you jump the shark. You've got the deity and man living in different realities. One can claim that deity experiences reality differently than man, but not that the rules of that reality are different. We experience time as a flow of consecutive instants in which the conscious content evolves from was to is as present instants become past instants and future instants manifest as the new now, but even if that's just a subjective perspective, it's being had withing a universe where the future is ordained even if that future isn't very clear to man at any given time.

But none of that makes the claim of the coexistence of free will and omniscience coherent. Simply saying that reality looks different to an omniscient god that can sense and experience dimensions and perspectives unavailable to us doesn't change what's logically possible.

I know what he is saying. But it's absurd.

No, what YOU are claiming is absurd. It is absurd to claim that the future is known but that man can freely make choices at the time of action that he could have made otherwise.

has not understood the OP and completely ignored it. Completely. You have too.

I refuted it and you ignored my refutation. Your argument's first point was to claim that "knowledge is not causation thus we do have free-will." That's a non sequitur. The words after "thus" don't derive from the words preceding it. You might as well have said Bob is six feet tall thus it's Monday.

The second part was the same kind of hyperdimensional sleight-of-hand that @Trailblazer mentioned and I just addressed. There, you claimed, "God is a transcended being and he transcends time." That's a vague claim that translates that you want your deity to be excused from the rules of reason.

Answer the question directly without any other irrelevant rhetoric like earlier please.

This is a bad faith habit of yours. You assert control you don't have and aren't entitled to, and you are dismissive and condescending. In the past, you've eventually begun trolling your collocutors with a series of these brief, dismissive comments rather than engage in dialectic. You begin that way. You brought and presented an argument for discussion. But once everything has been said and said again, and you've made no progress, your tendency is to switch to this mode here. You don't get to call the other guy's response beating about the bush or irrelevant rhetoric. You need to make the evidenced argument.

 

[Koldo]

This IS possible: but only if quantum mechanics is truly stochastic (as seems to be the case) and/or mind is not deterministic and not constrained by physical determinism.

How would the stochastic nature of quantum mechanics allow for free will though?

 

[firedragon]

No, what YOU are claiming is absurd. It is absurd to claim that the future is known but that man can freely make choices at the time of action that he could have made otherwise.

How in the world can knowledge become determinism? Can you tell me a well educated atheist scholar in philosophy make this argument?

Thanks.

 

[Koldo]

Agreed. What some call free will is what others call the illusion of free will, which as you described, is the feeling that one had a desire and was free to act on it when in fact perhaps he didn't have a choice. What I am interested in is whether that "choice" could have been otherwise, and I've decided that the question is unanswerable not just for now, but unanswerable in principle. What test would resolve that matter? Even if we had the power to go back in time and relive that moment with those same precise parameters of all of the contents of spacetime, we wouldn't answer the question any better than the last time we were at that point in time. We wouldn't be there the second time with a memory that we had been there once nor how we chose before.

I can't think of another means of resolving this issue, and that one doesn't work.

Actually, if you could travel back in time, it would be trivial to figure this out. You would only need to observe how others behaved in the short-term. This would entail something akin to locking yourself in your bedroom to avoid bringing interference and watching the news. Do you notice any change? If not, determinism is what we got.

 

[firedragon]

A very fine specimen of that group, from what I've read and heard from him. Iirc, he thinks that free will is an illusion, and he's agnostic about the world being deterministic. I can't remember what, if any, he said about the connection of the two.

You are wrong. Read his book on it. He is a Compatibilist.

 

[Koldo]

How in the world can knowledge become determinism? Can you tell me a well educated atheist scholar in philosophy make this argument?

Thanks.

Let me put it this way: Precise knowledge over the future is only compatible with determinism, because in determinism the future is set in stone, whereas in indeterminism it is not. It is only in determinism that the future is perfectly knowable.

 

[firedragon]

Actually, if you could travel back in time, it would be trivial to figure this out. You would only need to observe how others behaved in the short-term. This would entail something akin to locking yourself in your bedroom to avoid bringing interference and watching the news. Do you notice any change? If not, determinism is what we got.

Id you travel back in time, 24 hours, you know what's gonna happen the next day. Does that mean you determined what's gonna happen the next day?

Can you show me some Atheist philosophers trained in philosophy who made this kind of logic? Which determinist in the atheistic world trained in philosophy makes this argument?

 

[firedragon]

Precise knowledge over the future is only compatible with determinism, because in determinism the future is set in stone,

Why is it "future" for a 4D being as in analogized in the OP? Where did you get that from? Did you not understand that mathematical concept at all?

 

[Koldo]

Id you travel back in time, 24 hours, you know what's gonna happen the next day. Does that mean you determined what's gonna happen the next day?

No. If I can observe the exact same events happening then that's solid evidence the future is set in stone. An inevitability that entails determinism being true.

 

[firedragon]

No. If I can observe the exact same events happening then that's solid evidence the future is set in stone. An inevitability that entails determinism being true.

Tell me a philosophically trained scholar in atheism who makes this kind of argument. You have not understood determinism. Which philosopher says this?

 

[Koldo]

Why is it "future" for a 4D being as in analogized in the OP? Where did you get that from? Did you not understand that mathematical concept at all?

I did, but you haven't even provided any reason to presume that this being would be able to observe the entire timeline simultaneously.

 

[firedragon]

I did, but you haven't even provided any reason to presume that this being would be able to observe the entire timeline simultaneously.

I have. Read the OP.

Now let me repeat the question I asked you several times.

Give me a philosophically trained Atheist scholar who makes the same argument you are making. That knowledge of the timeline means determinism.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I have. Read the OP.

Now let me repeat the question I asked you several times.

Give me a philosophically trained Atheist scholar who makes the same argument you are making. That knowledge of the timeline means determinism.

Well, I can't do it myself. But I was told by an atheistic philoopsher that David Hume claimed there was no cause and effect, so I doubt he believe in determinism. So you might be on to something.

 

[Koldo]

Tell me a philosophically trained scholar in atheism who makes this kind of argument. You have not understood determinism. Which philosopher says this?

"Determinism, in philosophy and science, the thesis that all events in the universe, including human decisions and actions, are causally inevitable." Determinism | Definition, Philosophers, & Facts

"Causal determinism is, roughly speaking, the idea that every event is necessitated by antecedent events and conditions together with the laws of nature." Causal Determinism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Stuff like this?
I am not sure what you asking for exactly.

 

[Koldo]

I have. Read the OP.

I did read it. It is merely a claim with no susbtance.

 

[sayak83]

How would the stochastic nature of quantum mechanics allow for free will though?

Again what is your definition.
If underlying physics is stochastic, then indeed even with exactly same initial conditions, different actions and decisions can occur. That is we can do or will "otherwise". That is one definition of free will.