What causes people to choose what they choose?

[Sheldon]

God knows you are going to choose A if you are going to choose A
God knows you are going to choose B if you are going to choose B
God knows you are going to choose C if you are going to choose C

So this deity doesn't know which choice I will make until I make it then? Like @muhammad_isa, you are simply jumping back and forth between two contradictory claims, and pretending there is no contradiction each time.

 

[Sheldon]

My theory is that choices are at the intersection of our physical being, cultural being and spiritual being. We choose in shades of grey between them. Your mileage may vary as my old friend Dale Lehman would say.

What does that even mean?

 

[Sheldon]

I thought as much..
..so for you it is purely hypothetical. It is not possible for a deity to be able to know our future choices. End of !

Hypothetical is a position based on an hypothesis.

noun

1. a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation.

It's your claim and belief, others are extrapolating the logical consequences, this does not mean they share the belief, and their disbelief is irrelevant to the logical conclusion drawn from the belief you have professed.

It's not that hard to understand, especially since this has been explained to you multiple times, yet you keep repeating this spurious claim, as if you're simply trolling for a reaction.

 

[Sheldon]

So your resolution to the "married bachelor" paradox would be "A man can be both married and a bachelor at the same time".
Yeah that makes sense.

It never fails to make smile, when apologists repeat a claim, as if repetition makes it more rational or less irrational. Then simply repeats their bare denial of the rational objection.

Henceforth known as the "nuh uh" defence.

 

[KWED]

No .. you ignored the rest of my post.

Oh, come now! You can't reasonably complain about that when you do it all the time.

"Naturally, if somebody has traveled to the future, they KNOW what events are going to take place.
That series of events is fixed .. fixed by our choices."

And then you travel back in time to just before that person makes that choice.
Can they choose anything other than what you saw them choosing?
No, because if they did, your knowledge of the future would be wrong.
So the voice was fixed by you going forward in time and infallibly observing the future.

 

[viole]

This has already been addressed at great length on here, but here goes again...

In your universe, subject to linear time, you have to choose between A and B at time T.
At T-1 you have not made that choice.
However, at T-1 god knows infallibly that you will choose A at time T.
So at Time T, can you choose B?
Obviously not, or it would render god fallible as his knowledge would be wrong.
Therefore god's infallible omniscient restrict free will.

If God knows what I will choose, that means that I will choose. Otherwise, it is not clear what He knows. The fact that I will not choose what God knows I will not choose, does not entail that I did not choose.

Again, you are assuming God is also following linear time. That is not necessarily true. He could be outside of time and see things in the same way we see things in the past. But then, again, what is the difference? Watching a documentary is like watching events located at another spacetime location. Depending on the time ontology, these events are still happening at that time location. For instance, B theory, and time ontologies derived from relativity, expect that events at spacetime locations never cease to exist.or to happen.

In that case, knowing what happens next in the documentary, entails knowing exactly what is happening next at that spacetime location, just because of my position in spacetime today, and that entails nothing about the freedom of will, or lack thereof, of the characters involved at that remote spacetime location.

If I had a time machine, that exploits that spacetime ontology, and went back to Germany before WW2, knowing what Hitler will unavoidably do, does not entail that he has no free will to do it.

Consider this: if God knows everything, do you think that would break QM? I ask because if He knows how a spin measurement will turn out, might turn the experiment not random, despite QM. For, if He knows how the spin will be measured at time T, we can deduce that it cannot be measured differently. Ergo, measurements in QM are not inherently random, either. They are fully deterministic because of God.

this is of course a non sequitur. X can be as random as it can be, and knowing in advance how it will turn out, on account of having a view of the unchanging future, does not make it less random.

ciao

- viole

 

[viole]

Interestingly, this analogy supports a lack of free will. In this scenario, you watching the film is god's infallible omniscience (inerrant knowledge of what will happen). So, in the film, can Hitler decide to not annexe the Sudetenland?

Nope. But that does not entail that he did not freely decide to annex the Sudetenland.

look, i am a determinist. Even under the regime of QM. And i believe our mind is physical. I also believe, i actually know, that the amount of information in the universe is constant. I cannot possibly surprise the Universe by choosing in a way that could not be inferred by the information in the universe1000 years before my birth. So, whether I will choose to drive or to walk to work, that is already predetermined billions of years ago, by the fact that those two scenarios entail different physical end states that cannot possibly both come from the same physical state 1000000 years ago, without breaking the unitarian character of physical laws. And i do not consider myself able to break the unitarian character of physical laws.

so, having said that, does that really defeat my freedom? The question is, what is “I” when we reduce to the fundamental processes of my mind?

when you study the expected results of a game of (not rigged) roulette, do you use probability theory? Well, I hope so. But Why? A roulette wheel is a mechanical thing. Fundamentally, it is strictly deterministic. You can go ahead and measure all those billions of tiny mechanical variables whose measurement precision will let you determine perfectly the final result. That ball cannot land in no other slot. And you will become rich very soon.

But nobody does, and can, do that. We use probability, effectively as an epistemic tool, despite the roulette wheel and ball not being, fundamentally, probabilistic. And that is because we accept to use different epistemic tools depending on the abstraction level of the system under analysis.

so, why not free will? If we can so effectively represent not random things with probabilistic tools, why not try to make sense of freedom, even thought that does not exist at the fundamental level?

ciao

- viole

 

[muhammad_isa]

So the voice was fixed by you going forward in time and infallibly observing the future.

..and that was fixed by our choices, because as far as the time traveler is concerned, the known events have already taken place.

 

[Nimos]

No .. you ignored the rest of my post.

"Naturally, if somebody has traveled to the future, they KNOW what events are going to take place.
That series of events is fixed .. fixed by our choices."

They didn't travel to the future, the know the future.

I agree with you, that if we are talking a time traveler that doesn't know the future before actually experiencing it, then that would be correct.

But we are talking about a person that have knowledge of the future, regardless of whether they have experienced it or not. They just know what will happen at any given point in time.

 

[muhammad_isa]

They didn't travel to the future, the know the future.

I agree with you, that if we are talking a time traveler that doesn't know the future before actually experiencing it, then that would be correct.

Ah .. now you are putting restrictions on how C knows what the future is.

 

[Nimos]

Ah .. now you are putting restrictions on how C knows what the future is.

No, but we have to stick to the original question, which have always been if someone had perfect knowledge of the future at any given point in time.

If time travel were possible, we could simply use a human, but in that case the discussion would be a completely different one.

 

[muhammad_isa]

..we have to stick to the original question, which have always been if someone had perfect knowledge of the future at any given point in time..

..and also stick to the question of how that someone KNOWS at the given point in time.

 

[halbhh]

I can't think of any reason God would be expected to know 100% of all future events. For example, there's nothing in the extensive texts of the common bible that suggests God knows every future event ahead of time

Instead the texts have many passages that suggest that God doesn't know every event ahead of time, and is sometimes surprised (we see explicit in the text).

Instead we read such as God at times decides what He wants to happen, to "bring about" a future outcome of some sort, and then will intervene actively to send agents or forces to try to cause that outcome, until he succeeds.

Like an engineer tinkering with a project, until they succeed, eventually.

A lot of work at times, constant working, to get some particular outcome, which might never have happened naturally anytime soon (anytime in just a few thousand years).

 

[Nimos]

..and also stick to the question of how that someone KNOWS at the given point in time.

Could be magical for all I care, I don't see how that is relevant?

 

[halbhh]

In the bible we explicitly read God did not expect some things people did.

So, according to the bible, God's omniscience isn't comprised of knowing all of the future.

 

[ppp]

In the bible we explicitly read God did not expect some things people did.

So, according to the bible, God's omniscience isn't comprised of knowing all of the future.

Then it's not omniscience.

 

[Sheldon]

..and that was fixed by our choices, because as far as the time traveler is concerned, the known events have already taken place.

Can we choose other than the exact choice the time traveller saw us choose?

If yes then this is a poor analogy, and if not then our choices would be just an illusion the minute the time traveller saw exactly what we would choose. Replacing your fictional deity with a fictional time traveller, doesn't remove your contradiction.

You just keep making the same claims, and ignoring the contradiction.

 

[Trailblazer]

I did not suggest this phrase. I merely agreed that the future is fixed.

FIXED BY OUR CHOICES.

Did you mean that what will HAPPEN in the future is fixed (determined) by our choices?

 

[Trailblazer]

I'm not sure we often actually choose. It seems to me that most of the time, our so-called choices are predetermined by various factors.

I agree that our so-called choices are predetermined by various factors.

Free will is simply the will/ability to make choices based upon our desires and preferences. Our desires and preferences come from a combination of factors such as childhood upbringing, heredity, education, adult experiences, and present life circumstances and these are the various factors that determine what choices we will make.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Did you mean that what will HAPPEN in the future is fixed (determined) by our choices?

Yes. I have continually corrected people about what I mean by a "fixed future", but they ignore it.