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Old 07-21-2016, 08:03 PM
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davidm davidm is offline
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Default Re: Free will in philosphy and science

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That assumes a compatibilist meaning of free will, doesn't it?
It doesn’t actually assume compatibilism; it’s simply a logical demonstration that there can be no conflict between what we call determinism and what we style free will. Swartz himself writes that while the solution can be seen as “compatibilist” in a certain sense, this sense seems kind of superfluous, like saying that “doubts and itches should co-exist.” Why shouldn’t doubts and itches co-exist? I think the Swartzian logical reconstruction of the age-old problem is best described as eliminativist, rather than compatibilist: There is no threat of incompatibilism in the first place, any more than one should worry about incompatibilism between doubts and itches.
It should very much depend on what we mean by "free will"; I don't see how it could be independent from that. The whole thing invoking an omniscient God is basically time travel and equivalent to assuming determinism. If the result isn't predetermined by an earlier state, there is nothing for any God to foreknow. The time travel is a constraint that ensures determinism, assuming a unique history.
I’m not quite sure I grasp your objection here, but look: Whether the future is pre-determined, or determined, or just open, I think is off the point. Regardless of how we regard the future — existent or just potential yet open — the point stands.

We don’t need to invoke God at all; God is just a special (epistemic) thought experiment that is a subset of Aristotle’s problem of future contingents, also known as logical determinism.

The question is: Can there be true statements today, about future contingent events? And if so, what, if anything, does that imply?

Suppose today I utter the following statement: “Tomorrow, there will be a sea battle.” And then tomorrow comes and a sea battle indeed takes place, so my statement today was true about an event tomorrow.

Does that mean the sea battle had to happen?
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