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Originally Posted by davidm
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Originally Posted by davidm
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Originally Posted by davidm
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That assumes a compatibilist meaning of free will, doesn't it?
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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? |
Whether the statement is true today depends on whether the world is deterministic or not. If it isn't, the truth value of that statement isn't defined the moment it's made. If you bring an omniscient God into the picture, you assume the statement has to be true ahead of time, thereby ensuring determinism. |
Right. Aristotle worried that if there are true statements today, about events that happen tomorrow, then fatalism ensues; though fatalism is not the same thing is determinism. That is, he thought the future cannot be changed and any effort to do so is idle.
So he decided that statements today about events tomorrow lack truth values. They are neither true nor false but open.
But determinism is not incompatible with free will. Only indeterminism is incompatible with (the opposite of) free will.
Let us imagine that the entire past, present and future is fixed -- there is one, and only one, uniquely determined history.
Is this incompatible with free will? We can define free will, for the purposes of discussion, in several ways. One is the ability to choose among genuinely available alternatives (principle of alternative possibilities). Or we can define it as having ultimate moral responsibility for our acts. Or we can define it as being free of coercion but not of determinism. Maybe there are other ways to define it. If the entire past, present and future is fixed, can this be consistent with any version of free will? |
Determinism is the opposite of "could have done otherwise." As I explained, having the ability to choose among genuinely available alternatives (principle of alternative possibilities) does not grant free will. Being morally responsible is also out of the question if a person could not have done otherwise in spite of your judgment that he could have. There is a glaring contradiction here that you won't allow yourself to see. Free will also does not mean the absence of a gun to our head. And lastly, determinism has nothing to do with fatalism, as Trick Slattery demonstrated in his graphic.
Determinism vs. Fatalism - InfoGraphic (a comparison)