View Single Post
  #22  
Old 07-21-2016, 07:38 PM
peacegirl's Avatar
peacegirl peacegirl is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2011
Location: U.S.A.
Gender: Female
Posts: XXMVCDXXXII
Default Re: Free will in philosphy and science

Quote:
Originally Posted by davidm View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by thedoc View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by davidm View Post
As a matter of pure logic, there is no conflict between perfect foreknowledge and free will. Norman Swartz discusses this in one of the links GdB gives in his OP, which post I’ll specifically address later, and plus I’ve discussed this before here at :ff:. But let’s look at the alleged problem again.

Put simply, the claim that perfect foreknowledge precludes free will constitutes a modal fallacy.

The structure of the claim is: If God foreknows that I will do x, then I must do x — no free will.

As Swartz explains, in cases like this (and it generalizes to logical and causal determinism; what we are discussing here is a case of epistemic determinism) — the modal fallacy lies in imparting necessity (must) to the the consequent of the antecedent, whereas the correct step is to assign necessity jointly to the consequent and the antecedent.

The repaired argument now goes:

Necessarily (If God foreknows that I will do x, then I will [not must!] do x)

Given the stipulation that God is omniscient, it follows that he cannot fail to know what I will do. What doesn’t follow is that I must do the thing, that I actually do.

Suppose instead of doing x, I choose to do y. Then we would get:

Necessarily (If God foreknows that I will do y, then I will [not must!] do y)

It is not necessary that I do x or y. I can do either, freely. What IS necessary is that what I do, and what God foreknows, must match, in virtue of God’s omniscience.

If I do x, God will foreknow I do x. My doing x provides the truth grounds for what God foreknows. If I do y instead, then God’s foreknowledge will be different, for I will have supplied different truth grounds for his foreknowledge: I will have supplied y instead of x. This result, btw, is the solution to Newcomb’s Paradox.

Modal logic is cashed out in a heuristic of possible worlds, by which we mean logically possible worlds.

We can now parse out the above scenario in the modal language of (logically) possible worlds:

There is a possible world at which I do x.

There is a possible world at which I do y.

There is a possible world at which I do x, and God foreknows that I do x. (In fact, this proposition is true at all possible worlds, which means it is a necessary truth, like the statement “all bachelors are unmarried.” But note again — this is absolutely crucial to understand — the necessity lies jointly in the relation between the antecedent — what God foreknows — and the consequent — what I actually do. What I do by itself is utterly contingent; i.e., free.

There is a possible world at which I do y, and God foreknows that I do y. (also a necessary truth; i.e. true at all possible worlds and false at none of them.)

BUT

5. There is no possible world at which I do x, and God foreknows I do y; and there is no possible world at which I do y, and God foreknows I do x.

The upshot here is that while I am free to do x or y, there is no possible world at which what I do, and what God foreknows, fail to match. But this fact is no curb on my freedom. Once we see that there is a possible world at which I do x, and another at which I do y, then the whole alleged problem between God’s foreknowledge and my freedom evaporates.

Moreover, this modal solution to the alleged conflict between epistemic determinism and free will universalizes to all alleged conflicts between determinism and free will; the same modal solution holds for logical determinism and for causal determinism, and thus it renders the alleged conflict between all forms of determinism and free will a pseudo problem.
Thankyou, I believe that this is similar, if not the same, as your explanation in the other thread. As I have stated, I understand the logical explanation, and I know the difference between must and will, my problem is that it just doesn't feel right, and this is not a logical problem. Sometimes it takes me awhile to internalize information and ideas, sometimes it never happens. Again thankyou for the explanation, I will be trying to absorb it and internalize it.

I think my problem is similar to the difficulty I have with Lessans/Peacegirl's argument that we don't have free will, but our choices are free. And then she claims that we are compelled to choose only the "best" option in the circumstances. Of course Lessans claims that we always choose in the direction of greater satisfaction, by claiming that every choice we make is in the direction of greater satisfaction. We choose what we choose because we choose it.
I think the easiest way to understand it is to reverse the time direction.

If God has infallible foreknowledge of what we will do, then he also has an infallible memory of what we did, right?

So if yesterday I did x, then God will infallibly recall that fact, right?

But does it follow from this that I had to do x, yesterday? I think most people will immediately see the falsity of this.
You didn't have to do x in advance of you doing it. But once you did it, you could not have done otherwise given that same set of determinants.

Quote:
Originally Posted by davidm
They will recognize that I could have done y instead, but did not. If I had done y, then God would infallibly remember that fact instead, the y fact, rather than the x fact.
God would go along with anything you chose and have the foreknowledge of it. Who is saying otherwise? But this does not grant you freedom of the will.

Quote:
Originally Posted by davidm
We don’t even need God here. We have a record that Hitler invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. Because we have this record, does it mean Hitler had to have invaded Poland on that day? Surely not. He just did invade Poland, and that is all. Had he not done so, then today we would have a different historical record — Hitler not invading Poland on that day.
But he did do so and if you understand determinism at all, you would know that given his background, his heredity, his experiences, his personality, he could not have chosen any other option than the one he did. Had he not done so, there would have been a different set of antecedent conditions; a blip in the causal chain of his life that may then have led to a different outcome.

Quote:
Originally Posted by davidm
Gods infallibly foreknowing I will do x no more forces me to do x than God’s remembering I did x, forced me to do x. What God foreknows or remembers is conditional on what I actually (freely) do.
Why do you keep bringing God into this? God does not force anything. Natural laws are descriptive, remember? God is not forcing us in a certain direction; we choose it because we want to. You are making it seem that God is making you do something that you haven't chosen and don't want to do. You are not being forced by God or anything else to do what you don't want. God is in line with whatever you choose, but once you have chosen x (which was contingent on the available options and your consideration of the pros and cons of each of these options), you were not free to choose y because you found y less preferable in comparison. Your choice of x is not a free one at all, and all of your failed logic will never change that fact.
__________________
https://www.declineandfallofallevil....3-CHAPTERS.pdf

https://www.declineandfallofallevil.com/ebook/


"The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing
which is no longer doubtful is the cause of half their errors" -- John Stuart Mill

Last edited by peacegirl; 07-21-2016 at 07:58 PM.
Reply With Quote
 
Page generated in 0.44043 seconds with 11 queries