K

Douglas:

Your example doesn't include that fact that the certain people were also created by the person setting up the circumstances. God supposedly creates the people knowing how they will respond. That's the fundamental problem.

Douglas J. Bender

That doesn't really make a difference. If the human person in my example is not responsible for the free will choices of the people in those circumstances, then the same reasoning would apply to a God who created free will people. If you like, posit the human person in my example as the human father of those others, and that he knew before they were conceived what they would do in those circumstances. He is still not responsible for their free will choices.


In Christ,

Douglas

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Douglas J. Bender:

"If you like, posit the human person in my example as the human father of those others, and that he knew before they were conceived what they would do in those circumstances. He is still not responsible for their free will choices."

I don't think this will save humans' free will. I hope I haven't jumped in too late in the discussion. You seem to believe God knows what humans will do if some condition obtains; His knowledge of our choices is thereby a sort of conditional knowledge. God knows "P --> Q", for example. But I'm not clear whether you believe God also knows P; that is, whether God actually sees the future. The Bible seems to suggest that He does. (If God sees the future, of course, He also observes Q happening somewhere in it.)

My response is this. On almost any libertarian conception of free will, for free will to exist requires that I could have done otherwise. Even if I stop short of asserting that God has caused me to do x, the fact remains that I could not have done y if God knows that I will do x. One could present the Argument from Truth.

But I may have your concept of free will wrong. Are you a libertarian or not?

K

Douglas:

He most certainly would be responsible. Are you saying that if Adolf Hitler's father knew before conception exactly what his son would do and he proceeded to knock Mrs. Hitler up, he would share none of the responsibility ?

But this even goes further than that. God supposedly designed us. That means he not only created us knowing how we would act. He picked the design out of an infinite number of other possibilities and decided to go ahead with creating each of us knowing exactly what each of us would do.

That would be like me writing a program that I know will always multiply 3 and 7 incorrectly. Then, after releasing that program to the world, I could claim that I had no responsibility for the incorrect results. The program has the free will to multiply correctly. It just never will - and I knew it before I sent it out.

ELECTROGOD

Hey, "god" knocked-up an unwed virgin (via a Roman soldier). I'd say "god" is just like the rest of us "sinners".

You're EVIL!
-Kids in the Hall

ELECTROGOD

A genetic mutation would not make a horse become a unicorn. Unicorns are fictional characters with different versions of special "powers" in fairytales that exist only in our imagination. Good luck getting the genetic characteristic of a Narwhale horn to combine with a specifically white horse and then endow it with "powers" from your favorite book, or easier yet to graft a horn onto a horse, it's the closest you will get!

Douglas J. Bender

I don't think so. I'm winning, so I'm game.

I wouldn't say so, exactly. I would say that God knows what our choices would be under ANY circumstances, and this would include, of course, those circumstances which are actually "actualized".

I believe God knows "P". God actually sees the future, because, as I understand it, the past, present, and future are all "present" to Him.

I believe that for free will to exist requires that a person could have acted otherwise than they did and do.

No, that's where you are in error, I would say. Foreknowledge does not imply lack of free will. I think I gave this, or a similar, example earlier, but I will mention it here just in case I didn't: If a man knows a day ahead of time exactly what his son will do when faced with a particular circumstance that will confront him, does that mean that the son, when confronted with that circumstance, is not completely free to choose based on his own will? I would say no.

It seems to me that the idea that foreknowledge implies lack of free will stems from the assumption that choices are predetermined by what has occurred in the past. I don't think that they are. (Or maybe I'm just confused.)

I avoid politics.


In Christ,

Douglas

[ November 06, 2002: Message edited by: Douglas J. Bender ]</p>

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Douglas J. Bender:

"I believe God knows 'P'. God actually sees the future, because, as I understand it, the past, present, and future are all 'present' to Him."

Good so far.

"I believe that for free will to exist requires that a person could have acted otherwise than they did and do."

So there is a possible world in which S did ~p if S did p freely in the actual world. I'd be interested to see how you confirm transworld identity.

First, let's analyze knowledge. Most epistemologists would say that it is, roughly, justified true belief. So the man's belief about the future is true. We know this analytically.

We are in position to present a form of the Argument from Truth, for fatalism[1].

1 Let E be any event that occurs in the future. Then:
2 The proposition that E will occur is true. So:
3 Nothing that anyone can do can bring it about that E does not occur. That is:
4 It is inevitable that E will occur. So (since E is arbitrary):
5 All future events are inevitable, that is, fatalism (about the future) is true.

I think the only way to reject this argument is to deny 2, to deny that true propositions about the future exist. But this conflicts with your belief that God sees the future, and with the Bible.

We can derive truth from knowledge, and from that we can derive that there is no possible world in which something else happens. If there was any chance at all that S would not do p, then there was a possible world in which S did p. So I agree that the man's son uses his will to make the decision, but it is not free will as defined in a libertarian way. If the man knows P and P --&gt; Q, the man knows Q before Q obtains. And then "Q will obtain" is true before Q obtains.

[1] I borrow this from Jubien, Contemporary Metaphysics (1997).

Douglas J. Bender

Thomas,


I don't know that I would use the term, "fatalism" - it sounds too much like "fatalistic". Plus, I think it has too many connotations which are false.

True propositions about the future exist. And I agree with the "Argument from Truth" you presented. But where in that argument is the denial of free will? A future event might be inevitably determined by actual free will choices.

I'm not sure I know what you mean by "possible world". If you mean in the sense of actually existing in some quantum realm, then I would agree. If you just mean that such a hypothetical world could exist, given certain choices, then I would not agree.

Again, what do you mean, exactly, by "possible world"?

How would a libertarian define free will, again?

Yes. But where in that is free will negated?


In Christ,

Douglas

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Douglas J. Bender:

"I don't know that I would use the term, 'fatalism' - it sounds too much like 'fatalistic'. Plus, I think it has too many connotations which are false."

Fatalism is just the thesis that all future events are inevitable. Libertarians about free will say that free will requires there to be a possible world in which S did not do x.

"A future event might be inevitably determined by actual free will choices."

But this seems to be a contradiction. First, I would say most people would hold that free will and fatalism are inconsistent, that if every decision I make was inevitable, I don't have free will. But more importantly, we don't even have to talk about fatalism; we can simply talk about possible worlds...

"If you just mean that such a hypothetical world could exist, given certain choices, then I would not agree." (Italics original.)

A possible world is the way things might have been or might be. If I had free will in doing x, there is a possible world in which I did not do x. This directly contradicts fatalism, that there was no possible world in which I did not do x because x was inevitable.

If x is inevitable, then there was no possible world in which x did not occur. This is explicitly in contradiction to the libertarian position that there were possible worlds in which x did not occur.