God and "Free Will"

[slingblade]

Who lifted my arm? Who scratched my balls with my hand? (Well there was that one time ... )

Maybe someone else chooses to do those things for you ... ?

Could you please use another example besides your testicles?

You raised your arm in response to a stimulus. Something acted on you/your consciousness, and that was how you chose to represent your response.

In that light, if there is "free will," it's limited, in that our actions, responses, and choices are often (in fact, almost always) based on outside stimuli. You don't really have as many choices as you perceive, because they are limited by the actions, responses, and choices of others, who are in turn themselves limited by the actions, responses, and choices of others, and so on, ad infinitum.

I've made many desicions out of my own "free will" that have been stymied and killed by the "free will" of others. I must often account for the responses my actions and choices will generate in others, and having to account for them means my will is being limited by them.

You can call this "free will," but a few moments of cogent consideration ought to disabuse you of the notion that it's actually free, or that yours is the only will involved. Hence, not very free at all.

 

[Nick227]

If a murderer claims he shouldn't be held responsible because he lacked the free will to choose otherwise, we can claim we lack the free will to choose not to punish him.

Double edged sword.

To me, to take an action on this basis would undermine the legitimacy of legal authority.

A body can still be segretated from others, quite legitimately imo, if it is clearly a danger to others. I don't see the fact that it has no choice in its actions to have so much bearing in criminal acts.

Nick

 

[ServiceSoon]

No, he didn't. I could construct a very simple device which raises its arm. A device could even be constructed which raises its arm in response to a challenge to its free will. Any conclusive demonstration of free will would require, at a minimum, an action which could not be performed by automata.

Good luck.

Can you give an example of an action which could not be performed by automota? I can't.

 

[Robin]

"Free will" is, as I've understood it, to be a free ability to choose to think and want whatever we wish.

Alex.

Free from what?

 

[Robin]

These sort of threads are not about randomness or prior cause - they are about whether humans can choose actions and be held responsible for them. And they are about the apparent paradox of an All Knowing God creating humans while knowing the humans can make bad choices and monkey up the whole thing.

Well no, that is not a paradox at all.

Here is the classic form of the paradox:

1. God is infallible
2. God can say at 11 am "Peter will sin at 3pm"
3. If Peter chooses not to sin at 3pm then God would have been wrong.
4. God cannot be wrong so Peter cannot choose not to sin at 3pm
5. Peter should not be punished.

 

[Egg]

Well no, that is not a paradox at all.

Here is the classic form of the paradox:

1. God is infallible
2. God can say at 11 am "Peter will sin at 3pm"
3. If Peter chooses not to sin at 3pm then God would have been wrong.
4. God cannot be wrong so Peter cannot choose not to sin at 3pm
5. Peter should not be punished.

(bolding mine)

Not "cannot", but "will not".

Peter's choice at 3pm could be what causes God to be able to predict it at 11am.

 

[Marquis de Carabas]

Can you give an example of an action which could not be performed by automota? I can't.

Exactly.

 

[bruto]

But "free will" is actually completely nonsensical if you think about it. The only people who believe in free will are those who either haven't thought about it or who don't want to think about it.

For free will to exist you need an entity that can operate without the need for any form of internal or external process. Know ye of such a beast? Can you even conceive of such a thing?

Nick

Of course it depends on what you mean by "free will." I think we have something that might pass for free will, in the sense that in the world as it exists, we are responsible for our actions, without having to parse the exact mechanism of it all down to the last neuron and atom. If you define free will in its purest form, as theologians seem to prefer, I think you're right. I also think that the commonly defined "god" is impossible. But if one is possible, then the other ought to be. If you allow what is usually considered as God, the logical gap he must occupy has room in it for free will too, though it also has room in it for the denial of free will. If God is omnipotent, infinite, etc. etc. then any position can be argued.

 

[Robin]

(bolding mine)

Not "cannot", but "will not".

No, "cannot".

If Peter can choose not to sin at 3pm then God's prior message at 11 am can be wrong. But since God's prior message cannot be wrong then Peter cannot choose not to sin.

Peter's choice at 3pm could be what causes God to be able to predict it at 11am.

At 9 am you receive a detailed description of what you are going to do that day, signed off at the bottom "Try to act surprised - God "

Will you be obliged to do everything on the list, or will you be able to do otherwise?

 

[slingblade]

No, "cannot".

If Peter can choose not to sin at 3pm then God's prior message at 11 am can be wrong. But since God's prior message cannot be wrong then Peter cannot choose not to sin.

At 9 am you receive a detailed description of what you are going to do that day, signed off at the bottom "Try to act surprised - God "

Will you be obliged to do everything on the list, or will you be able to do otherwise?

But that's the outer stimulus, you see. If you hadn't that note from God, you'd have done everything on it, and thought it done of your own free will. Now that you have the note, if it prompts you to change your actions so that your free will operates, are you really acting out of free will, or as a response to outside stimuli?


GAH! I hate philosophy, and I'm leaving of my own free will!










...though I'll probably be back, because I can't help myself.










...oh, GAH!

 

[ServiceSoon]

No, "cannot".

If Peter can choose not to sin at 3pm then God's prior message at 11 am can be wrong. But since God's prior message cannot be wrong then Peter cannot choose not to sin.

At 9 am you receive a detailed description of what you are going to do that day, signed off at the bottom "Try to act surprised - God "

Will you be obliged to do everything on the list, or will you be able to do otherwise?

THis is why I hate the idea of destiny. If I have a destiny, the choices I make in my life have been predetermined, which means I have no free will. WHich leads to these questions...

I don't believe in God or in free will, but here's my thoughts based on the premise that both exist.

I can predict my son's behaviour quite well because I know him quite well. God can predict perfectly because he knows everyone perfectly. The fact that I know that my son will answer my next sentence with the words "That's not fair; and I'm not going to go to bed tonight" doesn't make him do it, or remove his free will. The same goes for God.

If we were able to accurately read brain states to perfectly predict a person's behaviour would that mean that they would suddenly lose their free will? Or does it mean that such an ability cannot exist? Or does it mean that they never had any free will in the first place?

Exactly.

You set me up

 

[Jeff Corey]

To make things clearer, the deterministic problem of free will is as follows: If effect follows cause, then are not our actions merely products of what we experience?

The idea is that if humans are just part of the cause-effect flow, then they don't exist as thinking entities; But this is a categorical error, it's like stating that molecules don't exist because they can't be seen when viewing matter at an atomic level.

Humans do exist as thinking entities, the way they think dictates the relationship between their experiences and their actions.

This makes no sense whatsoever.

 

[Jeff Corey]

People love the idea of there being no free will because then they can't be responsible for their choices ultimately and without free will it wouldn't matter whether there is a God.

After all, you only did that bad action because earlier actions from the material world made you. And ultimately, since everythng is only reacting to actions acted upon them backwards to the beginning, God started it all - so it's really His fault.

Another nosensical argument. Our behavior is determined by a multitude of variables. Some are the contingencies of reinforcement and punishment imposed by the society we live in.
You ought to read B.F.Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity.

 

[hamelekim]

The Abrahamic god has (among others) three characteristics:

He is infinitely knowledgeable
He is infinitely powerful
He is infinitely good

It's a bit like the builder who said "We build good, fast and cheap- pick any two". And the Christian theologists have spent the last 1800 years trying to sort it out, and merely digging the hole deeper. If god is omniscient, AND he encourages evil (after all, the Divil is just one of god's poor creatures), if he's "good", it's in a sense that has nothing to do with any morality that humans have so far recognised.

Christians have the problem that they never stopped to think out what infinity means, and just used it as a synonym for A Bit Big; or what creation implies (Monty Python did a good parody of All Things Bright And Beautiful recognising the implications of god's creation); and that their idea of Greatness and Majesty is taken wholesale from the expected behaviour of a Byzantine emperor, including fawning acolytes, torture chambers and bureaucratic accounting.

God doesn't encourage people to disobey him. Doing evil is not obeying God. Since God is infinitely good, disobeying him means you are doing evil.

If someone knows what decision I'm going to make in the end, does that mean I didn't have any choice in the matter? I made the choices to bring me to that end, I wasn't influenced because they knew the ending, imo.

I have to believe that Because God is infinitely Intelligent, Good, and Wise, that the decisions he has made will create the outcome he wants, which will be the best outcome.

Why else would he allow evil? If you didn't have free will he would have just made it so that you couldn't do evil. He wants people to choose good over evil. He's given people a choice, and he knows what choice they will make, but he isn't controlling that choice.

 

[cyborg]

People love the idea of there being no free will because then they can't be responsible for their choices ultimately and without free will it wouldn't matter whether there is a God.

...

God started it all - so it's really His fault.

Then that means the only reason you love the idea of free will is because the blame can then be shifted away from the entity that actually constructed the rules?

Being "responsible" for your choices and having a little free-will homunculus in your head are two separate issues. It is you who are attached to the idea that "free will" must be the ability to make a reasonable choice without a reasonable cause - because your particular beliefs would be undermined by the idea that your god is the final link in the causal decision chain.

For those of us who do see the inherent contradiction in claiming that people can make reasonable choices without a reasonable cause and who don't have the baggage of a pre-packaged moral assumption claiming "there's no free-will" is simply a proposition of mechanism - not an attempt to dissolve moral responsibility.

 

[Egg]

No, "cannot".

If Peter can choose not to sin at 3pm then God's prior message at 11 am can be wrong. But since God's prior message cannot be wrong then Peter cannot choose not to sin.

At 9 am you receive a detailed description of what you are going to do that day, signed off at the bottom "Try to act surprised - God "

Will you be obliged to do everything on the list, or will you be able to do otherwise?

As Slingblade noted, the situation changes if Peter has been told what he will do (which isn't necessarily implied in your example). Someone else knowing what you will do doesn't effect your decisions, knowing yourself certainly could.

But even with your hypothetical 9am note, God would know that those would be your choices having seen the note. You would not be obliged and you would be able to do otherwise, it would just so happen that for whatever reason those would be your choices even though you knew they would be - for example you might look at the note and see that the decisions written would lead to the most beneficial day for you, so you choose to follow them instead of choosing to deviate just to prove a point. The knowledge would be an influence, but it wouldn't cause the choices.

 

[Twiler]

God doesn't encourage people to disobey him. Doing evil is not obeying God. Since God is infinitely good, disobeying him means you are doing evil.

If someone knows what decision I'm going to make in the end, does that mean I didn't have any choice in the matter? I made the choices to bring me to that end, I wasn't influenced because they knew the ending, imo.

I have to believe that Because God is infinitely Intelligent, Good, and Wise, that the decisions he has made will create the outcome he wants, which will be the best outcome.

Why else would he allow evil? If you didn't have free will he would have just made it so that you couldn't do evil. He wants people to choose good over evil. He's given people a choice, and he knows what choice they will make, but he isn't controlling that choice.

Actually, I agree that people are responsible for their own actions, and that they could be judged. (I don't believe that they actually are judged, or that there is any absolute morality)

But explain this: If YHVH wishes people to choose good over evil, then why explain beforehand that they'll suffer for evil and be rewarded for good? If he's willing to allow evil to exist for the sake of choice, why not lie, and keep the consequences a secret so that the true nature of humans can be seen?

 

[Robin]

But that's the outer stimulus, you see. If you hadn't that note from God, you'd have done everything on it, and thought it done of your own free will. Now that you have the note, if it prompts you to change your actions so that your free will operates, are you really acting out of free will, or as a response to outside stimuli?

The first question is, how did God know what I was going to do? Did he observe it or did he know because he knows what I would do in any circumstances?

 

[Robin]

As Slingblade noted, the situation changes if Peter has been told what he will do (which isn't necessarily implied in your example). Someone else knowing what you will do doesn't effect your decisions, knowing yourself certainly could.

But if Peter had free will he might decide not to sin, whether or not he sees the message. And then the message would have been wrong.

But if you are saying God observed Peter's free action then inserted the message in earlier, why could he not observe Peter's free action and then hand it to Peter?

But even with your hypothetical 9am note, God would know that those would be your choices having seen the note. You would not be obliged and you would be able to do otherwise, it would just so happen that for whatever reason those would be your choices even though you knew they would be - for example you might look at the note and see that the decisions written would lead to the most beneficial day for you, so you choose to follow them instead of choosing to deviate just to prove a point. The knowledge would be an influence, but it wouldn't cause the choices.

But here is the point. How does God know what my choices would be? Is it because as an eternal timeless being he can see all events simultaneously?

Or is it because he knows exactly what I would do in any given circumstances?

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

People love the idea of there being no free will because then they can't be responsible for their choices ultimately and without free will it wouldn't matter whether there is a God.

After all, you only did that bad action because earlier actions from the material world made you. And ultimately, since everythng is only reacting to actions acted upon them backwards to the beginning, God started it all - so it's really His fault.

Dude, I like you, but you really don't get it, do you? Compatibilism is the attempt to account for moral action in a deterministic universe. Have you really not thought out the consequences of monism? Have you not actually paid attention to what others have repeated over and over?