RE: Free will
May 26, 2016 at 7:26 am
(This post was last modified: May 26, 2016 at 7:38 am by The Grand Nudger.)
(May 26, 2016 at 7:04 am)Ignorant Wrote: Great to get your thoughts, rob.Choices? We're talking free will aren't we? Similarly, it doesn't matter how many possible outcomes there are, a true claim to foreknowledge precludes -all- but the one to which it refers by necessity of the truth of the claim. That the road forks in front of me, does not demonstrate that I choose, let alone freely will - anything-. If x knows, prior to my choice, prior even to my birth, that I will go left..then my meeting that fork can only end in one outcome. I will go left. There is no freedom here, to go right. There is a simply a road that goes right.
Right, I am aware the word has been used in this way. This isn't exactly wrong either, but it does ignore something important about the term "determine". A determination is certainly the outcome of a choice, but if it is the [i]outcome of a choice, then choice occurred. If an all-knowing god has a choice of outcomes, then there are more than one possible outcomes. Hence, my desire to properly and helpfully distinguish it from necessity.
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Quote:This claim is true, but it uses "necessary" equivocally. Here is why:
Consider some thing (T) (e.g. a fruit tree) doing some action (A) (e.g. making fruit) which depends on the conditions X, Y, Z.
We can say:
If all X, Y and Z, then T necessarily does A.
Now consider some thing (T) (e.g. a fruit tree) doing some action (A) (e.g. making fruit) unconditionally.
There may be no "if" in a true claim to foreknowledge (fatalism, absurdism, etc) - and in case of a true claim to foreknowledge and it;s relationship to free will, the "if" is irrelevant. No "if he freely wills a, then a". Only, "he will freely will a".
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