How Free Will and Omniscience Works

[The Grand Nudger]

Are you pushing for a form of causal determinism?

Me personally no, but the proponent of precognitive entities is pushing hard determinism in some form or another.

I understand that's the route IATIA was going but haven't picked that up from you.

That's because I personally don't know, I'm just running with what knowledge of future events would entail.

[idunno]

OK, in the event where he votes Democrat without the coercion of the device, how is it not a free choice?

It depends on what you mean by "free choice" (and/or "free will").

The question of free will is one that's been debated since antiquity, and there is no consensus as to what "free will" is. My personal view is that if free will exists (and I am undecided if it does), then free will is incompatible with determinism (and therefore incompatible with precognition).

If you take the compatibilist viewpoint, and see free will as the freedom to act without coercion or restraint but not necessarily without pre-determination, your only problem is that you've redefined "choice" to mean something other what it means. Either that, or you've redefined what it means to be omniscient/precognitive.

Consider standard definitions of "choice", "omniscience", "precognition" and "knowledge":

• Choice: An act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities
  
• Omniscience: Knowing everything
  
• Precognition: The ability to know future events.
  
• Knowledge: Justified true belief.
  

When constrained by these definitions, there is no choice. If before you act, an omniscient/precognitive entity knows that you will choose A and not B, B is not a possibility at all. You cannot choose B when you invoke omniscience/precognition that knows otherwise - not without invalidating what it means to be omniscient/precognitive. If you could choose B, the entity's "precognition" that you would choose A would not be true, or known (things that are false are tautologically not known), and the precognition is not precognition at all (because to be precognition, the events forseen must necessarily be true).

There is no selection, no decision, and there is in fact only one option, and no choice is possible. This is true even if the omniscient/precognitive entity does not force your hand. There is no coercion, but your choice is restrained by the precognitive's future knowledge of your action.

You therefore have no capacity to act freely when you invoke a precognitive omniscient entity who knows your future actions, and your perception of free will in that case is illusory.

Now, you can certainly do as the compatibilists have done and redefine away the problem, but that strikes me as somewhat disingenuous and ad hoc. However, that is what you'd need to do to retain both free will and precognitive omniscience. You can "solve" any dilemma/paradox by redefining the terms - but is that really a solution?

I'll close by saying that an atheist who rejects the compatibilist view doesn't seem likely to find such an argument persuasive.

Gentlemen, this is not a result of this specific discussion, but I'm taking a break from online forums (not just this one) so would respectfully like to conclude this here. There's a few things I'd like to say in regards to the parts I've emboldened.

First, this is an issue that has been debated since antiquity. As you say, there really is no consensus as to what free will is. That's why I don't find it productive to cite standard definitions of complex concepts like free will. Since this isn't a simple issue I don't think it's fair to say that one side is redefining the concept while the other is holding to the 'true' definition.

I'll close by saying that I don't see omniscience posing as great a threat to free will as material determinism might. Frankfurt's work is only one solution to Theological Fatalism, and in my estimation one of the more simplistic ones to present. However, looking at the conclusion to the entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Divine Foreknowledge and Free Will one realizes that the argument is flawed at a more fundamental level.

Thank you all for the discourse. Special thanks to Rhythm for showing me he can have a civil discussion.

[The Grand Nudger]

Gee, I spend pages and pages trying to explain why "the problem of the alleged incompatibility of infallible foreknowledge and free will is a special case of a more general problem that has nothing to do with either foreknowledge or free will." - as per the link you provide- yet still you just don't see the problem.



Now, as far as redefining free will so that this particular issue vanishes...that's okay. I would however, suggest that we use a different word for whatever concept we would hope to argue in the event that we wished to do so. That's reasonable, yeah?

Nevertheless, fun discussion (and don't go telling people I can be civil- I have a reputation to uphold). Enjoy your break.

[IATIA]

For those who may not have read the other thread, in it I said that the only free will man has is to love God or not to love God, and outside of that all bets are off, simple really if one will search through the scriptures and find out what God says.

To paraphrase, your god says "love him or he will rip your heart out and cast you into a lake of fire". Not much of a choice there.

---

And now for something completely different!

Let us create a real unpredictable choice.

I have two envelopes each of which contains a twenty dollar bill. You can pick the left one or the right one. You cannot pick both. As there is no adverse effect to either choice, the only way to predict the choice would be knowledge of some series of events that would reveal the answer before the choice is made, i.e., determinism.

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, that's certainly not the only way. That's the way that we might try to make such a prediction. That probably has something to do with the fact that we are not precognitive.

Perhaps one could simply turn the dial and view the event itself. In this example you would have no knowledge of the series of events which led to the event in question but you would still have knowledge of the event. Nevertheless, if you can turn the dial -something- is confining the flow of events such that only one outcome is possible in any case.

[IATIA]

I admit my "knowledge of some series of events" was ambiguous in the respect of not annotating the 'possessor' of this knowledge. In the case od the "dial", it or the machinery attached or the operator or some combination thereof, must have "knowledge of some series of events".

On the other hand;

There was a movie (I cannot think of the name of it now) in which a young girl had the power to foretell the future. Her comment on this power was "Once you know the future, it changes".

Or in the scene from 'The Matrix', "Would it have happened if I had not mentioned it?".

Both of these scenarios allow for free will.

[The Grand Nudger]

I admit my "knowledge of some series of events" was ambiguous in the respect of not annotating the 'possessor' of this knowledge. In the case od the "dial", it or the machinery attached or the operator or some combination thereof, must have "knowledge of some series of events".

On the other hand;

There was a movie (I cannot think of the name of it now) in which a young girl had the power to foretell the future. Her comment on this power was "Once you know the future, it changes".

Then precognition, and hence omniscience with regards to precognition would be an entirely different animal.

Or in the scene from 'The Matrix', "Would it have happened if I had not mentioned it?".

Both of these scenarios allow for free will.

How would the example of a precognitive who knows the future (but th knowing changes it)- who then knows the new future (but the knowing changes it) allow for free will. Seems to me that this would propose both a completely useless sort of precognition -and- a lack of any "free will". These futures, however they may be changing - so long as we are not referencing will or choices- are still known, and still not subject. Keep in mind, we aren't trying to determine whether or not the future can change (though that would be amusing) but whether or not free will can change it. Supposing that we made the argument that at least this precogs will (and free exercise thereof) could have an effect on the future that does little to help us, wouldn't you agree? It also leaves us in the situation of explicitly stating (at the very word go) that this particular precog is immune to the flow of time that it observes...a special case for a special friend.

So people suggest things, and those suggestions might eventually become an actuality, but why did they suggest them, and if the suggestion can force the hand of fate where again is free will to be encountered?

A perception of free will does not equal the actuality of the same. Even without invoking either of these examples we already have a perception of such a thing, and proposing them changes what any given entity's perception of free will may be but says nothing of whether or not they actually possess it.

---

It's the knowing that presents the trouble (not the act itself mind you, but how it might be possible), because this would require that some point in the future, some event or circumstance is set, it cannot be altered (or it is not knowledge of an event, but knowledge of the possibility of an event). It would be difficult to explain the particulars of how knowledge of the future would change the future, if it could be known from the past - given that this knowledge will - at that future moment- BE a part of the past. If we propose that the circumstances of the past lead inextricably to the events of the present and future (causal determinism) then that knowledge of the future itself is one of those particulars, and why would precognitive ability be unable to pick that up?

My favorite narrative on prophecy or precognition btw is that of Cassandra, capable of foreseeing the future but incapable of either convincing others of the validity of her visions or altering the events she foresees. I like this narrative (over all others no less) because it follows the consequences of what would be if that knowledge could be possessed. It may be, for example, that Cassandra's warnings lead directly to the tragedy she foresaw, but keep ion mind, she saw the tragedy, not the lead-in, and in this example the lead-in required her warnings to shape the tragedy, so-to-speak, even from before the moment of her birth. This gift she was granted had no effect on the process (whatever it was) that made such a gift possible.

(the machine and dial btw, could simply tune to some time at random, perhaps the numbers of the dial don't actually correspond to anything at all, they just send you "somewhere, somewhen" in time. No knowledge of events is required - beyond the knowledge of what event happens at that particular time)

[ThomM]

God's omniscience, like Mr. White's device, removes the ability to do otherwise but that doesn't necessarily negate free will.


Free will is defined as the ability to choose ANY of the available possibilities available. It is not merely the existence of the possibilities.

IF a god KNEW 500 years before I was alive - everything that was going to happen - then - only one thing CAN happen - that which the god already knows.

So - 5000 years later - when A human makes a choice - is can ONLY choose the ONE THING the god knows will happen - and cannot have the ability to choose any other - or the god would NOT BE Omniscient. Since Humans can ONLY make choices when they actually exist - and since ONLY one can actually be allowed to be chosen - there would NOT BE free will - because there is NO free choice.

Of course - this speaks to a greater problem - since the god is in the same position as the human - it can ONLY DO what it already knows it will do - and cannot change its mind as well - so I cannot be almighty.

Today - I have done something an ALL KNOWING god cannot do - I have posted a message to this group - a message about which I had NO knowledge I would do 10 years ago. IT is a power of Humans - that gods cannot have. An all knowing god cannot do something it had NO PRIOR knowledge of.

So - the god cannot be almighty - and the claim of free will cannot be true with an Omniscient god

THE reason why humans have free will - is because there are NO gods - omniscient or otherwise -

[IATIA]

I had not considered the perspective of the god. This god could have no free will either. If it already knew what it was going to do then "Thy will be done" would simply be a puppet show.

[Angrboda]

"Uuuhh, whatever happened here, sir, I think we missed it"
— Aliens

I primarily came to throw a spanner in the works, but I'll engage in a bit of clean-up first.

MysticKnight, excellent analysis. So you aren't a worthless blob of protoplasm after all.

I must say that I disagree that foreknowledge and predictive ability are equivalent. It's not settled in epistemology exactly what knowledge is, but I think the fact that prediction is both fallible and not based on perception of the actual fact itself precludes it being considered knowledge. In Rhythm's words, you've replaced knowing with guessing.

Other minor points, indeterminacy, quantum or otherwise, does not rescue free will. If I encounter a basket of apples, and each time I reach for one, my arm swims and picks a different one, the apple eventually chosen wasn't the result of free will. Randomness and indeterminacy do not lead to meaningful free will. What the free will proponent wishes for is not things that are not determined, but rather choices that are determined in a specific way, that being determined by a free will. (And IATIA, I have for some time postulated that our concept of free will arose as a consequence of problems in predicting the behavior of prey; we can't efficiently predict which way the prey will zig or zag, but if we model it as being able to freely choose either, we can assert a productive response to its potential behaviors that result in our getting fed.)

I think the most significant error in idunno's presentation was likely to attempt to assert the independence of omniscience from free will without demonstrating anything about free will itself. I can readily assert that God's omniscience does not preclude the existence of square circles, but, even if I'm correct, I haven't really said anything. In order to say anything meaningful about God's omniscience and free will requires three parts: the God part, the free will part, and the relationship part. Attempting to only demonstrate the relationship part, beyond being rather vacuous, is likely the cause of the sort of semantic tail chasing that occurred here.

As to the PAP, which I confess I haven't spent much time thinking about (at all), it suffers from a common flaw that many compatibilist and libertarian views have. This is easiest to demonstrate by showing the flaw in this analogy. While the chooser in this scenario might have ephemerally selected Democrat or Republican, and might have had two possibilities, the system as a whole did not. The system as a whole was determined to vote Democrat by the nature and design of the system. Compatibilists appeal to this frequently by suggesting that their internal choices are free if they are not coerced by an external agent. This arbitrary line drawing serves nothing more than to create illusions of independence and freedom when the freedom itself is a direct result of choosing to draw the line this or that specific way. The system as a whole has no such freedom, and "this far and no farther" doesn't work to keep determinism at bay.



Anyway, on to the spanner! (This was introduced at a recent philosophy discussion, so I confess it's quite new to me, too.)

A person is playing a game operated by the Predictor, an entity somehow presented as being exceptionally skilled at predicting people's actions. The exact nature of the Predictor varies between retellings of the paradox. Some assume that the character always has a reputation for being completely infallible and incapable of error; others assume that the predictor has a very low error rate. The Predictor can be presented as a psychic, as a superintelligent alien, as a deity, as a brain-scanning computer, etc. However, the original discussion by Nozick says only that the Predictor's predictions are "almost certainly" correct, and also specifies that "what you actually decide to do is not part of the explanation of why he made the prediction he made". With this original version of the problem, some of the discussion below is inapplicable.

The player of the game is presented with two boxes, one transparent (labeled A) and the other opaque (labeled B). The player is permitted to take the contents of both boxes, or just the opaque box B. Box A contains a visible $1,000. The contents of box B, however, are determined as follows: At some point before the start of the game, the Predictor makes a prediction as to whether the player of the game will take just box B, or both boxes. If the Predictor predicts that both boxes will be taken, then box B will contain nothing. If the Predictor predicts that only box B will be taken, then box B will contain $1,000,000.

By the time the game begins, and the player is called upon to choose which boxes to take, the prediction has already been made, and the contents of box B have already been determined. That is, box B contains either $0 or $1,000,000 before the game begins, and once the game begins even the Predictor is powerless to change the contents of the boxes. Before the game begins, the player is aware of all the rules of the game, including the two possible contents of box B, the fact that its contents are based on the Predictor's prediction, and knowledge of the Predictor's infallibility. The only information withheld from the player is what prediction the Predictor made, and thus what the contents of box B are.



The problem is called a paradox because two strategies that both sound intuitively logical give conflicting answers to the question of what choice maximizes the player's payout. The first strategy argues that, regardless of what prediction the Predictor has made, taking both boxes yields more money. That is, if the prediction is for both A and B to be taken, then the player's decision becomes a matter of choosing between $1,000 (by taking A and B) and $0 (by taking just B), in which case taking both boxes is obviously preferable. But, even if the prediction is for the player to take only B, then taking both boxes yields $1,001,000, and taking only B yields only $1,000,000—taking both boxes is still better, regardless of which prediction has been made.

The second strategy suggests taking only B. By this strategy, we can ignore the possibilities that return $0 and $1,001,000, as they both require that the Predictor has made an incorrect prediction, and the problem states that the Predictor is almost never wrong. Thus, the choice becomes whether to receive $1,000 (both boxes) or to receive $1,000,000 (only box B)—so taking only box B is better.

In his 1969 article, Nozick noted that "To almost everyone, it is perfectly clear and obvious what should be done. The difficulty is that these people seem to divide almost evenly on the problem, with large numbers thinking that the opposing half is just being silly."