RE: Theists: How can predetermined fate and free will coexist?
December 19, 2016 at 1:41 pm
(This post was last modified: December 19, 2016 at 1:53 pm by Edwardo Piet.)
(December 15, 2016 at 10:31 am)Catholic_Lady Wrote:(December 15, 2016 at 10:27 am)pool the great Wrote: Say, the Lord has seen me eat ice-cream tomorrow noon at around 12. Do I have the ability to eat a chicken roll instead or will I have to strictly stick with the ice-cream?
What? Not sure if this is a serious question. Obviously you can choose to eat whatever you want. The point is He already knows what you will choose because he's already seen it happen.
Then he doesn't have a choice. He will simply eat an ice cream tomorrow at noon tomorrow and he has no choice to do otherwise.
He won't choose to eat an ice cream. He will have to eat an ice cream.
(December 15, 2016 at 9:07 am)Anomalocaris Wrote: For me, the closest approximation to an empirical definition of free will would be if the possessor of free will can uniquely reduce the number of possible outcomes in a particular situation in a way he alone could demonstrably predict, and yet there is no other agent whosoever who could even theoretically Possess the capability to predict how the possessor of the free will would reduce these possible outcomes.
It's not simply that no agent could possibly have that capability but that capability doesn't even cut it at all even if the possessor had it. So what if the posesser could always correctly predict what action he would take? All that would do is beg the question of what caused him to be able to make such a prediction. If it's himself then what caused him to cause himself? And so on. It can't go on forever. Infinite regress problem. He will never get to be causa sui. Was there no cause? Then he wasn't the cause. Either way, no free will.
Contra-causal/incompatabilist free will is a complete non-concept, entirely incoherent. All the ability of being able to always correctly predict your future action would do is beg the question.
Friedrich Nietzsche Wrote:The desire for "freedom of will" in the superlative, metaphysical sense, such as still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated, the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one's actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society therefrom, involves nothing less than to be precisely this causa sui, and, with more than Munchausen daring, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the slough of nothingness.
And here in video form is a complete knock down argument against free will. Most succinct I've seen. The true logical impossibility of incompatabilist free will: