Omniscience - Free Will Paradox
The argument for the absence of free will given that God is omniscient proceeds as follows:
X = anyone
1. God is omniscient (premise)
2. If God is omniscient then X can't do something different to what God thinks X will do (premise)
3. If X can't do something different to what God thinks X will do then X doesn't have free will (premise)
4. If God is omniscient then X doesn't have free will (from 2, 3 Hypothetical syllogism)
Ergo,
5. X doesn't have free will (from 1, 4 Modus Ponens)
Analysis:
Nothing can be done about premise 1. We want God to be omniscient.
Premise 2 is also acceptable. After all, if X can do something other than what God thinks X will do then God doesn't know what X will do and God wouldn't be omniscient. We want God to be omniscient.
The problem then is with premise 3 which I will restate: If X can't do something different to what God thinks X will do then, X doesn't have free will.
I agree with the antecedent of premise 3 viz. X can't do something different to what God thinks X will do because if he could then, God wouldn't be omniscient and we want God to be omniscient.
However, does that imply the consequent viz. X doesn't have free will?
The whole issue hinges on the answer to one question: what's the nature of God's knowledge regarding what X will do?
Two possibilities:
1. God's knowledge of what X will do is identical to the way we make predictions i.e. God first gathers all relevant information on X's initial state and then, using the knowledge of nature's laws, makes predictions on what X will do.
However, this begs the question. The conclusion we derived is that we don't have free will or, in other words, that determinism is true. So, assuming God's knowledge of what X will do in the future is determinism-based is to assume the very thing we want to prove. This isn't the way to go.
Therefore,
2. God's knowledge of what X will do has, should have, nothing to do with determnism in the sense it isn't based on calculations from initial states to final final states.
The absence of free will as per the Omniscient - Free will Paradox argument isn't because determinism is true - that doesn't follow.
Necessarily then that the conclusion (X doesn't have free will) has to do only with the fact that God knows what X will do but knowledge doesn't work like that, right?
Imagine for the moment that we do have free will. Also imagine that there's a time traveler, T, who makes a trip into the future. When T returns to the present, T will know what X will do in the future. So we have the situation where there's a being (T) who knows what X will do but X has free will. T and X, together is the required counterexample for premise 3. If God is omniscient then X doesn't have free will. It's possible for an omniscient God to know what X will do and yet for X to have free will.
X = anyone
1. God is omniscient (premise)
2. If God is omniscient then X can't do something different to what God thinks X will do (premise)
3. If X can't do something different to what God thinks X will do then X doesn't have free will (premise)
4. If God is omniscient then X doesn't have free will (from 2, 3 Hypothetical syllogism)
Ergo,
5. X doesn't have free will (from 1, 4 Modus Ponens)
Analysis:
Nothing can be done about premise 1. We want God to be omniscient.
Premise 2 is also acceptable. After all, if X can do something other than what God thinks X will do then God doesn't know what X will do and God wouldn't be omniscient. We want God to be omniscient.
The problem then is with premise 3 which I will restate: If X can't do something different to what God thinks X will do then, X doesn't have free will.
I agree with the antecedent of premise 3 viz. X can't do something different to what God thinks X will do because if he could then, God wouldn't be omniscient and we want God to be omniscient.
However, does that imply the consequent viz. X doesn't have free will?
The whole issue hinges on the answer to one question: what's the nature of God's knowledge regarding what X will do?
Two possibilities:
1. God's knowledge of what X will do is identical to the way we make predictions i.e. God first gathers all relevant information on X's initial state and then, using the knowledge of nature's laws, makes predictions on what X will do.
However, this begs the question. The conclusion we derived is that we don't have free will or, in other words, that determinism is true. So, assuming God's knowledge of what X will do in the future is determinism-based is to assume the very thing we want to prove. This isn't the way to go.
Therefore,
2. God's knowledge of what X will do has, should have, nothing to do with determnism in the sense it isn't based on calculations from initial states to final final states.
The absence of free will as per the Omniscient - Free will Paradox argument isn't because determinism is true - that doesn't follow.
Necessarily then that the conclusion (X doesn't have free will) has to do only with the fact that God knows what X will do but knowledge doesn't work like that, right?
Imagine for the moment that we do have free will. Also imagine that there's a time traveler, T, who makes a trip into the future. When T returns to the present, T will know what X will do in the future. So we have the situation where there's a being (T) who knows what X will do but X has free will. T and X, together is the required counterexample for premise 3. If God is omniscient then X doesn't have free will. It's possible for an omniscient God to know what X will do and yet for X to have free will.
Comments (13)
If God knows X does Y because X freely chooses to do Y, this is re-phrasing the principle of identity. This says nothing about what causes Y -- simple that X does Y.
Quoting TheMadFool
This is an equivocation. In 2, "can't" denies the possibility of God erring about what is real. In 3, it denies the possibility of X choosing freely, which has nothing to do with whether God knows the truth of how X acts. If X chooses freely and God knows it, there is no problem.
Will is not reason, but will and reason are interrelated. Reason knows, and will commits in light of what is known.
Knowing does not compel commitment. That is how will can be free.
Committing does not imply effective implementation. So, no failure of implementation can be evidence against free will.
I fail to understand your analogy.
Buridan's ass addresses a case of zero measure (exact balance on a knife edge) and is not a model of free will, which does not involve a balance of forces because motivations are not quantifiable, and so are not analogous to quantifiable forces.
I must confess I don't quite understand what you mean here but you made an important observation - the underlined bit above. Free will is about not being influenced and influence is, to my reckoning, always positive in the sense that it takes the form of a cause bent on producing an effect. The instant we become effectable - a something can cause us to do one thing rather than another - we become not free, part of the causal web. Ergo, one form our freedom of will can assume is resistance to whatever can become causes that produce effects on the decision-making center of our brain. Basically, as you said, "...the capacity to negate..." is key to claiming free will.
Quoting Dfpolis
I probably didn't understand what you mean here but if one imputes a cause to Y then, we're presupposing determinism is true and that's begging the question.
When God knows X will do Y, it means that, on pain of God losing his omniscience otherwise, X must/will do Y when the time comes. That's why X can't do something different to Y.
Quoting Dfpolis
Yes, you seem to be thinking along the same lines as me. God's knowledge that X will do something and X doing that thing when the time comes doesn't imply that X lacks free will. Do you have a reason why you think this? You said that there's an equivocation fallacy in there somewhere. Can you point out where exactly?
As Aristotle observes in the Posterior Analytics ii, 12, 95a14-24, there are two kinds of efficient causality, which have subsequently been called "essential" and "accidental." Hume and Kant didn't learn the fundamentals before starting, and so didn't know this. They thought that all causality involved time-sequence by rule. That is accidental causality. For Kant, this implied determinism and gave rise to one of the supposed "antinomies" motivating his transcendental confusion.
As Hume pointed out (and had long been known), there is no intrinsic necessity to accidental causality or time sequence by rule. It is an empirical generalization, like thinking that all crows are black on the basis of the few crows we've seen. As a generalization, there is no justification for applying it outside of its empirical basis, viz. Newtonian phenomena. So, there is no reason to think that it applies to acts of will.
Even in insensate nature, time-sequence by rule is not deterministic. If I plant a grain of wheat (a causal event) I can rationally expect a wheat plant to grow (the correlative effect), but still this does not happen infallibly. So accidental causes do not, and cannot, fully determine effects. Since the causal event is temporally prior to its intended effect, there is always the possibility of intervention in the intervening interval.
Essential causality, which is what I had in mind in my comment, is quite different. While accidental causality involves two separate events, essential causality involves only one. So, there is no possibility of an intervening event. While accidental causality lacks necessity because it is based on empirical generalization, essential causality is absolutely necessary because it is based on the principle of identity.
Aristotle's paradigm case is a builder building a house. We separate this event mentally into a cause (the builder building) and an effect (the house being built), but in fact it is one, inseparable event. There is no building without something being built and there is no being built without something building. So the builder building the house is identically the house being built by the builder.
What makes a cause essential is that it actualizes a potential. What is potential is not yet operational and so it cannot operate to actualize itself. Thus, the actualization of every potency requires the operation of a prior operational (actualized) cause.
This is the kind of causality by which free agents actualize their commitment to one of the possibilities open to them. So, God, in knowing that an agent chooses to actualize possibility P1 instead of P2, does not determine the agent's choice of P1. The free agent does.
Quoting TheMadFool
Time is the measure of change according to before and after. Since God is perfect, He can neither gain nor lose attributes, and so is immutable. Since there is no change in God, there can be no time to measure it. Thus, whatever God knows, He knows from a timeless perspective -- seeing the space-time manifold as a whole, rather than sequentially, as we do.
That God knows the cosmos in this way does not mean that the cosmos does not exhibit the temporal dynamics we experience. It just means that God sees it all at once. Part of what He sees is free agents actualizing their potentials. Indeed, He could not see us choosing our courses of action if we did not choose our courses of action.
Quoting TheMadFool
The question is: what possibility does "can't" deny. In the first instance, it is the possibility of God knowing in error. So, whatever God knows, it knows truly. In the second, it denies the possibility of us choosing freely. This is not the same as the first possibility, as how ever we choose, God can know it truly.
The background error here is the assumption that God knows by prediction, rather than by immediate Presence. If God predicted what we will choose, then there would be some reality prior to our choice that would infallibly determine our choice. But, if God knows what we choose, not by predicting it, but by being present to it, then there need be no prior determining factors.
Firstly, I don't understand the notion of identity you're employing here. You seem to be saying that the cause and effect are the same in the case of essential causes and ergo, nothing by way of an intervening "force" can be positioned between the two. So far so good but the cause, if there is one, arising from God's foreknowledge can act before a person makes decisions.
I agree with the second part of your post - there seems to be no contradiction i.e. it's completely plausible that god's foreknowledge is not deterministic like ours is. I'd like to ask you to review the key premise in the Omniscience paradox - god's foreknowledge causes people to make the decisions they make. Taking this to its logical conclusion, foreknowledge of any kind, god's or a time traveler's, should have causal power of some nature to force people to make decisions according to what was foreseen.
Your explanation that god's omnipresence as the source of divine foreknowledge is compatible with free will because, well, it's completely non-deterministic.
Here's a short argument based on your insight:
1. There are non-deterministic methods available for foreseeing the future
2. If there are non-deterministic methods available for foreseeing the future then, god's foreknowledge of the future could be non-deterministic in nature
3. If god's foreknowledge of the future could be non-deterministic in nature then, god's foreknowledge doesn't imply that we lack free will
4. If there are non-deterministic methods available for foreseeing the future then, god's foreknowledge doesn't imply that we lack free will (from 2 and 3, Hypothetical Syllogism)
5. God's foreknowledge doesn't imply that we lack free will (1 and 4, Modus Ponens)
Maybe God's omniscience works like any other argument one has with a theist:
1. God knows that X
2. God is presented with evidence to show that X is false
3a. God changes his whole position on X saying you didn't really understand it in the first place, OR
3b. God ignores the evidence on the grounds that he knows X and he is omniscient, therefore X is not false, the evidence is false (fake news!)
4. God calls his pastor to be reaffirmed that X is true, and his pastor reminds him not to vote for baby-killers
5. Since God never loses one of these arguments, he must be omniscient
If there is determinism, it is physical or perhaps biological in nature, and if we are ever to know anything about that, science will have to get us there. There is no determinism for the sole purpose of stroking the ego of a magical wizard-ghost.
First, the identity is that "the builder building the house" names the identically same event as "the house being built by the builder." The only difference is how we are thinking about that event. In the first case we are focusing on the causal aspect (the builder building) and in the second, on the effect being actualized (the house being built). Still, this mental separation does not reflect any real separation or separability, because there is only one event, not two as in accidental causality (time sequence by rule). In other words, the reality of building is identically the reality of being built.
Second, God is not in time, but sees the entire space-time manifold at once -- just as we can see the whole of a map at once. So, there is no before and after in God. In other words, from God's perspective, His knowledge is not before what is known, but concurrent with it.
Third, knowing does not cause what is known. Even if we create something, we can only know it as it is from its actual existence. Given that free will decisions, if they exist, are not immanent in the prior state of the cosmos, the only way to know them is to see what is actually decided. So, the idea that knowing causes the reality known is fundamentally confused.
Quoting TheMadFool
We need to reflect on the actualization of potential -- which is what causes do. Before we know X, we have the potential to know X, and X has the potential to be known. When we turn our awareness (aka the agent intellect) to X. we actualize both of these potentials -- we actually know X and X is actually known. We could not actualize X's potential to be known (X's intelligibility) if X did not exist to have that potential. So, there is no way knowing X can make it exist.
Quoting TheMadFool
That is not what I am saying, nor do I agree. While we humans speak of God's foreknowledge, it is only "fore" to us, not God. To God it is concurrent knowledge, for God simply is. He does not know what I will choose by knowing the state of the cosmos before my choice and predicting what i will decide, but by knowing what i actually choose at the space-time coordinates of my actual choice.
Yes, like instead of responding to what the theist actually says, the atheist spins a demeaning fantasy.
What the theist has to say IS a demeaning fantasy. Restatements of stale ontological tautologies don't change that.
Have you ever argued with a true believer? My sample argument is actually quite accurate.
Look, I'm just hazing MadFool for fun. Sorry if you felt you got caught in the blast. I've thoroughly examined the case for theism and found not only that belief in "god" is not consistently rational, but that if one has a humane sense of morality, it is unconscionable. In other words, I think it's not enough to say that god doesn't exist, it must be said that he shouldn't exist.
1- God doesn't exist/ Isn't omniscient
2- People do not have free will
3- Free will and knowing the future do not contradict (which depends on the definition of free will)
Quoting TheMadFool
This is the most important premise. This amounts to a denial of 3 but note how you called it a premise. That is because the definition of free will varies but the definition you seem to be using here is: The ability to do something differently, which is a definition that presents its own problems. It seems to suggest that there are THREE possible ways an event can occur:
1- Randomly (like nuclear decay)
2- Deterministically (like falling due to gravity)
3- "Free will"ly which I can never really conceive of
For any decision you make you will consider a bunch of variables. If those variables dictate your decision then your decision was deterministic (For example, eating when you're starving). If they don't dictate your decision then what did? If I asked you to pick between "A" and "B" without explaining what those were and you picked "A" why did you pick it? Was it because you like the letter? Then it was deterministic. Are you not really sure why you picked A over B? Then was that a random choice or a "freely willed" choice?
So far there seems to be no room for free will in our universe. Causes are either random or deteministic.
Most people who believe free will exists do so in 2 ways in my experience. The first is using some meaningless definition that assigns free will to us by default like: Free will is the ability to consider multiple alternatives, compare them, and make a choice, which results in chess bots having free will. The second is a pragmatic argument that goes something like:
1- We cannot be sure that random and deterministic are the only two modes for causes in the universe (In other words we're not sure whether or not free will exists)
2- If free will does exist and we think it doesn't then that is a great loss (As we act more irrationally and irresponsibly as a result), if free will doesn't exist and we think it doesn't exist we are right but we gain nothing, if free will DOES exist and we think it does we gain a great deal (Being able to act more responsibly), if free will DOES exist and we think it doesn't then we are wrong but we lost nothing
3- It is more pragmatic to believe in free will existing
Incidently that is the argument I use though I know it's not very good.