You can't take words like this "at face value" since the danger of equivocation is SO high.

But, the equivocation happens in the first argument because there are two senses of "precede" being used. One is temporal, the other causal. It uses something temporally preceding an event to show that the event precedes the event which is absurd...the reductio depends on this equivocation.

Free will requires some "it" that is purely random. Not that total randomness of everything is required, but whatever "it" that allows freedom would must not be caused at all. "It" would need to be purely random.*

"It" being whatever allows previous states to not constrain the current action.

"It" cannot be restrained in any way other than it could be dichotomous (see * below), or it loses all meaning.

I think this causes some problems for responsibility, and maybe everything else that free will. "I did it because of a random quantum event" is not satisfying. Adding some other "it" in place of quantum event is equally troubling, I think.

This puts your position in equality to mine in that the implications of both kind of suck.

We agree here.

In other words, you are saying:

"If free will exists, cause and effect are guidelines, not law," correct? It requires some uncaused causes.

* It could be dichotomously random or a range. I think that dichotomous would work as long as it is completely free from cause, so maybe that doesn't matter.

I wasn't, but it is an obvious implication of "god is good, god is great, amen."

Basically, god = Laplace's demon, therefore no free will.

To Durka, there is nothing more to the argument than that. It is pretty simple. Even Christians can be noncompatibilists.

For clarity, please at least fake quote who you are responding to.

Your statements in a vacuum kind of lose something. For instance, your above statement looks like the ramblings of a homeless psychotic* if we don't know who you are talking at.

*It is fun to ask homeless psychotics who they are talking to. I do this often. Surprisingly, they usually state that they are just replaying a conversation and saying what they wish they had said 5 or more years ago.**

**The only difference is that the rest of us do this on the inside and can distinguish between current conversation and imagined conversation.

***More to the point, stop it. Psych ph.d.s and phy ph.d.s are at great risk of becoming that guy

Could you elaborate on the difference between "temporally precedes" and "causally precedes" to me?

"Something happened first" does not equal "something happened because of."

I don't know what this is supposed to mean, nor do I see how it logically follows from what I am talking about.

Not really, as the being in this instance is not using current knowledge to calculate out the future. There is more to it then that as in this view determinism is not assumed as it is in Laplace's demon.

But what the above argument is leading to is the issue that the effect (the free will decision) exists definitely (in God's mind) temporally before the supposed cause (the free will agent).

So I cannot be the cause of an effect that exists before me.

If having free will means that I am the ultimate cause for bringing choice X from the set of possible worlds into the actual world, then the idea that choice X is actual (in God's mind) before I exist leads us to absurdities.

I was being silly, except for the "great" part.



Knowing the future + being the original cause (omniscient god)= knowing the future + nothing (omniscient lazy bastard) is equivalent as far as the implications go for free will

If god determines all future actions at one instant of creation, then you 'could' say that the effect precedes the cause but only in one sense. It depends on your frame of reference...and that argument equivocates.

C1 -> E1

C1 -> E2

...

Is different than:

C1 -> E1

E1 -> E2

...

,where C=cause and E=effect.

Exactly. The absurdity of an all knowing being being possible in a non-deterministic system has been established and is pretty much a non-issue here.

Brian...no such thing has 'been established'...but I have provided some arguments in support of it.

We seem to have dramatically different conceptions of what "cause and effect" means. Every event can be the cause of another event. It can be as local as my typing on the keyboard causes letters to appear on my screen, or as far-reaching as some sort of butterfly effect. It's not really a "law" nor is it a "guideline." Perhaps the best word I have for it is "heuristic." We see that aspects of the universe play out in some sort of linear manner, and we can trace backwards to see the "cause" of the "effect."

But it's not some sort of "universal law" because it's not clear that every event is the cause of something else. If I stand up, the only "effect" could be that I find that I'm standing instead of sitting, without having any impact on any other events in the universe.

Your insistence on the position of what random means is very problematic. It was brought up before:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standar...inst_free_will

The problem is that the notion of "random" in the sense that we commonly understand dice, cards, or quantum mechanical things is not the same notion of "random" that means "not fully determined by the state of the universe."

The connection that you have developed between "random" and "cause,"

is probably why we're not seeing "cause and effect" as the same concept.

I am more so just trying to understand better why the argument fails.

It is not logically possible.

Either:

1. You are conflating determinism and Laplace's demon, or

2. You are oversimplifying cause and effect within my argument. Causation is more like matrix calculus, than simple addition. That is why it is state 1 -> state 2, or

3. I am misunderstanding you here. I am assuming this one.

I am talking about an individual decision that is free here. I admit that a set of causes that constrain the free decision to a set of possibilities, is consistent with free will. I also admit that having internal causes that were caused by previous states as part of the process, is consistent with free will.

Simplistic example of the above paragraph: You can be out of bread, and only have english muffins and bagels. Also, you can have beliefs about the relative tastiness of english muffins and bagels.

However, the free part (whatever that is) must be random, or the same choice would be made each time, given the exact same circumstances.* That would be determinism.

*I mean the impossible to create state of precisely the same in every detail.

That has not been established. Let's say that all agents 'could' do otherwise in the actual world but never will...then they'd be perfectly predictable and determinism is false. I just proved your assertion false.

Huh?

They will not choose otherwise than what they will choose?

Otherwise from what?

If I really have the option of a bagel or toast each day and I really could choose either disjunct, but it may be the case that I'll actually always go with the bagel (like this morning, haha), then my behaviour would be undetermined, free, but perfectly predictable.

Perfectly predictable is necessary but not sufficient for determinism.

This would have to hold true for all free agents and every choice past and future for it to have anything to approach perfect predictability. I am pretty sure (haven't spent more than a minute on it), the perfect predictability must cover all free agents and all free decisions for it to work as a counterargument.

In this special case, (all free agents always repeat the same behaviors) you are correct. Wait, they would always have to also repeat the same behaviors as previous free agents as well. The choice of bagel for a new free agent would have to be made the first time, or it would not be predictable. So, in the case of every free agent always repeating the same behaviors AND every free agent always repeating the same behaviors of past free agents, you are correct.

#1 is a point you agreed with under the assumption that compatibilism is false:

If compatibilism is true, then there is a distinction between the two.

#2 and #3 are both possible. Part of the problem is that I don't understand your notion of "cause and effect." To me, it sounds like you're using cause-and-effect as determinism, and I was trying to help draw a line between the two because I don't think they are the same concept.

Determinism is a universal statement: Every event is fully the result of antecedent states.

Cause and effect is a heuristic: Events may lead to other events.

Bart Simpson has a rock-paper-scissors strategy: "Good ol' rock. Nothing beats rock." Does this imply that he cannot actually pick paper or scissors?

Lisa Simpson has a counter-strategy: "Poor, predictable Bart. Always picks rock." Does this imply that Lisa is determined to pick paper?

I really think we don't agree on what "random" means. I do not believe the "free part" is random (in the probabilistic sense).

I'm aware that it would have to hold for all agents for all time. The point is that it's logically possibile for this to happen.

But, your second paragraph loses it. I could be predictable in choosing bagel one day then toast the next and a different person could choose fruit one day and toast the next...etc. But, each agent 'could' have, in the actual world, done otherwise but they didn't and weren't going to.

It's logically possible for this to happen in an undetermined system so you're wrong that predictability is sufficient for determinism (or that determinism is necessary for predictability).

It's extremely unlikely, but it's possible and that's all I need for the argument.

This would only mean that it is possible for the omniscient being to be correct. But for the purposes of this discussion the omniscient being is said to have perfect knowledge, so it would be impossible for the being to be wrong. Which is a possibility in your scenario.

That discussion was a tanget led by Brian's assertion: I was showing that it was false.

In your case, you are correct that such a thing must be impossible. It wasn't meant to be relevant to your discussion.

Those arguments are just bad and equivocate or beg the question (though, hard to blame him since such famous philosophers also made that error). As I said, I'm extremely skeptical of cute 'tight' deductive arguments like that without supporting prose since the danger of equivocation is so high. Good philosophers support such arguments with pages of prose in order to attempt to demonstrate that they are NOT equivocating or begging the question; that is, they respond to objections.

The arguments that you posted/linked don't do that and I fear that they really do equivocate/beg the question.