Definitely not accurate...I'm willing to at least argue over what counts as a decision. I haven't made up my mind beforehand and it's not that case that I will never budge. I just have, what I consider to be, good arguments for my position and good counterarguments to the currently proposed alternatives.

I have done so. Read the last gazillion posts. Just kidding.

Choice is the process of picking between x alternatives based on y, where y is a bunch of crap, both internal and external.

Simplistic Socratic non-answer: "I don't know. Maybe you should ask them."

More complicated answer: They do not freely choose.

Extremely complicated answer: They follow specific knowable laws of behavior. Implication: people follow some specific laws of behavior, but we do not know them.

By your definition of "chose" (freely chose) it definitely did not. Neither did I chose my lunch by your definition of choose.

I agree on the deep point, but it is the implications of the simplistic view that do not hold.

It does. Either something happens or it doesn't. Either something is caused or it isn't. There aren't any other alternatives.

This is the problems that philosophy of science is attempting to answer. Just because we can't figure it out does not imply that it (reality) does not exist.

You fit into the "willing to consider alternatives" category. I did not state otherwise.

So you would agree that if eternal definite foreknowledge existed that determinism would necessarily follow?

Are you familiar with the typical arguments for the compatibility of eternal definite foreknowledge and free will?

First, I think that determinism would be a necessary condition...so I suppose that such a laplacean demon would be sufficient for determinism, yes.

Second, go ahead and give me one. Typically the doctrine of predestination is that God already knows what you're going to do but you still have to do it...somehow that seems incoherent to me.

Well, predestination is really a different doctrine. Depending on who you are talking to, some do believe that people are predestined even though they still have free will, and some just believe that God is in control of everything and predestines everything.

What I am really talking about is just the notion that an being can know the future exhaustively, but that it would in hinder our free will. So God knows that when Agent A is presented with a choice at time t, between X and Y that Agent A will choose Y.

There are a few arguments against this compatibility that I will probably post tomorrow that I would love for you to look at and tell me if you think they are sound.

Typically the arguments for the compatibility involve God being outside of time. I will try and dig one up for you to look at as well.

The 'god outside of time' (I forget the word for that) doesn't affect this. His very knowledge means that the agents can't 'choose' in selecting from a range of options since any 'range' is only an illusion. There's only one action they'll make at any given time (and it's the one God already knew about).

I can see the distinction between foreknowledge and 'predestination'.

However, I still think that it's incoherent to say that God knows what everyone will do at any point in the future and for people to still have 'free will.'

That's compatibilism and I think that it's incoherent.

There was an article sometime in the last few months about a wire that was simultaneously in a two different states of vibration. I can't find the other link, but here is the news release from UCSB:

http://www.ia.ucsb.edu/pa/display.aspx?pkey=2200

So in a sense, it was vibrating in two distinct ways at the same time. This creates problems for the idea that it either is or isn't. It's a bit of a diversion relative to this thread since we've sort of put quantum mechanics to the side. But it's worth noting that the universe might actually offer alternatives.

The determinism/free will issue is not resolvable through science because it's underdetermined. There is no experiment that can be devised that will distinguish between the two cases. It's not simply because we can't figure out to do it, but it's actually beyond the realm of answerable questions given that methodology.

It's worth noting that in the "Primer on Determinism" book that I linked to earlier in this thread, there was a distinction made between Laplace's demon, a being that exists outside of the universe, and Popper's demon, a being that must predict from within the universe. I don't have anything of value to add regarding compatibilism on this front, but it does seem that time constraint of humans compared to the unrestrained God can be made meaningful.

Just as an aside (which might spark another string of posts), I view the issue of God like a chess donk (like me) playing against a chess master. Even though I'm free to do whatever I want (within the rules, of course), it's still a foregone conclusion that I'm going to lose. It's important here that chess is a combinatorial game (game with no luck -- so that I don't "accidentally" win) and that the difference in skill level is gigantic. It is this second component that reflects the man-God relationship. So God may or may not know exactly what I'm going to do, he sees all I can do and he has a gameplan that encompasses all of my potential choices and defeats them all.

So I still make free choices, but the end is already determined. I think there's a chance compatibilism (of this type) can make sense. But I'm not particularly tied to that position.

The 'popper' demon would be different because it could be argued that its very prediction will change the system...the God-out-of-time, viz. not changing the system by making its prediction, is even more incoherent than something that, by making the very prediction, could change the system.

However, in the 2nd case, this seems merely a Godel Incompleteness sort of statement and isn't really what we're talking about. We're not concerned with the epistemic implications or limitations.

Huh? Of course it's a syntactic argument dependent upon the definitions. I already said waaaay back that the whole disagreement stems from libertarians insisting on particular definitions of terms like "choice."

Okay, I was thinking of the n-tuple as the set of such states. In that case, an n-tuple neither has to be a process nor has to contain a process. Most processes I know of occur over a period of time, and since each n-tuple represents one "moment" of time, an individual process would be stored within a series of n-tuples.

Yes. I thought it was fine because I thought we probably had somewhat similar ideas of what "select" and "range of options" meant. But it's clear that we disagree about the meaning of "range of options" even more than we disagree about the meaning of "choice." So including the phrase "range of options" in the definition of choice is counterproductive.

Probably just expand the definitions of the original, so...

"To take a course of action as a result of an internal process that enumerates and evaluates modeled actions."

That's one accounting of responsibility, albeit not one that I agree with.

But what makes you say it's intuitive?

Well...that's a great recipe for bad philosophy. You're abandonding a definition because you don't like the conclusion merely because you don't like the conclusion. You have no independent argument for rejecting it. Furthermore, you continue to fail to see and grasp the arguments concerning the conceptual analysis of your definition. Furthermore, you continue to fallaciously characterize the analysis as starting from a libertarian perspective on the meaning of the words when the analysis was clearly position neutral.

The analysis doesn't stem from a particular position on free will; it merely arrives at supporting one position rather than another and you find that uncomfortable and therefore cry "boo hiss, the definition must be rejected, then"...so who's begging the question? Who's trying to define a term from their own position? In this case, you will accept NO definition that isn't compatibilist. NIhan.

I have a great argument for rejecting it:

If you aren't willing to accept a definition of "range of options" anything like my own, that invalidates my definition according to your own standard here. If "range of options" is less well known than "choice," then it is invalid to define "choice" in terms of a "range of options."

Of course, I don't think you ever accepted my definition in the first place, and I think you're playing games with "range of options." But either way the bottom line is the same.

No, your analysis was not remotely position neutral. You were claiming that my definition included your magical fairy dust "possibility in the actual world." In NO way did I EVER reference anything LIKE that.

Under normal circumstances, if I said that a computer had a "range of options" available to it when calculating a chess move, I doubt that you would have objected. But in this thread, you've insisted that a "range of options" necessitates the libertarian contrivance of "possibility in the actual world."

A definition that includes "possibility in the actual world" is begging the question of libertarianism. The inclusion of "possibility in the actual world" is the thesis of libertarianism!

Any valid analysis (one that doesn't beg the question and use explicitly libertarian definitions) will not include reference to any such possibility. Since compatibilism is the position that choice does not require "possibility in the actual world," any attempt to define choice in a manner that does require such is an attempt to win the argument by definition. (Not to mention that there is never a legitimate reason to include any such stipulation in any kind of analysis in the first place.)

Now I've given a definition that doesn't easily allow you to twist my words and insert your "possibility in the actual world" fabrication, and suddenly it's unacceptable.

You never defined what it means to select 'from a range of options' and if you did I provided arguments against it.

edit: My inclusion of 'temporal' possibility as necessary for selecting from a range of options was a CONCLUSION for which I provided an argument. It's not begging the question to argue for a conclusion that YOU (madnak) disagree with.

Whatever, you're head-asplode bad at this at this point and the dialectic with you cannot continue. You don't know what you're doing and you've dug in your heels entirely.

I defined it in multiple places. Including posts you responded to. If you weren't paying attention, that's not my fault. I've defined a range of options as (from memory) an enumerated set of actions, as empirically possible behaviors, and most recently as enumerated and evaluated modeled actions.

You've responded by either ignoring me entirely or just plain re-attempting to insert your absurd "actual possibility"/temporal possibility back into the definition. It is absolutely clear that you are obsessed with inserting this "actual possibility" garbage into the debate, and that you will not even discuss anything unless everyone else kowtows to your pet superstition.

You're as bad as Splendour.

Your "argument" was that "range of options" implies your bull**** possibility model, and that choice implies a range of options, and thus that choice implies your possibility model.

Technically it's an argument, but in fact it's just redefining "range of options" by sticking your **** in there when I refused to allow it into my naive definition of "choice."

I think that what you are getting at is really the more the open theist position. God knowing all possible worlds knows all "will" and "will-not" counterfactuals as well as all "might" and "might-not" counterfactuals.

So God knowing all possible moves that you could make will never be surprised even though he does not know the actual move that you will make as he can be prepared for all possibilities.

This is often lost on most "classical theists" as they default to the idea that if the future contains possibilities that God must be gambling.

There's a huge difference in the following two theses:

God knows all of the counterfactuals and all of the possible moves for all points in the present and future of all things. But, God doesn't know which actual moves things will make.

vs.

God knows all of the counterfactuals and all of the possible moves for all points in the present and future of all things. AND, God knows which actual moves things will make.

The former doesn't imply determinism while, IMHO, the latter does.

Stop changing the subject. We're on "n-tuples" and "process." This is what you said regarding my statement "DEFINITION OF PROCESS."

....

Are you consenting to the idea that an n-tuple is NOT a process? You're hedging a little here by saying it does not "HAVE TO BE" a process.

I believe the more traditional position ends up invoking a weird time sense. I don't think it's necessarily wrong, but it is a lot harder to explain.

It's not determinism in that your future actions are not solely dependent upon the state of the universe right now. However, God knows the decisions you "will have made" when the time comes.

To wrap your mind around it, it's as if you're playing a game in which every decision corresponds to picking a particular card from a deck. So for breakfast, you've got a card labeled "bagel" and another labeled "toast" and "yogurt" or whatever else you've got. You then pick the card and that becomes your decision. And then the consequences of that decision are played out until your next decision. So at every junction, you are legitimately making your decision.

However, God sees the game as if it's already over. That is, he sees the stacks of cards that correspond to people's decisions, and when he lines up those decisions in time, he can "watch" the universe play itself out. The analogy gets a little difficult when you insert the fact that God is monkeying around by influencing certain decisions in time, because the question ends up being "Did God override free will?" whenever he acts. So he's interacting "in time" with everyone else, but is also able to see what it looks like after everyone has finished making their decisions. This is where things get hand-wavy.

Of course durka is trying to insert actual possibility into the debate. You've acknowledged that the existence of actual possibility (or temporal possibility) is inconsistent with compatibilitsm, so if he can show that choice implies the existence of actual possibility then he has won the debate. This is only question-begging if he does so tautologically--defining choice as requiring actual possibility. On the other hand, for you to succeed you have to show a definition of choice that does not imply the existence of actual (temporal) possibility that is still an adequate ground for responsibility. It is not question-begging for you to define choice as not including actual possibility, but only so long as you can show this definition is still an adequate ground for responsibility.

In other words, there are two ways you can defend against durka. You can both use the same concept of choice and then show how that concept does not imply the existence of actual possibility. Or, you can use a different concept of choice from the libertarian and show how that concept is an adequate ground for moral responsibility. As far as I can tell, durka wants to argue in the first way, and you want to argue in the second.

A nice summary, thank you.

I want to mention that I'm both arguing for the first method and against his ability to do the second. That's the mark of a good argument (to go both directions). 1: Here's what I think it is (and the argument why); and 2: Here's why I think that it is not the alternative (and the argument why).

Okay, fair enough.

Except here we're talking about how reality being information leads to an n-tuple being a process.

I think an n-tuple can be a process, according to the definitions of "process" that you've given.