This is a thread to allow discussions about how those lucky enough to have free will make decisions.
As materialism doesn’t explain squat, this thread is a place for explanations from those that presumably have them.
And if they can’t provide them, well, this will be a short thread.
So do phoodoo, mung, WJM et al care to provide your explanations of how decisions are actually made?
It’s kind of like quantum theory without the math and the content.
Here’s another thought experiment.
So God decides to reveal FFM this bit of His perfect knowledge, just as FFM’s trying to figure out what to have for breakfast, that he’ll be having pancakes. Is FFM now free to choose something else?
If you want to learn there are Bible studies every day in almost every city in the world. Lots of online resources as well from the very elementary to the advanced.
I’d be happy to answer any specific question you may have to the best of my ability but I rather not further derail a thread about materialism and decisions with information that is not desired or valued by most here.
peace
I don’t know if you know but I’m a Calvinist. I believe that ones actions can be completely determined and free at the same time.
It’s called compatabilistism and apparently most of your compatriots here hold to it as well.
peace
How can actions be free if they are predetermined by something/someone else?
You asked “If you disagree tell me where to locate a decision so I can weigh and measure it to determine it’s materiel causes.” I provided a link to an article showing how the material causes of a decision can be measured.
No, I was asking for a definition that didn’t build in the assumption that decisions must be the result of libertarian free will.
I’m good with that, although that means that computers can be programmed to decide, which you and phoodoo reject. That pushes the definitional question back to “choose”.
If we’re sticking with standard dictionary definitions:
a) pick out or select (someone or something) as being the best or most appropriate of two or more alternatives.
b) decide on a course of action, typically after rejecting alternatives.
I have personally built systems that do both of those.
No
When it comes to humanity there is actually an entity (the mind) that chooses. The fact that there are reasons for your choices does not mean that you don’t choose
peace
Your actions are free if they are not constrained. Generally folks choose what they most want at the time.
When it comes to the unregenerate what they most want is to sin.
peace
Can you address the thought experiment then?
There was a guy having a potentially fatal heart problem who was driven to the hospital by his car. Not entirely autonomously, but the time is coming when cars will drive themselves, choosing routes, and speeds.
Prototype cars are already being challenged with ethical decisions, being forced to choose who lives and who might not, when confronted with “impossible” situations.
The programs do not include all possible situations. They learn.
A sane person might notice that the implied concept of free will is incoherent.
It would be interesting to see someone try to describe a coherent concept of free will.
Measuring causes is not remotely the same thing as measuring decisions. In fact these two concepts are practically the opposite of each other
the dictionary definition does not build in the the assumption that decisions must be the result of libertarian free will.
On the other hand it does build on the assumption that decisions require the ability to choose. Something that materialism would make impossible
peace
I already did
If I want to eat pancakes then I’m free when I eat pancakes regardless of whether God foreknows or preordains that I eat pancakes.
My freedom is not dependent on my ability to do otherwise but on the lack of external constraint on my desires.
peace
Note I didn’t say “God preordains”, I said God revealed to you you’ll be having pancakes. If you can choose not to have pancakes, then God’s revelation fails
And failure of god’s revelation means His knowledge is fallible. IOW, God is fallible
What the article shows is the material changes in a brain that constitute a decision being made. That directly answers your challenge of “tell me where to locate a decision”.
That’s why I included the definition of “choose” as well. Note that it does not require any “immaterial” input, whatever that might be.
Software can decide and choose according to those definitions.
If God revealed to me that I will be having pancakes. Then either I want to have pancakes or I will be compelled to have pancakes by someone. It is impossible that I won’t have pancakes because God’s revelation can’t fail
If I’m not compelled to have pancakes against my will then my actions are free.
peace
FMM, I think you and I are generally in agreement on the free will/determinism issue. I mean, I’m a standard (hack) compatibalist.
But that we agree on this matter surprises me.I’d thought that the Dutch Calvinist philosophers like Van Inwagen and Plantinga were libertarian freewill advocates (as well as believing in pre-ordainment). Is there some split on this matter in your church?
Let’s say I want, or I’m compelled by someone else, or I simply will to troll God by freely choosing to do the opposite of what He reveals to know I will do next. Do I have the freedom to do that?
Generally to be a Calvinist one simply has to subscribe to the five points.
I’m really not to up on many of the Dutch Calvinist philosophers position of this stuff or even if they take a position but most of the Calvinists I hang with are compatibalist
peace
no,
Freedom is simply the lack of compulsion and if God says you are going to have pancakes you are going to have pancakes.
Whether your choice is free depends only on what you want to eat
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
I’d answer dazz’s clever question a little differently I think. Leaving God out of it, the compatibalist just says ‘sure I was free; I could have if I’d wanted to.’ When he asks, ‘could you choose to do that which is contrary to what someone knows I won’t do?’ I think the response is, ‘Yeah–and if he’s omniscient he’d have known something else.’
The key thing to remember is that the knowledge never causes anything. The causes are things like motives, pushes, desires, threats, hunger, curiosity, etc.
Even forces, atoms, chemicals, electrical charges, etc. But never somebody else knowing something.
So I’m not free to contradict God’s knwoledge then? OK
So if God knows I’m going to sin, there’s nothing I can do about it, so I shouldn’t be held accountable for my sins
No, that makes god’s knowledge into some kind of power over people. It’s really the other way around. People doing stuff constrains what others can know–whether the acts are performed freely or randomly or they are entirely determined by prior causes. The point is that knowing is entirely impotent in that arena.
walto,
That’s why I introduced revelation (before the decision takes place), but it’s not clear to me how foreknowledge, or timeless knowledge is any different. Even if knowledge doesn’t cause anything to happen
I don’t get the whole revelation concept so I left that out. I’m sorry if that changed the sense of your post.
The important point, to my way of thinking is that knowing is impotent. Only that which is true can be known, so those things (the known items) are the dependent variables, purely a function of the way the world is.
“Revelation” supposedly would allow one know what God knows one will do in advance, if that makes any sense
Again, I don’t know what revelation is supposed to be other than knowledge with extra-special assurance or something. But even if it came with a free gallon of gas, I don’t think it would change anything.
If I know I’m going to the bank tomorrow, then I must be going to the bank tomorrow, but I still don’t HAVE to. If I don’t go, it turns out I only thought I knew. The ‘has to’ in ‘it has to be true,’ is about what ‘knowledge’ means, not about what anybody ‘has to’ do. It’s just an artifact of language–it’s not a force or power.
ETA: Suppose you say to somebody about FMM–‘I just knew he would say that’. Maybe you did–he’s pretty repetitive. But whether you did or didn’t, your knowledge had no effect on what he did. Neither would an omniscient God’s (if there was one). For good or ill, however, most people take their God to have other tools….
dazz,
Since the dependency runs backward in time — what God reveals to you now depends on what you freely choose in the future — it is logically impossible that the choice God reveals to you is anything other than the choice you will eventually, and freely, make.
Your intuition is that once God has revealed your choice to you, your decision is no longer free. After all, it’s no longer possible that you’ll choose otherwise. But the possibility of choosing otherwise is a characteristic of libertarian free will, which is already an incoherent concept, and thus impossible.
When you consider compatibilist free will in place of libertarian free will, the problem vanishes. You choose what you want, and the fact that your choice couldn’t have been otherwise is irrelevant.
This and the other thread finally got me reading Dennett’s Elbow Room. He does a nice job of showing that libertarian freedom is an illusion and isn’t worth having. Put me down for Dennett on this one.
You’re All Puppets!
Do any of them search, too?
This is, I believe, the source of my potential confusion. If there’s an arrow of time and whether it makes any difference
This one, and the other books you suggested are now in my to-read list
Thanks everyone for the input
You listen to that crap? That might explain a few things… just kidding… but not really… well, maybe
Mung,
Not me. I’m a Muppet.
You mean I don’t understand the “trinity and the incarnation” concept as you understand them. To which I freely concur and say with the most absolute sincerity that I can’t possibly describe the joy and relief I feel in knowing that!
My choice could have been otherwise–if the causal conditions were different. Determinism doesn”t preclude other logical or metaphysical possibiilities. It jus constrains people given their motives, desires, conditions, etc. And that’s actually a good thing for us–or we wouldn’t be able to ensure results, given our desires and motives.
LoL.
It heals the damage done to my brain after reading posts by keiths.
Opeth and Devin Townsend. Top notch metal.
I also listen to stuff like this:
Maxwell Street.
God’s knowledge is not a cause unless He reveals it to you. Once that happens, it is your knowledge,too. One of the parameters/ causes for me in decisions is my knowledge.Is the electrical breaker off? God’s revelation of His foreknowledge would taint the exercise of free will.
Never heard of them but I hate that too, but just because I’ll never be able to play like them. Atheist rules, you know.
Kidding of course, they sound great. Perhaps we should start a discussion on music and I’m sure we’d find connections between us that we would never find in the usual topics
I like that
thanks
peace
Think about it
if your understanding of the Trinity and the incarnation makes what all Christians believe seem to be not just incorrect but incoherent and impossible.
Perhaps you are misunderstanding something
Just a thought
peace
If your definition of choice implies that computers can choose you are defining it wrong
peace
They can choose, select, decide, search, love, hate. Anything a human can do, only better!
I am funding a project that will create prisons designed specifically to treat ill-behaved computers in a humane way.
walto,
Unfortunately for Richard, most of those quotes are either taken out of context, or have been contradicted by other statements Hitler made. He was a guy who said lots of things to try to please lots of people, he was a politician you know? Its not easy to win the hearts and minds of an entire country by announcing you serve no God, and are going to try to exterminate a race. Does that surprise you?
Honestly, if you want to learn things, you might consider the source. Richard is a poor man’s Goebbels.
Patrick,
And what causes those changes?
Same source as you, his own words. I don’t disagree that he was manipulative but there are far more god references than evolution in his rantings.
Was it “Gott mit uns” or “Darwin mit uns”?
Did he ban ‘the bible” or “Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism (Häckel).”?
Don’t let actual facts get in your way Phoodoo, you never do.
FMM, I’m going to try and put this as succinctly as possible: what you believe about the Trinity and the Incarnation is not what most Christians believe.
Even barring that, an appeal to popular belief is simply a fallacy (argumentum ad populum, to use the technical term). If even 99.999999999% of the people on this planet held your views, that still would not actually indicate I was misunderstanding anything.
Just a thought.
So far there are at least 4 atheist posters who now are willing to admit that they don’t believe free will exists.
The others still want to know why materialism prevents one from free will. meanwhile the theists all agree that free will is possible.
You all don’t have your shit together very well on this one. You want to demand to know why materialism negates free will, whilst acknowledging free will is not possible. Any atheist willing to stand up and declare they believe in free will? (Besides keiths, who has shown he doesn’t understand the question. And Richard of course, who doesn’t understand a question.)