Do we really have any choice?

JamesWesley · Post by **JamesWesley** » Tue Feb 23, 2010 6:02 pm

It seems to me that any concept of free choice or free will is nothing more than simply an illusion if there exists an omniscient being.
Is this so even without the existence of an omniscient being? Do we really have a choice in anything we do? Or do previous experiences and events decide our "choices" for us?

Your thoughts?

ConiectoErgoSum · Post by **ConiectoErgoSum** » Thu Feb 25, 2010 7:00 pm

here's a speculation:
an omnicient God could exist outside of time. cause and effect do not happen in that order. cause is a bubble in space-time, and effect is a bubble linked to cause, somewhere else in space-time. God knows where all these bubbles are at any point in space-time, but does not always choose to influence them. free choice (intelligence, perhaps) is a property of humans, as is mass or temperature - but it is not a time-dependent quality.

ChaosBorders · Post by **ChaosBorders** » Mon Apr 05, 2010 1:23 am

McCulloch wrote:
McCulloch wrote: If it could be shown that a murderer had no real control over his choices, would that make him any less dangerous? There are good reasons to punish the perpetrators of crime. But allocating blame and getting retribution are not one of them.

JamesWesley wrote: It would not change the fact that he killed people. I believe that some sort of punshiment should be given to the murderer. Not for retribution, but for the hope of changing his "choices" further down the road.

Absolutely right. The existence of a justice system becomes part of the environmental influences which may partially determine behavior, either by limiting his available choices or influencing them. You see, blame has nothing to do with it.

Agreed. Even more interesting is that a lack of free will supports the concept of forgiveness quite significantly. There is no point in holding onto anger or hatred against someone for doing something to you because A) It wasn't really their fault and B) It's not good for you to hang on to negative emotions like that.

However, letting criminals run around freely is not conducive towards a stable society, and as such, efforts need be made to restrict or reform such behavior as the situation dictates.

sickles · Post by **sickles** » Sun Apr 11, 2010 2:23 pm

first off, God and free will can co habitate as ideas. Say god says, "all of you with red hair raise your hands", god will have a pretty good idea as to who will raise thier hands. A omniscent god will already know how you will use your free will.

That being said, i believe that accepting we have free will is nothing more than an illusion. A person who has free will is just a person who doesnt understand thier unconscious and subconscious desires and how those parts of thier mind influence and manipulate the consciousness. Those parts of your mind impart thier will on your conscious, so you do what you "want " to do. Or what you "like" to do. And you avoid things you dont like or want to do. What decides what you like and dislike? what you find disireable and undisireable may be decided on a particular subject by your conscious, but usually we dont know specifically why we like or dislike certain things other to mutter some adjective like "creepy" or "slimy" or "beautifull". but we usually cannot say why something is beatifull. Other parts of your mind decide that, it seems.

Goat · Post by **Goat** » Sun Apr 11, 2010 7:46 pm

sickles wrote:first off, God and free will can co habitate as ideas. Say god says, "all of you with red hair raise your hands", god will have a pretty good idea as to who will raise thier hands. A omniscent god will already know how you will use your free will.

The line 'An omniscient god will already know how you will use your free will is an oxymoron.

If God already knows your choices, then your choices aren't free, but predetermined.

sickles · Post by **sickles** » Mon Apr 12, 2010 2:31 pm

if an omniscent god knows how you will decide, that doesnt mean its pre determined. It means he will know how you decide. The decision is still ones to make.

Miles · Post by **Miles** » Tue Apr 13, 2010 8:47 pm

sickles wrote:if an omniscent god knows how you will decide, that doesnt mean its pre determined. It means he will know how you decide. The decision is still ones to make.

First of all, understand that making a decision means choosing between at least two alternatives.

If you accept that god knows what will and will not happen, and that what will happen must, by definition, happen, then knowing of such a thing implies its necessity: it cannot not happen. Therefore, if god knows X will happen there is no way for X not to happen. So if he knows that next Saturday you will "decide" to sleep in until 10 AM, there is no way you will "decide" not to. You can't do any differently: you are inexorably destined to think "I will sleep in until 10AM" and not think else wise. In effect then, there is no real choice to make; no actual choosing takes place. For whatever the determining reasons may be that lead up to you thinking "I will sleep in until 10AM" they led to that thought and none other. For them to lead you to think something else, say sleep in until 9AM, they would necessarily have to be different. Could they be different? Perhaps, but they would have to lead to the same outcome, because god has already seen what the outcome will be.

Therefore, because god sees what you will do, "decide," you are destined to do just that and not otherwise. There isn't even a case of "could do differently" because god has already seen that a "could do differently" will never exist. You can do no differently--in essence your actions are predetermined.

The bottom line then is that choosing and making decisions are illusions. Everything we do what we do because we can do no differently.

As a footnote, god and his omniscience isn't even necessary for determinism to be the default operating mechanism.

Miles · Post by **Miles** » Wed Apr 14, 2010 1:36 pm

sickles,

I just noted a misstatement in my post, but because the edit function is no longer available I'm amending it here. My comment "Could they be different? Perhaps, but they would have to lead to the same outcome, because god has already seen what the outcome will be." Should be excised. Please disregard it. I wasn't thinking straight

ChaosBorders · Post by **ChaosBorders** » Sat Apr 17, 2010 11:32 pm

Miles wrote:
sickles wrote:if an omniscent god knows how you will decide, that doesnt mean its pre determined. It means he will know how you decide. The decision is still ones to make.
First of all, understand that making a decision means choosing between at least two alternatives.

If you accept that god knows what will and will not happen, and that what will happen must, by definition, happen, then knowing of such a thing implies its necessity: it cannot not happen. Therefore, if god knows X will happen there is no way for X not to happen. So if he knows that next Saturday you will "decide" to sleep in until 10 AM, there is no way you will "decide" not to. You can't do any differently: you are inexorably destined to think "I will sleep in until 10AM" and not think else wise. In effect then, there is no real choice to make; no actual choosing takes place.

For whatever the determining reasons may be that lead up to you thinking "I will sleep in until 10AM" they led to that thought and none other. For them to lead you to think something else, say sleep in until 9AM, they would necessarily have to be different.

Therefore, because god sees what you will do, "decide," you are destined to do just that and not otherwise. There isn't even a case of "could do differently" because god has already seen that a "could do differently" will never exist. You can do no differently--in essence your actions are predetermined.

On a scientific level I agree with you (but that has nothing to do with omniscience). On a purely philosophical level, if the scientific case for determinism is disregarded, only having omniscience just negates the omniscient being's own free will, not anybody else's.

Though if you add in pretty much any form of omnipotence, anybody the being has any interaction with (whether directly or indirectly) would have any 'free will' they might have otherwise had restrained or negated to the point of non-existence or meaninglessness. If the being is further considered to be the creator of our current universe and consideration of science is added back in, there is most definitely no meaningful free will of any kind for anyone.

sickles · Post by **sickles** » Wed Apr 21, 2010 4:46 pm

some would say that Free will is the illusion created when one doesnt understand ones desires. In other words, you are ruled by your desires (for peace, for food, for comfort, for pleasure, to avoid pain) and those desires make those choices for you. there is no free will.

Cathar1950 · Post by **Cathar1950** » Wed Apr 21, 2010 7:13 pm

sickles wrote:some would say that Free will is the illusion created when one doesnt understand ones desires. In other words, you are ruled by your desires (for peace, for food, for comfort, for pleasure, to avoid pain) and those desires make those choices for you. there is no free will.

It isn't so much as an illusion as it is limited. Our wills are determined by our experiences the conditions and circumstances. We have choices but the are mostly conditioned responses.
When some one say God wants us to freely choose they mean uncoerced.

Most of what we are doing is unconscious and conditioned responses rarely do we have to make real choices and when we do these choices are all conditioned and determined. Feed-back and change is enough to create real novelty in our responses. More complex systems have more complex responses.