What is Free Will?
- Thread starter docrob57
- Start date
Contingent? You'll have to define that term more before I'll agree. There is a particular argument that hinges on this word and so I am a littel hesitent about it's use.docrob57 said:
I would be sitified that it is a free choice as long as it is understood that the ability to do otherwise is real.
I said it was a free choice IF you could have done otherwise.In going through this exercise, please do not infer any information from the sentences that isn't there. Remember, you decided the sentence that we first started with was a free choice, however, the equation developed says the exact same thing.
Resting in Him,
Clete
Clete said:
By contingent I mean the person will go to bed when he is tired unless he wants to do something else The bolded part would be the contingency. It would seem that we have now incorporated the possibility of doing otherwise. Agreed? Or not.
There is a method to my madness here, but our discussions tend to suffer from lack of common perspective, so I am trying to produce common perspective here.
So, lets see if thsi makes sense in laymans terms, since im a total n00b
Free will is supposedly negated by election, since God already knows those that will choose him and they are the elect, there fore meaning that they have no real freedom of choice.
So then thsi would mean that our actions are then guided and chosen by God; therefore meaning that God had Adam and Eve eat the apple, Cain murder Abel etc etc etc
Now here is my main question then: how does omnipotence turn into choosing for us? Isnt it more just God chose us, as he already knew we would choose him?
*feel free to bash me if im wrong, not better way to learn*
Just another :sheep:
Free will is supposedly negated by election, since God already knows those that will choose him and they are the elect, there fore meaning that they have no real freedom of choice.
So then thsi would mean that our actions are then guided and chosen by God; therefore meaning that God had Adam and Eve eat the apple, Cain murder Abel etc etc etc
Now here is my main question then: how does omnipotence turn into choosing for us? Isnt it more just God chose us, as he already knew we would choose him?
*feel free to bash me if im wrong, not better way to learn*
Just another :sheep:
shadrach said:
Welcome Shadrach. I think that is a fair assessment of some of the positions represented. However, right now I am trying to arrive at a common understanding of free will with my brother Clete and whoever else may want to participate, including you, of course!
Thanks, maybe Im starting to get the hang of all of this.
For me, Id think that free will started all the way back at Adam and Eve, as shown by them eating the apple. To me its akin of being a parent. If I leave my 5 year old son in the kitchen with candy sitting in front of him, hes got the choice of wether or not he eats it. But I KNOW hes going to, and still make that choice available to him to do the right thing. Eventually he learns, and doesnt eat the candy when that happens.
For me, Id think that free will started all the way back at Adam and Eve, as shown by them eating the apple. To me its akin of being a parent. If I leave my 5 year old son in the kitchen with candy sitting in front of him, hes got the choice of wether or not he eats it. But I KNOW hes going to, and still make that choice available to him to do the right thing. Eventually he learns, and doesnt eat the candy when that happens.
docrob57 said:Well, don't get too cocky, we will tear you to pieces soon enough.
Well, thats kind of like taking candy from a baby.....
Anyway, cant there only be a limited amount fo views on free will? Essentially its either we have it or dont. There cant be a such thing as limited free will, because then it just wouldnt be free.
I would have to disagree. But keep in mind that we have to keep a really tight rein on our terminology. I disagree with your statement based on my understanding of the word "know".shadrach said:
You cannot have known that you child would eat the candy. You definately did strongly suspect that he would and predicted his action with a very high degree of certainty but that is not what I mean by saying that one "knows" something.
For the purposes of this discussion I think that it is important that we distinguish "knowledge" as that which is known ABSOLUTELY. That is to say that if you know it, it cannot possibly be incorrect under any circumstance. Thus by this definition of knowledge if your child could have possibly done anything other than eat the candy then you did not know that he would. Do you see what I'm getting at here? Tell me if I need to clarify further.
So to answer your question about how does God's knowledge detroy free will, it does so by removing the abilty of an agent to do otherwise than that course of action which is known to God. Without the ability to do otherwise, there is no freedom.
Resting in Him,
Clete
Clete said:As stated, I see no problem with what you've said. So I think we are free to procede (I love punns!
Resting in Him,
Clete
Okay, so lets make another equation. We will add a variable P1 that is = 0 when there is another preference and =1 when there is not. So the equation becomes -
Y = P1X
P can represent any number of other preferences (other things to do) up to infinity. To keep things simple, let's say there is only one other. P = 0 when I want to stay up to watch David Letterman, and 1 when I do not.
To demonstrate that we can incorporate any number of preferences, we will add one more. P2 = 0 when my wife is coming home late (and I want to visit with her) and P2=1 when she is not. So the equation now would be Y = X (P1P2). Again, moving up to infinity. the vector of preferences that could exist other than going to bed can be represented as Pn, with n = to the total number of possible preferences, so our general equation would be Y = PnX.
So again, we have a free will choice that is the product of a deterministic process. So what am I missing, if anything.
Main Entry: free·dom
Function: noun
1 : the quality or state of being free: as a : the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action b : liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another c : the quality or state of being exempt or released from something onerous
Now, as I stated previously, the elect are the elect because God already knows what they will do, in other words, before we make our choices, our choices are already known. Nowhere in there is there implicit or even implyed lack of freedom.
Function: noun
1 : the quality or state of being free: as a : the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action b : liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another c : the quality or state of being exempt or released from something onerous
Now, as I stated previously, the elect are the elect because God already knows what they will do, in other words, before we make our choices, our choices are already known. Nowhere in there is there implicit or even implyed lack of freedom.
docrob57 said:
You lost me. Can you give me the english translation?
If I understand it (which I'm not sure that I do) then for any set of variables there must be more than one possible value for Y. If not them we do not have free will. This is why I posted that really technical definition earlier...
Necessarily, for any human agent S, action A and time t, if S performs A freely at t, then the history of the world prior to t, the laws of nature, and the actions of any other agent (including God) prior to and at t are jointly compatible with S's refraining from performing A freely.
Resting in Him,
Clete
The English translation is "I go to bed when I am tired unless I have something else I would rather do" The purpose of the equation is to demostrate that this sentence can accurately be modeled as a deterministic process. The equation says the EXACT same thing as the sentence.
Yes, that's right.
Resting in Him,
Clete[/QUOTE]
Clete said:
I must be completely lost in what your trying to say, as I am not making the connection that you are. We are elected by the choices we will make, as God knows all, and already knows those that will or will not choose him. Some of us just had to take long convuluted despicable routes to get here.