Another reason why philosophers are useless

[Innoruk]

Actually, first principles are always abstract a priori commitments. One cannot rationally filter experiences into models without having some basic framework of a priori commitments that make it possible to interpret experiences coherently at all. Certainly there is no empirical evidence for truths which are apprehended as self-evident, logically necessary, and understood without the aid of any other ideas. For example, that A=A, or that if A=B and B=C then A=C, or that A⊃B & B⊃C then A⊃C. Those truths are not empirical, they are pre-empirical (they are rational and intuitive).

Not true. It is easy to create examples where the propositions of “if A=B and B=C then A=C, or that A⊃B & B⊃C then A⊃C” do not follow.

Religion is under-defined here. I think that on a wide enough construal of religion, even Naturalism ends up being a religion insofar as it’s a worldview which attempts to answer the questions religion has typically been in the business of addressing (giving an account of reality, answering the big questions, etc).

Religion is any world-view that presents something of “super-natural” (I prefer the notion of “un-natural”), so it is very well defined.

However, to say that religion and science are irreconcilable only just because one changes and the other doesn’t seems silly to me. Mathematics doesn’t change, and yet I think it is reconcilable with science.

Mathematics is not science, and it has nothing to say about the objective reality. I would suggest to drop all the references to the abstract “sciences”, since they are axiomatically driven.

Indeed, the scientific enterprise is one which operates with key assumptions which have been borrowed from Religion - in particular Medieval Christian metaphysical presumptions which were carried into the early modern period. Science presumes that there is an external reality whose nature is not dependent upon what we think or feel about it (that’s a Christian assumption). Science presumes that the external world is rationally intelligible (that nothing which is logically impossible is actual). Science presumes that the human mind is properly equipped to model reality accurately, and not just usefully. These assumptions are all patently Christian.

Come on. The fact that these ideas were formulated by christian people, has nothing to do with Christianity. Back then everyone was a “christian”, because the alternative was to be burned at the stakes as a heretic. The ideas and concepts were presented not because the people were christians, but despite they were christians. But let’s not quibble about this.

First, philosophy has a feedback mechanism, but it happens to rely on reason rather than experiment, and thus its results change given the inclination of thinkers and preferred processes of thought. For instance, if in one generation the philosophy of scientism you’re advocating is in poor repute, it may become more respectable in the next generation - but science will never verify scientism; scientism is a philosophical commitment.

I do not advocate “scientism”, if by that term you mean that all propositions are subject to the empirical verification method. I made that abundantly clear.

There are no such things.

Oh, brother!

 

[Tyrel]

We all face the same problem.

Well, I am glad you allow me to say with my own words what I mean. A short analysis follows.

1. A possible world is a state of affairs, which is different from our world in some respect.
2. There is no special requirement, except one: the possible world cannot contain a logical contradiction.
3. A contingent entity exists in some possible world, but does not exist in another one.
4. A necessary entity exists in ALL possible worlds.
5. The number of entities in a possible world is unconstrained.
6. Therefore a possible world may be an empty world, with no ontological entities at all. Such a world, being empty, cannot contain a contradiction.)

I have a few issues here. For instance, your 1) should not say that a possible world is different from the actual world, since in that case the actual world isn’t logically possible, and that’s a serious problem. 2) is just redundant, since that’s what logically possible means. 3) should be worded more carefully, but I assume the proper reading is the one which agrees exactly with the definition I provided. 4) is correct. 5) I think is clearly false, which I can show in two ways. First, suppose you accept that there is good reason to believe that however many things exist in a world, the number of actually existing things will be finite rather than infinite - then you will want to say that the number N of things which exists must be such that N<∞. However, that’s not much of a constraint (and there are some philosophers who argue that there can be an actually infinite number of beings, though I think this is absurd and I hope you agree). Second, I think it is an analytic truth that N≥1. To see this, consider that all logically possible worlds are models of the way the world could be. Every world will, therefore, be some model, some picture of the way that world is actually. Now consider the following sentence “Nothing exists”. A world in which nothing exists would be one in which that statement is true, but that statement makes it impossible for us to have any model of the world in which it is true. Moreover, it is question begging insofar as to say it is logically possible that nothing exist is to say that God does not exist (and it is also to say that it is not logically possible that God exists, given the axiom S5 in modal logic). Now, while it seems clear to me that you can neither imagine nor conceive of a possible world in which there is no positive state of affairs at all, perhaps you aren’t satisfied with what I’ve said up to this point? In that case, I will direct you to something I wrote a while back on this topic: thirdmillennialtemplar.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/true-propositions-about-not-anything/

In other words, I take it to be a necessary truth that there is no logically possible world in which there is no positive state of affairs (i.e., in which nothing exists). To say there is is just to engage in non-sense.

Maybe you wish to take exception to the idea that the “null-world” (void of all ontologically existing objects) is a real possible world. I cannot imagine why someone would say that, but that is fine. We can posit two possible worlds, one with a specific quark of a specific “flavor” (quarks are supposed to be the “final” elementary particles) and another possible world with a different quark. The intersection of these possible worlds in the “null-world”, therefore there is no “necessary” entity.

I started off excited when I first read this paragraph’s beginning, but I was somewhat let down at the end. Saying there is a world represented by the intersection of those two possible worlds is just question begging of the worst kind. Moreover, it’s not even coherent question begging, since the intersection of those worlds will include the proposition reporting the state of affairs “something exists” or ∃x(Px) where Py means: y has some property or bears some predicate. I’ll issue the question to you directly: do you think it’s coherent to speak of a model of the way the world could be which reports no positive state of affairs? Isn’t it just the very essence of vacuity? Why should we carry on as though we can talk about such a thing? Can you imagine it or conceive of it? Can you understand it as an intelligible picture of the world to say that the world doesn’t exist? What else can the word ‘world’ stand for if not the aggregate of beings which obtain? I think the notion of a world in which there are no beings, no positive states of affairs (etc.) is just a world about which we cannot talk, and about which we cannot think. It is literally unthinkable, irrational and unintelligible to me (and I think you’ll find, if you reflect upon it, that it’s unintelligible to you too).

 

[Innoruk]

Thank you for the interesting philosophical problem.

Frankly, In some ways I’m having a hard time discerning a difference between definitions 1 and 2–at least if the terms are understood in a certain way.

Does “can” in 2) mean “humanly possible in general” or “presently possible.” So it is not humanly possible to leap a tall building in a single bound. But it is humanly possible although presently not possible for me to get to Mass because a blizzard has blocked the roads.

It means the second one. Suppose you are trapped in a building on fire (I hope it will never happen to you). Suppose your only “options” are to stay put, and burn, or break a window and jump to your death. None of these options give you the opportunity to do what you **will, wish, desire **to achieve - namely to survive. In that case and under those specific circumstances your free will is constrained to the limit that it disappears.

 

[Tyrel]

Not true. It is easy to create examples where the propositions of “if A=B and B=C then A=C, or that A⊃B & B⊃C then A⊃C” do not follow.

You must be thinking of something like the relation of simultaneity in the special theory of relativity, but it is a mistake to think that the special theory of relativity provides any such counter example. After all, what the special theory of relativity means when it identifies a relation of simultaneity is something which is actually incommensurable, and so it has nothing to do with what we generally or colloquially call simultaneity. To say that A relates incommensurably to B Y-ly and to say that B relates incommensurably to C Y-ly, and that A does not incommensurably relate to C Y-ly, is not to say anything of great import at all.

Religion is any world-view that presents something of “super-natural” (I prefer the notion of “un-natural”), so it is very well defined.

Well, I’ve had this trouble before, maybe you can enlighten me. Can you give me a non-question begging definition of nature? Will it include entities like sets (W.V.O. Quine admitted that sets need to be admitted as objectively extant in order to make naturalism a coherent view of the world)? What kinds of entities are natural, and what kind are not natural? Isn’t natural, on your account, just an arbitrary category? Why can’t God, if God exists, fit into the arena of the natural, on your account? I look forward to reading a thought-provoking response to this - I, in any case, have a hard time imagining what one could mean by nature other than something like this: a being is natural if and only if it exists objectively (independent of what anyone believes or perceives) and exists contingently. However, if you accepted that formulation, you’d be in quite a lot of trouble vis a vis the PSR… Then again, given that you are an Atheist (I presume), I think you already have a problem with the PSR, so maybe you’ll just bite the bullet here too.

 

[Tyrel]

It means the second one. Suppose you are trapped in a building on fire (I hope it will never happen to you). Suppose your only “options” are to stay put, and burn, or break a window and jump to your death. None of these options give you the opportunity to do what you **will, wish, desire **to achieve - namely to survive. In that case and under those specific circumstances your free will is constrained to the limit that it disappears.

This is just silly. Nobody thinks that free will entails omnipotence. Free will has to do with the power to choose in such a way that antecedent conditions do not necessitate the choice as a consequent. To say that one cannot choose to leap over tall buildings, or choose to believe that nothing exists (or that the first-person perspective is illusory or that intentional states don’t exist), is not to give a counterexample to any construal of free will.

 

[Innoruk]

I have a few issues here. For instance, your 1) should not say that a possible world is different from the actual world, since in that case the actual world isn’t logically possible, and that’s a serious problem.

Why would it? The current world is clearly possible, since it exists. If there would be pine tree in my back yard, where there is an oak tree currently, it would be another possible world.

1. is just redundant, since that’s what logically possible means.

Redundancy is not an “error”.

1. should be worded more carefully, but I assume the proper reading is the one which agrees exactly with the definition I provided. 4) is correct.

Fine.

1. I think is clearly false, which I can show in two ways.

No, you cannot. A possible world is simply a state of affairs which may be different from the existing worlds.

First, suppose you accept that there is good reason to believe that however many things exist in a world, the number of actually existing things will be finite rather than infinite - then you will want to say that the number N of things which exists must be such that N<∞. However, that’s not much of a constraint (and there are some philosophers who argue that there can be an actually infinite number of beings, though I think this is absurd and I hope you agree).

Totally irrelevant. The word “unconstrained” simply means that there is no upper or lower limit for the ontologically existing objects.

Second, I think it is an analytic truth that N≥1.

Why? I say that N≥0. Of course I am a mathematician, who has no problem with the concept of empty sets.

To see this, consider that all logically possible worlds are models of the way the world could be. Every world will, therefore, be some model, some picture of the way that world is actually. Now consider the following sentence “Nothing exists”. A world in which nothing exists would be one in which that statement is true, but that statement makes it impossible for us to have any model of the world in which it is true.

You confuse that proposition “issued” in our world, which pertains to the hypothetical world with a “hypothetical proposition” issued in that world. If that world has no “mind” in it, there are no propositions in it.

Moreover, it is question begging insofar as to say it is logically possible that nothing exist is to say that God does not exist (and it is also to say that it is not logically possible that God exists, given the axiom S5 in modal logic).

Uh-oh! The existence of “God” is supposed to be the end result of your line of reasoning, not a presented “axiom”. Of course I am familiar with the “axiom” of S5 of modal logic and I discard it as sheer nonsense.

In other words, I take it to be a necessary truth that there is no logically possible world in which there is no positive state of affairs (i.e., in which nothing exists). To say there is is just to engage in non-sense.

Why? You stated that a possible world must be without contradiction. The “null-world” qualifies, and now you wish to exclude it. Not acceptable.

I started off excited when I first read this paragraph’s beginning, but I was somewhat let down at the end. Saying there is a world represented by the intersection of those two possible worlds is just question begging of the worst kind.

Why would it be? There is no “question” here to “beg”. You keep on confusing the idea that a proposition exists in world “A”, with the idea that we, in this world issue a proposition ABOUT world “A”. If there is no mind in world “A”, there are no propositions in world “A”.

 

[ManOnFire]

The question here is: “does the concept of free will incorporate the freedom to act on that will, or not?”.

yes. People seem confuse the 2 concepts that, 1. it is “difficult” to act on that will (because then we must admit that life is hard, instead of out perpetual desire to dream life to be easy), and/or 2. that the person is too weak to resist acting on that will (and the result is that many people’s egos don’t want to admit that those people are too weak because it might make them feel badly).

fire away

 

[Fr_of_Jazz]

It means the second one. Suppose you are trapped in a building on fire (I hope it will never happen to you). Suppose your only “options” are to stay put, and burn, or break a window and jump to your death. None of these options give you the opportunity to do what you **will, wish, desire **to achieve - namely to survive. In that case and under those specific circumstances your free will is constrained to the limit that it disappears.

Well, as I pointed out above, I think you have to distinguish between internal and external acts, both of which can be exercised freely. Your example suggests that you equate freedom of the will with the possibility of external action to achieve ones primary goals.

But when options for achieving the primary goal are closed off secondary goals usually intervene. Some people, whose secondary goal is freedom from pain, may freely choose (very badly I would say) to commit suicide (external action). Some others may try to find other people and link up with them to provide support (external). Still others, with religious goals, may choose freely to turn their fate into a prayer and offer their suffering and life to God (internal action) or may pray with others (internal and external). As Viktor Frankel discusses, even when active or creative options in life are closed off to us (due to illness, age, injury) we still have the free choice of how we will handle our circumstances. We can freely choose our attitude.

 

[jonathan_hili]

They do? Of course if one’s purported “epistemology” is dependent upon their “camp”, then it is another useless, subjective method. An objective, repeatable epistemological method should lead to the same answer, no matter what the questioner might a-priori believe.

The different epistemological perspectives, if they have lasted in the philosophical world, are not based on just subjectivity: they are interpretations of objective data and experience, some better than others. Philosophy, unlike science, cannot be experimental in the same way, and works backgrounds, not hypothesising forwards. The same answer is used but the interpretation is different.

 

[Tyrel]

Why would it? The current world is clearly possible, since it exists. If there would be pine tree in my back yard, where there is an oak tree currently, it would be another possible world.

If a possible world is defined by being ‘different’ from the actual world, then the actual world is not a possible world. That’s the problem I was pointing out. I could have been more gracious with my reading of your second line.

No, you cannot. A possible world is simply a state of affairs which may be different from the existing worlds… Totally irrelevant. The word “unconstrained” simply means that there is no upper or lower limit for the ontologically existing objects.

I suggested that the upper limit is an actually infinite number of things, and that the lower limit is 1. Moreover, the world in which nothing exists is one with literally no positive state of affairs, ergo etc.

I am a mathematician, who has no problem with the concept of empty sets.

Nobody here has a problem with empty sets per se, but somebody, namely me, has a problem with the idea that one can project the idealization of an empty set (or a set with an infinite number of members for that matter) onto modal logic. Not all mathematical (or even physical) idealizations are logically possible. Schrödinger’s cat is an idealization which is very useful, but it is not meant to be literally construed as true (or else it would be proposed as a violation of the principle of non-contradiction). Similarly being able to deal with empty sets, or infinite sets, or differently sized infinite sets, does not mean that one can unproblematically project those idealizations from set-theory to modal logic. One cannot, in fact, subtract two apples from one in reality.

Now, just sit back and think about it - if I wanted to communicate some model of the world to you, and tried to do so by telling you all the states of affairs which do not obtain, or naming all the beings which do not exist, you would eventually want to know what does exist so that you can start to have some picture of the world I have in mind. If I tell you that there are no positive states of affairs, no beings, nothing whatever in my picture of the world, then you would be right to say “come off it now, one cannot conceive of a world in which nothing is true, no state of affairs is the case, and no being exists!” You would be right to respond that way. Consider by analogy if somebody wanted to describe ‘God’ to you, and did so by telling you all the things God was not (so that they had a purely negative theology). Wouldn’t you eventually ask them what the word ‘God’ even means, or what idea it could correspond to? Wouldn’t you insist that if they didn’t specify anything about what God was actually like that the concept is just incomprehensible and vacuous? What’s the difference between that notion of God and your notion of the empty world?

You confuse that proposition “issued” in our world, which pertains to the hypothetical world with a “hypothetical proposition” issued in that world. If that world has no “mind” in it, there are no propositions in it.

I think you must be confused, or there is some kind of miscommunication here. For the record I do think that if something is possible then it is necessarily possible, such that the range of logical possibilities is fixed across all logically possible worlds. However, that has nothing to do with the point I was making about a world in which nothing exists. It makes no difference whether there are propositions whose truth value is true from within the perspective of that world (since there are, in that world, no minds, and if propositions are mind dependent, then there are no propositions in that world). The fact is that there is no way to talk about any positive state of affairs from the perspective of any world. No model of a world in which nothing obtains, which has no properties, no qualities, no relations, no beings at all, is intelligible. To talk about nothing as though we can have a model of it is just hopelessly confused.

Uh-oh! The existence of “God” is supposed to be the end result of your line of reasoning, not a presented “axiom”. Of course I am familiar with the “axiom” of S5 of modal logic and I discard it as sheer nonsense.

If something is necessary that means it exists in all logically possible worlds. If something is possible then it exists in at least one logically possible world. If something is possible then it is necessarily possible. If something is possibly necessary then it is necessary. For something to be necessary means for it to exist in all logically possible worlds. For it to be possible means for it to exist in at least one logically possible world. Some being x is necessary if it exists at all, because the very idea of x involves it’s necessary existence. X, if it exists, exists in all logically possible worlds. If X is possible then it exists in at least one logically possible worlds, but it is something which exists in all logically possible worlds. Thus, if it is possible that a being which exists in all logically possible worlds exists (i.e., if it exists in at least one logically possible world), then it exists in all logically possible worlds. I know that Atheists find this controversial because of a fear of concluding that God exists, but I can see no good reason to reject S5 on any other grounds. Perhaps you can share with me your thoughts about S5.

 

[Innoruk]

yes. People seem confuse the 2 concepts that, 1. it is “difficult” to act on that will (because then we must admit that life is hard, instead of out perpetual desire to dream life to be easy), and/or 2. that the person is too weak to resist acting on that will (and the result is that many people’s egos don’t want to admit that those people are too weak because it might make them feel badly).

fire away

Thank you. I agree that the freedom to act on one’s will is inseparable part of “free will”.

 

[Innoruk]

Well, as I pointed out above, I think you have to distinguish between internal and external acts, both of which can be exercised freely. Your example suggests that you equate freedom of the will with the possibility of external action to achieve ones primary goals.

But when options for achieving the primary goal are closed off secondary goals usually intervene. Some people, whose secondary goal is freedom from pain, may freely choose (very badly I would say) to commit suicide (external action). Some others may try to find other people and link up with them to provide support (external). Still others, with religious goals, may choose freely to turn their fate into a prayer and offer their suffering and life to God (internal action) or may pray with others (internal and external). As Viktor Frankel discusses, even when active or creative options in life are closed off to us (due to illness, age, injury) we still have the free choice of how we will handle our circumstances. We can freely choose our attitude.

I agree with you. I am only concerned with the external action, however.

Let’s use an example. A strong rapist overcomes a weak victim, and performs his act. The victim has one desire: “to escape her predicament”. Unfortunately she is unable to carry out her wish - that is in this particular event she is deprived of her free will. The strange thing is that I has the same discussion a few times where the opponent asserted that her “free will” was left intact, only her ability to act on it was taken away.

One could say that she always has the “internal freedom” to lay back and enjoy the experience. This would be a very cynical way to view this situation.

(As a side note, this situation was the reason that I started to become interested in the notion of free will. During a conversation about the “free will defense” concerning the problem of evil, I asked why does God always “prefer / allow” that the rapist’s free will should conquer the free will of the victim, and I received the answer quoted above.)

 

[Innoruk]

The different epistemological perspectives, if they have lasted in the philosophical world, are not based on just subjectivity: they are interpretations of objective data and experience, some better than others. Philosophy, unlike science, cannot be experimental in the same way, and works backgrounds, not hypothesising forwards. The same answer is used but the interpretation is different.

This is what I call the lack of epistemology. Epistemology is the “tool” to separate the true propositions from the false ones. If the “tool” is objective, then it can be “wielded” by anyone, and the result will be same, no matter what the person a-priori believes.

If the “tool” is contingent upon the person’s a-priori beliefs, then it is already “tainted” and as such it is useless.

A real world example: quite a while ago I asked why God never talks to me. I was told that IF I perform a certain task (for example praying the rosary) then God WILL talk to me. I tried, and of course nothing happened. So the alleged epistemological “tool” (praying the rosary) proved to be useless. The answer was:

1. you did not persist long enough (how long is long enough?) or
2. you did not pray “honestly” enough, or
3. I closed my ears, or
4. God is not a vending machine… or many other cop-outs.

In my eyes these white-washing attempts are the indications of intellectual dishonesty, when the “player” refuses to fold his card, but insists of changing the rules to escape that his hand contains a losing combination.

 

[Fr_of_Jazz]

I agree with you. I am only concerned with the external action, however.

Let’s use an example. A strong rapist overcomes a weak victim, and performs his act. The victim has one desire: “to escape her predicament”. Unfortunately she is unable to carry out her wish - that is in this particular event she is deprived of her free will. The strange thing is that I has the same discussion a few times where the opponent asserted that her “free will” was left intact, only her ability to act on it was taken away.

One could say that she always has the “internal freedom” to lay back and enjoy the experience. This would be a very cynical way to view this situation.

(As a side note, this situation was the reason that I started to become interested in the notion of free will. During a conversation about the “free will defense” concerning the problem of evil, I asked why does God always “prefer / allow” that the rapist’s free will should conquer the free will of the victim, and I received the answer quoted above.)

Certainly there are things that can diminish the exercise of freedom in a given situation: habit, ignorance, force, strong emotion (e.g., getting carried away, fear). To that extent the rational control over our behavior and our power of choice is diminished or even taken away. There is no disputing that. In RC moral theology these have long been called “modifiers of responsibility.”

But my point is I don’t think one can equate freedom of the will (as a faculty) with the possibility of external action to achieve ones primary goal. There are other free external actions available regarding secondary goals even though they may not achieve the primary goal.

She could also–and many do–continue to resist. That is an exercise of freedom in an external act even though her goal was not achieved. Even if she chooses not to resist–say he has a knife to her throat–that is also a free external act to achieve a (in this case) secondary goal, to stay alive.

Just because the girl in your example can’t have her way, i.e., achieve what she wants to achieve as a primary goal, does not mean her faculty of free choice has been taken away.

 

[Innoruk]

Not all mathematical (or even physical) idealizations are logically possible.

That is ridiculous. If something is physically possible then it is also logically possible.

Schrödinger’s cat is an idealization which is very useful, but it is not meant to be literally construed as true (or else it would be proposed as a violation of the principle of non-contradiction).

Why is that a problem? As we keep digging into reality, many times we find that our a-priori concepts about reality are simply false. Consider the light as assumed to be rather a particle or a wave “dichotomy”. Or the double-slit experiment proves that one electron actually “passes through two slits at the same time”. The result shows that the macro-reality and the micro-reality are not governed by the same laws.

One cannot, in fact, subtract two apples from one in reality.

Sure you can. You will simply owe one apple to the other person.

…then you would be right to say “come off it now, one cannot conceive of a world in which nothing is true, no state of affairs is the case, and no being exists!” You would be right to respond that way.

But I would not. I would accept that you described an empty set, without any elements in it at all.

Consider by analogy if somebody wanted to describe ‘God’ to you, and did so by telling you all the things God was not (so that they had a purely negative theology). Wouldn’t you eventually ask them what the word ‘God’ even means, or what idea it could correspond to? Wouldn’t you insist that if they didn’t specify anything about what God was actually like that the concept is just incomprehensible and vacuous?

True.

What’s the difference between that notion of God and your notion of the empty world?

The difference is that the empty set is an abstraction, and God is supposed to be more than an abstraction.

---

But, since you seem to be uncomfortable with the abstraction of empty sets, lets use those possible worlds, which have at least ONE ontological object in them.

I think you must be confused, or there is some kind of miscommunication here. For the record I do think that if something is possible then it is necessarily possible, such that the range of logical possibilities is fixed across all logically possible worlds.

I disagree. In a possible world where there is no “life” it is logically impossible to have an “Einstein”.

However, that has nothing to do with the point I was making about a world in which nothing exists. It makes no difference whether there are propositions whose truth value is true from within the perspective of that world (since there are, in that world, no minds, and if propositions are mind dependent, then there are no propositions in that world). The fact is that there is no way to talk about any positive state of affairs from the perspective of any world. No model of a world in which nothing obtains, which has no properties, no qualities, no relations, no beings at all, is intelligible. To talk about nothing as though we can have a model of it is just hopelessly confused.

Sorry, mathematicians have no problem with that. They have no problem with “n-dimensional” physical space either. They are unable to visualize a “tesseract”, for example, but visualization is not necessary, it is merely an icing on the cake.

I know that Atheists find this controversial because of a fear of concluding that God exists, but I can see no good reason to reject S5 on any other grounds. Perhaps you can share with me your thoughts about S5.

Why do you think that atheists are “afraid”? Besides, if there would be an object in all the possible worlds, it would only be an object, which has nothing to with the “christian God”. And why only “one”? there is no reason to assume that there would be only ONE object which exists in all the possible worlds.

I accept that a “possible world is a state of affairs”, which is either identical to this actual existence or it is different in some degree or another. It may have more ontological objects, or fewer. The number of possible worlds is huge (possibly infinite). Every possible world is static - or a snapshot of a dynamic world. Again, it is much simpler to analyze a dynamic world as a sequence of zillions of static worlds.

We say that if an ontological object exists in some (but not all) possible worlds, then it exists “contingently”. We say that if an ontological object exists in ALL the possible worlds, we say that it exists “necessarily”. (By the way the terminology is horrible, but that cannot be helped. Just like in mathematics the terminology of “irrational numbers” or “imaginary numbers” are extremely misleading and confusing.)

To find out if an object “X” is “necessary” one MUST examine ALL the possible worlds, and ascertain that object “X” is present in each and every one of them. There is no “shortcut”. On the other hand to prove (mathematically prove) that the set of “necessarily existing objects” is an empty set, all we have to show that there are two possible worlds, where their intersection is the “null-world”. This is easy.

Let’s take world one (W1) which is the Milky Way. Let’s take world two (W2), which is everything else - except the Milky Way. The intersection of these two worlds is the empty set, and therefore the number of “necessarily existing objects” is zero.

S5 is simply a linguistic play.

There is no need to play with “possibly necessary” or “necessarily possible” or any other contrived nonsense. If something exists in all possible worlds, then it exists in each possible world, but the reverse in not true, no matter how many times one attempts to speak of “possibly necessary”.

 

[Innoruk]

Just because the girl in your example can’t have her way, i.e., achieve what she wants to achieve as a primary goal, does not mean her faculty of free choice has been taken away.

I said that in that respect, her freedom to achieve her goal is gone. Let’s say that one is trapped in a high-rise, which is on fire. He is “free” to stay put and burn to death, or he is “free” to break a window and jump to his death. I would not call any of these actions a “free exercise of his will”, because the goal - to survive - cannot be achieved. I only speak of individual cases, not in “free will” in general. As far as I am concerned, if one is free to choose a red tie over a blue tie, then in that respect he has “free will”.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I agree with you. I am only concerned with the external action, however.

Let’s use an example. A strong rapist overcomes a weak victim, and performs his act. The victim has one desire: “to escape her predicament”. Unfortunately she is unable to carry out her wish - that is in this particular event she is deprived of her free will. The strange thing is that I has the same discussion a few times where the opponent asserted that her “free will” was left intact, only her ability to act on it was taken away.

One could say that she always has the “internal freedom” to lay back and enjoy the experience. This would be a very cynical way to view this situation.

The condition of her internal freedom being intact does not rely solely on her enjoyment of the experience. What her internal freedom does depend upon is that a number of alternative responses remained available to her. She could make up her mind, for example, that she would not allow the traumatic event to “damage” her in any inevitable way and then go on to live out that option. That would be exercising freedom.

(As a side note, this situation was the reason that I started to become interested in the notion of free will. During a conversation about the “free will defense” concerning the problem of evil, I asked why does God always “prefer / allow” that the rapist’s free will should conquer the free will of the victim, and I received the answer quoted above.)

According to your view external constraints always compromise free will, in principle. I see no difference between your example and, say, someone who loses an arm in an industrial accident. You might conclude the individual is not free to “enjoy” that experience either, but it seems to me that you have not shown that an individual cannot exercise a number of options following the event nor that those options could not be the result of an individual exercising free agency.

Furthermore, I see no real difference between your case and a predicament that an impetuous young gentleman might find himself in after making a decision to marry a young woman, then waking up the next morning with a new found awareness that this is decidedly not what he willed, even though he “freely” entered into the marriage by his choices and actions in the time leading up to the actual wedding. The fact that he has obligated himself to the constraints of marriage does not mean those constraints have now compromised his capacity for free agency despite the fact that his options are constrained by his own choice of outcomes.

This would seem to entail the incoherent result that any exercise of choice is a defeater for free choice because choosing one option from a set imposes a limitation on the freedom of the will itself to choose by limiting the field of options. It is not clear to me that the coherency of the concept of free will depends upon an absolute autonomy from the real world, but merely that an individual can arrive at or create a multiplicity of options and then is free to choose between them.

 

[Innoruk]

According to your view external constraints always compromise free will, in principle.

Of course. The physical and psychological constraints always limit as to what we are able to accomplish. The problem only occurs when NONE of the remaining avenues of actions allow us to achieve our goal. That is when free will disappears.

It is not clear to me that the coherency of the concept of free will depends upon an absolute autonomy from the real world, but merely that an individual can arrive at or create a multiplicity of options and then is free to choose between them.

I did not mention an “absolute” control over our options. That is something you “invented”.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Of course. The physical and psychological constraints always limit as to what we are able to accomplish. The problem only occurs when NONE of the remaining avenues of actions allow us to achieve our goal. That is when free will disappears.

That would be the state called “death.”

As long as an agent has the power to revise or create new goals, free will remains. You are assuming, in the rapist example, that the rapist’s actions completely nullify the victim’s ability to create new goals.

Of course, it MAY be true that the victim just “gives up” but that relinquishing of the capacity or ability to create a new set of options, in itself, may be a “choice” of the agent, just as giving into the temptation to commit an act (say the rapist in your example) does not mean the renunciation of the capacity to forge a different set of options is likewise not a freely chosen outcome and did not have to be the end result.

If it is possible to conceive of alternatives, choice remains. The question is whether the actual exercise of choice is possible to that particular individual. This takes us back to my point earlier in the thread that free will is not a concept or fact about human beings, but, rather, a capacity or power (grounded in reason) that needs to be exercised and could be susceptible to diminishment.

The capacity of the rape victim to resolve the attack might be dependent upon previous choices to increase her capacity for free agency. So you are quite correct that for some victims such an event could result in the complete disappearance of free will, but that would be the equivalent of psychological death where the individual completely loses the capacity to create new goals.

However, even if this were true about a particular individual’s response to a situation does not entail the impossibility of free will or that free will does not obtain for some, most or, potentially, all human beings.

 

[Fr_of_Jazz]

I said that in that respect, her freedom to achieve her goal is gone. Let’s say that one is trapped in a high-rise, which is on fire. He is “free” to stay put and burn to death, or he is “free” to break a window and jump to his death. I would not call any of these actions a “free exercise of his will”, because the goal - to survive - cannot be achieved. I only speak of individual cases, not in “free will” in general. As far as I am concerned, if one is free to choose a red tie over a blue tie, then in that respect he has “free will”.

In those cases the goal is impossible–just as impossible as leaping a tall building in a single bound or running as fast as a speeding bullet. True we are not free to do any of those things. But usually people don’t speak about freedom in relation to the impossible, which we know (given we have no power to do) we are not free to do. In the face of the impossible we go to other goals and means.

Yes, freedom can apply to things like tie color or eating your vegetables before you mashed potatoes. But it also applies to greater struggles like remaining faithful in marriage in the face of temptation; conduct in war; choosing moral business practices even though they are not as “profitable” as less moral ones; confronting a friend with a drinking problem that is destroying his life and family rather than taking the easy way out and letting it slide.