Can a created being have free will?

[avflf]

Oi! What 'bout my question?

Going back to basics let’s consider a choice between two paths only. As written in (Deu 30:19) “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:” and one is given a set of rules that will lead to “life” and another to “death” The concept of “omniscience” dictates that God knows before hand which path each individual will take but is it not up to the individual to first understand the implications of both paths and then decide which way to go, taking that foreknowledge does not mean coercion?

 

[HelenaMT]

Going back to basics let’s consider a choice between two paths only. As written in (Deu 30:19) “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:” and one is given a set of rules that will lead to “life” and another to “death” The concept of “omniscience” dictates that God knows before hand which path each individual will take but is it not up to the individual to first understand the implications of both paths and then decide which way to go, taking that foreknowledge does not mean coercion?

The problem I have with this is that if God is truly omniscient in addition to being the creator of all reality, nothing can be done without his consent-meaning if he wanted Hitler to have been an artist instead of a dictator, that would have been how it worked out.

If I write a book, and one of my characters has an internal struggle going on, whatever he thought he “decided” only occurred because I wrote it. Do you see a way out of that?

Unless God can choose to “not see” the decisions we make (which seems counter to most ideas of omniscience) or* cannot *affect the decisions we make (which goes against the idea of omnipotence), then how can we be said to have real free will, as opposed to just the illusion of free will, as many who believe in a purely naturalist determinism would agree?

And if God cannot know our choices ahead of time, that would mean time has a meaning for God, too.

 

[ddarko]

The problem I have with this is that if God is truly omniscient in addition to being the creator of all reality, nothing can be done without his consent-meaning if he wanted Hitler to have been an artist instead of a dictator, that would have been how it worked out.

If I write a book, and one of my characters has an internal struggle going on, whatever he thought he “decided” only occurred because I wrote it. Do you see a way out of that?

Unless God can choose to “not see” the decisions we make (which seems counter to most ideas of omniscience) or* cannot *affect the decisions we make (which goes against the idea of omnipotence), then how can we be said to have real free will, as opposed to just the illusion of free will, as many who believe in a purely naturalist determinism would agree?

And if God cannot know our choices ahead of time, that would mean time has a meaning for God, too.

The simple solution to your problem is that known as the Boethian solution. The idea is that since God is outside of time, he can see the past, present and eternal all at once. So he has foreknowledge since he has actually seen what you will do in the future.

But you can refine your question to something more complicated as I am sure you no doubt will as I did when I first ran in to the problem. The refined question would be, how do you reconcile Providence/Grace with free will.

There is a solution to this problem commonly known as molinism. The church it self has no concrete position on whether it is the ultimate explanation but it does not discard it as false either. (Note: There is an another solution known as the Thomist solution which I noticed someone else already mentioned in an earlier post)

Molinist solution was first introduced by Molina in the 16th century. The solution is not the most simple to explain thoroughly in one forum post but I will summarize it here for you. For more deep and thorough philosophical analysis, I recommend the book ''Divine Providence" by Thomas Flint.

Summary:
The molinist idea deals with God having knowledge of ‘‘counterfactuals’’ which is known as God’s middle knowledge. In the molinist view, God has three types of knowledge prior to his creation of the universe. God has natural knowledge, which consists of concepts such as non-contradiction etc, Free knowledge, which is the knowledge dependent on God’s free will, and then Middle knowledge, truths dependent on creaturely freedom, i.e. Counterfactuals. The logical ordering of the knowledge is

Natural Knowledge → Middle knowledge → Free knowledge.

Counterfactuals deal with truths such as ''if Adam was in situation X, he would have freely chosen to do Y". Now one thing to note is that the counterfactuals are still contingent truths since they have no yet happened (no universe has been created yet). Given that God knows all the possible counterfactuals, in all the possible universes that he could create, he can then freely choose to create any universe and thus make the counterfactuals true.

A very simplistic objection is why didn’t he create one where there was no sin/evil. The simple answer is that there probably is no possible universe where free will can exist while sin does not. God cannot create square circles, so he has to choose one of the possible ones.

However, that is just a simple objection and there are other very good objections one can raise against the molinist position. So I encourage you to pick up the book I mentioned above if you are more interested.

Something I should mention is that the molinist solution is just a possible explanation. It doesn’t mean that it is exactly what happened and I don’t think we will ever know how Free will and Providence can be reconciled together till God reveals it to us. But you can at least know that the idea of having free will together with divine providence is not illogical as some might have you believe. And it is also helpful when explaining Catholic Dogma such as Papal Infalliblity, and petitionary prayer etc.

I took the time to reply because I once had the same problem you are having and was puzzled for sometime. I even nearly gave up the idea that there was divine providence at one point. But after much studying, now I see that the two can clearly co-exist. And even if Molinism falls, I have faith that the two things can be reconciled some other way. I hope this helps with your problem.

God Bless!

 

[greylorn]

Do you think the world would be a better place if 99-100% of the population were divergent thinkers? Do you imagine that if everyone were divergent thinkers that they would hold the same beliefs you do?

Better place? No. If everyone thought divergently, no one would hold the same beliefs as anyone else— unless they were also logical.

My theories would be even less popular than now, were that possible.

I agree with you here. Also, this is compatible with Church teaching as I understand it. This weakness is one of the reasons that Jesus’ life and His gift of the Church is so important.

Good. The concept is also consistent with human experience, but of course totally out of agreement with the beliefs of science on this subject, at several levels.
"greylorn:

Weak souls can exercise free will only in areas for which their brains have not been programmed.

This cannot be true at the same time as your earlier statement that divergent thinking can be learned without admitting some form of deprogramming. Is that what you are proposing? If so, I suggest that a more radical deprogramming is needed, like death (i.e., Baptism).

Divergent thinking cannot be learned by everyone. I erred in saying so. But this is a function of time and circumstances. If in time the soul can grow, it can learn. Rarely happens.

An old psych test for divergent thinking involved solving the problem of how to extract a ping pong ball from the bottom of a 3 foot steel pipe, of diameter only slightly larger than that of the ball, firmly embedded in concrete, using only the tools available in the set-up room.

Two different rooms each contained the necessary tools, but in different forms, One room did not have an environment helpful to finding the solution; the other did. Each contained a variety of useless tools. Problem solvers in the inconvenient room wasted a lot of time attaching globs of chewed bubble gum to a fishhook and string line.

In the convenient room, most people solved the problem easily. In the other room, only 3%.

So, divergent thinking can be widely accomplished in an environment which is conducive to it. Put a group of engineers together and ask them to solve a problem to which no one has found a solution, they will find it. Doesn’t matter if they are Catholic, Jews, Muslims or Darwinists.

But put the same group of excellent minds together and ask them to figure out how the universe came into being, and what is its purpose, and they will spend forever getting into arguments with one another over their various beliefs. Belief and agreement is the greatest barrier to divergent thinking. It is a fearsome barrier. All who have a belief are at its mercy.

A true divergent thinker will exercise his ability in spite of a contrary environment. Thus, the 3%.

Since when is QM and Catholic faith two belief systems? Are QM and Newtonian physics two belief systems? Does someone who believes in the law of gravity have to choose to continue the belief or not upon seeing a plane flying? I don’t know of any contradictions between QM and Catholic faith, and I doubt that every Catholic who learns QM starts throwing his faith out the window.

Since their beliefs were first formalized, I’d figure.

Newtonian physics is quite different from QM. The facts behind QM have led to different theories re: their interpretation. The present theories were adopted by a vote at a meeting once mentioned in the lore but now buried, referred to as the Copenhagen Convention, which was held in Geneva in, I believe, 1929. Never before has a physics theory been adopted, and opposing theories shut down, by democratic vote. Most of the physicists with opposing views were in the U.S. and did not have the funds to attend the meeting.

There are similarities to, for example, the Nicene Council. Those known to oppose Constantine’s opinions, mostly gnostics, were not invited. Curiously, the lifetimes of leading gnostics were foreshortened in the wake of this meeting.

Also, you mention logical problems with the Catholic dogma. As far as I know, there are none. The only times I have seen or heard of logical errors are when people are not reporting the true Catholic faith.

I’ve proposed many logical problems on CAF, and credit the Church with allowing this freedom of thought and expression. The simplest examples are the contraction between God’s creation of all things, and the energy conservation law. Or free will vs. omniscience.

I don’t agree with you here. I wouldn’t say that the brain is some kind of antenna that can be broken through defect or damage. Every human has a soul and has the capacity for free will.

You are reiterating dogma. Study the neurological literature. An old novel, The Soul of Anna Klane, addresses this issue. Its story is consistent with data.

Or you might care to educate yourself in this subject by reading the literature on psychological follow-up studies of prefrontal lobotomy patients, or even watch, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

 

[greylorn]

You have beliefs Greylorn, do not deceive yourself. You believe that you are a divergent thinker. You also believe that you have no beliefs. There are other things that you believe, but I’m sticking with things that are documented in this thread.

Reply #2 to Post 58.

Kindly trust me to know my own mind.

A mechanic does not “believe” in his ability to pull a cylinder head and replace a bad valve after he’s done it a few times. He knows his skills. Brett Favre does not believe he can throw a football— he knows he can. I’ve made my living doing divergent thinking, so have no need to believe I can do it.

But you are right in that I do have one belief. I put a silver dime under my pillow every night, believing that in the morning it will be collected by the tooth fairy, and I’ll awaken with a fresh set of teeth.

Please reference an opinion of mine which is illogical, and why you believe it to be so. Inconsistency with dogma does not count. I’ll see if I can correct it. Otherwise, you’ve made a statement worth retracting. I would appreciate it also if you would not refer to my ideas, theories, and opinions as “beliefs.” I do not follow any dogmas. I understand that you do, and that you therefore have beliefs.

Do you think it is appropriate to accuse me of having beliefs, simply because you do?

(I’ll bet you can catch me in a few late night posts using the term “belief” in a casual context where “opinion” would have been more correct. That might be confusing if one does not take context into account. I will be more precise in the future.)

For example, back when I was a Catholic, I believed in the Church’s dogma. Didn’t get killed for it, but did get hurt. Ran my life according to those beliefs.

Now, I can say that I believe that John Kennedy was assassinated by a group of professionals (because the single-bullet theory is stupid). I believe that a very serious coverup is involved in the WTC bombings, because of the absence of the flight recorders and the mysterious collapse of Building 7.

But I do not run my life according to these beliefs, like I did with Catholicism. I simply distrust my government.

Everyone’s comments are based on real-world information and theories derived therefrom.

You are entirely and absolutely incorrect. Religionists (read the CAF for reference) base their comments upon their beliefs, which have nothing to do with any real world experience. They commonly reference words written by primitive peoples, words which relate stories, and pretend in their little minds that the stories actually happened. Despite a complete lack of evidence that Jesus Christ existed, his belief is accepted based upon the written words of people who never met him, never even saw him from a distance.

That may be your idea of “real world information,” and technically you are correct. The words represent information, and they exist in the real world. My idea of “real world information” is the kind of thing one can see by pointing a telescope into space, or a microscope at a virus. Or sniffing a morning rose, watching an evening sunset, and dealing with human evil and general untrustworthiness.

I state that mankind’s ideas about the nature of man and the origin of the universe, Darwinism and Big Bang theory very specifically included right alongside Christian dogma, are entirely based upon theories which ignore real world evidence, and are therefore of little value to me.

 

[greylorn]

I did not mean to dismiss, but to contribute. The question was about thought, which Minsky wrote about, even if he was not referring to non-physical interactions. I’m not aware of any claim that the soul performs all thought, so the material is relevant. That said, I may have missed the underlying point of the question and focussed too much on the word thought. If so, I apologive to HelenaMT, esp. since the post was not a question directed to me.

I believe you. Your posts are generally of a contributory nature. I should have given you the benefit of prior history.

The problem with Minsky and other conventional researchers is that they do not distinguish between thought and information processing. This is hard to do, but essential to the conversation.

 

[ddarko]

Reply #2 to Post 58.

Kindly trust me to know my own mind.

A mechanic does not “believe” in his ability to pull a cylinder head and replace a bad valve after he’s done it a few times. He knows his skills. Brett Favre does not believe he can throw a football— he knows he can. I’ve made my living doing divergent thinking, so have no need to believe I can do it.

But you are right in that I do have one belief. I put a silver dime under my pillow every night, believing that in the morning it will be collected by the tooth fairy, and I’ll awaken with a fresh set of teeth.

Please reference an opinion of mine which is illogical, and why you believe it to be so. Inconsistency with dogma does not count. I’ll see if I can correct it. Otherwise, you’ve made a statement worth retracting. I would appreciate it also if you would not refer to my ideas, theories, and opinions as “beliefs.” I do not follow any dogmas. I understand that you do, and that you therefore have beliefs.

Do you think it is appropriate to accuse me of having beliefs, simply because you do?

(I’ll bet you can catch me in a few late night posts using the term “belief” in a casual context where “opinion” would have been more correct. That might be confusing if one does not take context into account. I will be more precise in the future.)

For example, back when I was a Catholic, I believed in the Church’s dogma. Didn’t get killed for it, but did get hurt. Ran my life according to those beliefs.

Now, I can say that I believe that John Kennedy was assassinated by a group of professionals (because the single-bullet theory is stupid). I believe that a very serious coverup is involved in the WTC bombings, because of the absence of the flight recorders and the mysterious collapse of Building 7.

But I do not run my life according to these beliefs, like I did with Catholicism. I simply distrust my government.

You are entirely and absolutely incorrect. Religionists (read the CAF for reference) base their comments upon their beliefs, which have nothing to do with any real world experience. They commonly reference words written by primitive peoples, words which relate stories, and pretend in their little minds that the stories actually happened. Despite a complete lack of evidence that Jesus Christ existed, his belief is accepted based upon the written words of people who never met him, never even saw him from a distance.

That may be your idea of “real world information,” and technically you are correct. The words represent information, and they exist in the real world. My idea of “real world information” is the kind of thing one can see by pointing a telescope into space, or a microscope at a virus. Or sniffing a morning rose, watching an evening sunset, and dealing with human evil and general untrustworthiness.

I state that mankind’s ideas about the nature of man and the origin of the universe, Darwinism and Big Bang theory very specifically included right alongside Christian dogma, are entirely based upon theories which ignore real world evidence, and are therefore of little value to me.

Wow, I am just going to touch on the part where you say that you DO NOT have beliefs. On the contrary you do.

Your whole description of what you say as ‘‘real world information’’ are all simply empirical observations. There is no way of saying that what you observe empirically is true. You will just have to believe it is. Even the logical axioms that you might use in proving such a proof (if it existed) are simply rules that intuitively taken as true. Not observed. So whether you like it or not, you my friend have a lot of ‘‘belief’’. You just seem to be ignorant to the whole fact that you do.

If you still don’t agree, you keep arguing with the people on this forum who you ‘‘believe’’ exist apart from you. You believe that it is not a figment of your imagination. Even the stuff you see through a telescope is believed by you to not be a figment of your imagination. I think you are simply going off the handle here when you claim that Catholics ‘‘believe’’ while you DONT.

 

[greylorn]

Wow, I am just going to touch on the part where you say that you DO NOT have beliefs. On the contrary you do.

Your whole description of what you say as ‘‘real world information’’ are all simply empirical observations. There is no way of saying that what you observe empirically is true. You will just have to believe it is. Even the logical axioms that you might use in proving such a proof (if it existed) are simply rules that intuitively taken as true. Not observed. So whether you like it or not, you my friend have a lot of ‘‘belief’’. You just seem to be ignorant to the whole fact that you do.

If you still don’t agree, you keep arguing with the people on this forum who you ‘‘believe’’ exist apart from you. You believe that it is not a figment of your imagination. Even the stuff you see through a telescope is believed by you to not be a figment of your imagination. I think you are simply going off the handle here when you claim that Catholics ‘‘believe’’ while you DONT.

I’ve long been askew from mainstream people, and aware of it Yet, unable to identify the problem. You’ve been helpful. It is that unlike everyone else, I don’t believe in anything.

Here, I find it curious that anyone would take the crab-bucket approach to beliefs, insisting upon dragging me into their bucket. Why?

I wonder if you actually understand the difference between a belief and an opinion? Or between belief and working principle.

A couple of years ago a neighbor got snakebit. She had opened the door to her pump shed and heard a rattling sound, reached inside because she didn’t believe that there could be a rattlesnake in there. A couple of years earlier I had hobbled out my front door on a pair of crutches, and heard a rattlesnake. Not believing that I’d not heard a rattlesnake or that I could not jump with a broken foot, I vacated snake space before she struck.

Admitting the cause-effect relationship between components of the physical universe is not necessarily a belief. I call it a working principle. When I pretend that no such relationships exist, my life works very badly. I could have stood on my porch and wondered about the metaphysical reality of the rattlesnake, but find that such musings are more interesting when I am alive.

You are absolutely correct that “real world information” is empirical observation. Did I declare it to be anything else?

If the stuff I saw through a telescope differed from what others saw, I’d have to conclude that it was a figment of my imagination. Others see the same things, as do instruments. Instruments have no imagination. Should I visually observe a star through a telescope on earth and relay its coordinates to the NASA control center for a spectrograph in outer space, the instrument will not only detect the star, but will produce numeric details of its electromagnetic emission spectrum.

Consistent observations of this nature, correlated with many others from a variety of sources, are sufficient to convince anyone other than a pinhead that there is an objective reality. Belief in this reality is unnecessary. Disbelief is absurd.

Many people who undertake to explain observations get personally attached to their explanations. thus creating a belief. Religionists and astronomers, for example.

Religionists simply adopt the beliefs of other religionists without bothering to test the empirical database, which astronomers do. Hence I find cosmological theories more interesting than religious beliefs.

I find it more interesting to operate as though the universe actually exists, especially after dealing with several dysfunctional nitwits trying to make it through life while believing that the entire universe is a figment of their attenuated imagination. I don’t need to believe in the rattlesnake before getting out of its striking zone.

I can’t prove that the universe exists. But my experience advises that I operate as though it does. Although I can follow Descartes’ logic to the same, “Cogito ergo sum,” conclusion, I won’t be surprised if, after the hollow-point .223 smacks me between the eyes, I don’t exist anymore.

Obviously.

But I will be surprised to find myself plucking harp strings, or meeting God, or consigned to a furnace. I will be equally surprised if my own theories turn out to be true.

Rather than continue to resist your attempts to yank me back into your crab bucket, I invite you to escape. Join me in pragmatic, open-minded non-belief.

Dray horses are fitted with blinders to attenuate their world view. Ride a blindered horse through the mountains, you’ll die. Beliefs are like blinders. Rather that insist that I must have some, you’d find life more interesting if you got rid of yours.

Don’t believe that your wife or girl friend loves you, just enjoy when it feels like that, and try to make her feel the same. Don’t believe that God created you, which is a terrible blame to put upon Him. Just be here and marvel at your conscious existence, and make the best of it. Don’t believe that you will be judged by God— just do some things, and see how they work out for you. Check into your own internal feelings, and then do more things accordingly. My proctologist said it will all come out in the end.

While I like happy endings and would love to believe my doctor’s philosophy, I program computers and know about the possibility of infinite loops. And I know where he spends much of his working day. He may be rich, but I’m free.

 

[Andy_III]

Oi! What 'bout my question?

I know that on May 31, 2010 you will post the phrase “Oi! What 'bout my question?”. Does that imply that you were coerced into posting that? Where did I get this knowledge from? How could I know without forcing you to post it?

 

[Andy_III]

Please reference an opinion of mine which is illogical, and why you believe it to be so. Inconsistency with dogma does not count. I’ll see if I can correct it. Otherwise, you’ve made a statement worth retracting. I would appreciate it also if you would not refer to my ideas, theories, and opinions as “beliefs.” I do not follow any dogmas. I understand that you do, and that you therefore have beliefs.

I was referring at least to the belief that you have no beliefs. That is illogical because the belief itself is a contradiction of the statement.

You are entirely and absolutely incorrect. Religionists (read the CAF for reference) base their comments upon their beliefs, which have nothing to do with any real world experience. They commonly reference words written by primitive peoples, words which relate stories, and pretend in their little minds that the stories actually happened. Despite a complete lack of evidence that Jesus Christ existed, his belief is accepted based upon the written words of people who never met him, never even saw him from a distance.

There is plenty of historical evidence for the events of the great flood, water from the rock, and Jesus Christ’s crucifixion. Not everyone goes straight to the source of real world information for this, they rely on the words written by others who do (or even those who have not). This is my idea of real world information, so I guess I get your stamp of “technically correct”. Even you must rely on the writings or teachings of others, no matter how much you might deny it.

I state that mankind’s ideas about the nature of man and the origin of the universe, Darwinism and Big Bang theory very specifically included right alongside Christian dogma, are entirely based upon theories which ignore real world evidence, and are therefore of little value to me.

A good reason to abide in Catholic dogma, whose theories are based on real evidence and are logically consistent. And yes, I do believe that it is entirely correct, but not in the way you denigrate. Some of the stories in the Bible are not written as factual accounts and should be interpreted as such. Also, the authors had limited scientific knowledge themselves which must be taken into account. The Catholic Church does this when interpreting scripture. It also uses historical documents. You said that you have had a bad experience with the Catholic Church, but does one or a few people’s personal sin invalidate the entire teaching of the Church? If you had a math teacher that taught 2+2=5 but was later removed by the school board, would you then give up math altogether?

 

[Andy_III]

An old psych test for divergent thinking involved solving the problem of how to extract a ping pong ball from the bottom of a 3 foot steel pipe, of diameter only slightly larger than that of the ball, firmly embedded in concrete, using only the tools available in the set-up room.

Two different rooms each contained the necessary tools, but in different forms, One room did not have an environment helpful to finding the solution; the other did. Each contained a variety of useless tools. Problem solvers in the inconvenient room wasted a lot of time attaching globs of chewed bubble gum to a fishhook and string line.

In the convenient room, most people solved the problem easily. In the other room, only 3%.

Fascinating. I wonder if the pipe were short enough that you could just blow across the top. Probably not, since the chewing gum might work if you could press it down with your finger onto the ball. So the pipe must be longer than a finger plus the height of the ball. I wonder what other tools were available.

So this is a measure of either how well one looks at many possible solutions (not just the first that comes to mind). I think there could be other explanations that would fit the experiment as well. This does not sound like a test to determine free will. Have you had this test (or similar) performed on you Greylorn?

All who have a belief are at its mercy.

Then I’m happy with my beliefs. We’re all at the mercy of something, I choose to be at the mercy of God.

Newtonian physics is quite different from QM. The facts behind QM have led to different theories re: their interpretation. The present theories were adopted by a vote at a meeting once mentioned in the lore but now buried, referred to as the Copenhagen Convention, which was held in Geneva in, I believe, 1929. Never before has a physics theory been adopted, and opposing theories shut down, by democratic vote. Most of the physicists with opposing views were in the U.S. and did not have the funds to attend the meeting.

I did not know that. Thanks, I learned something. Hmm, it’s been a while since I had QM class, but I’m less confident in the concepts taught now. There were aspects of it that I didn’t find very convincing. Like for example, that an entire person has a small chance to tunnel through a wall. Electron tunneling is measured (also causes a lot of the heat in modern computer processors), but when the experiments are done, can the observer be sure that the electron that tunnels is really the same electron, or simply one that was dislodged from the other side of the material?

There are similarities to, for example, the Nicene Council. Those known to oppose Constantine’s opinions, mostly gnostics, were not invited. Curiously, the lifetimes of leading gnostics were foreshortened in the wake of this meeting.

Good thing Catholicism is not based on voting. The councils are not to vote on what is true, but to discern and guard the truth. The truth taught by the Catholic Church has not changed over the last 2000 years, although the understanding of the truth has improved (and sometimes the teaching ability of the catechists is lacking).

I’ve proposed many logical problems on CAF, and credit the Church with allowing this freedom of thought and expression. The simplest examples are the contraction between God’s creation of all things, and the energy conservation law. Or free will vs. omniscience.

But neither of those is a contradiction. The energy conservation law is based on observation, and there are crucial observations missing around the time of the universes creation. Also, you might express the law like this: At any two times t1 and t2, the energy in the universe is constant. This also is not a contradiction then because time has a beginning. There is no time before t=0, so therefore comparisons cannot be made.

You are reiterating dogma. Study the neurological literature. An old novel, The Soul of Anna Klane, addresses this issue. Its story is consistent with data.

Or you might care to educate yourself in this subject by reading the literature on psychological follow-up studies of prefrontal lobotomy patients, or even watch, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Reiterating dogma does not make a statement more or less correct. Also, studies of patients would involve external observations, and would not speak to the capacity of free will. Also, even if someone were to lose free will, that would not remove the fact that they had it prior to the loss.

 

[Andy_III]

I wonder if you actually understand the difference between a belief and an opinion? Or between belief and working principle.

Here’s the third definition of belief from MW online:
conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence

If the stuff I saw through a telescope differed from what others saw, I’d have to conclude that it was a figment of my imagination. Others see the same things, as do instruments. Instruments have no imagination. Should I visually observe a star through a telescope on earth and relay its coordinates to the NASA control center for a spectrograph in outer space, the instrument will not only detect the star, but will produce numeric details of its electromagnetic emission spectrum.

Consistent observations of this nature, correlated with many others from a variety of sources, are sufficient to convince anyone other than a pinhead that there is an objective reality. Belief in this reality is unnecessary. Disbelief is absurd.

We all know you have beliefs. This is based on many repeated observations and correlated with other sources. Do not continue to disbelieve it because as you say, that would be absurd. You are at the mercy of your beliefs.

Don’t believe that your wife or girl friend loves you, just enjoy when it feels like that, and try to make her feel the same. Don’t believe that God created you, which is a terrible blame to put upon Him. Just be here and marvel at your conscious existence, and make the best of it. Don’t believe that you will be judged by God— just do some things, and see how they work out for you. Check into your own internal feelings, and then do more things accordingly. My proctologist said it will all come out in the end.

While I like happy endings and would love to believe my doctor’s philosophy, I program computers and know about the possibility of infinite loops. And I know where he spends much of his working day. He may be rich, but I’m free.

You cannot make the best of it if everyone believed as you do. One person might feel that the best thing for them would be to have a house in the mountains, and that the best way to do that would be to take Greylorn’s house. Would that be okay with you?

 

[antunesaa]

I think it’s far more reasonable to believe that the brain generates the mind however, for that we have plenty of evidence.

I think the evidence is scant. I am no specialist in neurosciences, but the pop-science accounts, and even opinions of more knowledgeable people, to me do not look impressive. While there’s a strange fascination by newspapers such as The Economist by the mental processes of humans and especially animals (“animals have conscience”; “animals display altruistic behavior”; “human altruism has an evolutionary reason”; etc.), I don’t find those findings particularly interesting or surprising. I mean: wouldn’t you expect those things? Wouldn’t you expect that animals displayed rudimentary altruistic behavior? Wouldn’t you expect that altruism benefited societies under repeated interactions among individuals? Wouldn’t you expect that different areas of the brain actually displayed specific activity according to stimuli?

I would be convinced by the brain <=> mind hypothesis if you could predict human behavior in any reasonable way. But you can’t. Scientists can scan your brain as much as they like but I would be willing to bet my house that they’re never going to find (now or in the future) what is your opinion on vegetarianism or whether you’re going to return to the Catholic faith in the next day. And there are two main reasons why I think this.

First, the overwhelming disparity between the human mind and the minds of intelligent animals seems not to be matched by fundamental differences in the physical, measurable characteristics of the respective brains. True, in many ways the human brain is generally more convoluted, more connected, relatively larger, etc., than the brains of most species. But the difference is by no means spectacular. If you plot graphs with different important measures of brains, you get perhaps that “the encefalization of humans is 7.4 while that of the dolphin is 5.3.” If you really get picky about what measures to use you can say things like: “the neocortex of humans is 4 times larger than that of chimpanzees”. Four times larger?! 1.2 times larger?! If it is true that the brain is the machine reducionists say it is, we need tangible and credible measures that are orders of magnitude larger than those of any other animal because in almost any conceivable way and metrics our measurable mental capacities are orders of magnitude higher than the smartest of mammals. For instance, in language, the most basic distinctive trait of humans, according to some place in the wikipedia (search for “great ape language”), humans learn words 140 times faster than chimpazees. These are lower bounds for the differences you must account for in studying the brain as a machine. Not to mention concepts beyond animal consideration, like the signs of the Zodiac or Mona Lisa’s mysterious smile. And beyond these are the concepts themselves: God; love; the future; metric spaces; fractal geometry; etc. For these you have no means of comparison. Sensing this powerful objection, some people now say that what distinguishes us from animals is our knowledge network, in much the same way as a cluster of computers is more powerful than a single computer. Still unconvincing; how do you account for generations of scientists and thinkers working alone for large periods and largely isolated from the world? They form the basis of modern science. Discoveries are still highly individualistic tasks; the knowledge network accounts for the expanding set of subjects humans can tackle, not the complexity of individual discoveries.

Second, and most important, concepts like free will (the capacity of deciding autonomously upon different feasible actions) or justice (the possibility of ranking outcomes according to a moral system) are inherently immaterial or, if you wish, metaphysical. I mean: there is no question that if the world is purely physical (that is, physical, measurable laws govern matter and energy) then these concepts do not exist. They are just illusions. Even when people talk about things like indeterminacy at the subatomic level as a means to justify, for instance, free will, the only thing they get out of that is, instead of determinism, a dose of determinism plus a dose of chance.

Now, there is also no question that if the mind is more than physical, then it must be operative in some physical sense, that is, it must have some sort of impedance in the physical world – otherwise it would be irrelevant. And the fact is that, as some people pointed out before, the apparent indeterminacy at the subatomic level could be a way to do it; that is, the mind could operate upon matter while still not violating any physical law, which explicitly acknowledges that indeterminacy might exist (remember that Heisenberg’s Principle is a postulate, not a result). But you would still need an outside entity capable of exerting the judgment involved in a decision unconstrained by the natural world – the mind.

Another question is whether such mind can be created by God (and here I’m thinking about the Christian God, although what I’ll say is, I think, compatible with the God of Muslims or Jews). I have doubts about the possibility of creating such thing as a mind ex-nihilo. It seems to me that the concept historically alleged to as “soul” shares with God that unique, immaterial attribute of being totally unconstrained by the physical world, and I don’t think this violates in any meaningful sense the traditional perspective of an omnipotent, omniscient and eternal God, as I tried to show in another post (see link below). The soul might thus be viewed as the only important thing that God shared with us, and the reason for His love towards us. God would be the only unexplained entity, because our soul would derive from God.

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?p=6583207#post6583207

 

[HelenaMT]

The simple solution to your problem is that known as the Boethian solution. The idea is that since God is outside of time, he can see the past, present and eternal all at once. So he has foreknowledge since he has actually seen what you will do in the future.

This is not a solution at all, it is exactly the problem. If God is outside time but still has ultimate control over what is happening/has happened/will happen/could happen/etc. this does not solve the problem for me. True free will and not simply the illusion of free will doesn’t seem possible without denying either God’s omniscience (He cannot know what we will do until it’s done), or His omnipotence (He knows what we will choose but cannot change it-but that would suggest He made a world that was full of damned souls from the get-go and was ok with it).

…

…
Summary:
The molinist idea deals with God having knowledge of ‘‘counterfactuals’’ which is known as God’s middle knowledge. In the molinist view, God has three types of knowledge prior to his creation of the universe. God has natural knowledge, which consists of concepts such as non-contradiction etc, Free knowledge, which is the knowledge dependent on God’s free will, and then Middle knowledge, truths dependent on creaturely freedom, i.e. Counterfactuals. The logical ordering of the knowledge is

Natural Knowledge → Middle knowledge → Free knowledge.

Counterfactuals deal with truths such as ''if Adam was in situation X, he would have freely chosen to do Y". Now one thing to note is that the counterfactuals are still contingent truths since they have no yet happened (no universe has been created yet). Given that God knows all the possible counterfactuals, in all the possible universes that he could create, he can then freely choose to create any universe and thus make the counterfactuals true.

A very simplistic objection is why didn’t he create one where there was no sin/evil. The simple answer is that there probably is no possible universe where free will can exist while sin does not. God cannot create square circles, so he has to choose one of the possible ones.

However, that is just a simple objection and there are other very good objections one can raise against the molinist position. So I encourage you to pick up the book I mentioned above if you are more interested.

Something I should mention is that the molinist solution is just a possible explanation. It doesn’t mean that it is exactly what happened and I don’t think we will ever know how Free will and Providence can be reconciled together till God reveals it to us. But you can at least know that the idea of having free will together with divine providence is not illogical as some might have you believe. And it is also helpful when explaining Catholic Dogma such as Papal Infalliblity, and petitionary prayer etc.

I’m a little familiar with the natural, middle, free knowledge ideas. These are the problems I have had with them.

natural knowledge-concepts of non-contradiction suggest that there is something beyond God that can define His parameters

middle knowledge-makes no sense to me unless you change the definition of knowledge-how can you know something that hasn’t happened yet? You can speculate on it, but it isn’t really knowledge.

This to me has always hinted that either God cannot control our free will decisions, and therefore cannot have true knowledge of them-only a really educated guess-or just He likes things the way they are. For some reason, the first would be more comforting to me than the second.

As to counterfactuals, the idea that God could actualize many different outcomes in different universes is really cool as a concept for a sci-fi or fantasy novel but doesn’t change the fact that for at least one of these universes, He has actualized a lot of really evil stuff. (But I don’t want to veer off into the Problem of Evil-that’s not my interest here)

Besides, if He is not subject to time, and is outside of it, why not just tinker with one universe, fixing things here and there from beginning to end as He wants to?

free knowledge-I 'm not sure what is meant by “knowledge dependent on God’s free will.” He is said to be unable to do things contrary to His nature, which seems very much like most people to me. He also is said to be unchanging, which if true, means He can’t learn because He already knows everything that can be known and always has. He also knows everything He ever can or will do. So where can His free will be seen? Perhaps just in the instant of creation, and nowhere else?

I do know that once you refer to what happened prior to God’s creating the universe, He no longer seems outside of time. I know the argument that our concept of time is not the same as something having had a cause, but I have no way of understanding what time is if not simply a sense of change from one state to another. God “outside time” to me does imply no change. But once the universe came into being, a change occurred. So How could He have remained truly outside time? (keep in mind, I don’t really expect to know the answer , just to hear some interesting possible solutions)

As far as petionary prayer being able to be reconciled with God’s foreknowledge, I would need to be able to understand it on terms that made sense to me-if God already knows the outcome, all my prayers really are are to ask that I be aided in accepting what’s going to happen anyway, since it’s part of God’s plan. In fact, that’s pretty much how I’ve always prayed, except on a few occasions where I’ve been truly desperate for a different outcome.

 

[greylorn]

Here’s the third definition of belief from MW online:
conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence

We all know you have beliefs. This is based on many repeated observations and correlated with other sources. Do not continue to disbelieve it because as you say, that would be absurd. You are at the mercy of your beliefs.

You cannot make the best of it if everyone believed as you do. One person might feel that the best thing for them would be to have a house in the mountains, and that the best way to do that would be to take Greylorn’s house. Would that be okay with you?

That definition is downright stupid. The first part is fine, but the “…especially when…” part is dead wrong. When I was young I believed in every jot and tittle of dogma and aced every religion class I ever took. I had no evidence for my beliefs— just trust in parents, teachers, priests, and gospel. Then I went to school and actually started looking at evidence.

To deal with the evidence I developed new beliefs on my own, and even managed to publish some. I liked those beliefs until more evidence came along which discredited them. Now I don’t have any.

I refuse to get even one leg near your crab bucket. I have opinions, theories, hopes, wishes, and ideals, all which are subject to change when invalidated, or if better ones appear. No beliefs,

My definition of belief is, “conviction in the certain truth of some idea, theory, opinion, or concept despite contrary evidence.”​

What got you thinking that freedom from belief is a justification for communism?

Someone tried to take my home and livelihood once, and I did not like it. One afternoon that person drove his motorcycle, helmetless, into the backside of an 18-wheeler with a velocity differential of 40 mph, plenty enough.

I’d never declare that freedom from belief will make one happy. Personal experience suggests otherwise. But it will make one as free as possible.

Freedom from belief is like garlic oatmeal— very nutritious, not too social, and definitely an acquired taste. Not for everyone.

Belief is something that ordinary people need, so I’d never suggest that they lose it. But like I once said to a lady who insured me that her dobermans loved her, which she believed absolutely, I advised her to keep them well fed.

 

[ddarko]

Hi again,

I will try to address your problems one by one so it will be easier to follow.

This is not a solution at all, it is exactly the problem. If God is outside time but still has ultimate control over what is happening/has happened/will happen/could happen/etc. this does not solve the problem for me.

I think this might be because you have an incorrect idea of what it means to be outside of time. If God is outside of time, he sees what you will do because you did it freely and there is no violation of free will. Since he knows, present past future, it does not violate the definition of omniscience. For God, it does not make sense to say he has to know something before you did it. For a timeless God, the statement does not make sense. This explanation (Boethian solution) is actually accepted as a means for reconciling omniscience with free will by philosophers. The problem however is in reconciling providence and free will and that is where molinist solution comes in.

natural knowledge-concepts of non-contradiction suggest that there is something beyond God that can define His parameters

This just seems to be a problem as a result of the way I worded it. By natural knowledge, you could think of it as God’s nature. Knowledge of himself. It is God’s nature to not contradict. Not a explicit rules outside of him.

middle knowledge-makes no sense to me unless you change the definition of knowledge-how can you know something that hasn’t happened yet? You can speculate on it, but it isn’t really knowledge.

Um, this still is knowledge. God knows all the possible universe’s he can create (The ones he cannot create are restricted due to contradiction) and that is knowledge. Then he knows the free actions of people in all the possible universe’s (You can combine Boethian solution here to understand how he might know). And then he can choose to make something true. The only way you could argue against molinism this way is to say that there are no counterfactuals of creaturely freedom and therefor God cannot have such knowledge. No one has succeeded in giving a convincing argument for that. Maybe I misunderstood your point here though.

This to me has always hinted that either God cannot control our free will decisions, and therefore cannot have true knowledge of them-only a really educated guess-or just He likes things the way they are. For some reason, the first would be more comforting to me than the second.

Ah yes, the first can sound comforting at first, but you will realize at some point why it is actually a bit scary. But personal experience aside, the idea is that since he knows counterfactuals of freedom, he can choose to create the Universe with the right situations in order to bring about his will. The key to note here is that the counterfactuals are what you would have done freely in a given situation in a possible universe. If God actualizes that universe, it does not violate your free will.

As to counterfactuals, the idea that God could actualize many different outcomes in different universes is really cool as a concept for a sci-fi or fantasy novel but doesn’t change the fact that for at least one of these universes, He has actualized a lot of really evil stuff. (But I don’t want to veer off into the Problem of Evil-that’s not my interest here)

Well, the problem is that there might be no possible way of actualizing a universe with free will and NO evil. (For a good argument against the problem of evil using free will, I recommend that of Alvin Platinga’s free will defense. This by the way is what has caused most in the philosophy community to regard the moral problem of evil as sufficiently addressed by Christianity).

One thing you have to understand is that, God can use these evil incidents to bring about greater good considering his knowledge of counterfactuals. At this point I can actually point out one reason why a God who makes a ‘‘educated guess’’ would be scary. If all God can do is guess, then it is possible that bad things just happen. There would be no purpose. God just got surprised entirely. Its possible that all of humanity will end up in hell. For me this feels like a more scary scenario.

(Continued to next post…)

 

[ddarko]

Besides, if He is not subject to time, and is outside of it, why not just tinker with one universe, fixing things here and there from beginning to end as He wants to?

Well he does, or more correctly, he already has. He has actualized the universe in which he knows he will be victorious. He has answered your prayers even before you had asked them by creating events and persons in the past .

free knowledge-I 'm not sure what is meant by “knowledge dependent on God’s free will.” He is said to be unable to do things contrary to His nature, which seems very much like most people to me. He also is said to be unchanging, which if true, means He can’t learn because He already knows everything that can be known and always has. He also knows everything He ever can or will do. So where can His free will be seen? Perhaps just in the instant of creation, and nowhere else?

By God’s free will, it just means the contractual that God makes true. For an example, If Adam sinned, he will be banished from Eden is a counterfactual God will make true.

I do know that once you refer to what happened prior to God’s creating the universe, He no longer seems outside of time. I know the argument that our concept of time is not the same as something having had a cause, but I have no way of understanding what time is if not simply a sense of change from one state to another. God “outside time” to me does imply no change. But once the universe came into being, a change occurred. So How could He have remained truly outside time? (keep in mind, I don’t really expect to know the answer , just to hear some interesting possible solutions)

Oh I think I understand your problem. In molinism, when we speak of natural, middle and free knowledge, this is in logical steps. Not time wise. Molinism is just a way of understanding how God created the universe with free will. For God, all knowledge would have been available at one instant/eternity. But its not very easy to understand it in that sense when we make philosophical discussions.

About petitionary prayer, I used to think the same way you did when I had problems with free will. I do have a different perspective now however. I believe that God already knows you would have prayed asking for request X, and therefore, he would have chosen to actualize a universe that grants your request (provided it is compatible for your salvation and that of others) . I find much joy in praying thinking about it this way.

God Bless!

 

[ddarko]

Something I should add about the Boethian solution (The forum doesn’t let me add Edits), one reason why one might find it inadequte for explaining omniscience vs. Free will, is it calls for a belief of a certain notion of time. If you do disagree with that notion of time, then Boethian solution might not hold. So you are in a way very correct when you say that Boethian solution does not entirely answer the question of omniscience and free will. So Molinist solution might be the best fit for the problem of free will and omniscience as well

God bless!

 

[rvilbig]

Something I should add about the Boethian solution (The forum doesn’t let me add Edits), one reason why one might find it inadequte for explaining omniscience vs. Free will, is it calls for a belief of a certain notion of time. If you do disagree with that notion of time, then Boethian solution might not hold. So you are in a way very correct when you say that Boethian solution does not entirely answer the question of omniscience and free will. So Molinist solution might be the best fit for the problem of free will and omniscience as well

God bless!

Could you direct me to some quotes on the Boethian and Molinist solutions? I’m only familiar with Saint Augustine’s, from City of God:

“It does not follow, therefore, that the order of causes, known for certain though it is in the foreknowing mind of God, brings it about that there is no power in our will, since our choices themselves have an important place in the order of causes” (Saint Augustine, City of God, Book V, Chapter 9)

Also, didn’t the scholastics differentiate between God’s subsequent and consequent Will to help clarify what is inherently confusing to us temporal beings when we consider the atemporal nature of God’s creative act? Thanks, this is very interesting stuff.

-Ryan Vilbig
ryan.vilbig@gmail.com

 

[ddarko]

Could you direct me to some quotes on the Boethian and Molinist solutions? I’m only familiar with Saint Augustine’s, from City of God:

“It does not follow, therefore, that the order of causes, known for certain though it is in the foreknowing mind of God, brings it about that there is no power in our will, since our choices themselves have an important place in the order of causes” (Saint Augustine, City of God, Book V, Chapter 9)

Also, didn’t the scholastics differentiate between God’s subsequent and consequent Will to help clarify what is inherently confusing to us temporal beings when we consider the atemporal nature of God’s creative act? Thanks, this is very interesting stuff.

-Ryan Vilbig
ryan.vilbig@gmail.com

Hi,

I am not sure about any quotes.

There are definitely some by Molina himself which were mentioned in his original book written in the 16th century on middle knowledge. I recall reading some of these at the beginning of each chapter in Thomas Flint’s book Divine providence. Unfortunately none of them remain intact in my memory .

Then the Boethian solution, is actually the one used by St. Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologica.

The molinist solution has had a lot of modern developments in the field of philosophy so you can probably find some lay quotes with respect to molinist solution as well. Some of the modern proponents of molinist solution are Thomas Flint (Catholic), Alvin Platinga (Protestant), and William Craig (Protestant). Though some of them are protestant, none of them are Calvinist, and hold a more closer view to the Catholic church when it comes to this matter so even their writings can be very useful.

I cannot seem to find any material from Thomas Flint online, but there are some by Craig here which might help. (He refers to Flint very often in his work)

leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/menus/omniscience.html

About the ‘‘subsequent & consequent will’’, I am actually not familiar with that. I always used to think of logical sequencing of God’s thought as just a way of helping me understand God a little bit and in that way the atemporal nature of God was still preserved… But what you say sounds interesting. Do you know of any reading material on the matter that you would recommend ?

Sorry I couldn’t provide actual quotes for the molinist and boethian solutions btw.

God Bless