Connection between free will and a known future?

[tonyrey]

I do think that his philosophy is important as a negative example. in that, thought can only get you so far. It’s nothing personal against him, I also don’t credit Humorism for creating modern medicine. The scientific revolution was a paradigm shift in humanity’s understanding of the world. It was in part a movement away from an Aristotelian view of the world. We are better as species for it.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_revolution

“in part” gives the game away! There is nothing negative about Aristotle’s view of reasoning or reality:

1. Non-Discursive Reasoning

The distinction Aristotle draws between discursive knowledge (that is, knowledge through argument) and non-discursive knowledge (that is, knowledge through nous) is akin to the medieval distinction between ratio (argument) and intellectus (direct intellection). In Aristotelian logic, **non-discursive knowledge comes first **and provides the starting points upon which discursive or argumentative knowledge depends.

It is hard to know what to call the mental power that gives rise to this type of knowledge in English. The traditional term “intuition” invites misunderstanding. When Aristotle claims that there is an immediate sort of knowledge that comes directly from the mind (nous) without discursive argument, he is not suggesting that knowledge can be accessed through vague feelings or hunches. **He is referring to a capacity for intelligent appraisal that might be better described as discernment, comprehension, or insight. Like his later medieval followers, he views “intuition” as a species of reason; it is not prior to reason or outside of reason, it is—in the highest degree—the activity of reason itself. **(Cf. Posterior Analytics, II. 19; Nicomachean Ethics, IV.6.)

For Aristotle, science is only one manifestation of human intelligence. He includes, for example, intuition, craft, philosophical wisdom, and moral decision-making along with science in his account of the five intellectual virtues. (Nicomachean Ethics, VI.3-8.) When it comes to knowledge-acquisition, however, intuition is primary. It includes the most basic operations of intelligence, providing the ultimate ground of understanding and inference upon which everything else depends.** Aristotle is a firm empiricist. He believes that knowledge begins in perception, but he also believes that we need intuition to make sense of perception.**

In the Posterior Analytics (II.19.100a3-10), Aristotle posits a sequence of steps in mental development: sense perception produces memory which (in combination with intuition) produces human experience (empeiria), which produces art and science. Through a widening movement of understanding (really, a non-discursive form of induction), intuition transforms observation and memory so as to produce knowledge (without argument).** This intuitive knowledge is even more reliable than science. **As Aristotle writes in key passages at the end of the Posterior Analytics, “no other kind of thought except intuition is more accurate than scientific knowledge,” and “nothing except intuition can be truer than scientific knowledge.” (100b8ff, Mure, slightly emended.)

**Aristotelian intuition supplies the first principles (archai) of human knowledge: concepts, universal propositions, definitions, the laws of logic, the primary principles of the specialized science, and even moral concepts such as the various virtues. This is why, according to Aristotle, intuition must be viewed as infallible. We cannot claim that the first principles of human intelligence are dubious and then turn around and use those principles to make authoritative claims about the possibility (or impossibility) of knowledge. If we begin to doubt intuition, that is, human intelligence at its most fundamental level of operation, we will have to doubt everything else that is built upon this universal foundation: science, philosophy, knowledge, logic, inference, and so forth. **

Aristotle never tries to prove first principles. He acknowledges that when it comes to the origins of human thought, there is a point when one must simply stop asking questions. As he points out, any attempt at absolute proof would lead to an infinite regress. In his own words:** “It is impossible that there should be demonstration of absolutely everything; there would be an infinite regress, so that there would still be no demonstration.” **(Metaphysics, 1006a6ff, Ross.)

iep.utm.edu/aris-log/

Irrefutable!

 

[Roscoe_Turner]

“in part” gives the game away! There is nothing negative about Aristotle’s view of reasoning or reality:

iep.utm.edu/aris-log/

Irrefutable!

By “in part” I meant that there were other things happening not just a move away from Aristotelian Thought. It wasn’t simply a reactive movement.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic#Rise_of_modern_logic

The period between the fourteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century had been largely one of decline and neglect, and is generally regarded as barren by historians of logic.[1] The revival of logic occurred in the mid-nineteenth century, at the beginning of a revolutionary period where the subject developed into a rigorous and formalistic discipline whose exemplar was the exact method of proof used in mathematics. The development of the modern so-called “symbolic” or “mathematical” logic during this period is the most significant in the 2,000-year history of logic, and is arguably one of the most important and remarkable events in human intellectual history.[2]

 

[tonyrey]

By “in part” I meant that there were other things happening not just a move away from Aristotelian Thought. It wasn’t simply a reactive movement.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic#Rise_of_modern_logic

The period between the fourteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century had been largely one of decline and neglect, and is generally regarded as barren by historians of logic.[1] The revival of logic occurred in the mid-nineteenth century, at the beginning of a revolutionary period where the subject developed into a rigorous and formalistic discipline whose exemplar was the exact method of proof used in mathematics. The development of the modern so-called “symbolic” or “mathematical” logic during this period is the most significant in the 2,000-year history of logic, and is arguably one of the most important and remarkable events in human intellectual history.[2]

That fact does not undermine or detract from the value and significance of Aristotle’s ground-breaking work:

Although Aristotle’s very rich and expansive account of logic differs in key ways from modern approaches, it is more than a historical curiosity. It provides an alternative way of approaching logic and continues to provide critical insights into contemporary issues and concerns.

iep.utm.edu/aris-log/
More directly related to the topic:

Fuzzy logic is one of a large number of “many-valued logics”—logical systems that have more than two truth values. Scholars are divided on the issue, but Aristotle actually may be the founder of many-valued logic. In contemplating the logic of “future contingents”—statements about contingent future events—he said things that suggested he believed that statements about contingent future events are neither true nor false before the event occurs (or does not occur) and only become true or false when the event occurs (or does not occur). If so, then there would seem to be at least three truth-values for declarative sentences: true, false, and indeterminate. Thus, in Book 9 of De Interpretatione, Aristotle considered the sentence, “A sea battle will occur tomorrow.” Is the sentence true or false? (Notice that to ask this is not the same as asking, Does anyone know if the sentence is true or false?) Aristotle considered this option: The sentence is true today if indeed a sea battle will occur tomorrow, and the sentence is false today if indeed a sea battle will not occur tomorrow.

 There are  problems with this option, argued Aristotle.  For one  thing, it seems to imply fatalism, the claim that the future course of  events is fixed ahead of time, and therefore nobody can ever do anything  that would affect the (already fixed) course of future events. **In which  case, it would seem to follow that nobody has free will. **For example,  suppose it is true right now, although I do not know it, that I will eat  a burrito for lunch tomorrow. It would seem to follow that tomorrow,  when I eat the burrito, I *must* eat the burrito, I can do  nothing else but eat the burrito, since the truth cannot be changed. But  it is part of our moral commonsense that if someone does something at a  moment in time, and they could not have done anything else, then they  do not act of their own free will and they are not responsible for what  they do.

 Thus it seems that if future contingents are right now either  true or false, then nobody has free will.** Aristotle apparently favored a  different solution: Statements about future events are neither true nor  false before the future events occur or do not occur; they only become  true (if the event occurs) or false (if it does not occur). **If “future  contingents” are neither true nor false ahead of time, then perhaps  there is a third truth-value, one that holds while a proposition is  “waiting” to become true or false: “undetermined.”

manyworldsoflogic.com/frontiersOfLogic.html