How God could create a being with free will?

[Bahman]

I’m not entirely sure what you’re trying to say about ‘the role of reason on free will’, but you are entirely correct about the bottom line of your last post. But if you grasp this, as well as that free will is the power to decide/try (not sure what the difference is), then I don’t see why you have a problem with free will. If by undefined you just mean that it isn’t pre-defined what a being with free will is going to choose, then I don’t see why this is a problem.

Undefined, not-predefined, or not predictable lead to same conclusion. I think we could agree on the point that the result of a decision is not predefined before decision is made then the process of decision making is not definable no matter how much you get close to the point of decision making, otherwise it contradict the previous statement. This means that the process of decision making is indefinable. And the rest of my argument follows: how God could create a being with indefinable quality?

 

[SentinelofTruth]

Free will isn’t indefinable, I’ll define it right here:
free will (noun): The ability of some beings to choose their actions independently.
As you can see, free will is plenty definable. I think a better word here would be ‘undetermined’. Also, ‘undefined’ and ‘not predefined’ aren’t the same. ‘Not predefined’ just means that it wasn’t defined before it happened. ‘Undefined’ seems not to have a temporal context. Thus, God is not creating beings with indefinable quality, but with not pre-determined actions.

 

[Bahman]

Free will isn’t indefinable, I’ll define it right here:
free will (noun): The ability of some beings to choose their actions independently.
As you can see, free will is plenty definable. I think a better word here would be ‘undetermined’. Also, ‘undefined’ and ‘not predefined’ aren’t the same. ‘Not predefined’ just means that it wasn’t defined before it happened. ‘Undefined’ seems not to have a temporal context. Thus, God is not creating beings with indefinable quality, but with not pre-determined actions.

And what is this strange ability which its outcome isn’t predefined prior to decision? You need to define it as well. Just think of a process of decision making to understand my point. By indefinability I didn’t mean that you couldn’t put set of words together to provide a definition for it.

 

[SentinelofTruth]

I realize that by undefinable you didn’t mean ‘having no definition’. But your first sentence seems circular. It basically says that everything is deterministic, which is exactly what you are trying to prove.

 

[Bahman]

I realize that by undefinable you didn’t mean ‘having no definition’. But your first sentence seems circular. It basically says that everything is deterministic, which is exactly what you are trying to prove.

I don’t believe in determinism and I am not trying to prove that determinism is applicable to all phenomena. Determinism basically contradicts free will and vice versa. Most of phenomena around us follow determinism (in my opinion with good level of precision but not exactly precise). Determinism is crucial for an intellectual living being as without that we had live in a chaotic world, could not construct any mental products such as logic, knowledge, etc and physical products like car, computer etc. The fact that our lives is so dependent on determinism force some people to believe that determinism is absolutely correct. One can easily conclude that free will is a delusion once determinism is accepted. We turned into simple conscious agents which their actions are controlled by deterministic cosmic forces.

One of our main problem is that we cannot construct any knowledge on a phenomena which is not deterministic such as our minds (if we accept that we have free will). Simply, we cannot have at least many copies of same person to see what would be the result of experiment when the person make a decision on a situation.

By the way, which sentence did you mean is circular.

 

[SentinelofTruth]

Bahman:

which sentence did you mean is circular?

This one:

And what is this strange ability which its outcome isn’t defined prior to decision?

Bahman:

I don’t believe in determinism and I am not trying to prove that it is applicable to all phenomena.

If you disbelieve in free will on the basis that nothing could exist which is undefined prior to decision, isn’t that basically determinism? If an event isn’t predetermined, and it isn’t freely chosen, then I don’t see what it could be except random (which, by the way, still seems to violate the principle that the outcome of every event must be defined prior to the event).

Bahman:

One of our main problems is that we cannot construct any knowledge on a phenomenon which is not deterministic.

I can construct plenty of knowledge regarding free will. Here are some facts about it:

• It is the only thing which is not deterministic.
• Patterns in the decisions of a free-willed being are called virtues if they’re good, and vices if they’re bad.
• No free choice can be directly affected by anything outside of the agent. The only way to influence a free agent’s choices is indirectly, through communication, giving of advice, and temptation.
• All free-willed beings can be held resposible for their choices, unlike other agents.
• It decisions must be made immaterially, or else they’d be deterministic.
  If by that you meant that we can’t understand how the decisions are made, I agree. Free will is in its most conceptually simple form. It is not reducible to anything or explicable in terms of anything else.

 

[DanAl]

What if the outcome of an decision is not clear or the outcomes are equally likely?

What of it?

Simply we learn reasoning and that is not something intrinsic that we own since our childhood.

The potential to reason is inherent to all rational beings, that children cannot use reason due physical limitations on their part does not show reason is something extrinsic to humans.

Lets put aside those situation where reasoning gives you a direction since you are not using your free will anyhow (( how do you know this?).That is in fact the reasoning which dictate your action and you lose the freedom of action.( Again, what is the reasoning behind this?) That as you mention act like a strong constrain but the constrain is so strong that roles out free will. (too strong? relatively strong? not strong at all? How do you even discriminate among these differing of conclusions?)

Needless to say that I disagree with everything you say. I look at a cake, my reason tells me that is sweet, that will nourish me and that I will enjoy it. Another part of my reason tells me that is bad for me, that I need to lose weight, and that I am not even that hungry to begin with. I reason along these lines for awhile and finally ** decide ** to walk away from the cake in order to lose weight.

Now, where is my willing hindered by these different considerations? nowhere.

However if reasoning play a role in the process of decision making but it could not completely determine the outcome of a decision, for example if it comes to a conflict with a desire , then we are faced with a situation that reasoning can’t determine the outcome and so it is not a constrain.This is type of situation that the role of free will becomes clear when reasoning tell you to do something and your desire force you to do something else. What you are going to do is only based on your reasoning and desire but the decision is up to you.

?

 

[SentinelofTruth]

DanAl:

The potential to reason is inherent to all rational beings, that children cannot use reason due physical limitations on their part does not show reason is something extrinsic to humans.

While I agree with the main point of this statement, I object to ‘physical’. Since reason is done with the (immaterial) mind, physical limitation cannot directly inhibit the use of reason. The reason that very young children do not exhibit reason is that the soul is at that age not mature enough (the potential is still there, just not the ability).
Aside from this, I agree with and appreciate the points made in DanAl’s post.

 

[Bahman]

This one:

And what is this strange ability which its outcome isn’t defined prior to decision?

I don’t see any circular statement there. We sometimes in a phrase use words like ability without defining what exactly is. I do however agree with you that this ability is not definable/knowable for the following reason:

You can know impact of free will on a decision since you know what free will is which means that you can know the result of a decision prior to decision which is a serous problem. It is a problem since you in principle can find the outcome of any decision a person make during his/her life and therefore could deterministically define his/her state of mind life long. This has serious ethical and social consequences since individuals are not responsible for their actions in such a picture.

Free will is not the only ability with such a problem, you can think of creativity, consciousness, instinct etc and all of them have the problem if undefeinability.

If you disbelieve in free will on the basis that nothing could exist which is undefined prior to decision, isn’t that basically determinism? If an event isn’t predetermined, and it isn’t freely chosen, then I don’t see what it could be except random (which, by the way, still seems to violate the principle that the outcome of every event must be defined prior to the event).

Your first statement is right but I don’t disbelieve free will. The event in nature are either deterministically determinable or not. I however believe that the outcome/product of mind when it comes to a decision making is not deterministically predictable.

I can construct plenty of knowledge regarding free will. Here are some facts about it:

• It is the only thing which is not deterministic.
• Patterns in the decisions of a free-willed being are called virtues if they’re good, and vices if they’re bad.
• No free choice can be directly affected by anything outside of the agent. The only way to influence a free agent’s choices is indirectly, through communication, giving of advice, and temptation.
• All free-willed beings can be held resposible for their choices, unlike other agents.
• It decisions must be made immaterially, or else they’d be deterministic.
  If by that you meant that we can’t understand how the decisions are made, I agree. Free will is in its most conceptually simple form. It is not reducible to anything or explicable in terms of anything else.

This type of knowledge could of course be constructed as a result of self-awareness and we could agree upon then since we share the same nature. The free will is however a little trick concept and many individual believe that the free will is an delusion which is not an applicable to consciousness.

 

[Bahman]

What of it?

I am sorry but I didn’t get your question.

The potential to reason is inherent to all rational beings, that children cannot use reason due physical limitations on their part does not show reason is something extrinsic to humans.

So you mean that we don’t learn reasoning. The fact that we have to potential to learn things does not mean that they are intrinsic. As far as I know instinct is the only intrinsic quality we own. Most importantly we have people with different sort of believes when it comes to reasoning, realist, materialist, idealist etc meaning that reasoning is not intrinsic quality.

Needless to say that I disagree with everything you say. I look at a cake, my reason tells me that is sweet, that will nourish me and that I will enjoy it. Another part of my reason tells me that is bad for me, that I need to lose weight, and that I am not even that hungry to begin with. I reason along these lines for awhile and finally ** decide ** to walk away from the cake in order to lose weight.

Now, where is my willing hindered by these different considerations? nowhere.

You tell me that why you haven’t done the opposite if reasoning gave you the same weight to different actions (eating or not eating).

 

[SentinelofTruth]

Bahman:

The fact that we have to potential to learn things does not mean that they are intrinsic. As far as I know instinct is the only intrinsic quality we own. Most importantly we have people with different sort of believes when it comes to reasoning, realist, materialist, idealist etc meaning that reasoning is not intrinsic quality.

The difference between materialists, dualists, idealists, etc. is belief, not the faculty of reasoning. All of them use reasoning to decide what to believe; Therefore all of them have the power to reason. Furthermore, the faculty of belief is still common to all of them; just that they use this faculty to believe different things does mean that the faculty of belief isn’t inherent to our nature.

You tell me that why you haven’t done the opposite if reasoning gave you the same weight to different actions (eating or not eating).

I’m not sure what you mean by this.

 

[Peter_Plato]

They are basically same: If state of a being, state of mind for example, is predictable for any small time interval then one can define the evolution of the being in deterministic way.

This is an example of a logical fallacy called retrospective determinism.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrospective_determinism

The idea being that if a course of action came about then that action was determined to be by the antecedent conditions and could not have been otherwise. However, simply because something did occur is not sufficient to conclude it had to without making metaphysical presumptions. Therefore, such a conclusion that something had to occur is assuming and not proving determinism, which is why the entire argument is fallacious.

 

[Bahman]

The difference between materialists, dualists, idealists, etc. is belief, not the faculty of reasoning. All of them use reasoning to decide what to believe; Therefore all of them have the power to reason. Furthermore, the faculty of belief is still common to all of them; just that they use this faculty to believe different things does mean that the faculty of belief isn’t inherent to our nature.

Well I think we could agree that there are a set axioms in each system of thought which are unprovable meaning that you accept/believe on those axioms and then build up a set of argument with specific conclusion. I don’t understand what you mean with faculty of reasoning and belief as I only believe on faculty of learning. We learn reasoning and belief.

I’m not sure what you mean by this.

I mean how he was able to decide about a situation where both outcomes were equally desirable/reasonable. We call that quality free will that we used it many times in our daily life but not able to explain what it is and how it acts.

 

[Bahman]

This is an example of a logical fallacy called retrospective determinism.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrospective_determinism

The idea being that if a course of action came about then that action was determined to be by the antecedent conditions and could not have been otherwise. However, simply because something did occur is not sufficient to conclude it had to without making metaphysical presumptions. Therefore, such a conclusion that something had to occur is assuming and not proving determinism, which is why the entire argument is fallacious.

Could you please elaborate on your statement?

I didn’t get why that argument was an example of logical fallacy.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Could you please elaborate on your statement?

I didn’t get why that argument was an example of logical fallacy.

In short, because you have assumed causal determinism instead of demonstrating it.

Where physical causation is considered, Cause A, as a physical event, inevitably and inexorably precedes Effect B. That chain of events has been evidenced and demonstrated by scientific testing or it cannot be claimed that Effect B has Cause A without that verifiable demonstration.

In your argument, you presume that motives and reasons function in the same way as physical causation, so that if Behaviour B has come about and Reason A or Motive A have been identified, then, you presume, Behaviour B was inevitable and determined by Reason A or Motive A.

However, unlike physical causation, reasons or motivations have not been demonstrated to have an inevitable causal connection to behaviours. We don’t know and you haven’t demonstrated that Reason (or Motive) A inevitably and inexorably results in Behaviour B, so we cannot assume a deterministic structure to human behaviour without demonstration.

To claim that by identifying a reason or motive for an action a determined cause has been identified is to engage in the fallacy of retrospective determinism.

In fact, there is a strong prima facie reason for thinking that reasoning is not causal in any sense that is like physical causation. In our own subjective experiences, we are often aware of not doing what we know to be the right thing. We can reason to what we ought to do and even be motivated to do, but fail to do what we have decided to be the best course. A reason or motive can result in an action, but need not and definitely does not always do so.

We have no reason, then, for assigning a causal paradigm to human agency.

 

[DanAl]

I am sorry but I didn’t get your question.

This is what you said “What if the outcome of an decision is not clear or the outcomes are equally likely?”

Again, what of it? I don’t follow, what is your point?

So you mean that we don’t learn reasoning.

No I did not say that. I said the potential to reason is intrinsic to us.

You tell me that why you haven’t done the opposite if reasoning gave you the same weight to different actions (eating or not eating).

If two options are equally compelling to the mind, why does the will choose one over another? This is like asking why heat heats or why triangles are triangular. All explanations have to finish at some point or risk committing, what Swinburne calls, the completist fallacy. There’s no ultimate reason or cause as to why the will chooses an act over another: the will wills just as heat heats.

 

[Bahman]

This is what you said “What if the outcome of an decision is not clear or the outcomes are equally likely?”

Again, what of it? I don’t follow, what is your point?

I meant what I said: What you would do if you are in a situation that the outcomes of your decision is not known or you are in a situation that the outcomes are equally likely. Let me give you example of second case: You are in a situation that to chose between A and B but cannot have both. For example reasoning ask you to pick up A but desire ask you to pick up B. Your decision might take time but you eventually you make a decision.

No I did not say that. I said the potential to reason is intrinsic to us.

So we agree on that.

If two options are equally compelling to the mind, why does the will choose one over another? This is like asking why heat heats or why triangles are triangular. All explanations have to finish at some point or risk committing, what Swinburne calls, the completist fallacy. There’s no ultimate reason or cause as to why the will chooses an act over another: the will wills just as heat heats.

You eventually would chose one over another for one reason. I mean if neither reasoning nor motive cannot help you in such a situation then what is the third thing. That is something that people call all it free will. My question is what it this quality if it is possible to define or understand it. It is crucial that we put ourselves in such a thought experiment that neither reasoning not motives could not define the outcome of our decision otherwise we turn to agent controlled by reasoning and motives in all situations and as a result don’t have any virtue like free will.

 

[SentinelofTruth]

Bahman:

You eventually would chose one over another for one reason. I mean if neither reasoning nor motive cannot help you in such a situation then what is the third thing. That is something that people call all it free will. My question is what it this quality if it is possible to define or understand it. It is crucial that we put ourselves in such a thought experiment that neither reasoning not motives could not define the outcome of our decision otherwise we turn to agent controlled by reasoning and motives in all situations and as a result don’t have any virtue like free will.

I do not understand what is being said here, but I tell you that free will isn’t only used in situations where there is equal incentive for both choices. You use free will in every situation, because you are culpable for what you do in every situation.

 

[Bahman]

I do not understand what is being said here, but I tell you that free will isn’t only used in situations where there is equal incentive for both choices. You use free will in every situation, because you are culpable for what you do in every situation.

Lets ask this question for a second: Do reasoning and motive are the only tools we have available when we make a decision?

 

[Bahman]

I think our discussion is going in a very good direction.

In your argument, you presume that motives and reasons function in the same way as physical causation, so that if Behaviour B has come about and Reason A or Motive A have been identified, then, you presume, Behaviour B was inevitable and determined by Reason A or Motive A.

Why we should depend on reasoning and motivation when it comes to a decision making then? You have to accept either reasoning A and motive A is enough for behaviour B or not. If yes then what behaviour B is the result of them otherwise you have to provide what else could cause behaviour B, free will for example which is unexplainable quality that allows us to do behaviour B in spite the fact that reasoning A and motive A define behaviour C as a outcome.

However, unlike physical causation, reasons or motivations have not been demonstrated to have an inevitable causal connection to behaviours. We don’t know and you haven’t demonstrated that Reason (or Motive) A inevitably and inexorably results in Behaviour B, so we cannot assume a deterministic structure to human behaviour without demonstration.

We might one day know it or not. My main question from you is if whether this is knowable/demonstrable or not in term of reasoning and motive?

If yes: we can predict a behaviour in a situation since we know that reasoning A and motive A would lead/cause behaviour B.

or no: there exist a ability so called free will which is indefinable/unexplainable that together with reasoning and motive cause behaviour B.

To claim that by identifying a reason or motive for an action a determined cause has been identified is to engage in the fallacy of retrospective determinism.

I don’t believe that determinism apply when it comes to human behaviour as well. My main question is what is it otherwise? Is human behaviour explicable at all or not?

In fact, there is a strong prima facie reason for thinking that reasoning is not causal in any sense that is like physical causation. In our own subjective experiences, we are often aware of not doing what we know to be the right thing. We can reason to what we ought to do and even be motivated to do, but fail to do what we have decided to be the best course. A reason or motive can result in an action, but need not and definitely does not always do so.

We have no reason, then, for assigning a causal paradigm to human agency.

I have also experience situation in which I neither follow reasoning nor motive. I do agree with you that causal paradigm does not apply to human agency. My question is what it is otherwise? I mean if reasoning A and motive A does not determine behaviour B then what does it?