Free will, perfection and limits on god

I disagree. As I said earlier... A simply definition for omniscience is all-knowing. I don't think this includes the future. You can know everything without knowing the things that haven't happened yet. This is a difference of opinion, you think omniscience includes knowing everything that will happen and I don't, let's put this part behind us. Check Message 11Which is why I would lose respect for him. I don't believe that god wants me to sin. I think we chose to sin, we chose to seperate ourselves from god. I think god doesn't know whats going to happen in the future by default, but if he wanted to control a part of the future he could. no, I don't think they make conscious decisions.

One thing DID change in the green/red swap - the sensory data we received. But BECAUSE the change was systematic our sensory data is still consistent and it cannot be called an error. My contention is that any change to our sensory data that is completely systematic is undetectable - but cannot be an error for the same reason that the red/green swap is not an error.

Ok, I understand your view better, and we aren't really going to get anywhere if we don't use logic. Beliefs are illogical, so lets apply logic to them and see what happens because it's fun. This is not an attack on your beliefs, just a logical analysis Well, "everything" means everything, so opinion doesn't really matter. "Everything" is all-inclusive. I think what you are talking about is "almost-omniscience." God knows a ton about what HAS happened, but not what WILL happen. Omniscience is knowing everything about everything, by definition. Is God bound by time? We can skip this part if you still would like to. If God controlled a part of the future, then all of the future would have to be controlled, and then necessarily all of the past as well, since past and future are relative terms. If God knows the past, but not the future, and we're talking about someone who lived 200 years into the future, then your life is in that person's past, which God already knows about. Thus, you have no free will. So if animals don't have free will, they are predetermined. We interact with these animals. The animals' lives are all fixed, including their interactions with us. We cannot change those interactions, and the time between those interactions must be spent getting precisely ready for the next interaction. Thus, we don't have free will either because we interact with animals that don't have free will.Does that all make sense (not asking "do you believe it" because you don't have to believe it)?

Bear with me, I'm still having trouble understanding what you mean. Is this swap like me looking at something red, then looking at something green?

No. The swap is that everyone has (and always had) the sensory experience (the "quale") we associate with "red" when they see something we would call "green" and vice versa.

Ohhh, so when photons that should register as "green" register as "red," that is the swap?

Photons that produce the sensations we associate with the colour green instead produce the sensation we associate with the colour red.

So the sensing mechanism isn't relaying or sensing the information correctly?

Differently from us. My point is that there is no "correct" result.

So everyone sees something different?

I assumed not, but really there's no way to tell. And that in itself supports my point - because if it DID make a difference we should be able to tell (and in cases like colour-blindness we CAN tell that there is a difference).

I'll play your logic game. But everything doesn't include the future. Something that hasn't happened yet doesn't exist yet and isn't a thing yet so it shouldn't be incuded as a thing in the term everything. Omni- means all, -scient means knowledge. If I believe god is all knowing, or omniscient, I don't have to believe that he knows everything about the future, so, its not "almost-omniscient", it is just "omniscient". The past has happened and has existed and can be known. The future has not happened and has not existed and can not be known. They are only reletive to the present and time can only go forward. Something can not go from the past to the future it can only go from the future to the past. I don't understand your view of time. False.They are neither predetermined nor do they have free will. The animals are the 'robots' that I see your view makes humans into. Animals' program is to just react to a stimulus via instinct, the reason they aren't predetermined is that the stimuli are "random" and not a part of the program.

Sorry to butt-in, but robots can respond to environmental stimuli as well. It's a primitive kind of robot that has no external inputs.Robots have been built which use visual and tactile cues to move, to find energy, and to execute tasks. I don't see this as fundamentally different from how you describe animals. It's just a matter of scale.In other words, if I've got it right, in your view then, for each "possible" environmental input, animals' behavior is predetermined. But the ACTUAL behavior is not predetermined, because the ACTUAL environmental input is unknown.I don't disagree with your position, I just wanted to point out that it's really not different from how many robots work.AbE: Posted in admin-mode AGAIN! Grrr...This message has been edited by Ben, 05/05/2005 05:22 PM

Thanks for replying. yeah, pretty much. Predetermined by instinct. I don't think you'll get the same response for the same input every time though. An unpleasant input repeated would yield a different response the second time. Though, you could say the input was 2 part and the program said X for part 1 and Y for part 2, or something like that. yeah, and there are so many variables.Is this the way you see things too? Do you think free will exists?

I think you're right on for animals. Of course, inputs are too complex to ever be exactly the same. Furthermore, through "learning" and memory, the state of the animal (i.e. context) changes, thus the INTERNAL state is always different. Things change because of learning mechanisms, but I don't see any need for free will.I don't think things work differently for people. I think that discussing the matter philosophically is not too useful for people. We appear to ourselves to have free will, and in most circumstances, that is good enough. It's an ad-hoc theory that is useful in many circumstances.One idea I'm (still) trying to flesh out is how basing law and morality on this ad-hoc view of free-will often breaks down and leads to undesirable and "strange" results. But that's a post for holmes that I'm "working on" (i.e. the thoughts are there, but the writing and form are not quite done yet).I think as time goes on, I'm becoming much more pragmatic, much less idealistic, and what "the true fact is" seems less and less important and useful to me. So, I'm sorry if my answer seems indirect... but that's actually the way I think about things currently.AbE: That's 4 posts in a row in admin mode when I just wanted regular mode.This message has been edited by Ben, 05/05/2005 08:32 PM