Predestination

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Feel free to post here about the lack of free will. Including you Fnord.

There was a reason I didn't start a thread like this...

How does it work? Does this rule out free will completely?

"The worst thing about religion" part 2

Predestination to me seems to be the notion that all events are set before they happen. I do think it rules out free will, because logically you cannot choose anything but what you have been predestined to choose. At the very least, this removes the notion of being able to choose otherwise, which is sometimes regarded as important for ethics.

You are right, we need more personal attacks, sweeping dismissals, and attempts to discredit somebody by looking at their use of the language! HURRY UP PEOPLE!! WE NEED THE MADNESS TO START!! !

I have to ask what exactly is free will?

Every action I take, either consciously or unconsciously is based upon a mental calculation weighing alternative courses or action and then taking the course of action most consistent with my mental conditioning. The mental conditioning covers a whole set of rules or behaviour responses picked up from my culture, religious beliefs, logic, sense of empathy, law and punishment etc.

In essence only different from a computer program in as much as many magnitudes more information and rules are applied in determining the output.

What exactly is free will under these conditions?

I could take a random action, the equivalent of tossing a mental coin, but I see no free will involved in that either.

At best I seem to be simply a witness to my own actions.

I see that predestination is a religious concept, which it seems strange about God having determined the universe, which it would suggest that the whole humanity was meant to suffer and decay in sin, it would been part of God's plan, in that case, which contradicts with things I have been thought in Church.

Without having thought about that principle, I have wondered about the lack of free will, when it comes to prophecies claimed by christians to have fulfilled or are to come, especially when it comes to Nostradamus, although not every christian may believe in his profecy, although some do, thinking about Nostradamus, it suggests in my view, that it conflicts with the notion of free will, as probably non-existent.

Last edited by greenblue on 20 Aug 2008, 4:02 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Hence TallyMan, you find robots attractive?

Oh goodness, who doesn't!! !! !



Sexy!! !

To be honest, I don't know. I mean, if taken in the libertarian sense, then it has to be acausal, and if it is acausal, then where does the choice come from? How is it not random?




It could be argued from a compatibilist view, that your free will is your ability to act upon your own desires as opposed to somebody else's, but then there come issues in defining coercion under that view.

Seriously. I would like to know what others think free will actually is? It sounds like a concept that we all hold dear but which nobody has really thought about. It sounds like a contradiction in terms to me.

I believe so, though others have tried to reconcile Predestination and free will. However, I would argue that, since they are unable to resolve Newcomb's Paradox, such a set of views is internally inconsistent and should be discarded.

Anyways, I have yet to see a real definition for free will. It is not causal choices based on a number of factors such as upbringing, genetic factors, value systems, etc. Such decisions as those should be regarded as determined by prior conditions. And if decisions are not based on a prior cause (and how can something be acausal?) then they must simply be random, which most will not regard as free will. After all, randomness isn't freedom. What then is free will?

Exactly my point. Free will may just be a mental concept, a plaything of the mind but with no substance.

Yeah, some argue that random-will is that what we perceive as free-will, And others, in the case of predestination or determinism, that what we perceive to have been made out of our own free-will, was determined to happen.

I ask, does time has to do with free-will? are they really connected? if so, how?

If I had to describe predestination in a single word, it would probably be "causality". That's the closest related term.

According to supporters of predestination, there's a whole separate physics that determines how the human mind works. Just as there's the laws of motion that say things like "any object at rest stays at rest unless acted upon by a force", there are also laws of emotion. We just haven't figured it all out yet. We're still working on physics that govern non-sentient objects, which are many orders of magnitude less complex than the human mind, so it may be some time before any progress is made there...