Free will and omniscience

[evets34]

As proven by Albert Einstein, time along with space is relative. The simple answer to this question is that God is outside the Universe. Therefore, he transcends time because without the universe, there is no time. Ergo, God knows what decision you have made before you make it because he knows the past, present, and future, and sees all at once.

[Morality Games]

As proven by Albert Einstein, time along with space is relative.

Not proven, just demonstrated. Special and General Relativity are still theories.

The simple answer to this question is that God is outside the Universe.

No, the simple answer is that there is nothing outside the universe (or multiverse). The idea of God is a stipulation.

Ergo, God knows what decision you have made before you make it because he knows the past, present, and future, and sees all at once.

Free will still does not exist. If past, present, and future exist at the same time, then every action taken by a being is necessary and not contigent.

"Existence" may have been originally used to describe material reality but that is only because pre-plato no one thought of transcendent idealistic reality (with the exception of Anaxagoras' Nous but I would hardly call it a worked out non-material entity). You seem to be saying that existence and cosmos are the same. It seems to me the typical use of the word existence means that the objects has being.

The only reason people speak of the cosmos as though it exists is because we infer from experience that it exists. I don't see why theoretical realities beyond the cosmos deserve special consideration. If there is a world beyond the world, then I will only have reason to speak of it as real when I am there or when it obviously effects this world I am in right now.

It seems to me the typical use of the word existence means that the objects has being.

That is why I shifted to 'like existence', although a better expression of my feeling would be to say it a mis-application with reference to what I consider the original intent and proper function of language.

[ryanatau]

Quote by: Morality Games The only reason people speak of the cosmos as though it exists is because we infer from experience that it exists. I don't see why theoretical realities beyond the cosmos deserve special consideration. If there is a world beyond the world, then I will only have reason to speak of it as real when I am there or when it obviously effects this world I am in right now.

Most idealist philosophers say the transcendent world influences the visible world. They do not postulate a total disconnect from the world but rather, in many cases, say that the world of understanding in none other than the transcendent world.

[Morality Games]

Most idealist philosophers say the transcendent world influences the visible world. They do not postulate a total disconnect from the world but rather, in many cases, say that the world of understanding in none other than the transcendent world.

Words like 'mind' and 'understanding' developed to qualitatively (conceptually) describe functions and activities of the nervous system. Whereas neoruscience aims to understand the mind quantitatively (numerically, aka, as empirically verified data), philosophy (under the guidance of logic) tries to make it comprehensible in terms of everyday language. While I don't think philosophers are obligated to adhere to scientific norms during their reasoning, I do think their ideas should not be inconsistent with scientific depictions of the world.

The idealistic philosophers (Plato) posulate the existence of a world of eternal forms (abstracts) from which the particulars of our universe derive. The Nietzchean assertion that abstracts are just the mind's comparison similarities of unlike things (observations of leaves create the impression of an abstract leaf in the mind) is more down to earth and sensible than supposing abstracts exist in another world.

The mind, since it is just a way of describing the physical activity of the brain and other nerves, is a continuation of the world, not a world apart.

[ryanatau]

Quote by: Morality Games The idealistic philosophers (Plato) posulate the existence of a world of eternal forms (abstracts) from which the particulars of our universe derive. The Nietzchean assertion that abstracts are just the mind's comparison similarities of unlike things (observations of leaves create the impression of an abstract leaf in the mind) is more down to earth and sensible than supposing abstracts exist in another world.

You sort of misunderstand Plato. Regardless, Nietzsche (and other nominalists if you will allow me to call him that) do not quit say what you are saying because it does not destroy the Platonic argument. Plato would just say that the thing they are using to compare like things (the thing that makes them alike) are the forms. If the forms do not exist then there is not base to compare. What makes two leafs similar? Plato would say the forms. A nominalist might say the forms have no ontological being because that would suppose the forms are more real then the particular while in reality it is the particular and not the forms that exist. We abstract forms from the particulars but they have no ontological being.

I actually tend to agree more with Nietzsche. However, we have to ask what is the most fundamental piece of knowledge we have. An idealist would say thought is more fundamental then perception. Perception is less reliable. Whatever you personal belief is it is difficult to disregarded Descartes' Cogito as the first and most fundamental thing we know.

The mind, since it is just a way of describing the physical activity of the brain and other nerves, is a continuation of the world, not a world apart.

We are not sure whether the brain constitutes the mind. Your argument, I am sure, is that a person missing parts of their brain have decreased mental capacity. However, it could also be thought that the brain is the place that the mind and body connect (some what like Descartes postulated but with more sophistication). When part of the brain is missing the mind losses control of the body. I am not personally a dualist but it is a thought.

[Yasa]

Quote by: ryanatau We are not sure whether the brain constitutes the mind. Your argument, I am sure, is that a person missing parts of their brain have decreased mental capacity. However, it could also be thought that the brain is the place that the mind and body connect (some what like Descartes postulated but with more sophistication). When part of the brain is missing the mind losses control of the body. I am not personally a dualist but it is a thought.

And as you may know, Descartes' postulation sparked the mind-body problem that many philosophers tried to solve and is still unresolved to this day. How is it that immaterial substance can affect matterial things? There is no good explanation and most appeal to ignorance and cop out by saying "it's impossible to know how it works", "magic" (or some version of saying this), "through god's unknowable powers", etc.

[ryanatau]

Quote by: Yasa And as you may know, Descartes' postulation sparked the mind-body problem that many philosophers tried to solve and is still unresolved to this day. How is it that immaterial substance can affect matterial things? There is no good explanation and most appeal to ignorance and cop out by saying "it's impossible to know how it works", "magic" (or some version of saying this), "through god's unknowable powers", etc.

Granted. All I was saying is that the way electron behave is similar to how Descartes said his little men that transfer data from mind to body behave (that was his somewhat silly idea).

As I said I am not a dualist, but there are similar problems that both idealists and materialists have to deal with.

[Morality Games]

You sort of misunderstand Plato.

I'm not writing a dissertation, but that Plato presupposes there exists a transcendant world 'above' the physical from which the particulars of our universe derive is a standard feature of his mid-way philosophy (if not mid-way and beyond). If I misunderstand anything, then it must be a 'New Plato' interpretation.

We are not sure whether the brain constitutes the mind. Your argument, I am sure, is that a person missing parts of their brain have decreased mental capacity. However, it could also be thought that the brain is the place that the mind and body connect (some what like Descartes postulated but with more sophistication). When part of the brain is missing the mind losses control of the body. I am not personally a dualist but it is a thought.

The reason a chair breaks and a wall is dented when Person A smashes a chair against a wall is because the physical relation between the objects allows them to communicate with one another, informing each other what to do (break, be dented). There is a science studying this and other similar phenomenon. It is called physics. How does a non-physical substance communicate with the brain, informing it what to do? That is an objection against dualism.

It can be argued Descartes' process is still possible under monism (if we assume the mind is also physical, existing in another universe or an imperceptible dimension of this one), but since reality is more effectively explained without that unnecessary stipulation, there is no reason in thinking along those lines.

[ryanatau]

Quote by: Morality Games I'm not writing a dissertation, but that Plato presupposes there exists a transcendant world 'above' the physical from which the particulars of our universe derive is a standard feature

He doesn't presuppose it. He infers it as a necessity if we are to have a standard of judgment.

The reason a chair breaks and a wall is dented when Person A smashes a chair against a wall is because the physical relation between the objects allows them to communicate with one another, informing each other what to do (break, be dented). There is a science studying this and other similar phenomenon. It is called physics. How does a non-physical substance communicate with the brain, informing it what to do? That is an objection against dualism.

As I said I don't hold a dualism, however, we cannot be sure it is not true. To do so would be similar to what theists do when they say "you cannot prove the world was created naturally without God therefore a God is necessary." Just because it cannot be understood does not mean it is wrong.

[Ajdub18]

Free will exsists in the form of the many-worlds interpretation. What we observe from the choices we make collapse the wave function of infinite possibility subjectively, in turn, sending every other choice or posibility off into its own history or world. Thus, free will.

Just a thought.

[Morality Games]

This is my Spinoza-influenced view of the will.

The ego cannot will by its own volition. Whatever is willed is the effect of a string of causes stretching back to time immemorial, or as far as human knowledge can go, whatever causes pertain to the event or act in question. The proof of this is a lack of evidence implicating the existence of a quality of mind which allows the ego to will contingently, and conclusive evidence that what the ego wills depends entirely on the circumstances surrounding it. Nature drives beings onward until their existential power is exhausted and they dissolve into dust, and while the ego can make every decision it wants up to this point, both its choices and desires are under the direction of a power far more expansive than itself. That is, the world decides what choices the ego will make and what desires motivate to choose thusly. If anyone perceives otherwise, then deficient awareness and faulty comprehension are giving them a bad understanding of the facts.

He doesn't presuppose it. He infers it as a necessity if we are to have a standard of judgment.

The philosophers who came after, starting immediately with Aristotle and an uneven development from there, have typically expounded more realistic standards.

As I said I don't hold a dualism, however, we cannot be sure it is not true. To do so would be similar to what theists do when they say "you cannot prove the world was created naturally without God therefore a God is necessary." Just because it cannot be understood does not mean it is wrong.

I can't be sure of anything, but there is more reason to adopt the position dualism isn't true than the reverse at this moment. We infer from experience, our most immediate reality, that a physical substance is real. The same does not hold true for a second substance.

[Dr_Acula]

Quote by: Yasa And as you may know, Descartes' postulation sparked the mind-body problem that many philosophers tried to solve and is still unresolved to this day. How is it that immaterial substance can affect matterial things? There is no good explanation and most appeal to ignorance and cop out by saying "it's impossible to know how it works", "magic" (or some version of saying this), "through god's unknowable powers", etc.

The inmatterial mind doesn't influence the body to do anything. It is the brain -and neurology is very much matterial- that influences the body. The mind only is a projection of the neurological prosseces. It's not the mind itslef that commands the body, it is the brain, and the mind just happens to be an "image" (lacking a better word) of the brain.
If I broke a chair in front of a mirror, it would be me, not my mirror image, that broke the chair.

[Yasa]

Quote by: Dr_Acula The inmatterial mind doesn't influence the body to do anything. It is the brain -and neurology is very much matterial- that influences the body. The mind only is a projection of the neurological prosseces. It's not the mind itslef that commands the body, it is the brain, and the mind just happens to be an "image" (lacking a better word) of the brain. If I broke a chair in front of a mirror, it would be me, not my mirror image, that broke the chair.

If you re-read, you'll notice I am in agreement with you. I see no distinction between mind and body (brain).

[tommy5x]

Can God not have knowledge of all possibilities, and become aware of them as choices are made by those who have the power to choose?

[spectre]

This argument is fucked and riddled with invalidity.

Free will still does not exist. If past, present, and future exist at the same time, then every action taken by a being is necessary and not contigent.

The point here is that past, present and future are transcended, if time is transcended how can you say they exist at the "same time?" The eternal state encompasses the infinity of time yet removed from the reltavistic nature of its measurability.

We are not sure whether the brain constitutes the mind. Your argument, I am sure, is that a person missing parts of their brain have decreased mental capacity. However, it could also be thought that the brain is the place that the mind and body connect (some what like Descartes postulated but with more sophistication). When part of the brain is missing the mind losses control of the body. I am not personally a dualist but it is a thought.

The reason a chair breaks and a wall is dented when Person A smashes a chair against a wall is because the physical relation between the objects allows them to communicate with one another, informing each other what to do (break, be dented). There is a science studying this and other similar phenomenon. It is called physics. How does a non-physical substance communicate with the brain, informing it what to do? That is an objection against dualism.

The fact that you remove the "mental" element here astounds me. The observations that you make in finding empirical answers come from experience of the situations you are putting into question. If your behaviour and nerves were simply an extension of "physics" you would be automated WITHOUT the experience to declare the results you find. Is there somekind of Consciousness molecule Mortality Games? I think not.

Your physical scientific world, is one side to the same world as the platonic-immaterial world. One side is exterior, measurable, physical the other is interior phenomenological, immeasurably abstract.

At what point does the physical substance actually form the structure of a thought? Is a thought just some-kind of vapourous gaseous thing? And we are still throwing around Plato like he hasn't gone out of fashion... christ...

Form and Being = inside and outside of same existance.

Free will exsists in the form of the many-worlds interpretation. What we observe from the choices we make collapse the wave function of infinite possibility subjectively, in turn, sending every other choice or posibility off into its own history or world. Thus, free will.

And I'm the reincarnation of the dead Pharoahs, wifes, dogs friend... observation doesn't effect physics you idiot, and no quatum theory out there suggests that it does. Observation only gives rise to the "mental knowledge" that you have a set of choices that can effect a situation, you choose that choice, perform related behaviour - "behaviour is physics in motion."

I see no distinction between mind and body (brain).

sad notion.

Mind = interior, immaterial abstract
Brain = exterior, material, governed by physics.

Bottom line a thought is not substance and a measurable sample of subtance is not meaurable without an experience (thought). Two sides of the same coin. If you can't experience it, then you sure as fuck can't write the results down in your research, if you believe that thought and mind exists in another world, obviously you aren't a part of this one.

[spectre]

NOW my two cents on the debate at hand:

God exists outside of universe (which includes time)

We acknowledge that experience and substance exist (assumption here being we actually experience both on a daily basis, if not both science and philosophy would declare us dead)

If God exists outside of universe, which is relative - then he infact cannot be relative but an absolute (whole in Self) as it transcends the relative (space and time)

NOW, if "God" governs all, and is "Whole" then obviously as relativistic the government of the universe would have to also be relativistic which means then that "free-will" is "relative."

Lastly;
Free will = choices which determine path of ones own existance

conception of God: as irrelative, includes all things as a whole (experiential internal) and (matterial exterior).

Thus to answer the last question. God knows(experiences) all things manifest and unmanifest (form and absent of form) because he is that knowledge, form, formlessness, experience. Being outside existance-nonexistance duality and not excluding anything that exists in any manner (manifest or unmanifest) how can anything just "pop up" into the awareness of God, when he is all awareness and substance in totality?

So to note, if God transcends "time" "space" "form" "formlessness" "substance" "experiential thought" then these relative interactions that give rise to a personal condition (which allows us to exercise our freewill, or our quota of) are also something "God" transcends in holistic fashion - thus being "transpersonal" encompassing all reasons for decision to exercise that freewill, or lack there-of (in both circumstances).

[Ajdub18]

Quote by: spectre observation doesn't effect physics you idiot, and no quatum theory out there suggests that it does.

One of the basic theories of quantum physics is that the observer creates the world around it simply by observing it. Without observation matter exists only as a wave of infinite possiblities (see double-slit experiment)...idiot.

[SoylentGreen]

God being omniscient has no free will. He knows and must follow his destiny.
Man having no idea of the future is free to choose.
Therefore man is superior to god.
In that we have choice he does not.

[spectre]

One of the basic theories of quantum physics is that the observer creates the world around it simply by observing it. Without observation matter exists only as a wave of infinite possiblities (see double-slit experiment)...idiot.

Yes I have heard of double-slit theory. But which quantum theory suggests matter exists only as a wave of infinite possibilities? This sounds like New Age bullshit, of an irrational nature along the lines of "What the Bleep do we Know?" which no REAL quantum-physicist (many have been asked) endorses.

The way that wavefunctions and superpositions work, is that quantum particles behave in a chaotic order that doesn't adhere to general relativity theory. Particles aren't localized in space. To say that a particle is in a specific place at a specific point it must be detected, You can examine a region that you expect to find a particle and determine its "probability" of being found in that region, so you can narrow down the probabilities until you can detect the quantum particle. Now this isn't saying your observation gives rise to the existance of the matter, it is simply saying that as a wavefunction, it exists in many places simultaneously due to its quantum nature, the Fourier Transform is only occuring because you are pinning it down in a concentrated region at a particular point in time. You don't just look somewhere and say "look quantum particles - I see it, therefore I make it exist." You are simply narrowing down the concentrated position the particle is taking in a localized space of time. That matter is going to be there whether you observe it or not sunshine. Inside secret, matter existed long before observation was possible (life-forms) so you want to explain how it made the transition from a wave of infintie possibilites to a defined and measurable state that we can experience day to day?

[spectre]

God being omniscient has no free will. He knows and must follow his destiny. Man having no idea of the future is free to choose. Therefore man is superior to god. In that we have choice he does not.

I like that, but I don't agree.

Why can Gods omniscence not be concurent to his freewill? - i.e. he knows what will happen because he has the infinite free will to make it happen, and makes it happen because he has the eternal nondual perspective.

I think that Gods freewill is only absolute due to the necessary relativity of humans relative freewill. However, if his freewill depeneds on the relative sentinent condition of choice to exist as a transcendental absolute then I can see how you can call that a lack of free will. The reason I disagree though, is that as relative, and the creations of God, we are not seperate, therefore our relative freewill being played out in whatever manner we decide, is also the freewill of God as he is the sum of all, thus sum of all free-willed decision. If all humans have relative freewill, then holisitically, as the sum of all space + time (external) and thought + experience (internal) his free-will is absolute as a kind of dominant-monad of the sum-of-existance.