The Law of the Excluded Middle and Free Will

[Imparcticle]

I was reading an essay (that has been simplied such that it takes on the format of notes but still is like an essay...not sure how to categorize it) at this webpage : http://www.sfu.ca/philosophy/swartz/freewill1.htm#intro
which concerns free will. At this time, I have only read through the two pages or so when I ran into an intriguing idea presented by the author:

For a bit of back ground for the particular paragraph of interest, read this:

Two admirals, A and B, are preparing their navies for a sea battle tomorrow. The battle will be fought until one side is victorious. But the 'laws' of the excluded middle (every statement is either true or false) and of noncontradiction (no statement is both true and false), require that one of the statements, 'A wins' and 'B wins', is true and the other is false. Suppose 'A wins' is (today) true. Then whatever A does (or fails to do) today will make no difference; similarly, whatever B does (or fails to do) today will make no difference: the outcome is already settled. Or again, suppose 'A wins' is (today) false. Then no matter what A does today (or fails to do), it will make no difference; similarly, no matter what B does (or fails to do), it will make no difference: the outcome is already settled. Thus, if every statement is either true or false (and not both), then planning, or as Aristotle put it 'taking care', is illusory in its efficacy. The future will be what it will be, irrespective of our planning, intentions, etc.
Is it possible to 'escape' the sting of the conclusion of this argument? How might one argue against accepting the conclusion that planning (for the future) is useless?

There have been three ways that have been proposed to avoid having to accept the conclusion.

Proposal One: One might argue that propositions are not true in advance of the events described. Propositions 'become' true when the events described occur.

Objections to Proposal One: (1) When did it 'become true' that Bush won the 1988 election? When the votes were counted? When it was clear that he would win? When 'the deciding vote' was cast? ...

And the following is the one of interest:

The questions in the preceding paragraph strongly suggest that it will prove problematic in the extreme to try to put precise times on the (supposed) occurrence of a proposition's 'becoming true'. Moreover, propositions, you'll recall, are supposed to be abstract entities, entities which do not exist in space and time; but if they do not exist in time, how can their properties change at some particular time?

Another Objection to Proposal One: To argue that propositions about the future acquire a truth-value only when the described event occurs (i.e. in the future) will entail abandoning the law of the excluded middle: propositions about the future will not, then, have truth-values now, i.e. prior to the occurrence of the predicted event. Adopting Proposal One would require our creating a far more complicated logic. This is not to say that this proposed solution is completely without merit; but it is to say that we ought to try to find some other solution before resorting to such a major revision of logic.

What the author is saying here is that the law of the excluded middle does not hold true for future truth values and that it is not possible within the present laws of logic which the author considered. However, the author failed to consider the possibility of probability, which if I may say so is the basis for a truth table. When one is making a truth table for a statement, one is assessing the possiblities of certain truth values that occur in correspondence with other truth values (within the same statement). As such, the truth value of a future event is also based on a structured probability. The author is basically assuming that all truth values must neccesarily be definite for every temporal direction. And with this, I disagree.

Am I flawed in my analysis?

 

[Imparcticle]

And by the way...
The author from the same website I posted on my previous post suggests this proposal also:

Proposal Two: Disjunctions (i.e. statements of the form "P or Q" [in this particular case "A wins or A does not win"] are true, but not the individual disjuncts (components, i.e. "A wins"; "A does not win").

Objection to Proposal Two: The proposal is terribly peculiar. We are inclined to say that a disjunction is true just because (at least) one of its disjuncts is true. If neither P nor Q is true, how can "P or Q" be true? And, further, just as in the previous case, this Proposal also entails abandoning the law of the excluded middle: while "A wins or A does not win" has a truth-value now, neither of the two propositions "A wins" and "A does not win" has a truth-value. So, once again, we would prefer a less radical solution.

What do you think about this proposal?

 

[loseyourname]

I think that's a pretty stupid proposal. It should be clear that once the battle has been fought, assuming that there is a winner, then the statement "A won" is either true or false.

 

[StatusX]

This is all meanigless. Statements are human inventions and they say absolutely nothing about the true nature of reality. The rules of logic should be changed, if necessary (which I don't think it is) to fit reality, not the other way around.

 

[Bartholomew]

The only circumstance under which A could justifiably slack off would be if A were told of his win, and this information for some reason is known to A to be infallible. Call this circumstance C.

If A will win no matter what he does, then A can slack off. If what A does is necessary to say whether he wins, then we know that A only does those things which ensure his win. That is, A can infer from C that he will choose to do nothing which is not conducive to his win. If not slacking off is necessary to win, then A can infer he will not slack off. You can say, "But what if A then set his mind to slack off?" and this is not a valid question. Given C, and given that if A sets his mind to slacking off he will succeed, we can infer that A will not set his mind to slack off; he is not of that disposition.

Then you ask, what if A _were_ of a disposition, when presented with C, to set his mind to slack off just to see what happens? If A had that disposition, C would have been false (because the information of A's win would have been false), so A could never have been presented with it, and the premises of the whole situation are impossible.

 

[Philocrat]

THE PROBLEM WITH LEM

One of the gravest intellectual errors that is now plagueing nearly every discipline is the assumption that only one of the many comepeting theories or theses about a given subject is correct. LEM is one such theories that now gravely labours under this error. All that the advocates of LEM would have done is to state the 'EPISTEMOLOGICAL STATUS' of LEM objectively thus:

It is sometimes, and not always, true that 'every statement is either true or false'

instead of making it appear as if they are implying:

It is always, and not sometimes, true that 'every statement is either true or false'

Those who teach this topic to their students should have excercised the highest degree of caution by honestly telling their students that there are in actually fact specific instances when LEM may materially and adequately apply without disputes. But equally that there are also instances when LEM is quantitatively and logically inadequate. They shoud have been honest and told their students that;

LEM materially and adequately applies only to any proposition which consists of ABSOLUTE OPPOSITE CONSTITUENT TERMS (AOCT) that cannot occupy the same logical space (note that this is also true even if the opposite terms have middle terms that range over, the fact still remains that none of the opposite terms and their associatted middle terms can occupy the same logical space at once). For example consider the the following types of statements:

a) The Dog with closed eyes is either dead or asleep and not both at once
(or equivalently, dead or not dead and not both / sleep or not asleep and not both)

b) The man is either dead or alive and not both at the same time.

Yes, statements (a) and (b) are consistent with LEM because the propperty of being dead and the property of being asleep cannot occupy the same logical space, and the same is true of the property of being dead and the property of being alive, given that we take being alive to also include being in a vegetative state. In both cases, only one or the other can be true, at least as long as the human form remains as it currently is.

But in cases such as these:


c) The book is red and not red

d) The Bottle is filled with water and not filled with water.

(C) would imply in our natural language (NL) that the book is partially red (partly red and partly not red) and (d) would equivalently imply that the bottle is half-filled with water. This will also cater for some of those statements that usually contain vague terms such as 'bald', 'wet' etc. So that if you say 'The man is bald and not bald', you would be implying in NL that the man is partially bald.

NOTE: Well, in (a) someone had once argued that 'SLEEPWALKING' is logically equivalent to being both asleep and not asleep or being both asleep and awake at once, such that if you said "The man is both asleep and not asleep", you would be violating LEM. The controversy rages on!

 

[Alkatran]

The bottle is filled with water and not filled with water.

It's not true that it would be half full. Not being full doesn't imply emptinance. It could be ALMOST full. The simple fact is that it is NOT full. It can't be not full and full.

 

[Philocrat]

The bottle is filled with water and not filled with water.

It's not true that it would be half full. Not being full doesn't imply emptinance. It could be ALMOST full. The simple fact is that it is NOT full. It can't be not full and full.

Correction taken. What about partially full and not partially full? Or partially full and partially empty Does this mask the middle terms or values? I was only thinking of how to express myself normally in NL without logic doing my head in.

And what about this?:

A bottle half-filled with water is completely empty!

In trading places, if anyone ever say this to you, you should turn around and say to him or her:

My dear friend, you are trying to cheat me in broad day light. I am a native speaker of a natural language and I do know when a bottle is completely empty!

 

[Philocrat]

Ok, if LEM is a viable logical theory, how come that one group of people in our society (Politicians) have perfected complex methodologies in NL to effectively violate it? Haven't you seen time and time again in the media how journalist try to push politicians to the corner and get them to respond to LEM-type questions with 'yes' or 'no' answers, and the politicians cleverly respond by claimining that the answers are both 'yes' and 'no' at once. In fact, it is not only politicians alone, I have seen many of my friends and other members of the public do the same. I even came across some responses on this PF that did the same thing.

What I am trying to point out here is that, in NL, when you ask someone a question, as it is usually the case in a normal conversation, and expect that person to say yes or no and the person responds by claiming that the answer is both 'yes' and 'no', this does look as if the person is violating LEM. Or is it not? But is this not a normal thing that the native speakers of NL do everyday? What is wrong in saying that the truth value of a given response to a question is both is partly the case and partly not the case?

If LEM is worth anything in the mainstream logical system, it must be properly clarified and made relevant to the life-blood of the native speakers of NL.

 

[Mentat]

This is all meanigless. Statements are human inventions and they say absolutely nothing about the true nature of reality.

If statements say nothing about the true nature of reality, then how is it that a statement could say anything about how worthwhile or "meaningless" a line of reasoning "truly" is?

 

[Mentat]

Imparcticle,
I think one of the most important problems, with the reasoning you presented in the first paragraph, is the idea that propositions exist independent of space and time. What is important to the discussion (in this case) is time, so we should focus on that: Can you make the statement, "A won", coherently, if the battle has not yet been fought? What would it mean? Should we instead use the statement "A will win" (reference to the future instead of the past)? If so, will that not be bound by the same uncertainty as any prediction?

The law of excluded middle (be it really valid or not) applies to all statements on which one can reason. But can one reason on the validity (or truthfullness) of a statement that hasn't had a chance to be true yet?

 

[Philocrat]

Transitional Logic (TL) accommodates all dimensions of time in its formal structure. When it comes to truth, TL treats the three dimensions of time (past, present and future) as a single time frame. The native speakers of Natural Langauge (NL) are encouraged think, speak, write and act clearly because NL aleady contained all the logical and quantitative components to do so. How do you do this? By actually teaching Clarity at all levels of the human education. At each level of inductrination, the native speakers of NL must be encouraged to learn how to map incomplete statements in a given time dimension to the remaining time dimensions using an appropriate logical forms or constructs that are available in NL already and made apparent by TL.

So, it seems that expecting the truth value of a future proposition to be true or false is almost pointless, if not completely irrelevant in the first place.

 

[StatusX]

If statements say nothing about the true nature of reality, then how is it that a statement could say anything about how worthwhile or "meaningless" a line of reasoning "truly" is?

The argument is that since all statements must be either true or false, a statement like "The world will end tomorrow" is either true or false right now and so it is already determined. But the fact is (and this is a fact of epistemology) that we don't know that the law of excluded middle accurately reflects reality. The argument rests on the certainty that this law is true, and since this premise is false, and the conclusion is invalid

 

[Alkatran]

The argument is that since all statements must be either true or false, a statement like "The world will end tomorrow" is either true or false right now and so it is already determined. But the fact is (and this is a fact of epistemology) that we don't know that the law of excluded middle accurately reflects reality. The argument rests on the certainty that this law is true, and since this premise is false, and the conclusion is invalid

But all statements aren't true or false!
Example: "How much is three minus two?"

Assigning 'true' or 'false' to that makes no sense. (paradoxical statements also come to mind). I think a more practical law is that if something is true it can't also be false, but there is the possibility of being neither true nor false (non-applicable, paradoxical, fuzzy logic, etc...).

 

[Philocrat]

As far as the Conversational Theory of Truth is concernced , every statement in a conversation must pass concrete information (directly or indirectly) to the next statement, hence effectively contribute to both the intermediate truth-values and the final truth-value of the whole conversation. So, a good conversation is measured by how effectively or consistently information of a truth-valued kind is passed from one statement to the next (without destroying that inforamtion) towards determining the overall truth of it.

If this is true, could we not equally claim that even a 'sneeze' (let alone a question, a command, an exclamation, or a metaphor ) is also effectively contributing in a truth-valued manner to the conversation? Or is it not?

 

[jackle]

I think every statement has both a true and a false aspect. Even clear cut things like "Today is Wednesday" doesn't get the same answer on different days. Likewise 1+1=3 is true to the person who interprets the sound "three" to mean the number 2. etc etc.

 

[moving finger]

I was reading an essay (that has been simplied such that it takes on the format of notes but still is like an essay...not sure how to categorize it) at this webpage : http://www.sfu.ca/philosophy/swartz/freewill1.htm#intro
which concerns free will.

The flaw in the logic in the article you refer to is that the truth or falsity of the statement "A wins tomorrow" is dependent on the actions of A and B today, therefore it is incorrect to say (as the author says) that "no matter what A does today (or fails to do), it will make no difference". This is true whether or not one adheres to the law of the excluded middle; it also has nothing to do with probability. The world may be entirely deterministic, the law of the excluded middle may still apply, and yet the truth or falsity of "A wins tomorrow" is still dependent on the actions of A and B today.

 

[quantumdude]

I agree, this article is silly. When we say that "p is true", we mean "It is the case that p", not "It was, is, and always will be the case that p." The author of the article has it exactly ass-backwards. He is denying that real planning and real effort have causal efficacy, while he affirms that merely assigning truth values has such efficacy. What a crock!

 

[Philocrat]

http://www.sfu.ca/philosophy/swartz/freewill1.htm#intro What does it mean to have free will? To have free will at least two conditions must obtain.

1) We must have two or more possibilities 'genuinely open' to us when we face a

choice; and

2) our choice must not be 'forced'.

Well, this is Metaphyiscally Narrow and Epistemologically Impoverished. Metaphysically, if you catigorise the notion of 'Force' into (1) Overcomable Force and (2) Non-overcomable Force, you could argue that free will conveniently operates where one can physically and mentally overcome opposing forces. This introduces modal logic to interplay to take care of this metaphysical catigory: ability to overcome certain natural forces or constraints. When you possesses the natural ability to overcome opposing forces on your pathway it is metaphysically equivalent to 'Freely Acting' unopposed. Overcoming physically opposing force is metaphysically equivalent to being physically unopposed. The modal Logic would then describe all the variants in such a world as follows:

1) If the conditions in world X is such that I am now overcoming a force or a set of forcess, then it is necessarily the case or true that I am now freely acting.

2) If some forces in world X are such that they are overcomable, then it is necessarily true that I sometimes act freely.

3) If some forces in world X are such that they are overcomable, then it is possibly true that I am now act freely.

4) If some forces in world X are such that they are overcomable, then it is possibly true that I will act freely tomorrow.

On the epistemolgical side of the arguemnt, you could argue that even if forced conditions existed in world X, so long as I knew how to overcome such forced conditioned, then it is immaterial or irrelevant whether forced conditions existed or not. For KNOWING HOW to overcome forced conditions in world X is metaphysically and epistemologically equivalent to ACTING FREELY in that world.

 

[Chronos]

Why are these arguments so complicated? Tom gave a very good answer and causality works. You are entitled to your objections, but it is up to you to show where causality breaks down... and don't resort to QM unless you have the math. Apologies, but that argument is a cowpie.
.

 

[learningphysics]

I agree, this article is silly. When we say that "p is true", we mean "It is the case that p", not "It was, is, and always will be the case that p." The author of the article has it exactly ass-backwards. He is denying that real planning and real effort have causal efficacy, while he affirms that merely assigning truth values has such efficacy. What a crock!

I think you're missing the point of the article. It is illustrating the effects of free will vs. determinism. We are part of the causal chain. When the author refers to what A can do or B can do, he's referring to acts of free will, not acts that are part of the causal chain.

Is it determined now that I will exert "real effort" and "real planning" some time in the future?

If every statement about reality (including future events) is either true or false, then determinism is true.

 

[quantumdude]

If every statement about reality (including future events) is either true or false, then determinism is true.

But as I said, the truth value of a statement is time dependent. The author does not take that into account at all, and I think that's why he's wrong.

The statement: Tom's grandfather is alive, was true until 12/28/96. After that, it was false.

 

[learningphysics]

But as I said, the truth value of a statement is time dependent. The author does not take that into account at all, and I think that's why he's wrong.

The statement: Tom's grandfather is alive, was true until 12/28/96. After that, it was false.

But the particular example you've given is of one that has different truth values at different points in time. This isn't the type of statement described in the article.

The article talked about a battle being fought between A and B. The battle has not ended yet. Is the statement:
"A wins the battle" true or false?

The statement above, IMO, can be taken as saying, when the battle ends, A will win. After the battle ends, A is either the winner or isn't. It is impossible for A to be the winner at some point in time after the end of the battle, and not be the winner at another point after the end of the battle.

To illustrate the essence of the argument using the type of statement you used:
Is this statement true or false today:
"John's grandfather dies on 12/24/2009"

 

[learningphysics]

The flaw in the logic in the article you refer to is that the truth or falsity of the statement "A wins tomorrow" is dependent on the actions of A and B today, therefore it is incorrect to say (as the author says) that "no matter what A does today (or fails to do), it will make no difference". This is true whether or not one adheres to the law of the excluded middle; it also has nothing to do with probability. The world may be entirely deterministic, the law of the excluded middle may still apply, and yet the truth or falsity of "A wins tomorrow" is still dependent on the actions of A and B today.

You are right. But the essence of the argument is that if determinism is true, A or B cannot change what A or B will do in the future.

Their own future actions cannot be changed from their pre-determined path. Whatever they do, or try to do, is exactly what they were pre-determined to do.

 

[moving finger]

You are right. But the essence of the argument is that if determinism is true, A or B cannot change what A or B will do in the future.

Their own future actions cannot be changed from their pre-determined path. Whatever they do, or try to do, is exactly what they were pre-determined to do.

Actually (reading Swartz's full text) Swartz plumps for Proposal 3 which is : The truth of propositions does not 'make' events happen (occur). , and this (he concludes) means that Logical Determinism does not in itself preclude us having free will.

This is very similar to the argument against Epistemic Determinism (also reviewed by Swartz on the same website), that God's foreknowledge of events does not cause those events to happen, ergo (the logic goes) God's foreknowledge does not in itself preclude us having free will.

MF

 

[Philocrat]

Actually (reading Swartz's full text) Swartz plumps for Proposal 3 which is : The truth of propositions does not 'make' events happen (occur). , and this (he concludes) means that Logical Determinism does not in itself preclude us having free will.

This is very similar to the argument against Epistemic Determinism (also reviewed by Swartz on the same website), that God's foreknowledge of events does not cause those events to happen, ergo (the logic goes) God's foreknowledge does not in itself preclude us having free will.

MF

But supposing when God created man amongst everything else and God said to man:

(a) "As I create you this moment, I WHOLEHEARTEDLY and UNCONDITIONALLY desire that you become or turn out to be whatever you may so desire and will!"

or, alternatively:

(b) As I create you this moment, I CONDITIONALLY desire that you become or turn out to be what, and only what, I want you to be?

Which of these two, (a) or (b), would you chose as unpredetermined? Would your original theory still hold under the one you have chosen?

 

[moving finger]

Which of these two, (a) or (b), would you chose as unpredetermined? Would your original theory still hold under the one you have chosen?

Sorry, Philocrat, is this question addressed to me? What "original theory" are you referring to please?

BTW - before we can usefully debate something that we choose to call "free will", we first need to define what is meant by "free will"...

MF

 

[Philocrat]

Sorry, Philocrat, is this question addressed to me? What "original theory" are you referring to please?

BTW - before we can usefully debate something that we choose to call "free will", we first need to define what is meant by "free will"...

MF

Determinists have one fundamental problem: they don't know how to metaphysically disambiguate interlocking argumenents. Often they lump them together and call it one argument. And when they do manage to see different sides of one argument, they hastily and ill-conceivably hold one part of it that they favour as true and conclusive. I invited you to make a choice between scenario (a) and (b) and say which of the two option is metaphysically equivalently to free will proper. Option (a) seems to me to be the scenaio that is metaphysically equivalent to having free will proper. If God gave a man the option to be what he likes and to act as he pleases, then this would be metaphysically equivalent to willing and acting freely.

The determinists sometimes try to twist the meaning of free will around by giving what they think is a clever definition. There is no need for twisting and appearing clever with fancy definition of the term. Free will means being able to think and act freely without constraints. But the question arises as to what type of constrainst are we talking about?

(1) God's will or physical action as a constraint?

(2) Someone else's will or physical action as a constraint?

(3) Laws of nature or causal relations as constraints?

Well, all these are arguably admitted as potential constraints on the evolutionary pathway of a free acting agent. Metaphysically, Epistemic determinism works both ways. Even if a free acting agent were arguably constrained by the preknowedge of his or her action by any of the above intervening agents, so long as he or she, by balance of measure or power, KNEW HOW TO OVERCOME such interventions or restraints, then this would be METAPHYSICALLY EQUIVALENT TO THINKING AND ACTING FREELY.

The problem in dwelling on the fruitless poject of proving one's theory is that you may in the process risk not seeing the metaphysical tools that are naturally available to you to disambiguate it and free youself from the ensuing stalemate and ignorance. The determinsts refuse to look at the range of possibilities that are readily available with which to produce far more logically consistent analysis and arguments. You do not chose one from inter-related arguements and force the world to accept it as true. The best action is to think and look at the circumstance or sense in whcih a particlar point of view may be true and the different senses in which the competing but related arguments may also be the case or true, instead of trying to make it appear as if what you arguing and breathlessly hanging on to is the absolute true. You need to also look at logical and natural circumstances in which freewill may be possible, instead of trying to drum determinism into everyone's throat.

----------------
Think Nature...Stay Green! And above all, think of how your action may affect the rest of Nature! May the 'Book of Nature' serve you well and bring you all that is good.

 

[Philocrat]

NOTE: Some arguments are notoriously problematic in that they may become epistemologically interlocked or intertwined such that their proper EPISTEMOLOGICAL DIMENSIONS become decisively masked and confused. In that case you must crack them open with a METAPHYSICAL HAMMER to reveal their proper epistemological dimensions. At this point, the issue is no longer about winning the argument and amassing academic fame in the process. Rather, the issue is now about stating in the clearest possible terms the EPISTEMOLOGICAL STATUS of each epistemologcial dimension of the interwoven arguments that you have successfully cracked open with a mataphysical hammer. You must state the sense in which each aspect of the same argument is the case and not the case, instead of presenting each one as the gospel truth and become locked up in a stalemate or fruitless debate.

 

[Philocrat]

Proposal Three: The truth of propositions does not 'make' events happen (occur). (http://www.sfu.ca/philosophy/swartz/freewill1.htm#intro)

Consider: My wearing a short-sleeved shirt today [Oct. 28] is what makes (the proposition expressed by) "Swartz is wearing a short-sleeved shirt on Oct. 28, 1997" true. It is not the other way round. Logical fatalism confuses the semantic (truth-making) order. It makes it appear that the truth of a proposition 'causes' an event to occur. It is, rather, that the event's occurring tomorrow 'makes' (but does not cause) the proposition to be true today. This is not 'backwards causation': the relation between an event and the truth of the proposition describing that event is not a causal relation whatever. It is a semantic relation.

The logic of the preceding paragraph can perhaps be made apparent by switching the example to one of speaking about the past rather than the future.

John Lennon was shot and killed in 1980. Let's suppose a group of ten persons is arguing about the year of his death. Alice says that it was 1976; Betty, that it was 1977; Cathy, that it was 1978; Denise, that it was 1979; Edith, that it was 1980; Freda, that it was 1981; etc.

Of the ten claims made, only Edith's is true. The other nine are false. Now ask yourself: Does Edith's making a true claim today (about the year of Lennon's death) account for Lennon's killing? Did Edith's asserting a truth today about Lennon's killing somehow or other 'force' Mark David Chapman to fire five bullets into Lennon's chest? Of course not. Now what if the year of the discussion were 1975? Alex says, "Lennon will be killed in 1976." Bellamy says that it will happen in 1977. Charles, that it will happen in 1978. Damien, that it will happen in 1979. Eduardo, that it will happen in 1980. Frank, that it will happen in 1981. Graham, that it will happen in 1982. Etc. Of the ten discussants, one, namely Eduardo, gets it 'right'; the other nine make false predictions. Does Eduardo's true prediction (in 1975) somehow or other 'force' Mark David Chapman to fire five bullets into Lennon's chest five years later, in 1980? Of course not.

Similarly you and I can make all sorts of predictions – some true, some false, some on the basis of excellent evidence ("There will be a lunar eclipse on Sept. 19, 2499"), some on the basis of no evidence whatever ("Simon Fraser University will remove all tuition fees in 1999") – but those that are true do not 'force' the predicted events to occur.

The future will be just what it is going to be. None of us can change the future. But that does not mean that we do not have free will.

If I could change the future, I would change it precisely. Nature and Nurture contain information with which to predict the future. The question now is how many of us have even bothered to look in these two baskets for parameters for such predictions? If I started to 'Naturally' and 'Nurturally' observe Hitler from birth and from the data amassed within a reasonable period of time before Hitler’s maturity predicted that Hitler would start the second world war on so-so date, then I would have alerted the world to this fact and got him stopped in one way or the other. By so doing I may have changed the future history of the world. For many years (in fact, up to late last century) no scientific prediction of any kind was thought possible. If you told people many years ago that you could predict the weather, you could use ‘Nature’s Signatures’ to predict Natural Disasters, you could genetically alter the future appearance, growth, size, colour, shape or height of a living organism, or that you could wake up one morning and make a conscious decision to build a spaceship and travel to the moon, the free will spin-doctors world say that you are mad or that you are daydreaming. All these possibilities were thought to be within the bounds of science fiction.

You can predict the future of an action if you get hold of the information of both its cause and its absolutely certain or likely consequence. With this information you can change your future. This is metaphysically equivalent to acting freely. For example, if I went with my wife to a medical doctor to check and confirm for certain that we are both fertile and can breed as many babies as we like, armed with this information myself and my wife may decide to change our future by not having any children because we want to spend the rest of our lives traveling around world without any worries about huge responsibilities that child care always bring. It is our choice and we have made it firmly without any interference by a third party. In this very case, based on the information made available to us before hand, we have chosen a different future from a list of available futures: that of not having children. The future of having children is different from that of not having children. We may even decide that we neither want to pursue a future of having children nor a childless future of traveling around the world. Consequently, we may then opt for a third future option: that of discontinuing to live (suicide). Of course, like in the other two future options, we also need enough information to produce it or bring it about with virtual certainty. There may be even be more choices at our disposal, who knows? But all that matters here is that we have the capacities to predict those futures with virtual certainty and to choose from amongst them without restrictions.

Knowledge is an instrument of free will. You cannot think and act freely unless you know how to do so. I watched in amazement two years ago two building site labourers arguing violently about how to get a giant bed through a tiny door way. They argued and argued until it resulted in a big fight. The foreman who overheard them in the next room came to the room, without stopping the fight, went straight to the bed, pressed one or two buttons on it, and the bed like magic folded into the size of a chair …..more than enough to pass through the door. Seeing this, the two labourers stopped fighting and one of them said, “Oh, I didn’t know that?” The foreman replied, “Now you know!”

The lesson of this true story is to illustrate how knowledge is important in overcoming natural obstacles and barriers. Sensationalists and spin-doctors in academic institutions prefer to sit forever and fatuate (make fat) and blow issues out of proportions. Yet if you ask them “what have you actually done to test and prove your hypotheses?”, 99.99% of the time they will have nothing to show. All that they do all day is sit down and make all sorts of noise and claims. That is not possible! That is this! That is that…..and all what not! If you ask them, “have you made a Natural Audit of what we know so that we can discount how much we do not know?”, they will not be able to give you one clean answer. Worst still, they do not even know how much we know in the strictest collective sense, let alone how much is outstanding that is yet to be known. The right hand does not know what the left hand is downing. Inter-disciplinary co-operation that would have made this possible as of this very moment is still a distanced dream.

How then can you sit down and make all these wild assumptions that “OUR FUTURE MAY BE SO BUGGED DOWN OR TIED UP TO THE PAST SUCH THAT IT MAY BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR US TO EXERCISE OUR FREE WILL NOW OR IN FUTURE AND THAT NOTHING THAT WE WOULD HAVE DONE NOW OR IN FUTURE WOULD HAVE MADE ANY DIFFERENCE”

Well, as an epistemologist, I am fully licensed to ask you “HOW DO YOU KNOW THIS?”

Then you may turn up with the usual responses “BUT MY PROPOSAL OR THOUGHT EXPERIMENT IS NOT RULED OUT BY LOGIC?”

I will also reply’ “DOES THE FACT THAT A GIVEN THOUGHT EXPERIMENT OR PROPOSAL IS NOT RULED OUT BY LOGIC MAKE IT TRUE, LET ALONE ABSOLUTELY TRUE?’

Of course, it is true that most things that we imagine or think about are not ruled out by logic. But, “WHAT ABOUT OTHER POSSIBILITIES?” and just for an argument’s sake “UPON THE SAME TOKEN, AREN’T THEY TOO CAPABLE OF BEING TRUE AS WELL? Ok, let’s put your whole thesis in clearer perspective: “IF PREDETERMINSIM THAT YOU CRY -WOLF ABOUT IS NOT RULED OUT BY LOGIC, UPON THE SAME TOKEN, IS FREE WILL IN THE SUM TOTALITY OF ALL THERE IS RULED OUT BY LOGIC AS WELL?” Of course, it is not.

Just as it is logically likely that predetermined states of the world may hamper or render free will less likely, so it is also logically likely that original natural conditions or states may have taken alternative turns or causal pathways such that they permitted or rendered free will fully possible or more likely. In this case you could also argue that free will is equally not logically ruled out. This is the reason why I suggest options (a) and (b) and asked you to chose which one is most likely to permit and favour free will. Option (a) is my own choice. As I have already explained above, if God created the world and facilitated man with all the ingredients needed for man to be what he wants and acts as he likes, then this would preclude everything, including making himself a replica of God, disobey God, and terminating every other possibilities. How free could anything get with this sort of possibility or likelihood? This is metaphysically and epistemologically equivalent to being completely free.

The problem with most intellectuals and their arguments that I have come across is that they always treat an argument or a given hypothesis with many potentially valid parts as if only one part that they favour the most is the gospel truth. They naively and strong-headedly refuse to admit the remaining possibilities. This is why some analytical philosophers have introduced modal logic and the so called possible words semantics to examine all range of possibilities before jumping into wild and premature conclusions that are now plaguing academic world.

These determinists, who are argument-drunk with the idea that we may not have free will afterall if determinism happened to be true, cannot without proper argument rule out the opposite possibility that the original conditions of the world may have favoured a free acting agent of existence to exercise free will within a wide range of possibilities. Even now, we may already be exercising our free will. Of course, the world as we currently know it is full many physical obstructions, interwoven relationships and laws, such that it appears as if we are being actually prevented from fully exercising our free wills? But how do we know that this is actually the case? Some of these obstacles are functional ones, which means that we need to learn about how those things work in other to overcome them, like the simple bed-folding example that I gave above. The rest are structural obstacles, which means you need to metaphysically disambiguate them in order to structurally modify, and change them to overcome the obstacles. See the next posting.

 

[Philocrat]

METAPHYSICAL DISAMBIGUATION OF NATURAL STRUCTURES TO RELEASE OR EXPOSE THEIR NATURAL POTENTIALS

What does this means? It means looking thoroughly at the underlying structures of things to expose what is possible and what is not possible in them. The hidden underlying potentials and capabilities of things maybe decisively blocked or concealed by their awkward outer appearances. If you don’t look or make any effort to find out, how could you know what is possible and not possible in things? Even those that appear naturally impossible after having made such an effort to look or check them out may need further metaphysical disambiguation.

Ok, for the sake of an argument, let us look at several natural possibilities within our own world. Let us look at the following natural scenarios and metaphysically expose their underlying natural potentials, while at the same time expose the determinist’s ignorance and premature assumptions:

SCENARIO 1

Determinist: “How come those birds have wings and can fly and we humans don’t have them and can’t fly?” Without thinking, asking further questions, paying a visit to a local library to make further research, or going to a local university to ask scientists, he/she hastily concludes “Human beings are predestined not to have wings and fly”

Really? Is that so? Just because human beings do not have wings and can’t fly does not immediately translate into a concrete fact that they are predestined not to ever fly. Of course, human beings can have wings and fly if they ever wake up one morning and decide to do so. They are not predestined, for they are naturally empowered to turn on their wings whenever they so desire or will!

SCENARIO 2

Determinist: “I have had this snake as a pet for years now. I am fed up with the fact that every time I take it out for a walk it cannot walk. Why do I have to drag it along all the time? All that snakes ever do is crawl! Why can’t they walk?” After embittering himself and swearing under his breath, and his vision clouded by emotions, without further thought or deliberation, he concluded, “Snakes are predestined not to have limbs” and then consoled himself with the defeatist maxim “Never mind, I guess will have to learn to live with snakes not having limbs!”

How do you know that snakes were predestined not to have limbs? Have you asked scientists whether this is true or not? Just because snakes have no limbs does not immediately translate into an absolute fact that snakes are naturally predisposed or predestined not have limbs. That is a metaphysical illusion. The Limbs-enabling Genes are there lying dormant in your pet snake. Some mutation within the evolutionary pathway may have turned them off in the past (so evolutionary biology and genetic science say). Who stands on your way? You have the will and the power to turn them back on. Dormant ‘Possibilities-Enabling Genes’ (PEG’s) are there on the evolutionary pathways to be turned on and off at will. If you are fed up with crawling pet snakes, then turn the limbs back on! You are naturally short-changing yourself by enslaving yourself in ignorance of the world that you know little or nothing about. If you restrict your will in this manner, why should you blame God for it?

SCENARIO 3

Determinist: “I wonder why human beings sleep less. Why can’t human beings sleep longer? Why can’t we choose to sleep now and wake up in 14 day’s time or in five years?” Upon the same inherent habit, he hastily concludes, “Humans’ are predestined to sleep less.”

Your guess is as good as mine. We have creatures that can sleep for seven years. If you want to sleep longer, have you investigated to see whether sleeping longer is possible in the human evolutionary biology? Why jump into conclusion? Why limit your will in this way? What about creatures that don’t sleep at all? Is sleeplessness not a natural possibility? What in your basket of facts rules out this possibility in the evolutionary pathway of the humans? In the end you still have to ask that fundamental question.: WHAT IS THE OUTWARD VALUE OF SLEEPING LESS OR SLEEPING LONGER? For example, does sleeping longer make you live longer, let alone forever? Of course, the choice of action may also depend on which choice produces the highest evolutionary value such as living longer or immortality or multi-static migration (change from state to state in an unrestricted way).

-----------------------------------------
Hence the issue is (1) of the possibility of a given choice and (2) of the outward quality or value of the consequence of that choice.
------------------------------------------

The pssibilities are endless. Do you want me to continuing listing them? Perhaps not. Or maybe I am misunderstanding the whole fixtures and strictures of the argument altogether.

NOTE: The law of excluded middle may be factionally naive by insisting on everything being either black or white, this or that, true or false, yes or no, but it cannot invite everyone of us to err on the same epistemological token. I reserve my right to differ and that is the right to always exmine a range of possiblities, and above all, a range of methodologies with a range of alternative truth-values!

 

[moving finger]

With respect, Philocrat, You did not answer my questions, shall I repeat them?

Sorry, Philocrat, is this question addressed to me? What "original theory" are you referring to please?

When I know who you are adressing and what “original theory” you are referring to then maybe (if it is indeed me you are addressing) I can make a stab at an answer to your questions?

I invited you to make a choice between scenario (a) and (b) and say which of the two option is metaphysically equivalently to free will proper.

And as I pointed out already, before we can usefully debate something that we choose to call "free will", we first need to define what is meant by "free will".

Free will means being able to think and act freely without constraints.

Good, now we get rid of the wishy-washy hyperbole, and get onto something that we can start debating.

Firstly, we should eliminate the redundant word “freely” from your definition, otherwise it becomes a tautology (free will = acting freely), which would be meaningless. Therefore your definition in essence actually says : Free will means being able to think and act without constraints.

If we accept this definition, how do you know whether anything thinks and acts without constraints? In other words, it may be the case that free will as you have defined it simply does not exist. And I would challenge you to prove that free will as you have defined it DOES exist.

Metaphysically, Epistemic determinism works both ways. Even if a free acting agent were arguably constrained by the preknowedge of his or her action by any of the above intervening agents, so long as he or she, by balance of measure or power, KNEW HOW TO OVERCOME such interventions or restraints, then this would be METAPHYSICALLY EQUIVALENT TO THINKING AND ACTING FREELY .

Sorry, and with respect, but this is still just so much mumbo-jumbo. If you agree that an “agent is arguably constrained by the preknowledge of his or her action”, then please explain how one can “know how to overcome” something that is epistemically determined? In other words, if I know infallibly that A will happen at a future time, then please explain what kind of knowledge I might be able to have to “overcome” A (ie ensure that A does not happen)?

The problem in dwelling on the fruitless poject of proving one's theory…… instead of trying to drum determinism into everyone's throat..

Proving what theory? What on Earth are you referring to here? With respect…. whilst the rest of us are happy debating these things, you seem to be the only one here trying to push theories down our throats…….

MF

 

[moving finger]

If I could change the future, I would change it precisely. Nature and Nurture contain information with which to predict the future. The question now is how many of us have even bothered to look in these two baskets for parameters for such predictions? If I started to 'Naturally' and 'Nurturally' observe Hitler from birth and from the data amassed within a reasonable period of time before Hitler’s maturity predicted that Hitler would start the second world war on so-so date, then I would have alerted the world to this fact and got him stopped in one way or the other. By so doing I may have changed the future history of the world.

You cannot “change” something that has not happened yet. Your introduction of the highlighted terms naturally and nurturally is (with respect) pretentious mumbo-jumbo which simply obfuscates.

For many years (in fact, up to late last century) no scientific prediction of any kind was thought possible.

Untrue. Astronomical predictions have been made for millenia. The possessors of the knowledge required to make such predictions were held in high esteem.

If you told people many years ago that you could predict the weather, you could use ‘Nature’s Signatures’ to predict Natural Disasters, you could genetically alter the future appearance, growth, size, colour, shape or height of a living organism, or that you could wake up one morning and make a conscious decision to build a spaceship and travel to the moon, the free will spin-doctors world say that you are mad or that you are daydreaming. All these possibilities were thought to be within the bounds of science fiction.

This has nothing to do with free will.

You can predict the future of an action if you get hold of the information of both its cause and its absolutely certain or likely consequence.

Untrue. Study chaos theory to understand how accurate prediction can be impossible even in a purely deterministic world please.

With this information you can change your future.

Again, this is a meaningless statement. It is meaningless to talk of changing something that has not yet happened.

This is metaphysically equivalent to acting freely.

No, it is meaningless.

For example, if I went with my wife to a medical doctor to check and confirm for certain that we are both fertile and can breed as many babies as we like, armed with this information myself and my wife may decide to change our future

Your future has not happened yet, how can you change it?

by not having any children because we want to spend the rest of our lives traveling around world without any worries about huge responsibilities that child care always bring.

You make your decision, and your decision determines your future. This has nothing to do with “changing” your future. Nothing has been “changed”, because the possible future where you had children never existed, except as a possibility in your imagination.

It is our choice and we have made it firmly without any interference by a third party.

Choice has nothing to do with free will. Choice can be as simple as taking two inputs and producing one output. Even a simple machine can choose in this way (“firmly without any interference by a third party").

In this very case, based on the information made available to us before hand, we have chosen a different future from a list of available futures: that of not having children.

Now you have it right – you have chosen a future from a list of available POSSIBLE futures. A machine could do the same thing.

The future of having children is different from that of not having children.

Yes, but only ONE future ever exists.

all that matters here is that we have the capacities to predict those futures with virtual certainty and to choose from amongst them without restrictions.

Again, this is all about choice, which a deterministic machine can do. It says absolutely nothing about unconstrained choices.

Knowledge is an instrument of free will. You cannot think and act freely unless you know how to do so. I watched in amazement two years ago two building site labourers arguing violently about how to get a giant bed through a tiny door way. They argued and argued until it resulted in a big fight. The foreman who overheard them in the next room came to the room, without stopping the fight, went straight to the bed, pressed one or two buttons on it, and the bed like magic folded into the size of a chair …..more than enough to pass through the door. Seeing this, the two labourers stopped fighting and one of them said, “Oh, I didn’t know that?” The foreman replied, “Now you know!”

The lesson of this true story is to illustrate how knowledge is important in overcoming natural obstacles and barriers.

What on Earth does this have to do with free will? What has been described could have been carried out by purely deterministic machines.

How then can you sit down and make all these wild assumptions that “OUR FUTURE MAY BE SO BUGGED DOWN OR TIED UP TO THE PAST SUCH THAT IT MAY BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR US TO EXERCISE OUR FREE WILL NOW OR IN FUTURE AND THAT NOTHING THAT WE WOULD HAVE DONE NOW OR IN FUTURE WOULD HAVE MADE ANY DIFFERENCE” .

This is fatalism, which is NOT the same as causal determinism. It is a fallacy promulgated by many anti-determinists that if we give up the notion of free will then we must necessarily become fatalists. It is completely wrong.

Well, as an epistemologist, I am fully licensed to ask you “HOW DO YOU KNOW THIS?” .

Just as I (as a human being) am licensed to ask : How do you know that you act freely (ie without constraints)?

MF

 

[Tournesol]

Choice has nothing to do with free will. Choice can be as simple as taking two inputs and producing one output. Even a simple machine can choose in this way (“firmly without any interference by a third party").

That shows you can have choice -- or "choice" -- without FW;
whether you can have FW without choice is another matter.
You need to be more careful about your nothing-to-do-withs.

 

[moving finger]

That shows you can have choice -- or "choice" -- without FW;
whether you can have FW without choice is another matter.
You need to be more careful about your nothing-to-do-withs.

oh my we are pedantic aren't we.

what I should have said is that choice is not dependent on free will.

i consider my wrist slapped!

MF