stochastic is another word for random.

you, i think, concisely defined a deterministic system - ie one which runs the same senario over gives the same result (like 2+ 2 = ? )

here i must apologise because i my have been ranting/side-tracked. I may have been unclear.

To follow my simple example of 2+2 a Predetermination woudl be 4.

If i know or can know the answer before the simulation is run it is pre-deermined. Now believing in a God 'outside' of time perhaps pre-determines everything. (time implies change which imples things outside of time don't change - at least from the prespective of thigns within time they don't change with respect to that time - so i see such a 'God' as unchanging to us - thus unable to interact with anything in our time stream - if you'll accept that aside for a moment) So long as WE can't determine by any means the answer until the system has run once it is not pre-determined. For my concept of what God could know, it can't tell us what it knows so IF a God exists capable of pre-determining WE can't communicate with THAT God. (there may be other things than i can imagine, i'm just discounting any influence on us from other things you can imagine predetermining.)

It's like my idea about free will. Assume it is an unbreakable illusion - if the illusion is unbreakable then i can't prove it is an illusion. Thus i conclude whether it is an illusion or not doesn't matter.

Life is not pre-determined because we don't have access to the 'answer'. And if it is deterministic but we can only find out the answer by living it then to US it doesn't matter if God knows before hand. We still have to live as if our choices matter because we don't know any better - The is if it is pre-determined, but we don't know what the determination is, then it doesn't matter that it is pre-determined. (so in effect to US it is not pre-determined; i suppose i'm going beyond what i said about free will.... it doesn't matter that free will is an illusion and it doesn't matter if life is pre-determined; in either case we act otherwise - and while acting in that otherwise category, morality has it's value.)

I'm NOT abandoning this or giving up on this, I'll read these and respond (if anyone has wanted me too) but busy tonight (and frankly night isn't the best time to try and make my way through 20+ messages seince last I left) so just saying...not ignoring anyone if anyone felt that way...

that's ok, most of my posts have been rather poor rant-ilicious messes... i wish i had the motivation to go back through them and work out which points i tried to make were actualy vital, and then concisely compressed them into one post...

apologies for all.

"God (capital G) would know everything about the future, but, since He created time and would be outside of it (He existed "before" it did), His knowledge does not mean that we are forced/predestined to do what we do. He observes us from outside of time, so to speak, which is how he can see us in the future (though it's not future for him, as He would be able to see it and the present and the past "all at once").
My knowing what you did yesterday does not force you to have done it.
My watching you do something right now does not force you to do it.
His watching something that will happen does not force it happen."

I actually really like this argument. Let's suppose for a moment that there is, in fact, a god that is omnipresence. If it did exist outside of time, then the argument that knowing what happens in the "future" removes morality falls apart. Existing outside of time, knowing everything doesn't "cause" it to happen, because, in a sense, it's already happened, so to speak.

With that being said, I think the existence of a god is a rather lazy and, quite frankly, uninteresting explanation to the beautiful universe we live in.

Between class: no time to read thread.

But I have a comment about free will.

It is said that there is now consensus among neurologists that free will is an illusion.

My refutation of this is this:

If there is no free will, what is the evolutionary purpose of a "free will illusion"? There would be no need to fool you about whether you are in control... because there would be nothing you can do about it.

Imagine waking up tomorrow, and the illusion is gone. You are horrified as you try to do things to no avail and watch your body carry out its day.

But on the outside, what actually changes in your behavior? Zilch.

So evolutionarily, it's a waste to develop something as complex as a free will illusion.

Oh it looks like this thread is more about God.

Well, my take on God and free will.

If you believe in an omnipotent AND omniscient AND creator God, then you cannot believe in free will... I think the reason why follows pretty clearly.

But if you take out one of those three, then yeah you can have free will.

Omnipotent + Creator - Omniscient = He made you, and can control everything, but doesn't know the future. You could have free will.

Creator + Omniscient - Omnipotent = He made you, he knows what will happen to you as a result, but he can't do anything about it. Free will is possible.

Omnipotent + Omniscient - Creator = He knows all about you and can make you do whatever he wants, but he didn't make you, so your existence is not his responsibility. I.e., your actions are not a result of his decisions. Free will is possible here too.

In no case is it NECESSARILY the case that you have free will... it's just that in the case where all three are present, you simply cannot HAVE free will at all.

My 2 cents. Off to French class.

@Thucy- your first post talking about horror of realizing you have free will implicitly assumes that their is a distinct difference between mind and one's physical body. It supposes it is possible for one to feel afraid but for this have no physical effects whatsoever on the world around us. Evidence+Ocam's razor in fact suggests our minds are based on physical matter- so you couldn't feel horror and want to do things without that having an effect.

The illusion serves us then in that it encourages us to consider decisions carefully and try and do things that are beneficial to us (if we were aware of our lack of ultimate freewill we may just act without thinking).
In fact the capability of our minds to consider various courses of action and come to a conclusion on which one to take would automatically lead to the perception of a choice- as in considering options means we must imagine we are free to take them.

Our feeling of free will also allows us a basis for morals- which enable societies to prosper and hence improves our chances at survival.

We also believe we have freewill because we are not naturally aware of any causes of our actions outside ourselves- and so we take this lack of knowledge of a cause to mean that there is in fact no cause outside ourselves. However, on closer analysis one can see that no effect happens without cause- and that our bodies and minds are simply a part of this cause and effect chain.

Hope that helps!

@orathaic
So determination and pre-determination are the same thing EXCEPT that with the latter, someone/something else knows what the end result will be before it happens. Correct?

@Thucy
Did you read the first paragraph of my first post on this thread? After you read that, I would say: the problem with your omniscient/omnipotent/creator God argument is that you are assuming God is INSIDE time, so to speak.

@abgemacht
thanks for the warm appraisal of my paragraph, though the laziness and uninterestingness of proposing God is not especially what we were talking about...
or was that a digression/aside?

@all
so it would seem to me that, if free-will (our choices having no causes beyond ourselves) is an illusion, then morality must also be an illusion.
My thinking is this:
morality comes down to the question of "to act or not act?". Why? Because it involves interaction with others (God too, if you believe in Him).
However, if the choice of "to act or not to act" is determined (see orathaic's definition), then it is not made from free-will.
Free Will=choices caused by us alone
Morality=us making choices
Does everyone follow my reasoning? Granted, both could theoretically be advantageous illusions, but illusions none the less.

@baum
It was an aside.
Although I really dislike organized religion, I have no problem with people who believe in a god. as long as it doesn't contradict modern scientific theories, I see no particular reason why a god can't exist. however I also see no evidence to support a his, so I think its fine to leave it up to the individual. personally, I would prefer to live in a universe without a god and so that's how I live my life.

@Abge, organized religion:
what's wrong with us sauerkraut-loving Lutherans? :)

Don't post often, trying to change that. (be gentle)

@dave bishop: So, what you're saying is that the illusion of free will exists to make our "choices" (for lack of a better term) become the optimal ones for ourselves. I'd like to know more about this neurological argument for lack of free will.

I like the cause and effect argument, though. Always fascinated by Newton's laws, etc. (I can explain the connection, if need be) And the illusion of free will is caused by not knowing the causality? But what of people who don't always take the 'best' course? Just because you don't do something, doesn't mean that you can't.

"Our feeling of free will also allows us a basis for morals- which enable societies to prosper and hence improves our chances at survival."

+1

"So determination and pre-determination are the same thing EXCEPT that with the latter, someone/something else knows what the end result will be before it happens. Correct?" - yeah, where someone else knowing it is completely unimportant because it can't affect us in any way.

In my mind it involves 'God' running a simulation in his mind of what will happen and that's how he knows everything. (of course that means his mind has to be older than the universe, and contains as many parts)... External to the Universe OR simply unable to interact with the universe (because if it could interact the simulation would have to include the result of the simulation - which would mean it included it's own result in the simulation; which would mean it contained all of it's own parts... ad infatum)

@Onar - i don't think the argument is for a lack of free will, it is for the evolutionary benifits of the illusion of free will.

That is you create a control program which takes inputs for the body and produces output for what that body should do. So we are aware that our actions are governed by our mind.

It seems like freewill only because we can't simulate our own mind within our mind (not being able to contain all those parts it already contains - cause we're not infinite, unlike the case for God predetermining; if you believe in an infinite God-mind) So we can tell that there is a process which controls our actions but we can't understand it fully.

If you downgrade the notion of free will to just be this control program which depends on inputs from the world around it. However the result of 'decisions' which it makes are also dependant on the configuration of the program (which is the internal configuration of your brain - including your memories, the emotions you associate with these memories, and your ability to predict the result of future actions based on previous expierence - you have a model of the world in your head which you use to make predictions. However by neccesity it is limited in it's predictive power - from the prespective of evolution it costs a lot for any animal to have such a big brain. Only those who are afforded a big enough competitive advantage can develop these facilities)

So by the neccesity of the limited size of our brains, we can make decisions which DO affect our real futures. To US with our limited predictive powers it serves us well to think that there are many possible results of any given decision - because there are. We can't know what our own decisions will be before we make them.

So to US it appears as if we have free will.

if 'Morality = us making choices' then this remains intact with this definition of free will. (whether good or bad as influenced by our internal model of morality...)

When i try to make the distinction between living in a pre-determined universe and one which is merely deterministic, it is because of this point. IF we can't know the choices we will make we appear to (ourselves at least) to have this 'free will'.

my posts always seem too long... remind me to attempt to make them more concise in future. I hope others can follow my terrible rambling (or that it makes sense to others, cause i think it makes sense to me)

Then it's settled. Morality is intact with the downgraded version of Freewill, but not with the original version thereof. Too bad that morality has to be downgraded as well.

The post made sense to me. To prevent rambling, look over it a few times and edit it after typing out the first version. It's what I do, and often contributes to the reduction of my posts. Also, seeing your thoughts on screen helps you put them in a coherent order, making them clear as well as short (or at least no longer than they have to be), resulting in conciseness.

why reduced?

downgraded even?

Reduced because Morality would not longer be a universal truth. We would have no real choice in the matter, despite the illusion of Freewill. Morality=choices Freewill=us making choices.
Without the freewill to make choices of any sort, we cannot make choices in morality.

@orathaic: I like the way you explained that, actually. It's like a computer program, almost. We're only allowed a set amount of data, and within those confines, our will is free. I think that it was a question of wording that threw me, about neurologists saying that free will is an illusion. That kind of phrasing is almost universally going to be rejected on instinct. After-all, the concept of not having free will is detrimental to maintaining the illusion. It's circular logic, but not in a bad way. It's circular because it needs to be. (If that makes any sense)

As to the question of morality and free-will? It's a tough one. A Clockwork Orange mused on this topic, and even after seeing it, I'm still not sure where I stand. On the one hand, can morality exist without the option to disobey? If one is naturally moral, then does that mean anything to him at all? Kind of like emotions - one needs to experience sadness to know true joy, etc.

To me morality wasn't a Universal Truth to begin with.

I guess that is moral relativism.

On the other hand we each have a sense of fairness, right and wrong, which we can use to judge the actions of others. This ma be a tool evolved to help each of us get the best out of social interactions. (i can imagine wolves sharing a kill - if the wolves don't share fairly some will starve and the pack will become weaker)

Does that mean wolves have to ignore their hunger when food is scarce? I think no, the moral force just be one of many factors which affects how a pack operates.

But isn't the sharing of a kill a trait that is learned, and not inherant? This brings up the question of nature versus nurture. And, with that, one wonders: where do morals come from? Society, or something else?

Both learned and inherent.

I think we have a sense of fairness which is inherent but that doesn't mean we value it (that is allow it to influence our decisions). This is my best guess.

Also in humans our brains are pre-configured with the ability to develop language and social skills, but that doesn't mean they are neccesary (and develop is the word, not learned/taught - like puberty there are physical changes in the body relating to language development)

I think it is a mix of nuture and nature - which doens't really answer the question of 'where morals come from' - I imagine we have a template of right/wrong upon which society imprints a specific moral system.

Alas i don't have anything resembling proof of this. The science to test such things runs into some serious ethical dilemas...

If it isn't a famous quote already, it should be: "Ethics are the only thing holding science back, and the only thing keeping scientists human."

But if what you say holds, then morals are something we have the potential for, but not the need? Well, isolation, and whatnot, so I do see what you're getting at.

But I think morals do come from society more than anything else. After-all, you've no need for morals outside of society, am I right? In any situation where society breaks down, looting, rape and murder run rampant, so... perhaps it is society itself that perpetuates?