From: Chris Cogan <ccogan@telepath.com>
[responding to Bertvan]
>I assume you mean *your* imagination? Let us suppose you had some *other*
>kind of free will. Suppose you are faced with choosing between A and not-A
>as an action and some other action (or inaction). Suppose, in your
>understanding, A is what you would rationally choose to do, because all the
>not-A actions that you can think of mean the deaths of everyone you love.
>Suppose, for reasons that are not significant here, you are faced with this
>same kind of choice several times in succession. Mostly, you choose
>correctly, and everything turns out alright. The lives of those you love
>are saved.
>
>But, because you have *indeterministic* free will, you are free to choose
>some not-A course of action, and, one time, despite knowing how bad it is,
>your free will leads you to choose a not-A action and all of your loved
>ones are killed.
>
>Now, of course, if you were able *consistently* to act rationally, you
>would always choose the A course of action in each instance. But, the
>problem is, *that* would be *predictable*. The only way for free will to be
>unpredictable in an absolute sense is for you to sometimes choose the wrong
>course of action, even though you know it's wrong, you are not emotionally
>compelled to do it, you have no childhood trauma causing you to do it, or
>*any* other such factors. You just freely choose wrongly, knowingly dooming
>all your loved ones to death.
>
>This is an *inevitable* consequential implication of the concept of free
>will as acausal, indeterministic, absolutely unpredictable choosing.
I don't see the relevance of this. Of course indeterministic free will means
that we will sometimes act irrationally. And the reality is that people
often *do* act irrationally. So this is hardly evidence against
indeterminism. It's not evidence *for* it either, since irrational actions
are also consistent with deterministic decision-making.
Richard Wein (Tich)
--------------------------------
"Do the calculation. Take the numbers seriously. See if the underlying
probabilities really are small enough to yield design."
-- W. A. Dembski, who has never presented any calculation to back up his
claim to have detected Intelligent Design in life.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Dec 20 2000 - 07:00:33 EST