Question about Free Will and Predestination

Art48

Imagine a light layer of sand covering a vacant parking lot. You walk from one side to the other, pushing a shovel in front, creating a path clear of any sand. You notice that the path has a yellow surface.

In your walk from one side to the other, you freely chose the path, now turning left, now right, now making a loop. The path you uncovered is yellow, so you naturally assume the entire lot is yellow. However, when the sand is blown away, you see only the path you uncovered is yellow; the remainder of the lot is black.

How can that be? You theorize there is something special about the sand and/or shovel such that the surface turns yellow when the shovel uncovers it. But no, you find it’s normal sand and a normal shovel. You learn that someone somehow knew in advance the path you would take and painted the path—and only the path—yellow; the remainder of the surface was left black. How this person knew the path in advance is left unanswered. Maybe the person could see the future. Maybe God painted the path.

From your point of view, you freely chose the path. You freely turned when you wished, went straight when you wished. From your point of view, you have free will. Yet the path was painted before you uncovered it.

Suppose the experiment is repeated many times. Each time you feel that you freely chose the path. Each time, when the sand is blown away, only the path is yellow; the remainder of the lot’s surface is black.

Question: in this scenario, do you have free will? Or are you predestined to create the specific path? Or both??

Yohan

Nice way to frame the question.
The question is part of a more essential question. What is the ultimate or first cause of an effect? Me, or something else?
Is it necessarily the case that one thing causes another, or that a cause and an effect are separate phenomena?

DingoJones

↪Art48

Just because you know what someone will choose doesnt make the choice predetermined.
Would you rather have your eyeballs pulled from their sockets with a rusty knife or a pleasant meal?
Nothing magical about predicting you would choose the pleasant meal. Its not predetermined, its just easy to determine just like it would be for your writing god or future seeing person.
I didnt answer the poll because your OP doesnt actually address free will. Its a free will adjacent question but you're actually just asking about foreknowledge of action, the answer to which depends on what ones views on free will already are.

Art48

I disagree. I think the issue revolves around "know".

I mean "know" with absolute certainty.

In your example, you "know" with high probability but not with certainty. The person may have had a stroke and be insane and chose the knife. The person may be suffering from deep depression. The person may think his suffering will somehow pay for his sins and send him to heaven rather than hell. Etc.

The question is: If it is KNOWN WITH ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY that you will have bacon and eggs tomorrow for breakfast, then tomorrow are you nonetheless free to choose corn flakes?

Of course, it may be argued it is impossible to know the future with absolute certainty. But that's beside the point as this is a thought experiment and one premise is that is it possible.

DingoJones

↪Art48

Good point, but the certainty still wouldnt make the choice predetermined. The knowledge of what happens does not effect the outcome of what happens. That was my point.
You would be predicting, with certainty, what the person will choose. Its pre-knowledge of what will happen, not knowledge of what is predetermined. The predetermination is still separate from what youre asking here as I described initially.
You are essentially positing that pre-knowledge and predetermination ( in the free will sense) are the same thing, which I dont think they are. You can have pre-knowledge ( in the context of this thought experiment) of something whether its predetermined or not so you arent actually addressing free will here imo.

180 Proof

The knowledge of what happens does not effect the outcome of what happens. — DingoJones

:100:

introbert

Predestination is one form of determinism and really relates to religious discussions of the topic of free will, whereas most philosophical discussions of free will/ determinism really don't discuss predestination. I definitely on principle can't agree with predestination as a possibility for determinism, but can't rule out determinism completely even though I do believe in free will.

In this scenario where you follow a path that is predetermined without being able to see it happens regularly. It is rather interesting to me the way footpaths and trails form, with people walking across hypotenuses or taking other shortcuts etc in well trafficked areas. When snow falls or leaves fall and the paths become obscure people will still follow the paths in the same manner as they were originally beaten when they were being established.

T Clark

In your walk from one side to the other, you freely chose the path, now turning left, now right, now making a loop. The path you uncovered is yellow, so you naturally assume the entire lot is yellow. However, when the sand is blown away, you see only the path you uncovered is yellow; the remainder of the lot is black. — Art48

I have a pet peeve about half-assed thought experiments, but this is a pretty good one. Paints an interesting picture. Now the question is if the scenario you describe is a good model of how things actually work. My first thought is that in the real world, the sand never gets blown off the parking lot. We never really have to face convincing evidence that our behavior is strictly constrained. We can only speculate.

Agent Smith

Syād ...

Foreknowledge, how does that work? Does it necessarily imply determinism i.e. negate free will? Can I predict what a person x will do in a given situation based on what kind of person x is? Does a person have any say on that score i.e. does x have a choice? Even if x can choose, x's character is knowable to some extent and for that reason x is predictable proportionately.

Art48

My first thought is that in the real world, the sand never gets blown off the parking lot. We never really have to face convincing evidence that our behavior is strictly constrained. We can only speculate. — T Clark

Yes, the sand never gets blown away. We know what we did but were we free to do something else? I feel I was free, but that's not the same as knowing.

god must be atheist

The question is: If it is KNOWN WITH ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY that you will have bacon and eggs tomorrow for breakfast, then tomorrow are you nonetheless free to choose corn flakes? — Art48

Question is whether "you" will know if others are knowing that you will have bacon and eggs for breakfast. If you are a contrarian then you will have corn flakes, just to be able to say you defeated determined course of the universe. But then you did not, but proved that the people who had purported to have had that knowledge did not actually have that knowledge.

That's all.

god must be atheist

Question: in this scenario, do you have free will? Or are you predestined to create the specific path? Or both?? — Art48

One thing you have not considered, and many others also haven't: Freedom is relative term. Both in magnitude and in amount.

And there is another thing people don't consider, or rather, mix up. They mix up what they or humans can possibly know, and what can possibly be known by a know-it-all. To be possibly known does not require a knower, that's a third thing people don't consider.

Go from here.

Just one more thing to consider: nothing is free of anything else, but our knowledge does not encompass all minute details of relationships between all events and all things.

Yohan

I am free to follow my preferences. I am not free to choose what my preferences are.

The first part is free will. The second part is destiny. We are all destined to freely choose to follow our predetermined preferences.

god must be atheist

Just because you know what someone will choose doesnt make the choice predetermined. — DingoJones

That is wrong. If you know, it is predetermined. If it is predetermined, you won't necessarily know.

And people know dick all. That's why future is uncertain. But only for us, because we don't know all the causes and the state of things as they are, therefore our predictions are only guesstimates.

If we knew, we could tell what the future holds, precisely because it's predetermined.
----------

Free will? you think that your will is something that is the ONLY thing in existence that can defy the cause-effect rule between events that happen to things?

The only argument I ever heard to support free will is the appeal that the Creator God made us this way. This a very strong argument. For the faithful in a God. However, if you don't believe in a God-Creator, then the argument falls down.

god must be atheist

I am free to follow my preferences. I am not free to choose what my preferences are.

The first part is free will. The second part is destiny. We are all destined to freely choose to follow our predetermined preferences. — Yohan

This is where my warning of "what is something free of" comes in. You are not free to follow your preferences. It is your preferences that dictate your behaviour. You can't act against your preferences, unless, of course, you have an overriding preference, also your own, that compels you to act against your preference.

Yohan

It is your preferences that dictate your behaviour. — god must be atheist

You are anthropomorphizing preferences. They are not separate things subjugating my will.

god must be atheist

You are anthropomorphizing preferences. They are not separate things subjugating my will. — Yohan

You are mistaken in believing that everything that subjugates your will has to be human-like.

You are also mistaken by thinking that preferences are part of your will.

This of course opens up the can of worms for us, if we must define what will is.

god must be atheist

They are not separate things subjugating my will. — Yohan

So.. preferences are not separate from what? Your will? You did not say what they are separate from. You need to state that to make sense.

god must be atheist

cause and an effect are separate phenomena? — Yohan

they are separate from what? Each other? or from everything else? You need to say to make sense.

Yohan

You are mistaken in believing that everything that subjugates your will has to be human-like. — god must be atheist

Dictate: Lay down authoritatively. That is something only a being can do. An artificial intelligence can be made to seem to do this.

You are also mistaken by thinking that preferences are part of your will. — god must be atheist

I agree we have to define will, and perhaps preference.

They are not separate things subjugating my will. — Yohan
So.. preferences are not separate from what? Your will? You did not say what they are separate from. You need to state that to make sense. — god must be atheist

Are they separate? Its a big jumbled.
Lets consider the body. It is a single system, and at the same consists of many subsystems, and is itself part of a larger system than itself.
I don't believe any one part of my body "dictates" what another part does. Presumably, my preferences are a subsystem of my over all being. They don't rule me, but are a part of me. Hmm, not sure that is exactly right, but am I making any sort of sense?

cause and an effect are separate phenomena? — Yohan
they are separate from what? Each other? or from everything else? You need to say to make sense. — god must be atheist

I am asking if they are separate from each other. I'm wondering if all arguments that X causes Y are essentially post hoc ergo prompter hocs.
Edit: For example, if everything is predetermined, you can't say "You crashed the car because you were drunk", because crashing was already predetermined before I got drunk. Even if there is a "first cause", what this first cause will cause is, according to predeterminsm, predetermined.

Yohan

You are mistaken in believing that everything that subjugates your will has to be human-like. — god must be atheist — Yohan

Lets take an example of being thrown in prison. Then all the people that work at the prison leave with the keys. There is just me and the prison. Assuming I want leave the prison, and can't, is the prison "subjugating my will"?
Is the number two "dictated" by arithmetic to be 2? Like 1 and 1 are FORCED to be two?

god must be atheist

Edit: For example, if everything is predetermined, you can't say "You crashed the car because you were drunk", because crashing was already predetermined before I got drunk. Even if there is a "first cause", what this first cause will cause is, according to predeterminsm, predetermined. — Yohan

thanks for so thoroughly answering my questions, and explaining your answers. Knowing that some can't be explained in a single paragraph, if they can be explained at all.

I quoted this because I agree with most of your first response, except this quote.

In a way everything being caused and therefore predictable and knowable is indistinguishable from fatalism, that is, knowing ahead of time, without knowing the causational processes that precipitate in an action. Furthermore, it is also true, like you said, that knowing ahead of time may be due to not following the causational links, but, instead, due to some other knowledge. And in essence, if you push it to the limit of Hume's argument, which states that random, from each other independent events can be explained by sheer happenstance as much as they can be explained by rigorous and exacting following the causational route.

This really is undecidable.

What I find impossible, though, is the half-and-half, or both causation and free will occurring concurrently. If a thing is caused, it happens. If it is not caused, then it does not happen. If a desire is causing your will to swing into action, it will. If nothing is enticing your will to perform an action, then it won't.

god must be atheist

You are mistaken in believing that everything that subjugates your will has to be human-like. — god must be atheist
— Yohan
Lets take an example of being thrown in prison. Then all the people that work at the prison leave with the keys. There is just me and the prison. Assuming I want leave the prison, and can't, is the prison "subjugating my will"? — Yohan

This is a good scenario, because it taxes the reason.

Is the prison subjugating your will? Not at all.

Are the people who locked you up subjugating your will? Not even they.

Is the freedom that you seek as opposed to being in prison subjugating your will? You bet.

I think it is important to identify what the will wills, before doing anything else. Your will is to be free at that moment that you are alone in the prison. Nobody is subjugating it. Your will is predetermined by the facts that 1. prison is an unpleasant place 2. being locked and no food in the foreseeable future is scary 3. you know that outside the prison you have a better chance at fulfilling your needs.

Being locked up has no impact on your will. You'd always want to be in the open, eat healthily and as much as you want/need, and not be a prisoner in a prison.

It's you who is in the prison, not your will. Your will's function is to motivate you to get out of there.

Yohan

↪god must be atheist

You've addressed the analogy well, yet not tied it in to the question we were discussing:
Can our wills be dictated/subjugated by external things.
With the prison example, we agree the answer is no.

Are our preferences, maybe rooted biology or whatever else, whatever it is we attribute as the cause of our will.... Can and do such things "dictate" our will?
Are our preferences biological(or metaphysical?) prisons?

Is the freedom that you seek as opposed to being in prison subjugating your will? You bet. — god must be atheist

Interesting. Isn't seeking freedom the same as having the will to freedom? And so, my will would be subjugating itself?

It's you who is in the prison, not your will. Your will's function is to motivate you to get out of there. — god must be atheist

This is interesting too, compared to the statement that the will to freedom is the subjugation, and here the will to freedom is a motivation to get free.

On the one hand, if one does not have a will which opposes being in prison, one would not be subjugated.

On the other hand, if one doesn't oppose being in prison, one will not try to leave prison.

Edit: I think I am forced to believe there are two wills.
One is negative desires, proclivities to addictions and such, which may be inherited genetically or else created by unconscious negative reactions to unwanted experiences.

Another will is to be free of unconscious habits.

Agent Smith

There is a world in which predestination is true & determinism is false, oui? Don't let's commit the argument from incredulity fallacy, oui mes amies?

god must be atheist

↪Yohan

Okay, I forgot for a moment what the original post was.

"Can our wills be subjugated / dictated by external things?"

If and only if this is the question, then my answer is a resounding "no". Our circumstances can put us in a subjugation, but our will can't. If we are in unpleasant circumstances, then our will is not subjugated; it is motivating us to get out of there. We wish to get out of there, our will is to get out of there.

I've heard of instances where people talk of "his / her will is broken". Not from first hand experience, thank god.

Is that possible? To have one's will not function, or make it malfunction, or to make it powerless? I don't think so. But what do I know.

People commit suicide in a number of painful situations -- mental, emotional or physical -- but that is not an indication of a broken will. It is an indication of their utter hopelessness that the situation would ever change.

One thing makes me wonder: people who are certain that they will be executed, go along the plan of the execution. For instance, many dig their own graves knowing that they will be interred there after the execution.

Or they simply line up against a wall to be shot.

There are footages, real footages, of these scenarios from wars: WWII, and in the Middle East. So this is not a fantasy or an imagined scenario of a mental experiment. The work is to be done on real examples.

Are the wills of these moribund people broken?

god must be atheist

What I said above in the previous post is about the subjugation of our will. I concluded that the will can't be subjugated. However, that does not mean that our will is independent of causation and independent of determination.

If and only if we are in a bad, intolerable or undesirable situation, then our will is invariably DETERMINED (i.e. can't act other way than), to get us out of that situation, or to make the situation stop.

This could be a prison situation, or going through a bad divorce, or having prostate / ovarian cancer.

The will is not subjugated; but it is affected by external circumstances. It is behaving in a predictable way, and therefore it follows the rules of determination. It is an effect of a cause, and it causes its own effects.

god must be atheist

Don't let's commit the argument from incredulity fallacy, oui mes amies? — Agent Smith

I don't understand this. It's not the French part I have trouble with. It is the English text that I can't make heads or tails out of.

For instance, I've never encountered an "incredulity fallacy". I am unfamiliar with that concept. Please explain and give a typical, educational example.

How can you commit something from something? You commit things TO, not FROM.

Don't let's? Let's not use unconventional grammar.

Yohan

It is behaving in a predictable way, and therefore it follows the rules of determination. — god must be atheist

This is the point I want to explore. Do the rules of determination subjugate the will. I don't think they do.
I think analogy is the best way to understand these sorts of things is why I brought up prison.
How would you describe, by analogy, how the rules of determination determine what we will?
When you said they "dictate our behavior", it sounds to me like a master and slave relationship. And that, to me, as anthropomorphizing. I'm worried I am not getting my point across.

I am not a slave to the rules of determinism unless, like a prisoner who opposes walls and prison bars of a prison, I oppose the rules of determinism. Amor Fati, the love of one's fate, or the rules of determinism, frees one from "negative will". When a man "knows his limitations" and accepts them, he frees himself from banging his head against the wall of limitation.

On the other hand, a defeatist resignation is as much of a trap as willing what one cannot have.
This is why the stoics say to focus on what you within your control and accept or be indifferent to what is not.

god must be atheist

Do the rules of determination subjugate the will. — Yohan

No, but they do affect the will and the will will respond in a predictable way.

Maybe my post was too long for readers. Maybe I should have just said so.

Subjugation is not the ONLY way a causational effect can happen.

Subjugation of the will never happens. But the will is exposed to causes to act on it, and the causes make the will behave in predictable ways.

The will has its own causes to act the way it does, and it has its own effects by its actions.

god must be atheist

I am not a slave to the rules of determinism unless, like a prisoner who opposes walls and prison bars of a prison, I oppose the rules of determinism. — Yohan

This is patently false. You can't oppose and succeed in defeating the rules of determinism.

But let's say you can, for argument's sake. Then your conclusion is false: If you oppose the rules of determinism, then you are a slave to (i.e. must always obey) the rules of determinism.

This is not proven, not even intuitive.

Also, unclear what you mean, because the word oppose means any one of these three things: successful resistance, or staging an impedance, or protesting against. Which do you mean?

Amor Fati, the love of one's fate, or the rules of determinism, frees one from "negative will". — Yohan

What's negative will? How does the love of one's fate free someone from this?

When a man "knows his limitations" and accepts them, he frees himself from banging his head against the wall of limitation. — Yohan

This is true. But it does not address the will defeating determinism.

--------------------

This post of yours does not explain itself at all, and it states things that are not intuitive, so you NEED to explain them if you want to make others understand what you mean.

Please also iron out the difficulties in composition that I unfortunately had to point out to you.

Question about Free Will and Predestination

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