Are there multiple versions of Determinism?

[2PhiloVoid]

I don’t wanna hear your excuses! Dig out that old textbook and start reading! I think it’s in that storage box next to all of that china that you never used in the front left corner of your attic lol.

Actually, that old textbook is just sitting two shelves above my books on Pascal and Kierkegaard ... ... which perhaps not too surprisingly is where I determined it should go.

 

[Bible Highlighter]

There are some things in the creation that are predetermined and we cannot change. We cannot fly and shoot laser beams from our eyes. We cannot change the nature of the creation by our thinking about it. God has set boundaries on the creation that no man can alter. Granted, God has given man some level of doing certain things with His creation that God may not necessarily approve of. God does not want any man to sin (even though man has inclinations to sin sometimes). God has allowed this as a part of a test to truly see that we love God more than anything else in this life. God does not predetermine our choices in life (When it comes to making a choice towards Him). While we may have a tendency to want to scratch and itch, etc. such things are minor decisions in God's design. God wants us to make the big decisions in life in following His Son, Jesus Christ, and to obey His commands. This is clearly our choice to make in this life and we will be judged if we do not receive the Lord's words (See: John 12:48).

 

[nonaeroterraqueous]

It feels like this speaks more of God’s foreknowledge than it would speak of illusory free will

Well, to be fair, I don't think that the illusion of free will is strictly true. I believe that the common perception is still true, but that a higher reality exists, which only God knows. In that reality our free will is seen as an illusion. Our perception is not made less real because of God's. However, ours is less by comparison, in the sense that the whole wide Earth is not made smaller by the existence of the vast universe, but it is infinitesimal by comparison.

But with God I see a power that Shakespeare just didn’t have, the power to inject decision making self awareness into His characters.

Agreed. There are limitations to analogy. I pose it simply to demonstrate the nature of greater, versus lesser, realities. Hamlet is to Shakespeare what we are to God.

IF you don’t leave your house and interfere with anything! For if you leave your house anything that you do could cause a domino effect.

"If" is a term to describe human ignorance. You're driving down a road and someone crosses right in front of you. You swerve and miss by an inch. The rest of your life, you shudder to think how close you came to not swerving that last inch. But...an inch is as good as a mile. No matter how much time passes after that, history never changes, and you never come any closer to closing that gap. There is infinitely no risk that you will have ever not missed that other person. "If" becomes a hypothetical description of something impossible.

Now, if you're God (ahem), and you see the future as clearly as the past, then the same is as true for the future. He doesn't spend his time wondering what will happen if you do something. Either it will definitely happen, or it is impossible, apart from his intervention.

But I can also see where you are coming from, THE MOMENT that God moves the chessboard of the world around in any way shape or form He would immediately be disappointed and/or proud of millions of different people’s future decisions immediately, decisions that haven’t even happened yet for many years (many people not even born yet). And his foreknowledge would only reboot if he stuck His finger into reality again and nudged something, BUT then he would once again immediately know how everything plays out in it’s entirety. Lol it definitely is weird to think about.

I fundamentally agree with that. I would only note your mention, "if he stuck his finger into reality again...." I think that God always knows when and if he will stick his finger into reality. Not only is all of history, past and present, a foregone conclusion to him, but I strongly suspect that he knows exactly how he will interact with it. The question of "if" he will interact with it is, again, a term used by humans as a placeholder to describe the unknown thing. In the end, it's always either true, or just a hypothetical description of something impossible.

 

[Mark Quayle]

You might be a very irritable person, or a negative thinker, etc, but if you finally decide to put your foot down on your habitual bad attitude, all the sudden your internal influences are different on a day to day basis. You are now light & breezy, it takes much more for stress to enter in as a stimulus. Because you decided enough was enough and you changed your attitude. NOW your day to day internal stimuli is very different. This is a change that YOU introduced.

But then, THAT decision was the result of external and internal influences. The fact you see yourself as instigating that decision doesn't change anything.

 

[Mark Quayle]

I think you have given a fair description of the Calvinist position in this thread. I have a philosophical question for you.

Why posit the will as a cause of choice? Indeed I am not quite sure what a "cause" even is on determinism, for apparently all of creation is just one big continuous deterministic machine without any discrete parts. The fact that humans isolate certain things as "causes" would seem to be due to indeterministic illusions that we possess rather than any true causal activity on the part of creatures. For example, we see the baseball flying towards the as-yet-unbroken window as two discrete causal objects, but this is only because the human eye is not able to perceive the air, the fluid dynamics of the ball colliding with inertial air particles that divert its path, the amorphous solidity of the glass, or the intricate fracturing, shattering, and dispersion that will occur in a split second. If we could see all of this then, on your view, the designations "baseball" and "glass" would be arbitrary parts of a deterministic machine slowly churning out the inevitable future, nanosecond by nanosecond.

In any case, why posit the will as a cause of choice? Consider the temporal progression:

A(t) -> Will -> Choice
​

..where A(t) is the collection of all antecedent conditions at time t, including things like the person's desires, circumstances, beliefs, etc. With A(t) in place we know exactly what "choice" will result, so why posit a will? Why not say the following:

A(t) -> Choice
​

That is to say, what does the will add to your model? Why posit it at all? What does it help explain? Apparently the same choice results whether or not we posit a will, which is to say that, on Calvinism, the will adds nothing at all to A(t). Is the will just a convenient way to denote the dispositions of a particular human substance, the internal determinisms that go into the equation with the external determinisms in order to produce a "choice"?

Nice! The same sort of thing works with the argument of an atheist who says it is not possible (or at least not just) that God (First Cause) can determine all things, for if he did, we are all robots. I say then, if there is no God, and naturalism determines all things, and you admit to the law of cause and effect, in which you admit to being caused to make your decisions, what difference does it make if God is the first cause in that chain of cause and effect? Why do you suddenly become a robot and God unjust?

Once we can establish that deistic idea, then we can begin the pursuit of the logic of the eminence of God.

 

[Jok]

But then, THAT decision was the result of external and internal influences. The fact you see yourself as instigating that decision doesn't change anything.

In that example I was going in a different direction, I was saying that your free will decision to make a major change in your life forever changed the internal influences that you experience from inside (day to day your negative attitude has now become a positive attitude).

However, this result to make a life changing macro decision differed from how you handled the same influences many other times in your life. You were under identical internal/external influences 1000 other times in your life before as well, yet sometimes you changed your attitude for just that day before falling back to your old self. Sometimes you kept it going for a full week. Sometimes you just gave yourself a 5 minute pep talk yet caved within the hour. So your major life changing decision (that stuck) was a unique result/effect that came out of the 1000th identical causal influences, however that lead to a new default setting for you with regards to internal influence. But still, now that you have this new attitude your decisions from day to day could still vary.

 

[Jok]

Well, to be fair, I don't think that the illusion of free will is strictly true. I believe that the common perception is still true, but that a higher reality exists, which only God knows. In that reality our free will is seen as an illusion. Our perception is not made less real because of God's. However, ours is less by comparison, in the sense that the whole wide Earth is not made smaller by the existence of the vast universe, but it is infinitesimal by comparison.

I know what you are driving at. It’s like how people say that A.I. programs don’t follow code but instead they write their own code on the fly. But that doesn’t make sense at a higher level, surely there is a primary programming code that enforces rules of allowances around that secondary self writing A.I. code in which the A.I. is fixated inside of those rules (but free to roam within the the inner boundary).

Ok I have changed my position I believe in Determinism now, I get it. However I do so with a huge caveat (which will make up the rest of my post).

I believe in broad Determinism, I believe that not believing in broad Determinism is actually a non-sensical position. HOWEVER, I also believe that saying
“I believe in Broad Determinism” is about as useful as saying “I believe that reality is reality.”

Broad Determinism literally draws a border around all of ultimate reality! For it makes no sense for anything at all inside of ultimate reality to NOT be exhaustively understood BY ultimate reality itself. And God IS ultimate reality. So my caveat is that I believe that broad Determinism is habitually and inconsistently used to imply a more narrow Determinism.

Some argue against certain properties being real because they predictably correspond to physical states of our nervous system. However many object to that because It only takes BEING a human to realize that something falls short with that explanation BECAUSE our very (experiential) existence is an objection against the argument (we feel/live the counter argument).


So, inside of ultimate reality we have these incredibly powerful axioms of immediate experiential knowledge that we know to be real. We know love is real. We know fear is real. We know happiness is real, etc. We also don’t seem to have any problem admitting that it makes total sense for the author of ultimate reality (God) to exhaustively comprehend these complicated properties SINCE they fall inside of that ultimate reality. Nor do we have a problem admitting that to understand exactly what these properties are ontologically is beyond human comprehension (and we are ok with that). And finally, we do NOT claim that these properties are rendered as being counterfeit & illusory simply because God exhaustively understands them but we don’t. We actually think that God exhaustively understanding these properties logically follow.

Now enter the dynamic property of human free will and notice the inconsistency! Love is not illusory, jealously is not illusory, feelings of panic is not illusory, etc; yet in the case of free will the claim is that it IS illusory because God has complete exhaustive knowledge of it. For complete knowledge of the property would automatically be wrapped up with the ability to see how the property would play out in various situations, because free will is a property that’s linked to choosing a path of action. Free will feels just as real to us as the other properties, therefore our experiential knowledge of free will is equally as real as the other properties. And just like the other properties its ontological reality is beyond human comprehension, and finally, like the other properties (that we don’t call illusory) God exhaustively comprehends it.

I guess the sticking point for people is that to exhaustively comprehend those other properties is for God to just understand their ontological essence, whereas to exhaustively comprehend free will is to also have predictive knowledge of how it would play out, and that doesn’t sit well with people. But if you break it all down God is the fabric of reality, and it makes sense that anything inside the fabric of reality is known BY that fabric of reality. So therefore in conclusion I find Determinism to be a useless term of simply stating the obvious lol. It’s like saying “Reality knows what reality is.” Well of course it does.

Just like how the self writing ability of the A.I programming code must be fixated inside of the primary code, so too anything at all that exists in ultimate reality (God) must be fully comprehended by that reality. That logical consistency doesn’t seem to result in people penalizing the other properties, but it’s inconsistently popular for people to turn around and penalize the property of free will for it.

 

[zippy2006]

I know what you are driving at. It’s like how people say that A.I. programs don’t follow code but instead they write their own code on the fly. But that doesn’t make sense at a higher level, surely there is a primary programming code that enforces rules of allowances around that secondary self writing A.I. code in which the A.I. is fixated inside of those rules (but free to roam within the the inner boundary).

This is a good observation. I studied computer science and I often see people struggle to understand this.

I guess the sticking point for people is that to exhaustively comprehend those other properties is for God to just understand their ontological essence, whereas to exhaustively comprehend free will is to also have predictive knowledge of how it would play out, and that doesn’t sit well with people. But if you break it all down God is the fabric of reality, and it makes sense that anything inside the fabric of reality is known BY that fabric of reality. So therefore in conclusion I find Determinism to be a useless term of simply stating the obvious lol. It’s like saying “Reality knows what reality is.” Well of course it does.

I don't think that the nature of God implies human determinism, and this is essentially what you and nonaero are saying. Nonaero is presenting a Calvinist position that is interesting, but is also deeply flawed and completely at odds with traditional Christianity (Catholic & Orthodox). The errors are a bit difficult to spot, but I can point out a few of them:

The essence of Christian determinism is that every cause has a prior cause, except for God, who caused everything. The chain of cause and effect has no loose ends. Every contributing factor to any event derives from a prior cause, whether spiritual or physical. If the human will is a first cause, either in part or in whole, then it must be something extant, like God, being uncaused and uncreated. This is the essence of why God calls himself the I Am, and why I think no one but God is self-extant in any way.

This is the modern error of the reduction of causality to efficient causality. "I Am Who Am" has nothing to do with efficient causality. Emphasizing God's grounding of the causal chain doesn't emphasize his transcendence, it emphasizes his immanence.

The self-caused choice is the indeterminist position.

Beings with free will are the cause of their own movement, but this doesn't make them the first cause or uncreated. To quote Thomas:

Reply to Objection 3. Free-will is the cause of its own movement, because by his free-will man moves himself to act. But it does not of necessity belong to liberty that what is free should be the first cause of itself, as neither for one thing to be cause of another need it be the first cause. God, therefore, is the first cause, Who moves causes both natural and voluntary. And just as by moving natural causes He does not prevent their acts being natural, so by moving voluntary causes He does not deprive their actions of being voluntary: but rather is He the cause of this very thing in them; for He operates in each thing according to its own nature.
​

The Calvinist's error is similar to the modern's error. He thinks God is a being in the world. He thinks that for God to create and be the first cause he must be the puppetmaster who pulls every string. He doesn't believe God has the power to create free beings. He doesn't believe God can make man in the image of His own freedom.

At the end of the day either man is free or determined. Free will is either an illusion or it is not.

Well, to be fair, I don't think that the illusion of free will is strictly true. I believe that the common perception is still true, but that a higher reality exists, which only God knows. In that reality our free will is seen as an illusion. Our perception is not made less real because of God's. However, ours is less by comparison, in the sense that the whole wide Earth is not made smaller by the existence of the vast universe, but it is infinitesimal by comparison.

If the existence of God determines human action then free will is made less real. Indeed it is made fully illusory, or not real at all. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

But I can also see where you are coming from, THE MOMENT that God moves the chessboard of the world around in any way shape or form He would immediately be disappointed and/or proud of millions of different people’s future decisions immediately, decisions that haven’t even happened yet for many years (many people not even born yet). And his foreknowledge would only reboot if he stuck His finger into reality again and nudged something, BUT then he would once again immediately know how everything plays out in it’s entirety. Lol it definitely is weird to think about.

I think the idea that creation is a deterministic chess board and God is the only player is a problematic premise. It's literally a form of divine solipsism, and God would never be proud or disappointed in anyone in such a scenario. He is the only player. I am not proud of the pawn or the rook as I play a game of chess. They are inanimate pieces blindly following my will.

In truth God endows creatures, namely humans and angels, with a portion or image of his own freedom. The agents are not inanimate because they have freedom and determinism is false.

 

[Jok]

I don't think that the nature of God implies human determinism, and this is essentially what you and nonaero are saying. Nonaero is presenting a Calvinist position that is interesting, but is also deeply flawed and completely at odds with traditional Christianity (Catholic & Orthodox). The errors are a bit difficult to spot, but I can point out a few of them:

I was trying to point out that the term determinism would cast such a wide net that believing in it would ultimately become meaningless because the net is so wide that it covers all of reality, so God’s knowing how free will will play out isn’t really saying much because God can’t not know everything at all inside of reality anyway. So I was basically saying ok fine call me a Determinist then if that’s the definition lol.

This could suffer from something similar to Hempel’s Dilemma, we don’t have the knowledge or full understanding of what exactly the property of free will is, so for us to call the property impossible (because God could predict it) is a powerless accusation. In Hempel’s Dilemma you’re writing an intellectual check that future knowledge is supposed to cash. However this lack of knowledge doesn’t result in a speculative toss up between free will existing or not existing because we have the proof of free will’s existence within us! Because we experience it we know it’s real.

Emphasizing God's grounding of the causal chain doesn't emphasize his transcendence, it emphasizes his immanence.

That makes sense. Since God’s transcendence extends to outside of the causal chains.

Beings with free will are the cause of their own movement, but this doesn't make them the first cause or uncreated. To quote Thomas:

Reply to Objection 3. Free-will is the cause of its own movement, because by his free-will man moves himself to act. But it does not of necessity belong to liberty that what is free should be the first cause of itself, as neither for one thing to be cause of another need it be the first cause. God, therefore, is the first cause, Who moves causes both natural and voluntary. And just as by moving natural causes He does not prevent their acts being natural, so by moving voluntary causes He does not deprive their actions of being voluntary: but rather is He the cause of this very thing in them; for He operates in each thing according to its own nature.

Yes I think so too. God is like the sea that is holding up everything that makes up a cruise ship. It’s not that God is performing all of the actions of every person’s arms & legs on board, but that their potential is only allowable by the foundation of the sea holding everything up.

The Calvinist's error is similar to the modern's error. He thinks God is a being in the world. He thinks that for God to create and be the first cause he must be the puppetmaster who pulls every string. He doesn't believe God has the power to create free beings. He doesn't believe God can make man in the image of His own freedom.

God might be sort of like a non-physical wireless power source of some kind that holds all of the laws of nature together. All of physical reality sits on top of this level, and certain entities have decision making capabilities built into their structures, and these built in capabilities also stem from God, IMO they are non-physical and dualism is true.

At the end of the day either man is free or determined. Free will is either an illusion or it is not.

I think so too.

If the existence of God determines human action then free will is made less real. Indeed it is made fully illusory, or not real at all. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

If I go back to my original question, it does seem like there are different versions of determinism. Because I definitely run into puppet on a string determinists, however I do understand the determinism that nonaeroterraqueous is describing (the Calvinist view) to be different than that, and I just can’t stop thinking that it’s only determinism in name, but in reality it’s just trying to describe God’s foreknowledge, but it gets mixed up every now and then and blurts the ‘I’ word out (Illusory). It definitely seems much softer than the pure molecules in motion determinism descriptions that I hear about from materialists.

I think the idea that creation is a deterministic chess board and God is the only player is a problematic premise. It's literally a form of divine solipsism, and God would never be proud or disappointed in anyone in such a scenario. He is the only player. I am not proud of the pawn or the rook as I play a game of chess. They are inanimate pieces blindly following my will.

In truth God endows creatures, namely humans and angels, with a portion or image of his own freedom. The agents are not inanimate because they have freedom and determinism is false.

Yeah my analogy was probably poor choice considering how chess piece are mindless and pushed around, I only meant to point out in that analogy how God can poke at nature and intervene in it.

 

[Mark Quayle]

In that example I was going in a different direction, I was saying that your free will decision to make a major change in your life forever changed the internal influences that you experience from inside (day to day your negative attitude has now become a positive attitude).

However, this result to make a life changing macro decision differed from how you handled the same influences many other times in your life. You were under identical internal/external influences 1000 other times in your life before as well, yet sometimes you changed your attitude for just that day before falling back to your old self. Sometimes you kept it going for a full week. Sometimes you just gave yourself a 5 minute pep talk yet caved within the hour. So your major life changing decision (that stuck) was a unique result/effect that came out of the 1000th identical causal influences, however that lead to a new default setting for you with regards to internal influence. But still, now that you have this new attitude your decisions from day to day could still vary.

I don't dispute that your decisions have consequences --of course they do. And so we are exhorted to make good decisions for that very reason, keeping our minds and bodies under subjection, developing good habits, etc. Nevertheless, in context with the OP, the decisions are caused effects. Even the changed attitude is a caused effect, and logically whether by direct action or influence, or by setting all things into motion as a result of First Cause (Deism), God caused it all.

 

[SPF]

I agree with Johnathan Edwards who said that at any given time we always act according to our greatest inclination. I have yet to find an exception to this.

Of course what determines our greatest inclination is a complicated topic.

 

[zippy2006]

I was trying to point out that the term determinism would cast such a wide net that believing in it would ultimately become meaningless because the net is so wide that it covers all of reality, so God’s knowing how free will will play out isn’t really saying much because God can’t not know everything at all inside of reality anyway. So I was basically saying ok fine call me a Determinist then if that’s the definition lol.

Okay, but why would a wide net make determinism meaningless? The Calvinist God, who causes a deterministic universe, throws the widest net possible, and yet the determinism that such a conception of God creates is still meaningful. In fact I would say that all forms of determinism cover all of reality, and yet all forms are meaningful.

This could suffer from something similar to Hempel’s Dilemma, we don’t have the knowledge or full understanding of what exactly the property of free will is, so for us to call the property impossible (because God could predict it) is a powerless accusation. In Hempel’s Dilemma you’re writing an intellectual check that future knowledge is supposed to cash. However this lack of knowledge doesn’t result in a speculative toss up between free will existing or not existing because we have the proof of free will’s existence within us! Because we experience it we know it’s real.

It seems to me that as long as we have a certain minimal understanding of what free will is, and determinism contradicts that minimal understanding, then the two notions clash. That's what happens when someone who believes in free will and someone who believes in determinism run up against each other. They clash. You believe you have the proof of free will within you; nonaero believes that you do not. He believes that your "proof" is an illusion. I'm not sure such a clash can be easily got around.

That makes sense. Since God’s transcendence extends to outside of the causal chains.

Yes I think so too. God is like the sea that is holding up everything that makes up a cruise ship. It’s not that God is performing all of the actions of every person’s arms & legs on board, but that their potential is only allowable by the foundation of the sea holding everything up.

Right, and for Thomas God can cause a free act. Calvinists don't think He can. It is certainly a mystery how God can create a free being or cause a free act. I certainly don't know how He does it.

God might be sort of like a non-physical wireless power source of some kind that holds all of the laws of nature together. All of physical reality sits on top of this level, and certain entities have decision making capabilities built into their structures, and these built in capabilities also stem from God, IMO they are non-physical and dualism is true.

Yeah, I think that is a good way to think about it!

If I go back to my original question, it does seem like there are different versions of determinism.

My opinion is that determinism is always the same but is grounded differently. Determinism means that every event that occurs in creation is fully determined by antecedent causes. This means that there is no freedom in creation. Now determinism can be grounded in natural science, or psychology, or philosophical argument, or God's nature, but it results in that same definition. It is helpful to understand the different groundings. For example, some Calvinists believe God's nature necessitates determinism and some only believe that The Fall necessitates determinism.

Because I definitely run into puppet on a string determinists, however I do understand the determinism that nonaeroterraqueous is describing (the Calvinist view) to be different than that, and I just can’t stop thinking that it’s only determinism in name, but in reality it’s just trying to describe God’s foreknowledge, but it gets mixed up every now and then and blurts the ‘I’ word out (Illusory). It definitely seems much softer than the pure molecules in motion determinism descriptions that I hear about from materialists.

Honestly I don't think it is any different. It's the same pill, he's just adding some sugar to try to get it to go down smooth. The more robust forms of determinism, such as Calvinism, see us as puppets on a more-complex string, but the philosophical issues are exactly the same at the end of the day. I have spoken to Calvinists at great length on these topics. There is a very simple Calvinistic doctrine that comes up in moral philosophy which illustrates the fact that we are dealing with hard determinism. It is the principle that "Ought" does not imply "Can." Remember earlier when I quoted Aquinas as saying that without free will there could be no legitimate commands? This is how the moral discussion goes:

• Catholic: If Calvinistic determinism is true then man has no free will and no ability to respond to the commands of God.
• Calvinist: So what?
• Catholic: Suppose God issues a command to a deterministic automaton, it does not carry out the command because it has no free will, and God damns it to Hell. This is patently unjust.
• Calvinist: You are laboring under the false notion that "ought" implies "can." Just because we ought to do something does not mean we can do it. God commands the impossible and sends us to Hell for things we could never have avoided doing. There is nothing wrong with this.

For Calvin, our acts are fully necessitated. Whoever is pulling the strings, it isn't us. (Cf. Treatise Against Pighius) Moral issues such as these are why Calvinism is heretical. It is Catholic doctrine that God does not command the impossible.

Yeah my analogy was probably poor choice considering how chess piece are mindless and pushed around, I only meant to point out in that analogy how God can poke at nature and intervene in it.

No, I understand the illustration. I think the "intervention & recalibration" model, which chess represents, is problematically premised on a sort of one-input determinism.

My main point is that there is no need to swallow nonaero's deterministic pill, and Catholicism has denied such a need for 2,000 years. If you come to the conclusion that it needs to be swallowed then I would be happy to try to convince you otherwise.

 

[Jok]

Okay, but why would a wide net make determinism meaningless? The Calvinist God, who causes a deterministic universe, throws the widest net possible, and yet the determinism that such a conception of God creates is still meaningful. In fact I would say that all forms of determinism cover all of reality, and yet all forms are meaningful.

You believe you have the proof of free will within you; nonaero believes that you do not. He believes that your "proof" is an illusion. I'm not sure such a clash can be easily got around.

Forgive me if I am guilty of moving the goalpost around a bit, I’m new at trying to think this all through and I am throwing out a lot of thoughts out as I post. In one post determinism is meaningless, but in another post I’m calling myself a determinist lol.

Instead of using the word meaningless I could instead say that I find it counterproductive to try to explain away Level 1 evidence with Level 2 evidence. Yes your assessment of me is true, I think that the strongest facts that we have available to us in life are our direct experiences and they should therefore be our floor of axioms (and I’m not saying that if I’m on drugs and I see a pink bear dancing that it’s a fact that there was a pink bear dancing, but rather it is a fact that I had an experience of a pink bear dancing). So by meaningless I just meant why bother attacking axioms. Yes some will disagree with me that my ability to freely make decisions is a solid axiom that’s as well grounded as the existence of an experience, but I think that it is because life is just oozing with instances of free will decisions in every direction. I don’t know why people would find this position compelling “God gifts some organisms with a genuine feeling of free choice that doesn’t really exist but it is rather just a property that emerges based on how they involuntarily get pulled around; however all of the other feelings in your life are real! Including feelings that even come forth from these false feelings of free choice such as shame, guilt, pride, regret, punishments, rewards, etc.” It definitely seems like this line of thinking violates the principle of accepting the simplest explanation.

So I think 1st person experience is the highest level of proof that exists, and determinism tries to explain away level 1 evidence with level 2 evidence. Like saying to someone “I understand that you saw it with your own two eyes, but please consider the solid reputation of this witness who is telling you that your eyes are wrong.” Sorry but seeing something directly is a higher level of proof.

Right, and for Thomas God can cause a free act. Calvinists don't think He can. It is certainly a mystery how God can create a free being or cause a free act. I certainly don't know how He does it.

I feel like the better argument to have would actually be God’s perfect foreknowledge. However I do realize that this would be way more likely to be taken up by an atheist. At least if you are arguing about perfect foreknowledge you’re arguing about something that falls outside of our direct knowledge bases, we do not directly know what it is like for God to know everything (or in atheist speak for Mother Nature to know everything). I do believe that God has perfect foreknowledge, but it seems like doubting perfect foreknowledge is a more understandable doubt.

It’s probably a pretty useless point to make for a Christian though. However a ton of atheists love determinism too.

My opinion is that determinism is always the same but is grounded differently. Determinism means that every event that occurs in creation is fully determined by antecedent causes. This means that there is no freedom in creation. Now determinism can be grounded in natural science, or psychology, or philosophical argument, or God's nature, but it results in that same definition. It is helpful to understand the different groundings. For example, some Calvinists believe God's nature necessitates determinism and some only believe that The Fall necessitates determinism.

This is great to think about! This conversation can make my head explode, so anything that helps to anchor me into concrete categories is helpful.

Honestly I don't think it is any different. It's the same pill, he's just adding some sugar to try to get it to go down smooth. The more robust forms of determinism, such as Calvinism, see us as puppets on a more-complex string, but the philosophical issues are exactly the same at the end of the day. I have spoken to Calvinists at great length on these topics. There is a very simple Calvinistic doctrine that comes up in moral philosophy which illustrates the fact that we are dealing with hard determinism. It is the principle that "Ought" does not imply "Can." Remember earlier when I quoted Aquinas as saying that without free will there could be no legitimate commands? This is how the moral discussion goes:
Catholic: If Calvinistic determinism is true then man has no free will and no ability to respond to the commands of God.
Calvinist: So what?
Catholic: Suppose God issues a command to a deterministic automaton, it does not carry out the command because it has no free will, and God damns it to Hell. This is patently unjust.
Calvinist: You are laboring under the false notion that "ought" implies "can." Just because we ought to do something does not mean we can do it. God commands the impossible and sends us to Hell for things we could never have avoided doing. There is nothing wrong with this.

For Calvin, our acts are fully necessitated. Whoever is pulling the strings, it isn't us. (Cf. Treatise Against Pighius) Moral issues such as these are why Calvinism is heretical. It is Catholic doctrine that God does not command the impossible.

I wasn’t familiar with that Ought does not imply Can principle, yeah that pretty much spells it out. I don’t like it at all.

You know it’s funny when I think about something, many times in my life I have heard people talk about their belief in psychics, but I never heard anybody follow up a story about a psychic with a comment that it makes their free will feel threatened. But it seems to be pretty common for people to follow up thoughts about God’s perfect psychic abilities as being a threat to free will being real. Strange inconsistency that I just thought about.

My main point is that there is no need to swallow nonaero's deterministic pill, and Catholicism has denied such a need for 2,000 years. If you come to the conclusion that it needs to be swallowed then I would be happy to try to convince you otherwise.

It’s definitely a brain teaser. Probably the greatest paradox for me, how God could know everything that a free will being will do.

 

[Jok]

I agree with Johnathan Edwards who said that at any given time we always act according to our greatest inclination. I have yet to find an exception to this.

I feel like I can’t get away from exceptions to it. From the extremes of a monk who goes to war with his greatest inclinations by constantly denying them, eventually to even pull himself out of society; to the extremes of a hardened criminal who gives into the majority of strong inclinations. It’s too inconsistent for me. For instance I could say to myself “The criminal denies some inclinations because his MOST PRIMARY inclination is to stay out of prison so he can maximize satisfaction of nasty inclinations.” But then THAT runs into inconsistencies because other times he will say “Oh who cares I’m gonna throw caution to the wind this time instead.”

It starts to seem circular to me, any path that someone takes no matter how inconsistent that person might be under identical inclinations, the determinist reply will be that it’s proof that that inclination was in fact the greatest one. But the problem is that my own mind has proven this as false. I have denied my greatest inclinations a lot. And in those situations I don’t think that giving the explanation of “I had inclinations to deny my inclinations“ is a good explanation.

 

[zippy2006]

Forgive me if I am guilty of moving the goalpost around a bit, I’m new at trying to think this all through and I am throwing out a lot of thoughts out as I post. In one post determinism is meaningless, but in another post I’m calling myself a determinist lol.

Haha, that's alright.

Instead of using the word meaningless I could instead say that I find it counterproductive to try to explain away Level 1 evidence with Level 2 evidence. Yes your assessment of me is true, I think that the strongest facts that we have available to us in life are our direct experiences and they should therefore be our floor of axioms (and I’m not saying that if I’m on drugs and I see a pink bear dancing that it’s a fact that there was a pink bear dancing, but rather it is a fact that I had an experience of a pink bear dancing). So by meaningless I just meant why bother attacking axioms. Yes some will disagree with me that my ability to freely make decisions is a solid axiom that’s as well grounded as the existence of an experience, but I think that it is because life is just oozing with instances of free will decisions in every direction. I don’t know why people would find this position compelling “God gifts some organisms with a genuine feeling of free choice that doesn’t really exist but it is rather just a property that emerges based on how they involuntarily get pulled around; however all of the other feelings in your life are real! Including feelings that even come forth from these false feelings of free choice such as shame, guilt, pride, regret, punishments, rewards, etc.” It definitely seems like this line of thinking violates the principle of accepting the simplest explanation.

So I think 1st person experience is the highest level of proof that exists, and determinism tries to explain away level 1 evidence with level 2 evidence. Like saying to someone “I understand that you saw it with your own two eyes, but please consider the solid reputation of this witness who is telling you that your eyes are wrong.” Sorry but seeing something directly is a higher level of proof.

That's a wonderful way of putting it. I agree wholeheartedly. We should be very cautious when level 2 evidence seeks to undermine level 1 evidence, especially when it comes to such a significant and pervasive thing as free choice. I have tried to explain it that way myself in the past, but I like your use of "levels."

You know it’s funny when I think about something, many times in my life I have heard people talk about their belief in psychics, but I never heard anybody follow up a story about a psychic with a comment that it makes their free will feel threatened. But it seems to be pretty common for people to follow up thoughts about God’s perfect psychic abilities as being a threat to free will being real. Strange inconsistency that I just thought about.

That's definitely a good point. I think it is less common to see psychics as a threat to free will than God, though I have seen it at times. I have a friend who believes in psychics, and she has struggled with the question of free will due to that belief, but you don't see it too often.

I feel like the better argument to have would actually be God’s perfect foreknowledge. However I do realize that this would be way more likely to be taken up by an atheist. At least if you are arguing about perfect foreknowledge you’re arguing about something that falls outside of our direct knowledge bases, we do not directly know what it is like for God to know everything (or in atheist speak for Mother Nature to know everything). I do believe that God has perfect foreknowledge, but it seems like doubting perfect foreknowledge is a more understandable doubt.

It’s probably a pretty useless point to make for a Christian though. However a ton of atheists love determinism too.

This is great to think about! This conversation can make my head explode, so anything that helps to anchor me into concrete categories is helpful.

I wasn’t familiar with that Ought does not imply Can principle, yeah that pretty much spells it out. I don’t like it at all.

It’s definitely a brain teaser. Probably the greatest paradox for me, how God could know everything that a free will being will do.

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One of the reasons I haven't gotten too involved in this thread is because there are so many difficult tangents and pathways to be trod. Foreknowledge is certainly one of them. Personally I think one of the first arguments a Christian ought to consider regarding foreknowledge is the one Boethius makes in The Consolation of Philosophy. There he describes foreknowledge as flowing from God's eternity, saying that God can see the free choices we make at each moment--past, present and future--from his divine eternity. It's not that he sees them ahead of time via deterministic prediction, but rather that since the future is not future to God, who is timeless, he is simply able to observe, in his eternal present, how we will freely choose to act in the future.

Now Calvinists will dispute that solution, but it is an early attempt to address the problem and it has certainly stood the test of time in many ways. You could probably find some good articles about Boethius' view online. These are difficult questions, to be sure.

 

[Mark Quayle]

No, it isn't. I ascribe to both views, and they both describe the same thing. Everyone is free to choose, but not to choose the cause of the choice (which would be circular reasoning). That is to say, as in both statements presented, the underlying factors, both external circumstances and internal inclinations, the causes leading up to the choice, are beyond the chooser's control. Even if a person were to take a drug to promote one inclination over another, the factors causing the choice to take the drug would be outside of the person's control. Ultimately, the cause of the choice is not the chooser, but something else. Otherwise, the choice causes itself, which would be an irrational proposition.

We feel that we have free will, because we can freely choose and act as we choose. It's an illusion of the second order, not because we don't freely choose, but because our free choice is the result of something other than our choice. Water is free to cascade down a waterfall, and it does so of its own accord, yet, its accord is determined by the situation and its innate nature.

I like your thinking and writing. Do you mind if I quote you elsewhere (on a different site altogether)? Can do with or without attribution, according to your preference.

 

[Mark Quayle]

I think you have given a fair description of the Calvinist position in this thread. I have a philosophical question for you.

Why posit the will as a cause of choice? Indeed I am not quite sure what a "cause" even is on determinism, for apparently all of creation is just one big continuous deterministic machine without any discrete parts. The fact that humans isolate certain things as "causes" would seem to be due to indeterministic illusions that we possess rather than any true causal activity on the part of creatures. For example, we see the baseball flying towards the as-yet-unbroken window as two discrete causal objects, but this is only because the human eye is not able to perceive the air, the fluid dynamics of the ball colliding with inertial air particles that divert its path, the amorphous solidity of the glass, or the intricate fracturing, shattering, and dispersion that will occur in a split second. If we could see all of this then, on your view, the designations "baseball" and "glass" would be arbitrary parts of a deterministic machine slowly churning out the inevitable future, nanosecond by nanosecond.

In any case, why posit the will as a cause of choice? Consider the temporal progression:

A(t) -> Will -> Choice
​

..where A(t) is the collection of all antecedent conditions at time t, including things like the person's desires, circumstances, beliefs, etc. With A(t) in place we know exactly what "choice" will result, so why posit a will? Why not say the following:

A(t) -> Choice
​

That is to say, what does the will add to your model? Why posit it at all? What does it help explain? Apparently the same choice results whether or not we posit a will, which is to say that, on Calvinism, the will adds nothing at all to A(t). Is the will just a convenient way to denote the dispositions of a particular human substance, the internal determinisms that go into the equation with the external determinisms in order to produce a "choice"?

Yes, I suppose that is one way to put it --that the will is just a way to denote the dispositions. But it is also the vehemence of decision, which plays into further decisions. But as you said, that doesn't add to your formula.

I'm not sure what a big deterministic machine is without any discrete parts. Discrete meaning, having no relation to or at least dependence on antecedent causes? I.e. "little first causes"? Any machine is made of disparate parts, each having their purpose as part of the machine. Each may be discrete from others, perhaps, but not discrete from the machine, as I take the thought. True the machine is not the part, and that may be what you meant.

By the way, I would like to use your post there on another forum, with or without attribution as you might prefer.

 

[public hermit]

This is such a hard topic. I'm tempted to say, if humans consistently reasoned to the best given (and known) choice, in any given situation, the illusion of freedom would be clear. It's the experience of seeing a better way, after the fact, that shows me that what I wanted was a bad "choice." But, could I have chosen otherwise? I don't know. Why would I have chosen otherwise? Reasons.

We choose what seems best to us, (i.e. what we want) with every significant choice we make. If we don't know what to do, and just pick, we know we are not free. In that case, we're bound by a situation that doesn't allow us what we want, whatever that would be. We want what we want, even when we don't know what that is, haha.

We always choose what we want. That is an inviolable law. I cannot choose to want that which I don't want. If I do choose to want what I dont want, then some overriding reason has caused me to want what I don't want. Or, to put it differently, I now want something else, and I can't simply pull myself up by the bootstraps and choose to want what I do not, right now, want. Why is this? I must have a reason.

Reasons are why we choose. If we always reasoned to the best choice (multiple, really good choices are arbitrary, so they dont require freedom in any significant sense) we would see that we always want what we want, and that can never change.

Again, we think we have freedom to choose differently because we can choose what we want, only to discover after the fact, it is now not what we wanted. But, that observation, in and of itself, tells is nothing about whether we could have done otherwise.

For me, the phenomenology of human wanting shows why the usual notion of human freedom is suspect. Sure, I can choose x, but will I? Nope. Why not? Reasons.

I would say there is a phenomenological determinism when it comes to.the will. We want what we want, and we can't choose to want otherwise. That is our experience, I think. I don't know if that is a version of determinism, or if it would be interesting were it true.

As a side-note, it would be very strange to complain that God made me do what I wanted to do.

 

[Jok]

This is such a hard topic.

Just do what I do, ramble on about it excessively and hope that at least 30% of it makes sense to other people lol.

I'm tempted to say, if humans consistently reasoned to the best given (and known) choice, in any given situation, the illusion of freedom would be clear. It's the experience of seeing a better way, after the fact, that shows me that what I wanted was a bad "choice." But, could I have chosen otherwise? I don't know. Why would I have chosen otherwise? Reasons.

We choose what seems best to us, (i.e. what we want) with every significant choice we make. If we don't know what to do, and just pick, we know we are not free. In that case, we're bound by a situation that doesn't allow us what we want, whatever that would be. We want what we want, even when we don't know what that is, haha.

We always choose what we want. That is an inviolable law. I cannot choose to want that which I don't want. If I do choose to want what I dont want, then some overriding reason has caused me to want what I don't want. Or, to put it differently, I now want something else, and I can't simply pull myself up by the bootstraps and choose to want what I do not, right now, want. Why is this? I must have a reason.

Reasons are why we choose. If we always reasoned to the best choice (multiple, really good choices are arbitrary, so they dont require freedom in any significant sense) we would see that we always want what we want, and that can never change.

Again, we think we have freedom to choose differently because we can choose what we want, only to discover after the fact, it is now not what we wanted. But, that observation, in and of itself, tells is nothing about whether we could have done otherwise.

For me, the phenomenology of human wanting shows why the usual notion of human freedom is suspect. Sure, I can choose x, but will I? Nope. Why not? Reasons.

I would say there is a phenomenological determinism when it comes to.the will. We want what we want, and we can't choose to want otherwise. That is our experience, I think. I don't know if that is a version of determinism, or if it would be interesting were it true.

As a side-note, it would be very strange to complain that God made me do what I wanted to do.

I know what you mean, but it feels like the definition of “Want” is a trap, like it’s impossible to sidestep. Or maybe I could even say that doing what you don’t want is unfalsifiable because anything at all that you decide to do, by definition it becomes that which you wanted to do at the very last split second.

Let’s think of the stupidest game imaginable, I will lay on the floor flat on my back and for the next 5 hours I will clear my head and approximately every 10 seconds I will randomly lift one of my four limbs up. I won’t let myself decide until the final microsecond. No matter how fleeting the thought is of which limb I decide to raise, by definition it will at that final microsecond become “The limb that I wanted to raise.” Even if I start trying to fake myself out and I feign my left arm with a slight twitch, then switch my choice to my right leg, by definition “At the very end my right leg is what I wanted.” For 5 straight hours this absurdly random game would consist of about 2000 limb raises, and by definition it will be literally impossible for you to not classify all 2000 of my limb raises as “Exactly what I wanted at the last split second.”

It’s trapped by its own definition. It’s impossible to not “Want” your choice inside of the exact moment that you are pulling the trigger on your choice.

 

[public hermit]

do what I do, ramble on about it excessively and hope that at least 30% of it makes sense to other people lol

That's pretty much what I did, haha.

know what you mean, but it feels like the definition of “Want” is a trap, like it’s impossible to sidestep

Agreed. And so long as my choice is what I wanted, and I wasn't compelled to do otherwise by some outside force, then that seems to amount to free choice.

But, assuming the exact same scenario, could I have done (or even wanted to do) otherwise? It's hard for me to see why I would. Does that mean I am determined? Am I both free to choose what I want and not free to choose otherwise?