RE: [asa] God, Chance and Purpose

At 04:01 PM 6/8/2008, Alexanian, Moorad wrote:
>Making observations means that you do not ask questions to David bur
>merely observe his actions. Is that so? Therefore, can you predict
>if he would commit suicide? After all, this is something that lies
>deep in his mind and you have no data on his views about suicide.
>
>

Let me say first that I do not think this prediction is possible
because people *do* have free will. I was trying to tie
predictability to free will. If a person's behavior is completely
predictable, that person is not free. This seems to me self-evident.
Now, Dave offers the perfect refutation of the computer experiment.
If you tell the person what the prediction is, they can obviously
refute it by doing something else. An aspect of free will is that
people can do things for good reasons, bad reasons, or for no reason
at all. A person's actions can be totally arbitrary, thus unpredictable.

I was giving this example in response to examples such as that given
earlier by David where he is able to predict that his son will choose
ice cream over lettuce. My point is that if David were able to
infallibly predict his son's actions in every instance without
mistake, then his son would not have free will.

>Moorad
>
>
>________________________________
>
>From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu on behalf of j burg
>Sent: Sun 6/8/2008 2:43 PM
>To: Brian Harper
>Cc: Kirk Bertsche; David Campbell; asa@calvin.edu
>Subject: Re: [asa] God, Chance and Purpose
>
>
>
>On 6/7/08, Brian Harper <harper.10@osu.edu> wrote:
> > At 05:29 PM 6/6/2008, Kirk Bertsche wrote:
> >
> > Okay, let me propose a thought experiment. Suppose you and I got together
> > and observed David over a long period of time. We took our
> observations and,
> > with the help of a developed model and a super computer, were able predict
> > every thing that David did. What he ate for breakfast, what color shirt he
> > wore on Tuesday etc. etc. What would you conclude about David? That he has
> > free will?
>
>Dang. That's a good gedanken! I'll have to chew on it awhile. I know
>the answer I want. But is it the best answer?
>
>Burgy
>
>To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
>"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
>
>
>
>
>To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
>"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Mon Jun 9 11:34:16 2008