rtris (04/14/83)
Hail again,
(I don't know about anybody else, but I think this is an interesting
discussion)
Short note this time.
Don's defenition of determinism:
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Defn: *Determinism* in a system S means THERE EXISTS A SPECIFICATION OF
ALL STATES of S over all time. i.e. there exists a function f
mapping times to states, such that f(t) is the state of S at time t.
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Thank you for formalizing that. I think it will be very helpful in pinpointing
our differences (I think this is actually going somewhere).
I would disagree with your defenition of determinism. I think the word
determinism implies that the transition between states must be specifiable
in rules which have only the current state of the system as input. I.e.
time should be excluded as an input, to bar trivial rule concoctions like
at time t the system will go into the state that I know it will be in at
time t+1. Or, to explain that another way, I think that if you have two
sets of inputs, which are identical except for the time at which they
occur, then the outputs should be indentical. (Can you pluralize I/O?).
Thusly, in this context, I would say that the existence of free will is
equivalent to the non-existence of such rules.
And also, therefore, although the states can be KNOWN by God, He did not
choose them; we did.
Ralph.