cbostrum (07/29/82)
(From bstempleton (Brad Templeton) Tue Jul 27 13:02:58 1982) This is a foolish belief, for if the future is fixed, it doesn't matter what you believe, since it's all fixed anyway. On the other hand, if the future is not fixed, and you think it is, you are wrong. I assume the belief alluded to is belief that the "future is fixed", and the claim is that such a belief is silly. Surely you dont believe this, Brad. If the "future is fixed" your beliefs can still be right or wrong, and Im sure you would prefer that they be right. It *does* matter what you believe. The way things work, future fixed or not, you are likely to get along better with beliefs which are right.
ecn-pa.scott (07/29/82)
There's a difference between predestination and foreknowledge. I personally don't see any incompatibility between having free choice and all of my future being known. If I were in a room with you and said, "In 45 seconds, someone is going to throw a rock through the window," and, if it actually happened, you would be at a loss to decide whether I had actually caused someone to throw the rock, or if I just knew somehow that it was going to happen. The place where a lot of people stumble in talking about the fixedness of the future is where they try to make implications about causality based on determinism. In other words, people try to say that if the entire future is in some sense fixed, i.e. it is possible to know (even though there may be no person who actually does know) what will happen during the entire future (whatever that is) then we can't really have free choice, because our choices are determined by what will happen in the future. Not necessarily so! If we were able to step outside of time and look at any event in the space-time continuum, then we would see what the results of future free choices will be. That doesn't mean that in doing so we have fixed those choices and removed the element of free will. (whew!) Scott Deerwester Purdue University Libraries
felix (07/31/82)
I am not really sure about the point he wants to make in the article. If furture is determined and would not affect by whatever your choice is, then in effect all choices are the same one, or no choice at all. On the other hand if furture is affected by whatever choice you make and you *know* something is going to happen to you if you don't do this and this, then the thing you do to affect the furture will make your foreknowledge false, then furture is not deterministc at all, and nobody will be able to know about it. Regards, Felix Luk