Proof of nonexistence of free will

However, if some theory states that I will walk 300 steps and I walk 301 instead, and I believed in that theory, then both my belief was false and that theory is wrong.

1. If you actually exist and your existence becomes impossible, precisely then you cease to actually exist: your actual existence and its necessary possibility are simultaneous.

2. If the possibility of your existence were identical to the actuality of that existence, then it would become its necessity, rather than its necessary possibility.

3. Hence, the possibility of your existence must be both different from and simultaneous to the actuality of that existence.

Finally, for being both different from and simultaneous to your actual existence, your possible existence must exist: its nonexistence would require its being either identical or asynchronous to your actual existence.

Now I must be definitely clear: the problem here is the duality of truth. Any certainty depends on your forgetting that it is also a belief, otherwise it becomes doubtful.

So your problem is not with the word "know": you are in trouble with the dual nature of truth. When I know that I will walk 300 steps tomorrow (by no matter which theory), I forget this is my belief. Then I remember that I can still walk 301 steps tomorrow, by which I remember that my "knowledge" was also my belief, hence doubtful.

And stop trying to capture this with symbolic logic: you won't, since for symbolic logic truth is unary.

guigus wrote:

However, if some theory states that I will walk 300 steps and I walk 301 instead, and I believed in that theory, then both my belief was false and that theory is wrong.

Yes, this is exactly what I am saying.

guigus wrote:

1. If you actually exist and your existence becomes impossible, precisely then you cease to actually exist: your actual existence and its necessary possibility are simultaneous.

2. If the possibility of your existence were identical to the actuality of that existence, then it would become its necessity, rather than its necessary possibility.

3. Hence, the possibility of your existence must be both different from and simultaneous to the actuality of that existence.

OK so far. To put it more concisely:

1. Actual existence requires possible existence (at the same time).
2. Possible existence does not require actual existence.
3. Therefore, possible existence is not identical to actual existence.
4. All actual existence is simultaneous to some possible existence.

guigus wrote:

Finally, for being both different from and simultaneous to your actual existence, your possible existence must exist: its nonexistence would require its being either identical or asynchronous to your actual existence.

This is very obscure. I cannot make any sense of the underlined passage. How can something be identical or asynchronous if it does not exist? (If two things are asynchronous, they both independently exist.) What are you saying, other than that possible existence must be an entity distinct from actual existence?

And how does this refute determinism? You have only demonstrated that possible existence is logically independent of actual existence, i.e. that one can conceive of a non-deterministic universe in which possible existence is more extensive than actual existence. But it does not follow that the actual universe is non-deterministic. It may be the case that, in our universe, possible and actual existence are (contingently) co-extensive.

guigus wrote:

Now I must be definitely clear: the problem here is the duality of truth. Any certainty depends on your forgetting that it is also a belief, otherwise it becomes doubtful.

Not at all. I am certain that I exist, and that 2+2=4; when I introspect and consider that these are my beliefs, I am still certain about them.

guigus wrote:

So your problem is not with the word "know": you are in trouble with the dual nature of truth. When I know that I will walk 300 steps tomorrow (by no matter which theory), I forget this is my belief. Then I remember that I can still walk 301 steps tomorrow, by which I remember that my "knowledge" was also my belief, hence doubtful.

But it wasn't knowledge. (Not even if you put it in quotation marks.)

guigus wrote:

And stop trying to capture this with symbolic logic: you won't, since for symbolic logic truth is unary.

I am not trying to capture it with symbolic logic. I am only pointing out the established meaning of the word "know". Knowledge implies truth. If you invent your own definitions of words, it simply causes confusion. The English language is rich enough to express even the most complex or subtle concepts without the need to change the meanings of words. Try to be clear and concise.

The English language is rich enough to express even the most complex or subtle concepts...

There are only 3 possible ways your action can originate:

1) When you have reasons for your action - then the action is the result of those reasons.

2) When you don't have reasons for your action - then the action is unintentional.

3) Your action can be the result of a combination of 1) and 2).

None of those possibilities allow for free will because you are always compelled to your action and never in control of your action.

There are only 3 possible ways your action can originate:

1) When you have reasons for your action - then the action is the result of those reasons.

2) When you don't have reasons for your action - then the action is unintentional.

3) Your action can be the result of a combination of 1) and 2).

None of those possibilities allow for free will because you are always compelled to your action and never in control of your action.

litewave wrote:

There are only 3 possible ways your action can originate:

1) When you have reasons for your action - then the action is the result of those reasons.

2) When you don't have reasons for your action - then the action is unintentional.

3) Your action can be the result of a combination of 1) and 2).

None of those possibilities allow for free will because you are always compelled to your action and never in control of your action.

Why would you think that when I have a reason for doing what do, that I need be compelled to do it? Suppose my reason for going to a restaurant is a recommendation of a friend. Now I don't have to do to the restaurant if I choose to do otherwise. So why would you think that if I do go, I went under compulsion?

I will try and clarify some words and concepts much needed, as there seams to be some confusion "rolling on" down there and such that Ken and the other formal logic guy´s, out of let´s say, "shocking perplexity" did n´t even found the will to address it...

1 - To Know = To be certain on what will happen out of possibility.

2 - To believe = That, which is my personnel conviction that may happen, but that must n´t necessarily happen.


3 - Knowledge may or may not imply belief, as I can actually Know and not be aware on my knowing...some people think it must imply...

4 - Belief alone, does not imply necessary knowledge as personnel conviction and guess work does not amount to certainty on knowing, although belief, it may well imply its possibility, given its true that you still can know.

People, feel free to correct any slippery detail that I might have missed given back here its 7:43 AM and I´m not in bed yet...guess I ´m out for today !
Asta la vista !

Before we can have beliefs or knowledge about the world we must have meaning. The basic understanding about our environment that comes to us first through sensation and emotion. An example of this would be seeing the image of a color and also hearing the word green. The combination of the image and color brought together within the mind making an association based on their being experienced relatively close in time. A more complex relationship might be the perception of an object like a tree. The meaning of a tree might be understood as the sight of a gray to brown form, that is column-like to branching in shape, with a textural surface of a particluar range (the trunk) and massed above this the sight of greenery composed of smaller varying green shapes (leaves). This is the generalization of the meaning of a kind of tree based on many more basic percieved associations and is what I would call an example of knowledge of this type of tree.

An example of a belief would be to take the generalization of the trunk part of the meaning of our particular type of tree and assume that because for every memory of a trunk there accompanies with it a memory of green leaves above it, that all tree trunks have above them green leaves. In this case, the belief is not knowledge of things perceived but an attempt at generalizing possibility. Knowledge must be composed of associations made through perception and so this belief can never be known to be true since we must exhaust all possible perceptions of a trunk in the universe to find this. But it can easily be known to be false since one example to the contrary can show this. Of course, we can imagine a tree trunk without any leaves on it even if we had never seen a bare trunk before and take this as a clue that it is possible for a tree trunk to be without leaves.

The absolute truth of most beliefs about the world can never be known for the same reason the belief held about leaves and tree trunks can never be known to be true. Only by exhausting all possible cases can we know truth for certain. However if by some method we could eliminate false generalizations to the point that few possible cases exist then truth may be known, but this requires knowledge of the number of possibilities.

Mathematical knowledge is different from knowledge of the percieved world because mathematics can be judged to be consistent within its own rules. Though these rules are aspects of the percieved world, the functionality of mathematics does not depend on the percieved world, only its useful application does. So mathematical truths are certainly known because we create them.

kennethamy wrote:

litewave wrote:

There are only 3 possible ways your action can originate:

1) When you have reasons for your action - then the action is the result of those reasons.

2) When you don't have reasons for your action - then the action is unintentional.

3) Your action can be the result of a combination of 1) and 2).

None of those possibilities allow for free will because you are always compelled to your action and never in control of your action.

Why would you think that when I have a reason for doing what do, that I need be compelled to do it? Suppose my reason for going to a restaurant is a recommendation of a friend. Now I don't have to do to the restaurant if I choose to do otherwise. So why would you think that if I do go, I went under compulsion?

because the your decision not to do so is made by the complexity of reason

You are forgetting that any generalization of past experiences, perceptions, feelings, builds upon the belief that those past events indeed happened, which is always a belief, as also the belief on our knowledge of those past events. Without believing in our past experiences, or without believing we know them, we cannot build anything, any meaning. So meaning depends on belief and knowledge at least as much as knowledge and belief depend on meaning. For example, a child builds the meaning that her mother's body is near her, and utterly finds out that it was some other object. Were her perceptions or feelings wrong? Or was the meaning she gave them wrong? And why? The only answer is that she believed those perceptions and feelings to mean the presence of her mother's body, and she believed to know they meant that presence, but she was wrong. There is no direct path from perceptions and feelings to meaning, without the intervening aid of beliefs and knowledge: meaning without belief and knowledge is meaningless.

So here comes the old question: who judges the rules according to which mathematics can be judged to be consistent?

Are you referring to some sort of "metaphysical movement" ?
...Unguided action ???
You mean action with no axis ? no direction ?

Well, no wonder you don´t accept Determinism...
...you see...action is always guided !

Quote:

You are forgetting that any generalization of past experiences, perceptions, feelings, builds upon the belief that those past events indeed happened, which is always a belief, as also the belief on our knowledge of those past events. Without believing in our past experiences, or without believing we know them, we cannot build anything, any meaning. So meaning depends on belief and knowledge at least as much as knowledge and belief depend on meaning. For example, a child builds the meaning that her mother's body is near her, and utterly finds out that it was some other object. Were her perceptions or feelings wrong? Or was the meaning she gave them wrong? And why? The only answer is that she believed those perceptions and feelings to mean the presence of her mother's body, and she believed to know they meant that presence, but she was wrong. There is no direct path from perceptions and feelings to meaning, without the intervening aid of beliefs and knowledge: meaning without belief and knowledge is meaningless.

I completely agree with you. I think we are just differing on the way we define meaning. I define it as the very basic relationships between sensory perceptions and/or emotions. Such as a red block of color covering one half of the visual field in relation to a green block of color being percieved on the other half. I use "meaning" because I could not think of a better word for the building blocks that make up one's knowledge. Possibly "information" would work but we might have a similar misunderstanding. So meaning in the way I defined it would not depend upon any belief since it is like information that we recieve either from memory or the perceived world. We can question the nature of this information: is it is real or imagined? but that does not conflict with the particular meaning I give. (By the way, I was just setting up a way for other terms to be defined from the ground up.)

I am defining knowledge then as a more complex relationship of meanings. A higher order term used for defining a collection of associations between "meanings" or "information" (as I have defined them). But these associations must be direct perceptions from either the external environment or from memory. They cannot be secondary to this, such as an assumption based on this knowledge as in the example of the tree trunk.This is what I would define as a belief. So knowledge as I have defined it cannot be held to be wrong or right. It just is. What can be questioned is the belief that is based on knowledge. A belief then is a jump from one piece of knowledge to another not given directly by associations between pieces of information.

guigus wrote:

So here comes the old question: who judges the rules according to which mathematics can be judged to be consistent?

We judge them based on the common rules that we have given the subject. Like any game, we make mathetical rules that are known and can be judged to be self truths within the context of the subject. Now to apply those rules outside the pure subject is a different story.

There are only 3 possible ways your action can originate:

1) When you have reasons for your action - then the action is the result of those reasons.

2) When you don't have reasons for your action - then the action is unintentional.

3) Your action can be the result of a combination of 1) and 2).

None of those possibilities allow for free will because you are always compelled to your action and never in control of your action.

[@litewave - I think of free will differently -
1. Let us say you either receive cognitive input/s or you don't.
2. The input or no input is entered into a mind which is already processing many thoughts.
3. The input or no input (state of self processing in the brain) throws out a number of possibilities of action.
4. The mind assesses these and comes up with a reason to pursue each action or at least acknowledges the existence of the possible actions.
5. The mind chooses to effect one of those possibilities. It must be a cognitive process as it causes a physical process to follow.
6. The mind effects the action to commence.

For you to state that there is no free will, you will need to prove that steps (3) , (4) and (5) do not exist. In fact, in your model step (1) impacts (2) and results directly into (6). I think, that is quite a leap. Free will is not about unlimited possibilities, it is about coming up with options and having the ability to decide which option to pursue.

I do not believe you have shown that your input possibilities logically result in predetermination. You have not shown how your input conditions preclude the possibility of self processing, assessing and choice making in the mind.