Sorry, should have been clearer. Why is God doing his own will incompatible with God doing evil?
AND Gen 1 says they were image bearers.
So free will is not likely the distinguishing feature.
Evil or sin or Original Sin is the only distinguisher available.
6 posts were split to a new topic: The Flood âRemovedâ not âKilledâ Everyone?
Which is only possible through free will. If thereâs evil, itâs free will. One group was capable. One group wasnât.
Still donât get the insistence that being in Godâs image has to include free will.
Because God defines what âgoodâ is. âEvilâ is what God isnât.
Uh-oh. Euthyphro.
Well, sorry, but in this case, it is circular. Itâs one element referring back to itself. Itâs an infinite loop.
The God Ouroboros, eh?
Youâre asking for what explains free will, and Iâm saying the answer, satisfying a version of the PSR, is the free choice of the agent.
I realize you wonât want me to tell you just to read another thread, but if you go to this link here:
And go down to about April 23rd, look at the dialogue between mostly Scott, Robert, and John West. They essentially explain why youâre setting up a false dichotomy between randomness and causation.
If you donât end up reading it, I can try to post summary tidbits.
Regarding the physicality of mental phenomenon, Iâd take issue with what you said. But Iâd have to start another thread to explain why
One of the advantages of the Genealogical Adam scenarios are their flexibility to accommodate the nuanced differences in theology embraced by different denominations.
For example, you seem rather keen to make the pre-adamites lacking in free will. While others couldnt imagine any evolved hominid population without some measure of free will.
At least now you have your answer for why there was a lot of discussion about your insistence on free will as a distinguisher.
I am a bit late here, but as was hashed over previously in this board, we do not have a theory in physics in which both determinism is true or that there is predictability in the sense that one can predict an event prior to it happening.
Neither of these is equal to free will, but they are prerequisites of incompatibilist free will. I am not an incompatibilist, but I thought that this is worth mentioning.
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Put it that way, and efficient causation is just a causal association in our brain between events which happen to occur consecutively. Humeâs arguments to that effect are faulty, but he did show up that causation is not a slam-dunk proposition to which all else must be subsumed.
The assumption of material efficient causes in our brains as necessary for our decisions (and, by implication, a chain of such causes stretching back to the big bang) is mere philosophical assumption. Itâs the physics equivalent of universal common descent, but unlike common descent, no decent disproof of âspontaneous generationâ has been given.
Meanwhile, final causation is evident every time we make a decision, and any incoherence in the idea derives directly from the perceived need to place it downstream of the single causal chain of nature. But if mind is upstream of nature, then the problems disappear⌠and in Christianity, of course, a divine Source of final causation is the primary assumption.
Descartes dealt with the problem of free-will by exempting the human soul from consideration of the res extensa (it derives its being, and hence its power of free will, directly from God), and by classifying all animals as mere automata.
The latter proved impossible to sustain, its incoherence in physiology resulting in the anti-vivisection laws of the nineteenth century.
And the former has been the direct cause of the mind-body problem in its various forms. The denial of Cartesian dualism in reductive materialism leads to the inability to explain free will except, entirely unsatisfactorily, as an illusion or epiphenomenon. But dispose of the unproven assumption that all true causes are efficient causes, and the central human experiences of consciousness and will make sense rather than being something to explain away as âsomething that happens in our brains.â
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What is âthe PSRâ? I donât see any explanation of a false dichotomy. I see an assertion of false dichotomy, and I see what I regard as an empty claim that there is free will thatâs something else, but what that something else is doesnât seem to be defined. It seems that free will is caused by a homunculus in your head that has free will. But what causes the free will of that homunculus?
Sure, if by âmake senseâ you mean nothing more than âallow us, by fiat, to stop thinking about itâ. The âbrain activityâ theory of consciousness has the advantage that we know there is actually such a thing as brain activity; a dualist doesnât have such an advantage. Now, for everything we can actually observe, we find either a chain of efficient causes or quantum randomness. If consciousness or final causes are special and different, I see no evidence of that. Nor do I understand what this self-contained final cause could be; is it impossible to explain further than just labeling it and stopping there?
No, youâre wrong. I have been thinking about it, as have many others. What it does do is forbid us from calling the basic mental activity of human beings illusory or epiphenomenal, which thinking about it shows to be an absurd reduction.
We can actually observe decision making, and experience it first hand. But neither quantum randomness nor chains of efficient causation come close to accounting for it.
If, as I have suggested, the will is actually the start of a chain of efficient causation, then understanding what it is will be the equivalent of understanding the initial cause of the chain of events in nature - and nobody has an evidenced explanation for the Big Bang - it is a brute fact, or an act of Godâs final causation, or the product of some entirely unobservable causal chain.
Neither is it actually very clear how one explains why events in a chain are causal.
So whatâs the difference here? We knew there were minds long before we knew there was brain activity (not strictly true - people whose brains were removed lacked minds). There is no theory of mind that arises from knowledge of brain activity, and it is arguably incapable in principle of explaining consciousness, intensionality or the will.
The idea that free-will is an illusion is, to be frank, implausible woo.
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Two observances of brain activity through two different methodsâŚ
In the above article, neuroscientist Adrian Owen was working with a patient who had been completely unresponsive for 12 years after suffering severe traumatic brain injury.
Observing the patientâs brain through an fMRI he was unable to determine whether or not the patient was conscious/aware. He had the idea to give the patient verbal instructions to imagine playing a game of tennis to mean âYesâ to verbal questions, or to imagine walking around his house to mean âNoâ, he found that the patient could follow these instructions and answer questions. Depending on which the patient did, different regions of the brain would âlight upâ indicating which scenario he was imagining.
So, it would seem there was no brain activity to show the patient was conscious/aware though it turns out he actually was. He was able to hear and comprehend the verbal instructions, and was able to perform these acts and communicate through them.
The second is the measuring of electric frequencies throughout the brain and body here âŚ
In doing so the following conclusion was reached âŚ
Section - The Brainâs Role in Conscious Experience
"⌠we know from electrophysiological (Rodriquez et al. 1999; Kornhuber and Deecke 1965) and functional imaging studies that our thoughts or mental images always are correlated with specific neuronal electrical activity and a corresponding local increase in blood flow in the brain. Thus it appears that the thinking process, just as all the sensory processes studied above, leaves an imprint or reflection in the brain.
It seems, then, that the general rule of brain function holds: the brain does not produce thoughts or mental images, just as it does not produce the light of vision or the strength of our movement. Instead the brain serves to bring the thought or mental image to consciousness by allowing it to be imprinted. The brain in this sense might be compared to the sand that provides enough resistance to receive the form of a footprint"
Based on these two observations it would seem to go against the idea that the conscious mind is an emergent property of the brain, created by brain activity. Leaning more in support for the âdualistâ view.
If Christians can invoke the divine creation of de novo Adam and Eve⌠they can certainly invole tge divine presence of Free Will.
This is part of the Christian package.
I would never call it either. I would just call it embedded in causality, both cause and effect, as are most events.
I would claim that those observations donât generally reach the level at which the process is actually happening, which is why we canât account for it. And not just by randomness and efficient causation. You canât account for it either.
What does it mean to say that? Is it really the end of the line of causation? I just donât see meaning in that claim. And of course there are proposed explanations for the big bang; itâs not just a brute fact.
Could you briefly make that argument? I donât see it.
What about the idea that it isnât what you think it is (i.e. some compatibilist idea)? Why is the notion that we are a part of the world, subject to the processes that occur in the world, implausible woo?
That isnât what that says. It says âhe was unable to determine whether or not the patient was conscious/awareâ, which is not the same as âthere was no brain activityâ. In fact, everything that happened in that experiment involved brain activity interpreted as conscsiousness. I think you have undermined your thesis.
No need to shout. I do not see how this conclusion follows from the prior statements. Perhaps you left out something important? Nor do I see how any of that supports a dualist view. Whereâs the evidence of a non-physical entity?
Not if youâre a Christian determinist, right? Christians can of course make up anything they want, but it certainly helps if that thing is undetectable. Thatâs the advantage of the central A&E scenarios promoted here. Not sure that free will falls into that category.