Philosophy Now Forum

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 8:21 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 4:17 am

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 1:55 am

That's not the law. Civilised nations follow the law.

The law is for citizens. Deportation is for invaders.

That's not the law. Civilised nations follow the law.

See above.

mickthinks wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 11:08 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 4:17 am

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 1:55 am That's not the law. Civilised nations follow the law.

The law is for citizens. Deportation is for invaders.

Cruelty is never civilised.

It's not cruelty. It's called "justice."

I wonder if you're not worried enough about the cruelty to victims of fentanyl, or to women who are forced into prostitution, or children who are trafficked and raped to death...if you're looking for cruelty to eliminate, start there.

Walker wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 12:15 pm For God, must perfect knowledge also include the unpredictability (ignorance) of human-involved patterns? (An unpredictability caused by human free will.)

I think that is it in a nutshell.

A man, any man, is a libertarian free will. He causes his actions and not even God knows what he'll do next.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 1:44 pm

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 8:21 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 4:17 am
The law is for citizens. Deportation is for invaders.

That's not the law. Civilised nations follow the law.

See above.

Likewise you silly old troll.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 1:53 pm

Walker wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 12:15 pm For God, must perfect knowledge also include the unpredictability (ignorance) of human-involved patterns? (An unpredictability caused by human free will.)

I think that is it in a nutshell.

A man, any man, is a libertarian free will. He causes his actions and not even God knows what he'll do next.

If I may add something...

One of the basics of the debate, conceded by all sides, both hardcore Determinists and proponents of free will, is that the debate gets misled if we fail to discern the distinction between foreknowledge and predetermination. Foreknowledge does not automatically entail predetermination, just as knowing and making are very different verbs. If I know what you are about to do, that does not entail that I'm the one making you do it. Even if I know correctly or precisely what you are going to do, that does not automatically imply I made you do it. You may well have freely decided to do it yourself. It merely means I knew what you were going to choose to do.

So for libertarian free will to be in jeopardy, the Determinist cannot merely appeal to the issue of foreknowledge. Instead, he has to demonstrate that fore-making is entailed, somehow. It may be, or it may not be, in a given case; but it's not automatic, or even more likely. There is an equal probability that the foreknower is merely functioning as an observer, not a participant, in what ensues.

Therefore, God might well know what you are going to do next. (Say, become a Florida State fan.) But that does not mean He's got to make you do it. He may know, from the fact that you're moving to Tallahassee to go to college, and that you've always admired Native Americans, and that your favourite colour is burgundy, plus any number of other facts He can know supplementary to those superficial ones, including facts about every single molecule in the universe, that you are certain to become a Seminoles fan; and still, you have libertarian free will, and God is not usurping your independence when you choose to go to Florida State.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 1:46 pm It's not cruelty. It's called "justice."

Manny doesn’t see the cruelty. I told you Manny would have been a good Schutzstaffel Offizier.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 2:15 pm

Metaphysical freedom bein' what it is, it seems to me while God can know all the possibilities and probabilities of a person He can't know the actualities. He knows, for example, the probability I'll step out for a cigarette in the next five minutes is overwhelming, but He can't know it as a certainty becuz I won't know myself till I make the choice to stop, get up, step out, and light up. Right now, this moment, all God can know is what I know: I'm jonesin' for nicotine.

mickthinks wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 2:25 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 1:46 pm It's not cruelty. It's called "justice."

Manny doesn’t see the cruelty.

Ironic. It's even cruelty to Americans you're ignoring. But the Nazis were collectivists, Socialist like you...so maybe they, too, cared more about ideology than about cruelty...

henry quirk wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 2:49 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 2:15 pm

Metaphysical freedom bein' what it is, it seems to me while God can know all the possibilities and probabilities of a person He can't know the actualities.

If that were so, then God would have to be limited by time. He would not be omnipresent, nor all-knowing, obviously. And the entire future would be beyond his ability to deal with. The question arises, is such a limited being, however powerful, sufficient as a definition of "God"? I would suggest it would fall well short.

He knows, for example, the probability I'll step out for a cigarette in the next five minutes is overwhelming, but He can't know it as a certainty becuz I won't know myself till I make the choice to stop, get up, step out, and light up.

And yet, I'm a spacially-limited, time-bound, temporary, moribund being. So should we generalize from what I know and can know, and assume therefore that we know what God can know, or that He cannot know more than we do? That seems a bit of a gap, does it not?

I submit to you that we have no personal experience with divine foreknowledge, except by analogy with our own limited prognostications, which are often incorrect because you and I are fallible and restricted to linear time in our knowledge. But can we therefore attribute such fallibilities and limits to the Supreme Being? Would one not need to show that analogizing from us to Him was not doing violence to the case?

I recognize that making the distinction between foreknowledge and predeterminism catches folks off guard; most are accustomed to blending the two. But precision reflection on the two concepts shows a difference recognized as basic to the debate, by both sides. I think it's worth considering.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 2:59 pm

If that were so, then God would have to be limited by time.

Not time, free will. God can, with a precision the Swiss would envy, I'm sure, tell us exactly when Sol will nova, or collapse in on itself, or...

What He can't do, or mebbe chooses not to do, is tell you, as fact, what you'll do or why you'll do it. Your interior is a mystery to God. That's how He made you to be.

Mine is not a *Christian view, I know, but I'm not Christian, so...




*though Boyd is Anabaptist, and I'm simply givin' my take on his open theism (which fits nicely, I think, with deism)

henry quirk wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 3:38 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 2:59 pm

If that were so, then God would have to be limited by time.

Not time, free will. God can, with a precision the Swiss would envy, I'm sure, tell us exactly when Sol will nova, or collapse in on itself, or...

What He can't do, or mebbe chooses not to do, is tell you, as fact, what you'll do or why you'll do it.

The Biblical God isn't like that, of course. It's quite explicit that God knows all the secrets of the human heart, and all that is in us, and all that is yet to come.

Mine is not a *Christian view, I know, but I'm not Christian, so...

Yes, I understand.

I'm familiar with Boyd. I have his book, "The God of the Possible." I ran into that view several years ago, shortly after I first also encountered Process Theology. The two are somewhat related, as both are launched on the concern that if God foreknew things, it might imply He also had to constrain them by interfering with them...which, of course, is not at all necessary, given the proper implications of the idea of "knowing" things. And both try to resolve the problem by proposing a God that either changes or fails to be capable of knowing anything before it happens...hard to explain, given the presence of so much prophecy in the Bible, and so much of it fulfilled already.

Open Theism is very much a minority view in the Christian community, and quite controversial, for precisely the reason that while it seems to solve some aspects of concern about foreknowledge, it opens up equally big problems of another kind; and because, of course, it really doesn't square with Scripture.

Still, I get the reasons for Boyd's view. And I think the worry about divine foreknowledge being some kind of constraint on human volition is actually a kind of category error, a non-sequitur, once we grasp that knowing and making are distinct verbs -- the latter implicating interference in causality, but the former not implicating any interference at all.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 6:02 pm

We can agree on this: a man, any man, has, or is, a free will and he is morally responsible for his actions.

And BigMike is fulla poop.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 6:38 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 6:02 pm

We can agree on this: a man, any man, has, or is, a free will and he is morally responsible for his actions.

And BigMike is fulla poop.

Yes, to all three.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 1:46 pm

mickthinks wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 11:08 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 4:17 am
The law is for citizens. Deportation is for invaders.

Cruelty is never civilised. Never has been, and never will be. But it is popular with right wingers like Immanuel Can.

Officials beat and shocked Hernández Rojas with a Taser while they were deporting him to Mexico through the San Diego border in May 2010. He was hospitalized and died a couple of days later.
[…]
“It’s the result of use-of-force laws that violate international standards and fail to protect civilian life. It’s the result of a justice system that has proven itself incapable of holding law enforcement agents accountable.” https://truthout.org/articles/intl-huma ... ed-killed/

It's not cruelty. It's called "justice."

Manny doesn’t see the cruelty. I told you Manny would have been a good Schutzstaffel Offizier.

mickthinks wrote: ↑Tue May 06, 2025 7:32 pm Manny doesn’t see...

Same answer. See above.