“God is testing us”?

Originally posted by Lord Shark
This is a little off topic, but where do you stand on Frankfurt examples?

They show that an agent can be responsible for an action, in a manner that provides a suitable foundation for moral assessment of some sort, despite the fact that that agent could not have done otherwise. In fact, I've never shared the intuition that one need live metaphysical options in order to be morally assessable. You?

Originally posted by Lord Shark
Empathy.

After all, if it is reversible brain damage that's not so bad. More like a prosthetic pregnancy belly that men can wear to experience the weight gain and back ache their spouse experiences.

But if that man was all knowing like “God” then he wouldn’t want to wear a prosthetic pregnancy belly to experience the weight gain and back ache experiences because, with his infinite wisdom, he would already know what that experience would be like else he wouldn’t be all knowing.

Originally posted by whodey
When you take a test who is the benefactor? Is it the teacher? After all, the teacher knows all the answers. In addtion, they probably have a good idea as to whether or not you know the answers based upon previous conversations. The question is, how can we show you what you really know or do not know?

“Empathy…”

Empathy to who? and how could diminishing your own knowledge/understanding either be a part of empathy or be caused by it?


“…When you take a test who is the benefactor? Is it the teacher? After all, the teacher knows all the answers…”

I admit this assumption I made that what people mean by “God is testing us” is that “God” is the benefactor here is a flaw or at least a potential flaw in my original argument.
It all depends on whether or not, in every day English, when somebody says “God is testing us”, do they usually mean “God is testing us so HE can find out something” or “God is testing us so WE can find out something”? I had always implicitly assumed the former but now I am not so sure.

“…The question is, how can we show you what you really know or do not know?...”

If you are all powerful you wouldn’t have to do this indirectly and inefficiently by giving us a “test” to make us find out for ourselves; you could simply and effortlessly magically feed in the info directly into our brains and dispense with wasting time with a test. So what use/need would you have with a test if you are all powerful and all knowing?

Originally posted by karoly aczel
Legends are often loosely based on facts. (Facts should ALWAYS be cross-checked)

I reckon the Adam and Eve story is an allegory, but the exact facts I'm not sure about.

We cannot know if there was a garden anywhere, and this garden had two inhabitants. But we know for sure that there were no first two people, that we know for sure.

Legends has their value, no question about it. It explains a lot of things that people of the old biblical time was thinking about. Now, when we know more about biology, we have better answers.

Originally posted by bbarr
They show that an agent can be responsible for an action, in a manner that provides a suitable foundation for moral assessment of some sort, despite the fact that that agent could not have done otherwise. In fact, I've never shared the intuition that one need live metaphysical options in order to be morally assessable. You?

I also don't share the intuition that unconditional alternative possibilities are necessary for moral responsibility. However I'm rethinking whether the Frankfurt examples are effective against incompatibilist counters.

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
But if that man was all knowing like “God” then he wouldn’t want to wear a prosthetic pregnancy belly to experience the weight gain and back ache experiences because, with his infinite wisdom, he would already know what that experience would be like else he wouldn’t be all knowing.

Well this just highlights the potential paradoxes in the idea of omniscience. How can an all knowing being know what it is like not to know stuff? Theologians make a distinction between inherent and total omniscience to try to fix this. The former is like the capacity to know everything knowable whereas the latter is just knowing everything knowable.

Originally posted by Lord Shark
I also don't share the intuition that unconditional alternative possibilities are necessary for moral responsibility. However I'm rethinking whether the Frankfurt examples are effective against incompatibilist counters.

Do you have any particular incompatibilist responses in mind?

Originally posted by FabianFnas
We cannot know if there was a garden anywhere, and this garden had two inhabitants. But we know for sure that there were no first two people, that we know for sure.

Legends has their value, no question about it. It explains a lot of things that people of the old biblical time was thinking about. Now, when we know more about biology, we have better answers.

Thats why I say it is allegory.
There is no way just two people would've started the whole race.

Maybe the Adam and Eve story represents a little "bump" in evolution that changed the course for the rest of humanity to follow (?)

For example to some it means 'alien intervention '.
Or maybe the "fruit" was a psycadelic that made people think differently forever...
Or maybe it is just a fairy tale and too vague to draw any allagorical conclusions from.
Certainly, as a literal story, it is laughable

Originally posted by bbarr
Do you have any particular incompatibilist responses in mind?

Yes. Suppose the incompatibilist recasts the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP) not as the general ability to do otherwise but the ability to do something specific, namely the ability to decide otherwise.

My response is that the Frankfurt examples do provide a counterexample to PAP as originally construed, which is that a necessary condition for an agent to be acting on the kind of free will sufficient for moral responsibility is the ability to do otherwise. Since decisions are just examples of things agents do, it follows that if PAP is false, the ability to decide otherwise is not necessary.

But then, maybe the incompatibilist might reply that deciding is a special case that has particular moral significance, and it isn't difficult to imagine how they might proceed there.

I suspect that I have made a fairly fundamental conceptual blunder, but I just can't see it at the moment.

Originally posted by Lord Shark
Yes. Suppose the incompatibilist recasts the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP) not as the general ability to do otherwise but the ability to do something specific, namely the ability to decide otherwise.

My response is that the Frankfurt examples do provide a counterexample to PAP as originally construed, which is that a necessary con ...[text shortened]... at I have made a fairly fundamental conceptual blunder, but I just can't see it at the moment.

Interesting. Suppose that decisions are just the formations of intentions to act. Intentions are the outcomes of processes of deliberation; sometimes habitual or dispositional, but in every case indicating that some consideration is taken as a practical reason of some weight. Couldn't the Frankfurt examples just be modified so that the prohibitive intrusion occurs at the level of deliberation? S forms the intention to A on the basis of assigning R some weight, but had S failed to assign R that weight, the implanted chip (or whatever) would kick in and make S assign R that weight.

Originally posted by bbarr
Interesting. Suppose that decisions are just the formations of intentions to act. Intentions are the outcomes of processes of deliberation; sometimes habitual or dispositional, but in every case indicating that some consideration is taken as a practical reason of some weight. Couldn't the Frankfurt examples just be modified so that the prohibitive intrusion ...[text shortened]... R that weight, the implanted chip (or whatever) would kick in and make S assign R that weight.

Yes that was what I came up with too. But then there is a particular problem with the modification in that the specification of the conditions for the chip to kick in require S to have basically decided the wrong way already and then this is overridden. The problem with that is we seem to be assuming what we're trying to falsify.

Originally posted by Lord Shark
Yes that was what I came up with too. But then there is a particular problem with the modification in that the specification of the conditions for the chip to kick in require S to have basically decided the wrong way already and then this is overridden. The problem with that is we seem to be assuming what we're trying to falsify.

If the chip kicks in at the level at weighing reasons, then I don't see any problem with assuming what we're trying to falsify. If you construe weighing reasons as proto-decisions, then we're left with a regress on deliberation (since these proto-decisions will themselves be, presumably, reason-responsive), similar to the Kripke-Wittgensteinian rule-following regress. The weighing of reasons must be, at some level, just automatic.

Originally posted by Lord Shark
This is a little off topic, but where do you stand on Frankfurt examples?

I agree with your analysis of the limits libertarian free will places on omniscience, but how can we deal with the problems we have touched on in other threads regarding god's relationship to time? You'll notice that your account assumes or implies god as an agent which in turn implies existence in time.

I think Frankfurt-style cases are successful in refuting the principle of alternative possibilities. In fact, I know I have brought up Frankfurt cases before in this forum on at least one occasion (the occasion that comes to mind is a discussion I had with knightmeister in a thread where he was promoting the PAP). So my stance on the Frankfurt examples is that they can be a useful weapon against the PAP. Your discussion about the ability to decide (vice do) otherwise is interesting, but I am inclined to agree with bbarr's latest point: if the counterfactual intervening is implemented on a low enough level, I don't yet see a problem.

Regarding god's relationship with time, yes my initial response assumes existence in time, and that is an assumption that also seems to characterize the initial argument that prompted the thread. I'm not sure how best to proceed here, but my first thought would be that I'm sure the theist could take exception right away to Andrew Hamilton's argument. His argument seems to suppose that God's knowing certain propositions can be temporally indexed; but according to some accounts of God's eternality, such is not the case. If God is "eternal", then we could presumably say that God knows this or that proposition eternally; but it would be in error to place His knowledge within our timeline. So I think the theist could object right away on such grounds. That would be my first impression.

Originally posted by bbarr
If the chip kicks in at the level at weighing reasons, then I don't see any problem with assuming what we're trying to falsify. If you construe weighing reasons as proto-decisions, then we're left with a regress on deliberation (since these proto-decisions will themselves be, presumably, reason-responsive), similar to the Kripke-Wittgensteinian rule-following regress. The weighing of reasons must be, at some level, just automatic.

Yes this seems better than my attempt because it gives some detail of the deliberation process and hence how the chip might work in principle without assuming that the deliberation process is deterministic.

I had argued as follows, suppose the chip is activated when the brain state of S is sufficiently close to a correlate of the decision not to shoot, and then it actively steers S's brain toward the decision to shoot. If S decided to shoot anyway, the mechanism played no causal role but it is still true that S could not have decided otherwise.

The counter to this was that this assumes that we can reliably extrapolate from preceding brain states to the correlate of a decision not to shoot, and this assumes determinism, whereas the indeterminist can say that this precludes alternative possibilities a priori. I countered that in various ways I won't go into here, but do you agree your version sidesteps this criticism more neatly as I do, or do you think the criticism is flawed on other grounds anyway?

Originally posted by LemonJello
I think Frankfurt-style cases are successful in refuting the principle of alternative possibilities. In fact, I know I have brought up Frankfurt cases before in this forum on at least one occasion (the occasion that comes to mind is a discussion I had with knightmeister in a thread where he was promoting the PAP). So my stance on the Frankfurt examples ...[text shortened]... he theist could object right away on such grounds. That would be my first impression.

I agree about the Frankfurt examples but think care is needed in framing the mechanism in such a way as not to preclude alternative possibilities a priori.

I think we touched on the problems of god as agent in relation to time in another thread recently didn't we? For me it just emphasises the all-bets-are-off nature of such a deity.