Subject: RE: imaginary worlds etc.

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2001 20:09:40 EST

I'm really sorry I mentioned free will, but once I get on a standard rant 
it is hard to stop before the end. So, OK. Free will in any meaningful 
sense for morality has nothing to do with our feelings; we could have 
delusory feelings of freedom or we could be free and not notice it, aand the 
feeling is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether I could choose to do 
something different from what I do in fact do. If I could, even if I never 
do, then I have free will. If not, not. So, if there is no other possible 
world, I clearly cannot so choose. But if I cannot choose to do otherwise, I 
cannot choose to do what I do do (regardless of my subjective states of 
indecision and coming to a decision, etc.) . I am, therefore, not morally 
responsible for what I do and so am blameless for it. Any so-called 
punishment is then unjustified infliction of pain upon an innocent and would 
be an evil, but for the fact that those who inflict it also do not choose to 
do it. And so on and on.
As for definitions of God being contradictory, not obviously. What does 
happen is that any attempted definition or list of properties of God tend to 
combine with one set of beliefs to support one conclusion and with another 
set to support an incompatible conclusion, with no good way to decide which 
set of beliefs to give up, since giving up any of them leads to uncomfortable 
results. Of course, giving up God is the easiest one in a sense -- it gets 
rid of all that set of problems. But they come back with the universe or 
something else. 
<Is there a possible world in which false statements are true? > This has 
to be said very carefully. Obviously, if there is more than one possible 
world, there is a possible world in which some statements false in this world 
are true (else the two worlds would be identical, i.e, only one). And it is 
not implausible, once we let in one possible world, to let in so many that 
there is a world in which every contingent false statement in this world is 
true (not quite cheating, since it requires only that it be true in some 
other world). So I suppose you are asking whether there is a world in which 
every stement false IN THAT WORLD is true IN THAT SAME WORLD. I don't think 
so, since that would not have any real use in the things possible worlds are 
to do. But I can imagine situations (smaller than worlds) where some claims 
are both true and false, even where 2+2=5 is true, because 4=5.
<In Physics there is the interesting idea that if two things are 
identical, they are in fact the same thing.> Not really Physics, where it is 
said in fact to be demonstrable that nothing is ever identical. But I can't 
follow that proof, obvious as the claim seems to be.
<It is quite possible that there is only one possible world. And that all 
others could only have arrived through violation of the conservation of 
momentum. Quantum physics may allow us an escape, but do we really have to go 
that far?> This and the paragraphs that follow sugggest we have gotten off 
the topic a little (considering how we got here, the deviation seems minor), 
since we are not talking about physically possible worlds (some of them have 
different laws of physics, after all) but logically possible one, 
possibilities limited, at least initially by, at most, non-contradiction. If 
we are not careful in using these, it does turn out that the conclusion 
follows, that anything can happen in any possible world and so we can get no 
information out of such talk. However, we continue to talk the way that 
possible worlds are meant to illuminate, so we need to try to find what 
restrictions there need be on such things to make our talk make sense -- or 
even be meaningfully precise.
<The fact that the past and present are completely "determined", that is, 
fixed and inexorable, does not mean that anybody has enough information to be 
able to compute the future precisely.> Point? What does computation, 
prediction, etc. have to do with whether or not the course of events is 
totally fixed?
<Once we start talking about non-provable assertions and ill-defined 
concepts, we are talking nonsense. I wrote about this in my jinvi article on 
balvi. I suggest you read it. > Nice to get back to balvi, whence all this 
started. My system refuses to get it (white page, incorrectable error, 
blahdeblah). But the first part of this line is surely right and thus the 
reason for being VERYcareful about all the notions involved here. We have 
seen too many of the other sort already.
<Actually, I think this is where this daffy butterslide goes off the 
rails, to mix several metaphors. How can all predications be reduced to 
identities, pray tell?> I may have forgotten some crucial details but I 
think it goes by way of reducing all universal quantifiers to particulars and 
then all particulars to selector Skolem functions so that Fx becomes first, 
Ey(Fy &y= x) and then x = SyFy. 
<Foreknowledge, even perfect foreknowledge, doesn't imply causation.> 
True, but to the point, perfect foreknowledge does imply the lack of choice.