From: utzoo!decvax!pur-ee!ecn-pa.scott
Newsgroups: net.misc
Title: Re: Silly beliefs about the future
Article-I.D.: ecn-pa.273
Posted: Thu Jul 29 09:19:46 1982
Received: Fri Jul 30 04:43:02 1982
References: watmath.3120

There's a difference between predestination and foreknowledge.
I personally don't see any incompatibility between having free
choice and all of my future being known.  If I were in a room
with you and said, "In 45 seconds, someone is going to throw
a rock through the window," and, if it actually happened, you
would be at a loss to decide whether I had actually caused
someone to throw the rock, or if I just knew somehow that it
was going to happen.  The place where a lot of people stumble
in talking about the fixedness of the future is where they try
to make implications about causality based on determinism.
In other words, people try to say that if the entire future is
in some sense fixed, i.e. it is possible to know (even though
there may be no person who actually does know) what will happen
during the entire future (whatever that is) then we can't really
have free choice, because our choices are determined by what
will happen in the future.  Not necessarily so!  If we were able
to step outside of time and look at any event in the space-time
continuum, then we would see what the results of future free
choices will be.  That doesn't mean that in doing so we have
fixed those choices and removed the element of free will.
(whew!)

	Scott Deerwester
	Purdue University Libraries