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From: jim@ism780b.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: moRE omniscience and freedom
Message-ID: <57@ism780b.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 18-Oct-84 00:33:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: ism780b.57
Posted: Thu Oct 18 00:33:07 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 15-Oct-84 01:49:11 EDT
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Nf-ID: #R:wucs:-39600:ism780b:27500050:000:1116
Nf-From: ism780b!jim    Oct  9 23:31:00 1984

> But, Paul Torek, imagine the following:
> After contemplating my various courses of action, I choose what seems to me 
> to be the best.  Then I note that that was what I knew I would do.
> Having the desire to test this whole idea of preknowledge, I decide to
> follow my second best course of action -- that is, I choose to do something
> different from what I "know" I am going to do.

Why did you put the quotes around "know".  Because it is possible to choose
to do something different from what you "know" you are going to do, but it
is not possible to do something different from what you *know* you are going
to do (where *knowing* is absolute; that is, knowing something not actually
true is a formal contradiction; certainly this sense is implied by true
omniscience).
If you succeed in your test of preknowledge, then you didn't truly know.
So if you truly know, you can't succeed.
So if you are omniscient, you are not omnipotent.
Q.E.D.

-- Jim Balter (ima!jim)
"Why does it bother you so much that you can't be both omniscient
and omnipotent, as though you had a bloody chance at either one anyway?"