Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!hplabs!hao!seismo!harvard!godot!ima!ism780b!jim 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 Lines: 0 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?"