Hi Craig, I am not an expert on Laplace, and it seems from what you present that he uses a billiard ball analogy. Something that became popular after Newton, who Laplace followed in the timeline. The notion of "the Laws of Nature" is a bit confusing. It could be argued, that a law is put into place by free will. We are natural, and we make laws. Our laws can be considered laws of nature unless we are somehow Divine and separate from Nature. I do not see this to be the case. So, can it be proposed that he who puts laws in place has free will? Perhaps the Laws of Nature is a misnomer, but these words arise for a reason, in my opinion.
If such Laws are also predetermined, then we return to Ham's Source. Mark On Sat, Apr 23, 2011 at 12:34 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > [Ham] >> Laplace used the premise that absolute knowledge would give us the power to >> predict events. The "flaw" is that it is not possible to acquire >> absolute knowledge; so he is begging the conclusion that events >> are deterministic. > > Laplace's argument does not depend on the possibility of absolute > knowledge (whatever that might be). > Instead: > 1) Assume that the first exercise of free-will occurs at time t0. > 2) If D0 is the complete state of the universe at time t0 & > if the laws of nature were such that from D0 only D1 would result at > time t1, then D1 must result at time t1. > 3) :. D1 must occur at time t1 > 4) If D1 must occur at time t1, then the exercise of free-will > cannot produce some result other than D1. > 5) :. The exercise of free-will cannot produce some result other than D1. > > So Laplace has argued that free-will cannot change the outcome that > must result by the laws of nature. > Craig > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org/md/archives.html > Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
