Free Will or Omniscience? (Sorry if i misspelled omniscience)

[Chromatophore]

The character is nothing more than a specific arrangement of ink on paper.

If that were true then it would be impossible for two authors to write the same character.

Seeing as I can copy whatever words you put down, I fail to see how this is true.

Nevermind

[OldTrees]

Wow this grew fast last night.

Assume an Omnipotent deity
Said deity can do anything that is possible but cannot do the impossible. (if the impossible can be done it is not impossible)
Therefore Omnipotence does not permit the impossible.

Assume Free Will (the ability to have done other than you did) could exists in material beings.
Assume an Omnipotent deity.
Creating Free Willed beings is possible (premise 1 where we assumed they could exist) therefore the Omnipotent deity can create them.
Adding Omniscience would not change the result unless it contradicted Omnipotence.
Therefore if Free Will could exist and if an OO deity could exist then they would not necessarily contradict each other.

[Chromatophore]

The character is nothing more than a specific arrangement of ink on paper.

If that were true then it would be impossible for two authors to write the same character.

Seeing as I can copy whatever words you put down, I fail to see how this is true.

Nevermind

Sorry i had to go to bed.  What i meant was how can one author write a book (a different book not just copying the words verbatim) that includes a character from someone else's book/story.  Like when Luke Skywalker appears in a new star wars book or something.

If he is just the collection of ink on the page, the mere summation of plot points divined upon him by a writer, then how does a second author know how to write him into a new story with new circumstances such that a reader recognizes this as the same character and not as a completely different character who simply happens to share the same name?

[Neopergoss]

Ummm...those words define linear causes.  Using the language of logic, "for everything that happens there are conditions such that, given them, nothing else could happen" is written "X -> Y", or "if X then Y".  That's the definition of a linear cause.

It's the definition of a cause, which could include some kind of non-linear cause. Indeterminism is rejecting causes in favor of ??? (hence the term "indeterminism")

[QuantumT]

The character is nothing more than a specific arrangement of ink on paper.

If that were true then it would be impossible for two authors to write the same character.

Seeing as I can copy whatever words you put down, I fail to see how this is true.

Nevermind

Sorry i had to go to bed.  What i meant was how can one author write a book (a different book not just copying the words verbatim) that includes a character from someone else's book/story.  Like when Luke Skywalker appears in a new star wars book or something.

If he is just the collection of ink on the page, the mere summation of plot points divined upon him by a writer, then how does a second author know how to write him into a new story with new circumstances such that a reader recognizes this as the same character and not as a completely different character who simply happens to share the same name?

Because the arrangement of ink has specific traits (name only being one of them), just like anything else.

Let's say you have a super ball. I notice that it has several traits; it's red, rubber, and spherical. I then go and make something that is red, rubber, and spherical, and say that I have produced a super ball. Note that I could have gone and made something that was blue, glass, and cubical and called that a super ball, however you wouldn't really think of it has the same thing, just something that happened to share the same name.

[Essence]

Ummm...those words define linear causes.  Using the language of logic, "for everything that happens there are conditions such that, given them, nothing else could happen" is written "X -> Y", or "if X then Y".  That's the definition of a linear cause.

It's the definition of a cause, which could include some kind of non-linear cause. Indeterminism is rejecting causes in favor of ??? (hence the term "indeterminism")

Wikipedia disagrees: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indeterminism#Types_of_cause)

Necessary causes:

If x is a necessary cause of y; then the presence of y necessarily implies that x preceded it. The presence of x, however, does not imply that y will occur.

Sufficient causes:

If x is a sufficient cause of y, then the presence of x necessarily implies the presence of y. However, another cause z may alternatively cause y. Thus the presence of y does not imply the presence of x.

Another way is to consider not yet a single cause, isolated, but a complex course of cause. So we have linearity or non-linearity in the courses of causes: deterministic in the first case, indeterministic in the second one.

[Chromatophore]

The character is nothing more than a specific arrangement of ink on paper.

If that were true then it would be impossible for two authors to write the same character.

Seeing as I can copy whatever words you put down, I fail to see how this is true.

Nevermind

Sorry i had to go to bed.  What i meant was how can one author write a book (a different book not just copying the words verbatim) that includes a character from someone else's book/story.  Like when Luke Skywalker appears in a new star wars book or something.

If he is just the collection of ink on the page, the mere summation of plot points divined upon him by a writer, then how does a second author know how to write him into a new story with new circumstances such that a reader recognizes this as the same character and not as a completely different character who simply happens to share the same name?

Because the arrangement of ink has specific traits (name only being one of them), just like anything else.

Let's say you have a super ball. I notice that it has several traits; it's red, rubber, and spherical. I then go and make something that is red, rubber, and spherical, and say that I have produced a super ball. Note that I could have gone and made something that was blue, glass, and cubical and called that a super ball, however you wouldn't really think of it has the same thing, just something that happened to share the same name.

I don't understand the analogy.

If someone reads two books by different authors about Luke Skywalker, they know what to expect of him.  He behaves consistently (according to his principles) when confronted with any situation.  If the reader was told Luke Skywalker was met by a stranger in a dark alley they could reasonably guess how he would react.
The reader is able to extrapolate based on what they read to understand him as an entity separate from what was written about him.

(A pathological writer could write a book about Luke Skywalker in which he behaves in a manner that does not coincide with the principles he follows in the majority of what is written about him, but most readers would recognize such a Luke Skywalker as a different character).

Now on the other hand we have two things called super balls, one of which is a red rubber sphere and the other a blue glass cube.  I don't see how anyone can extrapolate based on that information to determine what we expect of the next superball we encounter.

In what way are the two superballs analgous to two depictions by different authors of the same character?  Or am i missing the point entirely?

[QuantumT]

Your red super ball and my red super ball analogize to the 2 consistent depictions of Luke Skywalker. Both red super balls (Luke Skywalker) share a certain set of traits that we recognize as similar. That's how we (the authors) can write about Luke Skywalker in a consistent way even though Luke Skywalker is just an arrangement of ink on a page, because we've identified what specific arrangement of ink people identify as Luke.

To get back to the point, I think that in order for something to have free will, it has to be an animate object. Nobody asks if a rock has free will because the very idea is ludicrous. Similarly, ink on a page as no free will.

[Chromatophore]

Your red super ball and my red super ball analogize to the 2 consistent depictions of Luke Skywalker. Both red super balls (Luke Skywalker) share a certain set of traits that we recognize as similar. That's how we (the authors) can write about Luke Skywalker in a consistent way even though Luke Skywalker is just an arrangement of ink on a page, because we've identified what specific arrangement of ink people identify as Luke.

To get back to the point, I think that in order for something to have free will, it has to be an animate object. Nobody asks if a rock has free will because the very idea is ludicrous. Similarly, ink on a page as no free will.

But those traits aren't a part of the ink on the page... they exist n the mind of the reader and their existence in the collective consciousness of all the readers grants existence to the character independent of the writer... I feel like we're going around in circles here...

[QuantumT]

Your red super ball and my red super ball analogize to the 2 consistent depictions of Luke Skywalker. Both red super balls (Luke Skywalker) share a certain set of traits that we recognize as similar. That's how we (the authors) can write about Luke Skywalker in a consistent way even though Luke Skywalker is just an arrangement of ink on a page, because we've identified what specific arrangement of ink people identify as Luke.

To get back to the point, I think that in order for something to have free will, it has to be an animate object. Nobody asks if a rock has free will because the very idea is ludicrous. Similarly, ink on a page as no free will.

But those traits aren't a part of the ink on the page... they exist n the mind of the reader and their existence in the collective consciousness of all the readers grants existence to the character independent of the writer... I feel like we're going around in circles here...

The traits themselves may exist in the minds of the reader, but their association with the character is only because of the ink.

For example, let's say we think that one of Bob's character traits is that he's brave. Here's how we came to that conclusion:

Chapter 1 - Bob does something brave.
Chapter 2 - Bob does something brave.
Chapter 3 - Bob does something brave.
Etc.

The author has conveyed the idea that the character of Bob is brave through repeated examples. However if instead the author had written:

Chapter 1 - Bob does something cowardly.
Chapter 2 - Bob does something cowardly.
Chapter 3 - Bob does something cowardly.
Etc.

We would no longer think Bob is brave, we would think he was cowardly instead. The way we think of the character is entirely defined by the words chosen by the author.

For a better analogy than the super ball, the character can be thought of as a puppet. A puppet might look like it exists as an independent entity, but in reality everything it does is decided entirely by the puppet master. The puppet offers zero input into the decisions because it is nothing more than a specific arrangement of cloth and is therefore incapable of offering input.

[Chromatophore]

You seem to think that the character only comes into being after the writer writes about him, whereas i think that the character exists beforehand and the writer is merely conveying the notion of the character through writing.

I think an analogy would be to the concept of "number" (specifically counting numbers i.e. positive integers).  Do numbers exist independent of the objects they are counting.  If there were nothing to count would the number still exist?

If no one ever wrote about Luke Skywalker would he still exist (as a collection of principles)?

[QuantumT]

If no one ever wrote about Luke Skywalker would he still exist (as a collection of principles)?

No. The principles themselves would still exist, but the specific arrangement of the that represents Luke Skywalker would not.

If he exists, then so do all of these characters. I challenge you to define what all of their characteristic traits are. The fact that no one has ever written about them should present no challenge if they exist even before someone has written about them.

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