I take it you're no fan of Freud. The brain and body also exist in the moment of decision. — Marchesk

That is true. Brain and body however are material and obey laws of nature. The problem according to OP is consciousness.

In case of quantum mechanic, anomaly in black radiation comes first and then the anomaly was resolved by Plank. You can read about it in here. The same is true for special relativity.

Moreover there is another problem related to omniscient being who has free will. It is described in here.

How? If this is god then what he says is all there is, regardless of what they think. — Cavacava

Either they are free to do the opposite or they are not free. There is no blame in both cases.

You mean like he told Judas or Peter.

"The Son of Man goes, even as it is written of him, but woe to that man through whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would be better for that man if he had not been born." Judas, who betrayed him, answered: "It isn't me, is it, Rabbi?" He said to him: "You said it."

“this very night, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times.”

He played his own story?

Still like my argument. — Cavacava

That is one of the example if they could make firm decision then they could do the opposite.

No physicist claims that physics provides such an explanation as you claim, nor is the term Laws of Nature used in physics. So we are back to you having to enumerate the Laws of Nature that explain how all matter evolves and reacts to stimuli? — Rich

The physicist call it standard model in which all equations related to particles movement can be derived from.

But you're not consciously aware of what all goes into making your decision. — Marchesk

The options and the conscious decision are all which exist in the moment of decision.

There's a more straight forward incompatibility to be found, as far as I can tell.

Suppose one entity, or single mind, that's both omniscient and free (to change it's mind).
Mind and freedom to change it's mind already implies temporal. †

Freedom (to change mind) is independent of whatever, including whatever knowledge.
In principle it's solely dependent on (the existence of) said mind, if it's to be free at least.
So, freely changing mind along the way cannot be known prior, since otherwise it wouldn't be free (to do so).

Conversely, in case said entity already knows everything at an earlier time, then that means the knowledge is true.
Which, in turn, cannot be false later on, and hence means the entity cannot change mind by then, since otherwise it would be false.

Not because omniscience itself is causative, but just because the knowledge is true.
(As an aside, this line of reasoning doesn't involve modal logic per se.)

Note, this stuff pertains to just one mind that's assumed both all-knowing and free, it's not about any other entities/minds.

Thus, God cannot be a mind that's both omniscient (with foreknowledge) and free.

† Some responses to the incompatibility will have the entity (or God as a special case) be "atemporal".
I think this may be even more problematic, though. — jorndoe

I came across this which of course apply to temporal God, Jesus. What is the issue related to atemporal God?

Unfortunately this is not true, I have never heard of anyone getting answers from god. So no one can decide the opposite. — Sir2u

There are claim of prophecy in the past and even now.

I remember discussing this paradox in one of college philosophy classes. I can't recall which authors we read, but I remember we watched a portion of Minority Report, because it deals with the same idea--seeing the future, and the implications of that. I wish I remembered more details to share, but unfortunately I don't. Considering it now, though, it's difficult to even comprehend. Essentially, the ability to see/predict the future would require determinism, and yet if you show a person their future you are now adding a variable that wasn't present before (them having knowledge of the future) which means you are changing their future, which shouldn't be possible if you were able to see it in the first place. — JustSomeGuy

Interesting.

If god is construed as omniscient, then god knows everything, from the beginning to the end of time, the whole shebang, but if this is so then his knowledge of our decision/actions is similar to our reflections on past events, which neither he nor we can change, in this way we are free to do what we will, because god can't change them, god is past them. — Cavacava

No, His knowledge of our decision is not similar to our reflection of past events. He can tell us what we will do in future.

I had a really hard time following your post, but this is one point I could understand. In what universe is there a "fantastic" correlation between what we expect and what happens? — T Clark

In our universe. Laws of nature dictate that at the moment my hand should move and type specific word for example. I am consciously aware of situation and can decide too about whether I should move my hand or not. There is always a fork when a decision is involved, so called options. I choose the branch which I wish. So the chance that laws of nature exactly dictates what I decide is 50% if there are only two options. People makes decisions at each instant. This makes the chance even lower.

Really? How so? You can start by enumerating all of the Laws of Nature that are involved with this explanation. Then you can explain how they formed conscious experience which is that what reacts to stimuli. — Rich

This is a physicist interpretation of reality which seems coherent if there was no consciousness. We are dealing with a improbable situation when there is conscious decision.

No, the laws of nature just explain how simple matter evolves and reacts to a stimuli.

If you want to understand materialism, just substitute God for the Laws of Nature.

The Laws of Nature act in anyway they wish and can do anything it wishes. It can create Consciousness and make Consciousness act in any manner that it does. There is no question the power of the mystical Laws of Nature (an entirely invented abstract concept) that is creating the illusion of Consciousness.

Materialism is a rather interesting religion that does not succomb to either logic or commonsense. — Rich

Interesting religion but impossible, unless you have a God who knows everything.

Real time (duration) is the feeling of existence. — Rich

Don't we exist when we are asleep and don't feel time?

There is a gap here:

But there is another way to do it that gives a different result. This is for an observer inside the universe to compare the evolution of the particles with the rest of the universe. In this case, the internal observer would see a change and this difference in the evolution of entangled particles compared with everything else is an important a measure of time.

This is an elegant and powerful idea. It suggests that time is an emergent phenomenon that comes about because of the nature of entanglement. And it exists only for observers inside the universe. Any god-like observer outside sees a static, unchanging universe, just as the Wheeler-DeWitt equations predict.

What attach us to reality?

Mind is everywhere. It is dispersed throughout the body. The mind in the gut area is well recognized as is the mind throughout the muscular system (i.e. muscle memory). The human body had 10x more microbes than human cells, and those microbes have their own minds.

The "minds" in the body communicate with each other via the nervous system, which in itself is another form of mind. Out of habit they learn to work together, but at times they are overridden by the larger mind which we call the "I". The I creates and commands via will power (exerts energy stored in the body). This process can be overt (conscious) or maybe be developing in a less focused manner unconsciously, since the mind is dispersed and is every bit a mystery as is the life out creates. It observes itself and in doing so continues to learn more about itself. — Rich

Why there is only one "I"?

I don't think so. I think it's more probable to take place in subconscious awareness. — phrzn

What is subconscious awareness? You meant subconscious mind?

like i wrote in your last post. i think it is both, i think a choice will have entered your mind subconsciously but you can rethink that idea based on the possible consequence of that decision. someones personality may be inclined to speak and act before they think but someone else may be the opposite and think before they act or say. i think that you're right to a certain extent, i think that every time you're made to make a decision a subconscious choice is made in you're head but it is definitely possible to rethink it and change the outcome of your decision.

hope you don't mind me replying to both posts, i think you have a good point and i like this topic alot. — David Solman

Thank you very much for your contribution.

Thanks for the comment.

thanks for the reference.

To me imagination is duty of conscious mind
— bahman
What is imagination, you think? I cannot agree with you.
"The term imagination comes from the latin verb imaginari meaning 'to picture oneself'."
--
"The conscious mind includes such things as the sensations, perceptions, memories, feeling and fantasies inside of our current awareness."
Imagination is something beyond sensation. Sometimes, just a vision comes to make you aware of something. — phrzn

Well, can I say that imagination is one of duty of conscious mind?

In the second case the content of sentence should be understandable for the second person so we need to imagine whether the sentence can convey the content of our mind. That is where conscious mind comes to play, imagination.
— bahman
I don't think it's like that! What you said has been analyzed in linguistics and psycholinguistics. The communication and the transfer of the meaning between the two minds is somehow universal. We do it subconsciously. — phrzn

What do you mean with the universal in here? We sometimes misunderstand the message of a sentence sometimes.

Yes, this is the real time of existence. — Rich

Interesting.

That is the price you pay for holding substance views of space-time, as if space and time were transcendental tape-measures being aligned to a table-universe.

So why not simply reduce talk of time to measured intervals between events? For presently observed change does not require a background notion of temporarily if one accepts present change as irreducible and fundamental. — sime

Time is real. I have an argument in favor of it in here.

I don't think this is totally clear. Sure we may experience Freudian slips where bits of our unconscious bubble up to the surface, but in general I think the unconscious is not ordered, at least not on a logical basis. Its activity seems to have more to do with our own idiosyncratic structuring (metaphoric and associative) of conscious activities, memories, beliefs the whole gamut of mental activity. The structuring here is not direct or straight forward. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar sometimes it is not.

Extraneous thoughts spring from our imagination, which is dynamic and always working. The unconscious contributes to what we imagine, but we don't realize its contribution normally. It nudge us, pushes us or compel us to think and act in certain ways.

Most time this is beneficial it opens up un-apparent connections, other times it may be harmful, which is why people seek therapy. to understand why they do what they do. — Cavacava

So you are thinking that imagination is a conscious activity whereas thinking is a conscious activity?

Although I agree you cannot "deal with all knowledge we accumulated and memorized in unconscious mind" , when we think we focus on a particular information. We don't need to be aware of the entire content of our mind to create a thought. It usually comes from stimuli, and from the first thought comes a second thought related in some way to the first one, and so on. — Abaoaqu

I think we could both agree on the fact that we need a context when we think and discuss a problem. The context can be defined clearly and that is the duty of subconscious mind since you need a structure which is comprehensible for both party, which can be performed by using language. The solution to a problem is either in the related to unconscious activity or conscious activity. In first case, the content of our unconscious mind should be large enough to allow us to produce a solution unconsciously otherwise we are talking about something non-existence to our experience. That is where conscious mind and imagination comes to play.

Can be both!! No, again I don't agree to the main idea of your discussion, Bahman.
You think it's unconscious!? That's all? Prove it with scientific data if there's any, plz. — phrzn

According to scientific research it is both. You can read more about it in here.

I however don't agree with them. To me imagination is duty of conscious mind whereas constructing a thought which can be verbalized through a sentence is unconscious. It is simple to understand that. We are either talking about a known idea or one of us is unaware of an idea. We could simply construct a sentence and convey the idea which we have in our mind in the first case. In the second case the content of sentence should be understandable for the second person so we need to imagine whether the sentence can convey the content of our mind. That is where conscious mind comes to play, imagination.

Each sentence you write is one thought. So i guess you are conscious of your thoughts. — Purple Pond

That is no true. Sometimes an answer to a question just pop into our conscious mind when you are thinking of something else. Moreover, thought as I argued required the collective knowledge of all thing we gathered during our life. It is not possible to collectively be aware of everything.

What is the beginning? It only exists in humans' minds. Time, as Haramein suggests, is only a memory. What doesn't exists in our collective mind, seems a paradox!
It's not like that. — phrzn

Time in my opinion is real and allows change. I have a thread on this in here.

Hawking argues something like the curvature of spacetime is analogous to the surface of a sphere: - where's the beginning of the surface of a sphere? Similarly, where/when is the beginning of the universe/spacetime? Maybe more to the point is that questions like that of the OP require definition to be meaningful, and usually when you define the terms, the question has disappeared. Without definition there can be no understanding of the question; it becomes a nonsense question. — tim wood

Beginning: the point in time at which something begins. To define the beginning of time you need time which is circular. You can look at the problem this way.

So you are relating time to consciousness?

Well, I think thought is a unconscious activity because we cannot consciously and collectively deal with all knowledge we accumulated and memorized in unconscious mind in order to create new thought.

What if the second decision is also unconscious?

You mean like local randomness for local people? — tom

This is difficult to explain but I give it a shoot. What I am trying to say is that there is no randomness in the whole if determinism is true. Determinism is not true in a part which interact with the rest of whole. That is true because there is only one chain of causality which dictates how the whole should evolve. There is no chain of causality for the part therefore local randomness is possible.

Who is allowing this? — tom

This is just happening as a matter of fact.

What is compatibilist definition of free will?
— bahman

That one's will determines one's actions. Whether or not one's will is determined is irrelevant (to the compatibilist). As Schopenhauer said, "Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills."

Edit: I missed charleton already saying exactly this. — Michael

So compatibilists don't care about determinism? Moreover what is the definition of will?

Thanks for the reference.

I find it strange that those who deny free will in the face of determinism, because the two really aren't compatible, baulk at the notion that evolution is therefore also incompatible.

The case for the incompatibility of determinism with evolution is actually much easier to make. Determinism really means there are no chance events. Evolution requires chance to exist as a ontological ultimate.

Darwin actually wrote about this in the last chapter of his "The variation of animals and plants under domestication."

God either plays dice or he does not. — tom

That just means that randomness is not globally allowed. You still can have local randomness.

you're suggesting that the sub-conscious makes the decision before you're conscious of it? — David Solman

Yes.