Why are you mentioning the bible? You think if the bible says something that's good evidence it is true? Sheesh.

You're just expressing beliefs about the content of logic. It's beside the point. I am asking whether being omnipotent involves having control over the content of logic. You can't provide any insight into the answer by just telling me more and more about the content of logic.

No, I am asking if you think rational intuitions are probative. That's what my premise assumes to be the case. But if you deny that they are probative, then what I want to know is what, exactly, you do take to be probative?
The conventional beliefs of the current age, regardless of how they have been arrived at, perhaps?

it is undeniable that we have rational intuitions and undeniable that they have probative force.

For instance, which of these arguments is valid:

A:
Premise 1: If P, then Q
Premise 2: P
Conclusion: therefore Q

B:
Premise 1: if P, then Q
Premise 2: Not P
Conclusion: Therefore not Q

The first is, the second isn't - and that's something we (most of us) recognise by rational intuition. You can't see it with your eyes, or smell it, or taste it, or touch it. It is a truth of reason and we find out about those via rational intuitions.

Now we 'appear' - rationally - to have free will. Our reason - that is the reason of the bulk of humanity - represents us to have free will. If that isn't stunningly good default evidence that we do, then I don't know what you mean by evidence.

So, do you think that the thought "I exist" can possibly be false? If you agree that it cannot be false, then you agree that there are some thoughts we can't be mistaken about, surely?

For example, take child sex abuse - that is seriously wrong in no small part precisely because children cannot consent to sex, yes? Yet by your logic the fact they're incapable of giving consent means that cannot be any part of the story about why it is wrong. It is part of the story - a very important part of it - which just underlines that you do not have to be capable of giving consent before your lack of it constitutes a serious bad-maker.

That's question begging - it IS an issue with procreation as even kids themselves recognise ("I didn't choose to be born!").

A small child is incapable of giving consent, but it is still wrong to do things to that child that will affect it for the rest of its life, and wrong in no small part BECASUE it has not consented to them.

no, I think procreation is wrong for numerous reasons, not one alone. But if an act does something very major to another person without their consent then that fact about the act will standard lyrics make the act wrong. There may be exceptions - I am not an absolutist about any moral principle - but it is the reasonable default assumption. And as this is a feature procreation acts have, it is reasonable to assume they are made wrong because of it, other things being equal. They are wrong for other reasons too tho.

so, just to be clear, you are denying that the fact a person will be seriously affected by an act and cannot consent to it is NOT a moral negative most of the time? Because that is just absurd.

It clearly IS a moral negative most of the time. For instance whenever we have - for other moral reasons - to impose something on someone without their prior consent it is almost invariably regrettable. That is, it would have been better if somehow, per impossible, we could have got it.

Take procreation acts themselves - would it notake be better if they could be consented to?

no, it is default wrong to coerce someone - and default wrong to deceive someone - because the nature of the act is such that it cannot be consented to (as Kanot pointed out ). Perhaps that's the wrong analysis but it'd be absurd to deny it's plausibility. And thats also the nature of procreation acts, so they are default wrong too, or at least it is extremely plausible that they are.

reason says what to do in such cases, namely appeal to analogous cases about which our reason is clearer.

you are not following the argument.

It was claimed that it cannot be wrong to impose life here on someone without their prior consent due to the impossibility of getting it.

I was pointing out that there are lots of acts of where the nature of the act in qustion is such as to make consent impossible. Such acts are still clearly default wrong and default wrong due to the fact the other person dor not consent.

Thus the idea that the impossibility of getting consent somehow makes it okay to go ahead is patently false.

A rational intuition is an apparent representation of reason.

You can't argue for anything without making an appeal to reason. The validity of any argument you employ is itself something that can only be seen with our reason.

You still haven't answered my question - do you deny that rational intuitions have probative force?

You can't answer a question with a question.

I have made my position clear: I believe an omnipotent being would be able to do anything. And that's because I think an omnipotent being, to be truly omnipotent, would be able to make anything they want be true.

I still don't know what your answer is to the question. Can an omnipotent being make a square circle or not?

It is just there because it is possible for a rational intuition to count for nothing if, for example we can give an undercutting explanation of how we have come to possess it. But that undercutting explanation will itself have to appeal to rational intuitions

So are you denying the probative force of rational intuitions? If so, how do you argue for anything?

Can you show me, by using a premise from my argument and adding to it other ones, how to derive the conclusion "therefore the earth is flat"? I think you'll only be able to do that by adding very implausible premises to it.
If that is correct, no premise of my argument is called into question by the fact that, at one time, a lot of people falsely believed that the earth is flat.

I am not entirely sure what you're saying - are you saying that even if an omnipotent being were bound by logic, this would not be much of a bind, or are you saying that an omnipotent being is not bound by logic, or are you saying that logic, as it is, shows evidence of being the creation of an omnipotent being?

Hm, a square circle isn't nothing, rather it is an object that is both square and circular. Their existence seems to be impossible. But I think a truly omnipotent being would be able to create one, for nothing is impossible for a truly omnipotent being.

You are wrong. The fact consent is impossible in these sorts of case has no bearing on the matter as other examples amply demonstrate.

For example, it is impossible to agree to be coerced (for if you agree to be coerced, you are not being coerced). So, if I want to coerce someone, then it is impossible for me to get their prior consent. Now, does that mean it is morally permissible to coerce people?

No, obviously not. It is default seriously wrong to coerce another person. Lots of exceptions of course, but 'other things being equal' it is wrong.

And why is it wrong to coerce people? Well, because they don't agree to it.

So, contrary to what you've claimed it IS wrong, other things being equal, to impose something significant on someone else without their prior consent (and especially wrong when it involves risks of significant harms).

It is not clear to me what your answer to the question is. Are you saying that omnipotence involves not being constrained by the laws of logic?

Re your other points - no premise in my argument implies that the world is flat (or that it is flat if enough people believe it to be). So you're attacking a straw man. You need to address my premises, not replace them with quite different, wholly implausible ones.

As to your claim that we reason our way to thinking we have free will - what is that reasoning process? And on what basis do you make this claim? It sounds like a conspiracy theory.

Did you just decide you have free will? Or does your reason represent you to have it?

I still don't see how indeterminism in the brain could give any mind associated with it free will.

Free will has to be capable of grounding moral responsibility. But if I'm not morally responsible if everything I am and do is antecedently determined, how am I going to be if it turns out that to some extent what I am and do is indeterministic? Perhaps if it is indeterministic what some brain event will cause my mind to think or decide then there is a sense in which I am the originator of my decision. But it is not the robust sense necessary to make me free in a way that could plausibly make me morally responsible for my resulting decisions. For if it really was indeterministic, then it was just a brute matter of chance that the brain events caused me to make one decision rather than another.

I still don't understand why you think physics will give you any answers to these questions - physicists are not studying free will. And although physical discoveries may have important implications for free will, we can't possibly know what those implications are until we know more about free will - something physics isn't even attempting to tell us about.

My point is that the view has nothing to be said for it - until or unless we can explain in a rationally satisfying way how it is that an extended thing can be conscious, then positing that all extended things are conscious will do nothing whatever to help.

Why do so many recognise that there is a problem explaining how extended things can be conscious? Well, because the reason of virtually everyone represents extended things to be positively lacking in mental states, and the reason of virtually everyone represents their own minds to be positively lacking in the kinds of properties characteristic of extended things.

Note, however, that to even think this is a 'problem' is to have assumed that our minds are extended things. I think it is perverse to think it is a problem. Why not just follow reason and conclude that our minds are not extended objects?

But my claim is not about beliefs. No premise of my argument mentioned beliefs. The claim, is NOT that if enough people believe something that will make it true. That's obviously fallacious (and the fallacy in question involves confusing a belief with its object and has nothing to do with numbers - one commits the same basic fallacy if one thinks that believing something will make it true).

The claim is that if the reason of most people represents a proposition - p - to be true, then other things being equal that is good evidence that p is true.

What is a rational appearance? Well, just as there are visual and tactile appearances, so too there are rational ones. For instance, how do you know that there cannot exist any square circles? Because your reason and the reason of virtually everyone represents such things to be impossible.

All attempts to argue for anything - so all appeals to evidence - are ultimately appeals to rational appearances.

Anyone who rejects my premise on the grounds that rational appearances have no probative force will - by hypothesis - be rejecting it on no rational basis or being inconsistent.

That seems question begging in this context, for if omnipotence involves being able to determine what is or is not possible, then the logic would be created if, that is, an omnipotent being exists (or, alternatively, if we know in advance that logic is not created, we could then conclude that no omnipotent being exists).

but then you are just not using the word God in its normal sense.
Someone who refers to their teapot as God and insists that on their definition the teapot qualifies is simply using a common term with a well understood meaning in a misleading way.

I think an omnipotent being would be the creator of logic and thus they would have control over what is logically possible. Thus such a being could do impossible things bexcuse their being impossible was itself determined by the being.

yes, that would be my view - an omnipotent being would be the arbiter of truth and thus would be capable of anything as what's possible and impossible is now constitutively determined by their will.

No, exactly what omnipotence involves is the issue under discussion. I am saying that it involves being able to do anything, not just the possible.

Hmm, I think what you've said there is false. It is generally agreed that 'God' with a capital 'G' denotes a being who has at least the following attributes essentially:
perfection, omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence and the creator of everything. There's debate over anything additional to this and debate over exactly what it takes to posess those attributes, but surely that those attributes are essential is not seriously in dispute?

I also do not understand why you looked to physics for answers to a philosophical question. Whether we have free will and what it involves are philosophical questions, not questions in physics. Physics know nothing about them. For free will is not something one can investigate empirically - free will is not something we can see, hear, smell, touch or taste. Our awareness of our free will is mediated by our reason, not our sensible faculties.

You need to answer the philosophical questions first before you can possibly know the implications of anything in physics. You're doing things the wrong way around, I think.

I do not see how you're addressing my point. If antecedent determination of our decision making processes is incompatible with them exhibiting free will - and you think it is (as do I) - then how does making them indeterministic to some degree magically mean they do now exhibit free will?

If a past state of the universe that i had no hand in, and the laws of nature, which I also had no hand in, created me and determined both what qualities I would have and how I would develop, then I lack free will.

If, instead, a past state of the universe that I had no hand in, and the laws of nature that I had no hand in, and some chance events, created me, then I still lack free will.

I mean, take the colour of my eyes. I take it that I am not morally responsible for the colour of my eyes and that it is sufficient to explain this to cite the fact that their colour was not something I determined.
Now imagine that it turns out it was indeterministic what eye colour I would have - does that make me morally responsible for their colour? No. It makes no difference, for it was still not something I determined.

It doesn't challenge the claim that my mind is indivisible. All it does - if it is true, that is, and I see no evidence at all that it is - is show that if you split a BRAIN in half, then the mind that was previously associated with it ceases to be associated with it, and two other minds become asociated with each respective half. It does not show the mind itself to be divisible. To assume it did show this would be to assume - not show - that the mind is the brain for the purposes of demonstrating the falsity of a premise in an argument that shows the opposite. That is, it would be question begging.

You're just stating that no belief can be known with certainty - that about any belief we can raise a doubt about its truth, yes? But that's false.

I don't understand you - my premise talks about rational appearances, not beliefs. So you now accept, I take it, that what you said does not address any premise of my argument?

I don't know what you're arguing. So you think that the belief "I exist" can be false?

I just did above. Death is a harm. If something harms a person, then it harms them in their life. Therefore death is an event in a person's life.

No, we need cast iron evidence that we have it.

An analogy: I have cast iron evidence that my computer is working - it appears (visually) to be working. But I don't know how it is working. But only a fool would conclude that therefore I do not, in fact, have good evidence that it is working.

Likewise, I have cast iron evidence that I have free will - I appear, rationally speaking, to have it. I do not know 'how' I have it, but only a fool would conclude on that basis that therefore I do not.

If I have cast iron evidence that I have free will, then free will is an objective possibility even if none of us can figure out 'how' it could be.

clever replies.