Newcomb in “No Man Has Mastery Over His Own Spirit”

שו”ת › Category: philosophy › Newcomb in “No Man Has Mastery Over His Own Spirit”

asked 10 months ago

I don’t understand why the experiment contradicts knowledge and free choice at the same time.
In the experiment, there is an additional assumption that the voter knows about the knower’s knowledge. We don’t have such knowledge, so why assume it’s possible?
And in general, when I think about knowing the future together with free choice, it is not contradictory. Like a parent who knows their child well, they will know how to bet well on what the child will choose (assuming that he develops and changes and the parent knows his child and the changes he goes through [and he does indeed choose and is not deterministic in advance]).
In parallel with the Creator of the world, only with greater skills.
The knowledge does not fix me because I am not aware of the knowledge of someone external to me (the experiment assumes that I know)

Discover more from הרב מיכאל אברהם

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Leave a ReplyCancel reply

0 Answers

0 Vote Up Vote Down

מיכי Staff answered 10 months ago

First of all, to clarify the claim: the experiment does not contradict both. Knowledge contradicts freedom of choice, and the experiment is the evidence for this. If the prophet tells the voter that he knows what the voter will do, will the voter not hear his voice? Who is to prevent him from telling the voter that he knows? Incidentally, many believers think that God knows their actions. So according to them, here is how one can know about the prophet’s knowledge. Regarding your suggestion that there is no contradiction, see the columns that dealt with this (299 onwards). It is discussed there in great detail.

Discover more from הרב מיכאל אברהם

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

דוד ש. replied 10 months ago

Regarding the example with the parent and child: You wrote it yourself – a bet, it is fundamentally different from knowledge. A bet by definition can fail, even if the relationship is very much in your favor. A parent may have been able to predict with 99% accuracy, this is still not knowledge, but simply an expression of the distribution of the child's choices in his psychological, cognitive state, etc.’ (Perhaps the last paragraph is a little unclear. Miki explains the effects of the environment in the example of a ball – without choice, which rolls between hills, and we know for sure that it will eventually reach the lower place. Compared to a person who can climb the hill, but there is still a higher chance that he will go downhill and not climb up, i.e., if you have a lot of data on a person – like your child, you can approximately predict his choices, but not be precise with certainty in a given specific case)

דוד ש. replied 10 months ago

Refinement: I can point to any random person and say that I know they won't commit suicide this year. And lo and behold, I'll be right 99.9994% of the time. For some reason, here, I imagine it doesn't feel like you're denying the individual I pointed to's ability to commit suicide.