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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
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    Perspectives
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    42
    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Backward causation is impossible if free choice exists

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Backward causation presupposes eternalism
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    • 2.Eternalism entails that future events are already determined
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    • 3.If future events are already determined, free choice is impossible
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.If an agent can cause a prior event, a second agent could cause a prior event that blocks the first cause, generating an irresolvable causal loop.
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    • 2.Irresolvable causal loops eliminate the agent's ability to do otherwise, which is a necessary condition for libertarian free choice (Kane 1996).
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    • 3.Therefore, backward causation and genuine libertarian free choice cannot coexist in the same causal structure.
      ?

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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Backward causation requires that the effect precede its cause temporally, meaning the future state must be fixed before the agent deliberates.
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    • 2.Genuine deliberation, as Kant argues in the Critique of Pure Reason, requires that the future remain genuinely open to the agent at the moment of choice.
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    • 3.A fixed future state that causally determines a prior choice renders that choice a consequence, not an exercise, of freedom.
      ?

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    Strongest counterpoint
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