On 6/7/2012 5:15 AM, R AM wrote:
On Thu, Jun 7, 2012 at 1:37 PM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be
<mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be>> wrote:
Because he remembers that he was hesitating. Yesterday I have eaten
spaghetti, but I
could have decide otherwise, I hesitated a lot.
OK, for the sake of the argument, let's suppose that you ate spaghetti because that's
what you liked at that moment. Do you think you could have done otherwise?
Now, let's suppose a gangster decides to rob a bank after considering all his options.
Later he might be judged and told that "he could have done otherwise"? Could he really
have done otherwise?
The answer must be relative to our (imperfect) knowledge. Since that knowledge is not
sufficient to predict what he would do, we say "Yes, he could have done otherwise." In
the same way we may say, "I know him well and he's not a person to rob a bank." We may
believe the world is deterministic and yet still unpredictable, so when you ask "could" we
need to think in what sense it is meant.
Brent
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