Is it possible for there to be an omniscient being? Patrick Grim doesn't think so. Instead of engaging directly with his arguments, however (which I hope to do in a later post), I think it would be helpful to take a step back and reflect a bit on what omniscience could be.
First, omniscience is supposed to be a kind of upper limit case of knowledge and understanding. The implication is that knowledge is something that can come in varying degrees. Off the top of my head, there seem to be at least five dimensions along which knowledge can vary:
- Breadth: One can know more or less. When we learn, our knowledge grows in extent. When we forget, our knowledge lessens in extent.
- Depth: We can understand something more or less well. In a glance, a chessmaster understands more about the position on the chess board than a novice grasps after studying the position minutely for half an hour. A measure of depth is the ability to appreciate the logical consequences of what one knows. One who is adept at math sees the implications of theorem; one who is just beginning doesn't.
- Security: We can be more or less justified in our knowledge. Some knowledge is very secure (e.g., 2+2=4), and some is much more tenuous (e.g., string theory is correct).
- Transparency: Sometimes we not only know, but we know that we know. Fido, on the other hand, may know where the bone is buried, but he doesn't know that he knows. We can sometimes attain a higher-order perspective on our knowledge. Animals can't.
- Fragility: We can lose knowledge, either through failure of memory, trauma (amnesia), disease (Alzheimer's), and so forth. Some people are better at retention than others.
Second, human knowledge and understanding is fundamentally limited in all five of the above ways (and possibly more besides). In particular, our knowledge attains transparency (we become distinctly conscious of the content of our knowledge) only by becoming abstract. That is to say, we can focus attention on a particular proposition only by regarding it against a tacit, unarticulated background. For example, it is in relation to an empirical background that I can pick out a particular object, say, one of my cats. If there were no discernable distinction between the cat and everything else, I'd never notice it. It is this fact that our focal, conscious knowledge is abstract that gives rise to the distinction between knowledge by acquaintance, the inarticulate familiarity we have with persons, places, and things, and knowledge by description, the articulate but abstract formulations of propositions about persons, places, and things.
But for an omniscient being this would presumably not be the case. Such a being has knowledge that is perfect in breadth, depth, transparency, etc. So it cannot be abstract. Abstractions always leave something out. What this means is that such a being doesn't know how many hairs are on my cat Tiffany by knowing a proposition like Tiffany has exactly 546,234 hairs. Rather, that being knows how many hairs are on my cat by knowing the hairs on the cat. In other words, the knowledge by description / knowledge by acquaintance distinction breaks down for an omniscient being. Such a being doesn't know by means of abstract propositions about reality. Rather, such a being knows reality, directly.
If this is right, then it's inaccurate to describe omniscience as knowledge of all and only true propositions, since such knowledge is not mediated by abstractions as it is for us. Rather, we should say that an omniscient being knows the truthmakers of all true propositions.
Incidentally, this fits the theistic picture of God and creation perfectly. God knows all (real) possibilities through his immediate and thorough acquaintance with his own power and nature. He knows all actualities through his immediate and thorough acquaintance with himself and with his own activity of creating and sustaining.
A further advantage of this way of thinking about omniscience is that we can easily sidestep most of Patrick Grim's arguments. But I'll save those details for later.
Alan,
I'm perplexed how the fact that God's knowledge isn't and cannot be abstract leads to the conclusion that "such a being doesn't know how many hairs are on my cat Tiffany by knowing a proposition like Tiffany has exactly 546,234 hairs." Maybe you left an 'only' out? I get the point that God knows things directly. But presumably if God knows all things directly, then He also directly knows the true proposition Tiffany has exactly 546,234 hairs. So, it seems that then God has 2 different ways of knowing how many hairs are on Tiffany--by knowing the hairs directly and knowing the proposition about the number of hairs directly. We might then say that God's knowledge is overdetermined. Now, perhaps this seems like an objection--I don't mean it that way. But it just looks like there are 2 different kinds of things for Him to know directly, even if one supervenes on the other. So this seems to preserve the common understanding of omnipotence as God's knowledge of all and only true propositions (though He doesn't only know propositions). What do you think?
Also, I've never understood what is being claimed when someone says that God knows all possibilities through knowing Himself. I realize that some people think that having the realm of possiblitiies exist necessarily smacks too much of Platonism, and also don't want to embrace some sort of voluntarism about possibilia. Now, I happen to like Platonism on most days, so I don't see why people object to it. But here my question is just trying to get clear on what this alternative amounts to. Can you say more?
Dear Alan, first, I like the idea that omniscience is an upper limit on knowledge and understanding. I take it that you mean we should begin by defining the maximum amount of knowledge a being should have, and ascribing that to God, rather than ascribing an amount of knowledge to God, only to discover that the ascription of knowledge we have made to God is self-contradictory, and, since we have made omniscience part of our definition of God, we find that we've come up with a definition of God that is self-contradictory.
So, we want to say something like 'God has that amount of knowledge such that no possible being can know more than God knows.' In other words, if we try to describe a being whose knowledge exceeds that of God, our description contains a contradiction, and so fails to describe a possible being.
(By 'possible' here I mean 'logically possible', and I'm assuming that what is consistent is logically possible and what is inconsistent is logically impossible).
Now, this might well need to be refined, but it will probably deal with arguments against omniscience based on set-theory and other such considerations. But what of arguments based on first-person considerations?
God, so it is argued, cannot know what I know when I know that 'Unless I hurry up, I'm going to be late for work.' Only I can know what I know when I know this. However, the requirement was not that God knows everything I know, only that no possible being knows more than God. And God certainly knows more than I do.
But suppose we contrast God as considered by monotheists with God as considered by pantheists. I think that the pantheist could claim that God knows exactly what I know when I know that 'If I don't hurry up, I'm going to be late for work.' Or, if there is any difference between what I know when I know this and what the God of pantheism knows when I know this, it is a deficiency in my knowledge - I do not know who I really am, and do not know that the I who might be late for work is the same I as the I who will punish me if I am late...
This leads me to the following suggestion: could it be that the God of pantheism is, in fact, a possible being who is more knowledgable than the God of monotheism?
The question of whether God's knowledge is propositional raises interesting questions as well. I think we should bear in mind two different ways in which we can describe someone as knowing a proposition: their knowledge could be mediated by the proposition, or our knowledge of their knowledge could be mediated by a proposition.
I remember one of my teachers who regularly told the class stories she had heard of tragic deaths, engaging in morbid speculation. "What do you suppose he was thinking as the train headed towards him and his car was stuck on the level crossing? He must have known he was about to die..."
In such a case, I think we can guess that the person had direct knowledge. There is the train, there is he, fearing it...We would accurately describe his knowledge by saying 'He knew that the train was about to kill him', and we have no other way to ascribe this knowledge to him than by using a proposition - or perhaps we do have other ways (we could make a film, in which the actor's face would indicate his knowledge more eloquently than any words), but still, we are accurate when we say 'He knew that he was going to die' even if we want to say also that the proposition in question plays a different role in our knowledge than in his knowledge.
This might help with the issues raised by Kevin.
But I have to leave it there: I must hurry, or else I'll be late for work.
Kevin and Ben,
Thanks for your comments. I've only got a little time right now, so I'll briefly respond to Kevin and get back with you a little later, Ben, if that's alright.
Regarding the idea that God's knowledge might be overdetermined by knowing both states of affairs directly and also knowing true propositions, I have three comments.
First, when I said earlier that God doesn't know things propositionally, I was speaking somewhat loosely. The issue is not that God doesn't grasp meanings that can bear truth-values (i.e., propositions) - I think he does - the issue is that, unlike us, a perfect knower like God wouldn't grasp meanings piecemeal or need to formulate them in linguistic or quasi-linguistic fashion to get clear on what he knows.
Second, the kind of view I want to oppose with respect to God's knowledge is the familiar view (at least since Frege and Russell) that construes propositions as truth-bearing units of meaning that are built up out of atomic constituents. According to this view, complex or non-atomic propositions are built up out of atomic propositions by logical connectives like 'and' and 'or' and can be analyzed down into those more basic propositions, until we get to atomic propositions, which cannot be analyzed further. I think this picture is radically misleading when it comes to understanding God's knowledge, because it suggests that, like us, God's knowledge is a metaphysical composite built up piecemeal. On the contrary, I think God knows the whole, all at once. As such, he doesn't know propositions (plural), but rather, if you will, knows The Proposition, which is not an abstract object but Reality itself qua intelligible. The Proposition is not a logical construction out of more basic propositions but is in fact more fundamental than the bite-size chunks of meaning that we are used to calling propositions. Endless numbers of propositions can be abstracted out of The Proposition, just like endless numbers of points can be picked out of a plane. But every abstraction leaves something behind, and so no set of propositions can fully capture what God knows in knowing The Proposition, just as no set of discrete points can be assembled into a continuous plane.
Third, if the foregoing is right, then there can be no overdetermination of God's knowledge. In knowing Reality, God knows The Proposition, and in knowing that he knows, say, all the details about my cat. It is due to our limitations that we have to chop things up into bite-sized chunks to get a clear understanding of them. God, I submit, doesn't need to do that. And even if somehow he could do that, it wouldn't add anything to his understanding or his knowledge.
Next, regarding your question about the idea that God knows all possibilities through knowing himself, what I mean is this. If, unlike David Lewis, we are actualists, then we are committed to the idea that actuality is the ontological delimeter of possibility. In other words, all possibilities must be grounded in something actual. If, in addition, we are theists, then we hold that the fundamental actuality is God - everything else is created and sustained by him. Thus, all possibility is ultimately grounded in God's nature. In knowing his own nature, therefore, God knows everything that is possible, whether logically or metaphysically or physically.
Well, I gotta run, but I hope that clear's things up a bit rather than muddying the waters further.
Alan
Dear Alan,
Isn't David Lewis an actualist? I thought he was given how he uses the word 'actually'. Every possible world is actual, that is, actual at itself.
I am also somewhat inclined to agree with Kevin. There is a proposition p, pis true, and we can ask: Does God know that p is true?
You say 'no' if I understand you and that is all Kevin needs, just one proposition God does not know.
You say "I think this picture is radically misleading when it comes to understanding God's knowledge, because it suggests that, like us, God's knowledge is a metaphysical composite built up piecemeal."
I don't see how changing the objects of God's knowledge from propositions to facts supports this claim. Facts, like propositions, are built up out of simpler facts.
Finally, you suggest five dimensions along which knowledge can vary. I'm inclined to think those are not five dimensions of knowledge. In fact only (1) seems like a dimension of knowledge, the others seem to me to have more to do with justification, or perhaps some other psychological states.
I'm not even sure what transparency amounts to on your view, when it comes to God, given that he doesn't believe propositions? God knows that he knows that he knows that he knows that p because he knows the The Propostion. How is that transparency?
Anyway, those are some worries.
Christian ,
David Lewis is not an actualist since he simply uses 'actual' as an indexical. The actualist thesis is that this is the only concrete world and that everything that exists exists at this world. You might see the SEP entry on Actualism. I'll let Alan defend the rest of his claims.
Some intriguing points brought up in Grim's paper. Like Ben, I also thought of pantheism with regard to the problem of the essential indexical. But if God cannot possess the de se knowledge that is properly mine, so what? This is exactly what is involved in creating free beings. Also: the "god" of pantheism would seem to solve that problem, but at what expense? He (it?) would have everyone's de se knowledge, but could such a "knower" be a person in its own right?
Also, I think it's just silly to think that a Divine Liar Paradox could invalidate the possibility of omniscience. Grim's (4), like all liar paradoxes, has no truthmaker and so I don't see how it can be considered a real proposition. I think of liar paradoxes as being simply logico-linguistic quirks, with no further significance.
Of course, all of what I've suggested is anticipated in Alan's sketch of a response, which I think is probably just right.
Mathew,
That seems right.
I was thinking that Lewis thinks that for every way the world could be, there is world that is that way. And for each world that it that way, that world is actual at itself. So, in a sense, Lewis is an actualist. Every world is real and every world is actual at itself. That was all I intended.
I see that Actualism is a technical term though. Strictly speaking, other worlds are not actual on his view. Good point.
You mean on Lewis's view? On Lewis's view, all worlds are actual, they're just not this one. The Actualist, conversely, holds that this world is the only actual one.
The Serious Actualist (e.g., Plantinga) goes on to say that there are no unexemplified essences, yet there could have been things that exist but in fact don't. But this is a rabbit trail, by now.
Micah,
Yeah, on Lewis's view. But I take it Matt's point is that it is, strictly speaking, false on Lewis's view that:
"all worlds are actual"
Also, the Actualist is not claiming that:
"This world is the only actual one"
This is because this claim is equivalent to:
This world is the only world that is this world.
But that claim is trivially true and Actualism, if true, is not trivially true. Instead, Actualism is the view that:
For anything whatsoever, if it exists, then it actually exists.
Hence, when I said other worlds are actual I said something necessarily false. No other worlds are this world. What's true is that, at some other world w, w is actual at w. This doesn't entail that w is actual.
Getting back to omniscience.... :)
Alan, you write "God doesn't grasp meanings that can bear truth-values (i.e., propositions) - I think he does - the issue is that, unlike us, a perfect knower like God wouldn't grasp meanings piecemeal or need to formulate them in linguistic or quasi-linguistic fashion to get clear on what he knows." Point taken. But this in no way implies or entails that God doesn't have propositional knowledge, or that all His knowledge isn't propositional.
You also write: "he [i.e., God] doesn't know propositions (plural), but rather, if you will, knows The Proposition, which is not an abstract object but Reality itself qua intelligible." But unless you deny that there are propositions, then the propositions will be part of Reality. So either God doesn't know all of Reality or God knows all propositions. Which disjunct do you favor? (And if you could deny that there are propositions, but then it seems almost trivially true that God's knowledge isn't propositional.)
I don't think that God needs to chop up His knowledge into little finite propostional chunks. But this doesn't mean that He doesn't also have knowledge of all the finite propositional chunks.
And I guess I'm just not an actualist in this sense. I don't understand how the possiblity that I could have had a twin sister who likes to play cribbage and once had tea with the Queen of Peru is somehow 'grounded' in God's nature. But then again, I also don't see how the laws of logic are either created or sustained by God either, at least not in any voluntarist sense.
Kevin,
My point is not to deny that there are propositions or to say that God's knowledge isn't propositional, properly understood. I just want to insist that God's knowledge not be conceived as some sort of logical construction out of more basic propositions. If that point's accepted, then I don't think Grim's Cantorian-style refutation of omniscience can get off the ground.
As for actuality being the ground of possibility, I agree with you that the laws of logic are not created or sustained by God. I think they reflect essential aspects of God's nature as a perfectly rational being. If that's right, however, then logical possibility is grounded in the actuality of God himself. As for your example of a twin sister who likes to play cribbage, etc., it seems to me that that's grounded in the fact that God could have providentially brought it about, had he wanted to.
OK, I've finally got time to address some of the other comments/criticisms that have been raised. I'll do this in a few separate posts.
Ben, I wholeheartedly agree with you that "we should bear in mind two different ways in which we can describe someone as knowing a proposition: their knowledge could be mediated by the proposition, or our knowledge of their knowledge could be mediated by a proposition." That's roughly the point I'm making with respect to God's knowledge. I don't think God's knowledge is mediated by propositions as ours is. That's not to say that God's knowledge does not have propositional content, but God doesn't know things by knowing propositions about them; rather, he knows propositions about things by knowing them directly and immediately.
That said, though, I wouldn't say that God knows the most that can be known if this is construed in a way that allows there to be realities that can't be known. I want to hold out for the medieval view of the convertibility of Being and Truth. In this vein you suggest that there's a difficulty account for first-person knowledge - how can God literally know what I know when I know, say, that I am in pain? I don't see that as a problem for my view. Since I hold that God knows reality - all of reality - immediately, I don't see any problem with God's knowing exactly what it is 'like' to be me. He knows the thoughts and the additudes of my heart, not from an external vantage point, like how we discern what others are thinking by inference from their words and behavior. He knows us directly from the inside, so to speak, because the reality of my first-person perspective together with all of its qualitative aspects is something that he sustains in being.
Christian,
Thanks for your comments. Matthew addressed your point about David Lewis and actualism. And above in my replies to Kevin I clarified my position with respect to the propositionality of God's knowledge. To reiterate, I don't mean to say that there are no propositions or that God's knowledge has no propositional content. What I mean to say is that God's knowledge, unlike ours, is not propositionally mediated or any sort of logical construction out of more basic propositions.
So on to your other concerns. One worry you have is that "changing the objects of God's knowledge from propositions to facts" is compatible with my claim that God's knowledge is not "a metaphysical composite built up piecemeal" because "facts, like propositions, are built up out of simpler facts." Here I deny your premise. That facts can be [i]analyzed into[/i] simpler facts does not imply that facts are [i]built up[/i] out of simpler facts. Similarly, that God's knowledge can be [i]analyzed into[/i] simpler propositions does not imply that God's knowledge is [i]built up[/i] out of simpler propositions. The organic unity that is my body can be analyzed into various organs, but the unity of my body is metaphysically prior to that analytical multiplicity. Similarly, the unity of reality and the unity of God's knowledge is metaphysically prior to any analytical multiplicity.
On another point, you question whether the five dimensions of knowledge that I specify are really all dimensions of 'knowledge'. You doubt this, suggesting that the last four concern justification and possibly other states. Certainly several of them concern justification etc., but as knowledge concerns justification, it is also concerned with those dimensions as well. I'm strongly inclined to say that if S knows that p and T knows that q and, all other things are equal except for the fact that S has better justification for believing p than T has for believing q, then S knows that p in a stronger sense of 'knows' than T knows that q. Wouldn't you agree?
Micah,
I agree with your analysis of the Divine Liar Paradox. Because of the way in which Grim's statement (4) is self-referential, it's impossible to make out any determinate proposition as its meaning.
Dear Alan,
I think I understand the strategy. Avoid arguments against omniscience by finding some way that God could be omniscient, that is inuitive, and show if that view is right, then certain arguments that depend on denying that picture are unsound.
The immediate questions are:
1. Is that omniscience?
2. If so, does it avoid the original objections?
3. Are there other objections to the new account?
So the view is that God is directly aware of Reality, all there is, and this knowledge is not mediated by a Fregean "sinn" or proposition in the way that our knowledge is. God's knowledge is like perceptual knowledge, perhaps, not knowledge that has been conceptualized...
Additionally, reality has a unity and is not simply the sum of its parts and this unitary Reality functions as a truth-maker for various propositions.
Here are some (not well-thought out) questions/objections:
1. If the Growing-Block or Presentist view of time is correct, then Reality is still coming into being. For God to be omniscient would require him to have "states" that play the role of beliefs about the future, he would not be directly aware of the future because it does not exist, and something proposition like would be required to make sense out of God's omniscience. The same goes for the past on the Presentist view.
2. You wrote, "I'm strongly inclined to say that if S knows that p and T knows that q and, all other things are equal except for the fact that S has better justification for believing p than T has for believing q, then S knows that p in a stronger sense of 'knows' than T knows that q." Although justification comes in degrees, it isn't clear to me that knowledge does. In fact, I can't think of any natural assertion according to which knowledge can be compared in int strength. Also, consider a similar argument. Belief comes in degrees. Knowledge requires belief, so knowledge comes in degrees. I suggest this argument is weak and yours, appealing to the analyzability of knowledge partly in terms of a degree concept, is weak for the same reason. And given that there are no natural cases, cases where it seems clear that we judge one kind of nkowledge to be stronger than another, I doubt the general view.
3. Similarly, it isn't clear to me that knowledge requires justification at all. Bonjour and Williamson argue against this, each for different reasons, each drawing different conclusions.
4. My point about the above list, why it isn't "about" knowledge: Take Transparency, for example, the view that if S knows that P, then S is a position to know that he knows that P. I think transparency is primarily a pyschological claim, a claim about one's resources to form second-order thoughts, to have introspective access to one's thoughts, to be able to think about one's own thoughts clearly. Is this about knowledge? Perhaps in a loose sense. I don't think anything hangs on the distinction "is x really about knowledge" and I'd be happy to throw away my claim that the above list is not about knowledge in some sense of 'about'.
More importantly, God is said to have reasons and be justified in the sense that his reasonsare perfect and accurate. But the content of a reason is a proposition. Given that you don't think God's knowledge is medioated by propositions, in what sense can he be said to have justification? Does he have reasons on this view at all? What exactly is the content of these reasons?
5. The new account has problems dealing with cases like "Ted Bundy knows what it is like to enjoy murdering people and watching them suffer" or "To be a bat" but God does not. So, God is not omniscient. The standard reply is that knowledge of these kinds of propositions is inconsistent with God's nature, but you have to say knowledge of....x...is inconsistent with God's nature. Now, 'x' cannot be the Real, so I don't see how your acount handles this case.
6. The new account "may" exclude certain solutions to the problem of freedom and foreknowledge. For example, if God knows the truth-maker, then we cannot say that our free acts are making true what God knew.
7. I can't think of any reason to accept the thesis that the Real is a unity, like a body is an organism.
8. Even if the Real is a unity, it still has mereological parts, sub-regions, temporal parts, logical parts, constituents, etc. If God is omniscient then he knows for any given thing, that it is a part of the Real. I don't see how being directly aware of the Real is going to imply this though. When I see a table, I'm arguably directly aware of it, but I am not directly aware of its parts. But then you are pushed to say God's direct awareness is better, he is directly aware of the parts, and now I see no reason to think that his awareness of the whole is priori to his awareness of the parts. So, either the knowledge is overdetermined, he is directly aware of both and neither in virtue of the other, or there will be this unexplained fact, the fact that God is aware of the parts in virtue of the whole.
Anyway, those are some more thoughts...
Dear Alan,
I don't think it solves the problem of the essential indexical to say that God knows what it is like to be me. I agree with Micah that this limitation on God's knowledge results from his creating free beings.
Consider the typical kind of situation that is used to justify the essential indexical. I notice that someone has been walking around the classroom wearing muddy shoes, and I think to myself 'Whoever is walking around in muddy shoes should take those shoes off.' Perhaps I even voice this thought out loud, and someone says 'The crazy professor is the one wearing the muddy shoes,' and it takes me a while to figure out that I am the crazy professor.
The realization that I am the crazy professor is a new piece of knowledge for me, and only when I acquire this knowledge do I come to realize that the way to deal with the problem of the muddy shoes is not for me to go around looking for the crazy professor, but for me to take off my shoes.
Now of course, God knew all along that I was the cause of the problem. He understood perfectly my embarassment when I discovered that I was the true cause of the muddy footprints. But while he knew 'He must take off his shoes' he surely did not know 'I must take off my shoes.' My reason for being sure that God did not know this is that it is precisely because I acquire this knowledge - that I should take off my shoes - that I acquire the responsibility to take off my shoes: God knows I am responsible, and God understands better than anyone what it is to have responsibility, but if he is not responsible for this particular action of mine, then he cannot have that piece of knowledge in virtue of which I have the responsibility to perform the action.
I note, in passing, that I think this is what Kierkegaard had in mind when he wrote about the importance of what is true 'for us': one of his examples is Pontius Pilate, who asked 'What is truth?' when he should have asked 'What is true for me?' In this context, I don't think that Kierkegaard was trying to introduce moral relativism, whereby Pilate could have said 'What is true for me as a member of the Roman Empire is that I should kill anyone who might possibly be a threat.' The point is that faced as he was with a decision that only he could make, he avoided facing up to 'his' truth: 'I should not execute this man'. Jesus knew better than Pontius Pilate what responsibilities Pilate had: he asked forgiveness for his executioners because they knew not what they did. But what Jesus knew was not "I should set this man free" but "He should set this man free," for if his knowledge had been of the former kind, he would have been obliged to set himself free.
My definition of omniscience was: 'God has that amount of knowledge such that no possible being can know more than God knows.' I was here trying to make a little more explicit the idea that omniscience takes knowledge to its limit, while being neutral as to where that limit might be. After all, with regard to set theory and other such examples, we have great difficulties defining the limits of our own knowledge (do I know things about all sets, e.g. that the empty set is a sub-set of every set?), because we have great difficulties knowing where the limits of reality and truth are (is it true to say 'This statement is true'?) It seems absurd to count these difficulties with regard to knowledge as being particularly difficult for the problem of omniscience. What I wanted to say was something along the lines of 'When the philosophical community as a whole has reached a consensus about the limits of reality and so of knowledge, then we theistic philosophers will have our consensus about omniscience.'
I kind of agree with Micah that if God cannot possess knowledge that is essentially mine, so what? I'm arguing that there is such knowledge precisely because I see it as a prerequisite for my responsibility as a free individual, and I don't want to say that God shares in this responsibility. I don't think this lack of knowledge diminishes God.
However, I don't want to write off the pantheistic challenge so quickly. Micah asks 'Could such a 'knower' be a person in its own right?' Well maybe yes, or maybe the pantheistic God is a person in an analogical sense, perhaps for pantheism I should substitute panentheism, or perhaps the pantheist will deny that God is a person, asking what is so brilliant about being a person anyway. But if a pantheist God meets my definition of 'omniscient' better than a monotheist God, then I would need to rethink my whole strategy for explaining what it means to say that, as a monotheist, I believe God is omniscient.
Christian,
Thanks for your additional comments.
Ad 1. I don’t think my proposal creates any problem for a growing block or presentist view of time, provided that it is recognized that truths about the future are grounded in the propensities or dispositions of the present. In other words, truths about the future are grounded in their present causes.
Ad 2. Frankly, I think the argument from degrees of belief is strong, not weak. Anyway, haven’t you ever heard anyone say something like “I now know this subject so much better than I used to��?? I have. At any rate, it seems to me that recognizing degrees of knowledge is the intuitive or commonsense position.
Ad. 3. It all depends on how one cashes out the notion of ‘justification’. I use that term in much the way Plantinga uses ‘warrant’, i.e., as whatever it is that when added to true belief yields knowledge. So defined, Bon Jour would have no problem with it. Williamson would, but I remain entirely unconvinced by his proposal that knowledge is an analytically basic concept.
Ad. 4. Earnest Sosa certainly thinks what I’m calling ‘transparency’ is relevant to knowledge. For him, it’s a central component of ‘reflective knowledge’ that distinguishes it from mere ‘animal knowledge’.
As for the justification of God’s beliefs, on the view I’m proposing, for a being like God there neither is nor can be any epistemic gap between the reality God knows and the content of God’s knowledge. Hence, God’s knowledge is necessarily perfectly reliable, accurate, and true. The justification is simply the immediate presence to God of all of reality.
Ad. 5. I don’t see how those problems arise for my view. I think God knows exactly what it is like to be a bat because he made bats and determined exactly what sorts of phenomenal ‘feels’ bats have, just as he determined that when I my optical receptors are stimulated in a certain way I will be appeared to redly rather than greenly.
Ad. 6. I think it does exclude Ockhamism and Molinism (unless the proponents of those views can find some satisfactory way to meet the ‘grounding objection’, which I seriously doubt), but I’m confused by your comment that “if God knows the truth-maker, then we cannot say that our free acts are making true what God knew.��? I’m guessing that you’re asking how, on my view, God could infallibly know in advance, say, that I will freely (in a libertarian sense) eat a cheese omelet tomorrow. Frankly, I don’t think he can because in such a case I don’t there is a truth either of the form “I will eat a cheese omelet tomorrow��? or “I will not eat a cheese omelet tomorrow��? for God or anyone to know.
Ad. 7. The unity of the Real is implied by the traditional theistic doctrine of creation ex nihilo. God himself is a unity, and if everything apart from God is created and sustained by God, then in God everything is connected to everything else.
Ad. 8. Let’s not confuse abstract ‘parts’ with real parts. Logical ‘parts’ are abstract, not real. Sub-regions of space are abstract, not real. When we distinguish sub-regions of space we are not dividing reality at its ‘joints’, so to speak, since space is a continuum. Same goes for the kinds of ‘parts’ that mereological universalists like to talk about. Temporal parts may be another matter, but as a presentist I deny that there are any. God knows all real parts through knowing the whole. Abstract ‘parts’ aren’t real, however, so it is no defect in knowledge not to know them since there’s nothing there to know.
Regards,
Alan
Alan,
Cool. I'm understanding the view better. Interesting how different things hang together.
Rp1: I don't think truths about the future or past can be grounded in present propensities. Two main problems: There are properties like being more than ten minutes past, some events have them, and they can't be explained by propensities. Two: The future is open and the past is fixed, but grounding facts about the past and future in terms of propensities, as far as I can tell, cannot ground this fact.
Rp2: So, you offer an example of knowledge that comes in degrees and you refer to this position as common sense. “I now know this subject so much better than I used to.��? I think that the position is not common sense and that I can explain away your example. To more about some matter x, is to know more propositions about x.
Rp3,4: I'm not convinced by Williamson's proposl either. But it would raise a problem for the view so it needs to be looked at carefully. That dude is smart. You write "the justification is simply the immediate presence to God of all of reality" but this does not sound like internal justification. I take internal justification to be having a reason to think one's belief are true, roughly. The question is whether things being "immediate" to God are consistent with his having internal justification, and if not, whether his having knowledge is consistent with not having internal justification, and if not, whether this won't end upo being (a) Something we don't consider omniscience, or (b) a William's style view.
Rp6: You accept that God knows "what it's like" to enjoy watching people suffer? Are we still talking about a greatest possible being here?
Rp7: I don't see how thing being created ex nihilo, or the fact that God has a unity, supports the claim that the world has a unity and is not a sum of facts. It's not true that if God has F and creates x, then Fx. That can't be what you have in mind. So I still don't understand.
Rp8: You say "let’s not confuse abstract ‘parts’ with real parts. Logical ‘parts’ are abstract, not real. Sub-regions of space are abstract, not real." I'm not sure I agree. I think the 'part of' relation is extensional, so if x is real and y is a part of x, then y is real. It is an open question what kinds of things can stand in this relation, a different relation with parthoods formal properties, but I don't think regions or temporal parts (if there are any) or properies (as Laurie Paul argues) are any less real for being a part of "The Real".
You also later say "Abstract ‘parts’ aren’t real, however, so it is no defect in knowledge not to know them since there’s nothing there to know." So I don't think these parts are abstract, but set that aside. Here you are making a much, much stronger claim. If x is abstract, then x is not real. Before you were only suggesting God can be omniscient without the resources of propositions even if people need them. Are you arguing for both claims?
Later, C
I apologize for mistaken, but English is not my mother language (I'm Italian).
In my thoughts about quantification on totalities (and possibly related paradoxes) I've always been reflecting upon an idea that looks a bit neglected: that is, that one should make a distinction about quantification on ALL things of a certain kind conceived as a completed totality, and quantification on EVERY (single) thing, without reference to a completed totality. This second kind of quantification might be conceived as a rule: if you have an x, then you have also an Y (instead of saying: all x are y).
An example of this line of thought is Kant's conception of the empirical world: there is no completed totality of experience, but we can well quantify on every single empirical fact, for example to say that is subject to causality.
Other lines of reasoning that might rensemble my one are: subtitutional quantification, intuitionist conception of quantification, iterative conception of sets, idefinitely extendable sets.
I also found an exat reference to the same idea in a post in the group talk atheism (Paul Holbach, apr 21 2006).
Do you think that such distinction holds? If yes, do you thing that it is useful to respond to Grim's arguments? Of course, it would allow us to say that God doesn't know the completed totality of propositions, but every single proposition (or also that, just every proposition in either true or not true, so it is such that it is known by God).
Anyway, at least a problem remains. What about a proposityon about every proposition that is not about itself?
Beppe
Another objection that might be opposed to Grim's view on propositions runs as follows.
According to Grim, we can't quantify over all propositions, so for example we can't say:
(1) no proposition can be eaten
We might then conclude that
(2) some propositions can be eaten
But this conclusion is hardly acceptable because it would be more or less inconceivable and inconsistent with our very notion of a proposition. Thus, it looks that refusal of universal quantification on proposition has very little practical bearing, because we can't affirm universal propositions like (1), but we can continue to deny particular propositions like (2).
Furthermore, Grim's view seems to stop any scientifical or philosophical investigation about what propositions are, because such investigation should end up saying that "proposition are such and such things", that is of course a universal quantification. Thus we should continue to speak of proposition without even being able to say what there are (unless we take the argument as a confutation of the existence of propositions).
Beppe
Again on the same argument.
I think that the main way to answer to Grim's arguments is the metaphysical one, as outlined in the first post: God knows what exists (of course: everything what exists), not propositions.
But this in turn may raise another problem: someone might argue that, by way of some diagonal argument, can be shown that also the notion of the totality of being is inconsistent (btw. this hits also other religious doctrines, notably that of creation).
John Post is inclined to think so, as he explains in his writings http://www.vanderbilt.edu/~postjf/OmWpsrMeth7.02nc.htm and http://www.vanderbilt.edu/~postjf/gale&pruss.htm.
But I think that Post's argument are based upon the abuse of abstract entities, like states of affairs, facts and properties, taken as if they were beings in the same way concrete beings are. But I refuse to accept that "the state of affairs in which P is the property of the state of affairs S of not having the property it is paired with in the mapping M" is a being, or a part or an aspect of a being or anything of metaphisically relevant.
I even tend to think that properties don't exist at all but as ways of describing how things are.
Anyway, let's conceive a mapping between all beings and the properties a being can have. Now, let's consider the property of being something that don't have the property it is paired with. This property can't be paired with any of those beings, but at this point, so what? This property is neither a being, nor it is some positive level, part or aspect of existence that is to be added to the totality of being, so I think that this diagonal argument is not sound against such totality.
Furthermore, I think that "being" is neither a property nor the most general kind (genus) of things (a view agreed upon by Aquinas and Kant), so that speaking about everything what exists is not the same as speaking of all proposition: here there is some kind of basic metaphisical intuition that show us that speaking of the totality of being is legitimate. I'm not sure wether this point is clear, but the discourse about the being is at the very limit of our language.
Beppe
Alan, I hope a brief comment.
Alan says,
". . .it's inaccurate to describe omniscience as knowledge of all and only true propositions, . . .Rather, we should say that an omniscient being knows the truthmakers of all true propositions."
This is hard to follow. It looks like you're saying that all of God's knowledge is de re and none of it is de dicto. So, for instance, you say,
1. God knows the hairs on the cat.
but,
2. God does not know that the cat has exactly 546,234 hairs.
But what on earth could (1) mean? What does it mean to know the hairs? Apart from that, not all knowledge can be expressed intelligibly in de re form. It is hard to make sense of God knowing a fact or state of affairs de re.
Micah, you write,
"You mean on Lewis's view? On Lewis's view, all worlds are actual, they're just not this one. The Actualist, conversely, holds that this world is the only actual one."
This is certainly not true as it is stated. Matthew is pretty clear on the question above.
It is not true on Lewis or Plantinga or anyone else (save one suggestion by Parfit--the All Worlds Hypothesis--and earlier by Nozick--the Fecundity Assumption) that all worlds are actual. Both Plantinga and Lewis hold that this world of ours is the one and only actual world. This claim is consistent with saying that other possible worlds are actual-at-themselves. And both Lewis and Plantinga hold that every world is actual-at-itself. Actualism, on the other hand, has it that only one world is instantiated. You can intelligibly quantify over the objects in this world alone. Lewis--a non-actualist--freely quantifies over objects--e.g., counterparts, duplicates, etc.--in all worlds. Of course Lewis and Plantinga disagree on Lewis's modal realism, the principle of plenitude, and lots of other things.
Beppe,
Thanks for your insightful comments. I especially like your point that the alleged impossibility of quantifying over all propositions makes it impossible to say obviously meaningful and true things like "no propositions can be eaten".
Mike,
You say "It looks like you're saying that all of God's knowledge is de re and none of it is de dicto."
Reply: If it looks like I'm saying that, then I apologize for my lack of clarity. To use your de re/de dicto terms, what I want to say is that God's knowledge is fundamentally de re without denying that it has de dicto content.
You ask what does it mean to directly know facts or de re states of affairs? The best example, I think, is knowledge by acquaintance, which we express with the word "know" followed immediately by a noun (e.g., I know Tom, God knows me, etc.). Another way to put my point then is to say that God's omniscience is more akin to a knowledge by acquaintance with the totality of reality than it is to a knowledge by description of a totality of discrete propositional truths. To say this, however, is not to deny that God knows true propositions; it is, rather, to say that he knows true propositions because he has a non-propositionally mediated acquaintance-type knowledge of reality as a whole, and not vice-versa.
This way of looking at things circumvents Grim's objections against omniscience by denying that omniscience (exhaustive knowledge of the whole of reality) is a logical construction from knowledge of all the parts. On the contrary, this is no more true than a continuous 1-dimensional line is a construction out of 0-dimensional points.
Alan, thanks,
Your examples are these:
1. I know Tom.
2. God knows me.
I agree these are de re. But knowledge de re (of Tom) cannot capture everything we know de dicto (about Tom) and vice versa. There is no set of de dicto knowledge claims, for instance, to which (1) is equivalent. So complete knowledge de re (of Tom) will not be equivalent to everything there is to know about Tom. For the converse case, knowing a lot of facts about Tom (de dicto) does not entail that I know Tom (de re). I wonder why you believe that complete de re knowledge will be exhaustive of all knowledge. That doesn't seem true.
Hi Mike,
I disagree that knowledge de re of some object X cannot capture all there is to know de dicto of X. You're right that there is no set of de dicto knowledge claims to which "I know Tom" is equivalent. On the contrary, the reality that is Tom exceeds any reductive analysis into abstract propositions, just as the continuity of a line or plane cannot be exhaustively analyzed into a set of discrete points.
When you say that "complete knowledge de re (of Tom) will not be eqivalent to everything there is to know about Tom" you presuppose that "everything there is to know" about Tom can be given in de dicto terms. That's precisely what I'm denying.
De dicto knowledge is abstract--it focuses on particular aspects of particular things and not on the holistic reality of things. That's why de dicto knowledge can never capture the fullness of reality. And that's why the knowledge of an omniscient God, who has exhaustive knowledge of reality, must be fundamentally non-abstract and thus fundamentally de re.
Alan (and Mike),
Mike's right here, I think, about the ways in which de re and de dicto knowledge can come apart. You can have knowledge of a tennis ball and not realize that it is a tennis ball, for example: your aboriginal background doesn't give you enough information to know what kind of object it is.
Nor does this point need to presuppose that everything there is to know about the tennis ball can be given in de dicto terms, though it does presuppose that everything there is to know about the tennis ball includes de dicto all the true information there is about the tennis ball.
There may be some other way to express the idea of God's intimate knowledge of reality that goes beyond mere de dicto knowledge, but the language of de re knowledge is not well-suited for it. Expand the tennis ball example and you can get de re knowledge of everything and still know very little about what these things are.
Jon,
I grant your point that knowledge de re and knowledge de dicto can come apart. But the reason they can come apart has to do with the our inherent limitations as knowers. Our acquaintance with reality is always more or less superficial. We directly experience only the surfaces of things, and that only from a situated perspective. God, on the other hand, is directly present to all of reality at once and at its deepest levels. So for God, knowledge de re cannot fail to include knowledge de dicto. In short, I think the language of de re knowledge is apt for thinking about God's knowledge provided we set aside any creaturely limitations that we may normally associate with such knowledge.