I recently finished Robert Adams' old article "The Virtue of Faith" (chapter 1 of the book The Virtue of Faith), and I found a really interesting point. Uncertainty and faith are necessary for a certain sort of special good in a relationship. I think it's worth quoting Adams on this:
For simplicity, I shall ignore the distinction between God talking and Jesus talking. I shall also write "deny" for "deny libertarian-freely" (note: typical libertarians allow for the possibility of free choices that are determined by character and circumstances, as long as the agent had a sufficient role in forming the character through properly indeterministic choices; it is only the latter that I will call "libertarian-free"). Take the case where God tells Peter that Peter will deny him. What divine knowledge was the prophecy based on? Suppose we say: God tells Peter that Peter will deny because God knows that Peter will deny. This would be a simple-foreknowledge (SF) account of prophecy. Now we have an apparent circularity in the order of explanation. God telling Peter that Peter will deny is explanatorily prior ("e-prior") to Peter's denial--it affects Peter's state of mind when choosing whether to deny. But Peter's denial is, presumably, e-prior to God's knowing that Peter will deny. (Thomists and Calvinists will likely deny this. And so such Thomists and Calvinists will have no difficulty.) And God's knowing that Peter will deny is e-prior to the prophecy. So we come full circle.
There is a way out of this argument: God ensures that Peter's choice whether to deny is causally isolated from Peter's memory of the prophecy. This breaks the circle, since then God's prophesying to Peter that Peter will deny will no longer be e-prior to Peter's denial. Moreover, Scripture says that only after the denials did Peter remember the prophecy, so there is some exegetical ground for supposing some causal isolation.
The difficulty with this SF account of prophecy is that it only makes prophecy possible in cases where the prophecy is isolated from the prophesied event. I shall argue that the Molinist may face a similar problem.
I just finished Trenton Merricks' recent Phil. Review (2009, 118:1) article "Truth and Freedom". Like most of his stuff, his arguments were crisp and clear. I'll say at the outset that I'm far from being an expert in the freewill/foreknowledge/fatalism literature. (I make that explicit, because I know that some readers of this blog are!)
It was fun to see Merricks apply some of his work on the nature of truth to the fatalism problem. He starts with the mundane, general point that a proposition is true because of what the world is like; i.e., truth depends on the world, not the other way around. Furthermore, this dependence is not a causal one (more on this below).
Consider two claims about God's knowledge.
Here is the argument that (2)-(4) entail (1). Fix any true p. By (4), let q be any proposition such that possibly God knows q and possibly God knows not-q. If q holds, then let r=q. If q does not hold, then let r=not-q. Note that r is true. Observe that possibly God knows not-r (if r=q, then this follows from the fact that God possibly knows not-p; if r=not-q, then this follows from the fact that God possibly knows q as well as (3), since q tautologically implies not-r). Let s be the proposition (p or not-r). Then, God possibly knows s. For God possibly knows not-r, and in any world where God knows not-r, God also knows (p or not-r) by (3). Now, s is true as p is true. Therefore, s is a proposition that is true and possibly known by God. Therefore, by (2), God knows s. Moreover, r is a true proposition, and God possibly knows r (since God possibly knows q and God possibly knows not-q). Therefore, God knows r, by (2). But s is (p or not-r). By (3), it follows that God knows p, since (s and r) tautologically implies p.
So if one attempts to limit omniscience by saying that omniscience only means that God knows things that God can know, or that God only knows things that possibly are known by someone (which also entails (2)), one hasn't limited omniscience at all: God still ends up knowing all true propositions, assuming (3) and (4). Is there some other way of non-arbitrarily limiting omniscience? I am not sure. But, fortunately, there is no need to limit omniscience. God knows all truths.
One of the problems with accepting Christian universalism is that in doing so it seems that one must give up on a libertarian notion of freedom of the will. This is due to the classic Arminian objection that a being could not really be free unless it were possible for that being to resist the will of God--that she be saved--for all eternity. Thus the denizens of Hell are said to be there as a result of their ongoing rejection of the Almighty. The universalist, contra the Arminian, holds that Hell is essentially purgative and restorative, and thus only temporary, and that ultimately everyone is reconciled to God. But then, if everyone is ultimately reconciled with God, it seems to follow that no one possesses libertarian freedom. After all, no one can choose to be permanently separated from God.
N.B.: This is being reposted from earlier in the week, thus responses to some previously raised objections appear after the fold.
Pro-lifers who are also classical "closed" theists, (as I assume the majority of Pro-lifers at least in the US to be), face a problem from the following argument:
1) Assume that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent [classical theism]
2) It follows from (1) that God always brings about the maximally beneficial state of affairs (MBS) for any creature x.
2.1) If God is omnibenevolent, then God always wills the MBS for x
2.2) If God is omniscient, then God always knows how to bring about the MBS
for x.
2.3) if God is omnipotent, then God always has the power to bring about the
MBS for x.
2.4) it is the case that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent.
2.5) So, God always brings about the MBS for x [2.1 -2.4 MP]
3) Assume God allows abortion to occur
4) In that case either abortion is the MBS for some creature x or either (1) or (2) is false.
5) (1) and (2) are true
6) Therefore, it must be the case that abortion is the MBS for x [4,5 MT]
If this argument is correct then pro-lifers who are also classical theists should not be universally opposed to abortion, since the argument concludes that God would only allow abortion in the case where it is the MBS. However most who are pro-life would find this conclusion counterintuitive or even counter-dogmatic. So how do we account for the wrongness of abortion?
[Cross-posted at Parableman] Open theists distinguish between two different varieties of their view. There are actually a number of ways to divide up open theism into varieties, but one particular division that open theists make among themselves is between the following two positions:
1. There is no such thing as a future to be known, and that's why God doesn't know the future exhaustively. It's not a limitation on God that he doesn't know everything that will happen. There's nothing to be known, so God can't know it. So God is omniscient in knowing all the facts about the future. There just aren't very much such facts yet.
2. God could know the future, but it would prevent our freedom, so God chooses to limit his knowledge, knowing that knowledge about what we would choose to do would make us unfree. God doesn't know all he could know metaphysically, but he does know all he could know given his choice not to know future free choices.
I'm not really sure these are distinct views.
[cross-posted at Parableman]
I'm working on a chapter for the forthcoming Blackwell Philosophy and Harry Potter on the topic of destiny, and one of the things I'm trying to do in the chapter is distinguish between different metaphysical analyses of prophecy. I've come up with three, and I'm inclined to think that it might be exhaustive enough for the purposes of a popular-level work like this, but I'm curious if anyone here can think of any others.
Here's what I've got (and how I'm presenting it in the draft I'm writing):
1. They involve mere likelihoods. No one has access to the actual future, but someone might have magical access to information that's derived from what's likely. Given what's true about the various people involved, it's very likely that a certain outcome will happen. That means prophecies, even the ones Dumbledore is inclined to call genuine, are not infallible. They can turn out get it wrong.
2. They do not derive their content from the actual future. Rather, they make the future happen. When a genuine prophecy occurs, it influences those who hear it in such a way that they end up doing things that will fulfill the prophecy. This kind of prophecy is self-fulfilling in a very literal sense.
3. The seer has some intuitive connection with the way things will really happen, such that the words of the prophecy are true about a future that really will be that way. If it's a genuine prophecy, it can't be wrong, because its origin lies in the very future events that it tells about. In the same way that a report about the past can bring knowledge about the past only if there's some reliable connection with the actual events in the past, a genuine prophecy in this sense must derive its truth from a reliable method of getting facts about the future.
My understanding of J.K. Rowling's view of prophecy, judging by this interview and my sense that the Albus Dumbledore character represents her views when he discusses this issue with Harry Potter, is that she wants to treat Professor Trelawney's two genuine prophecies as the first kind, a kind of prophecy an open theist could accept.
There are hints in at least two of Dumbledore's conversations with Harry that he thinks something like the second kind is going on, but it's clearly not a reduction of prophecy to what happens in #2, because the characters in question (mostly Lord Voldemort) still make free choices and aren't simply caused by the prophecy to do anything the way some ancients thought Laius was caused by Apollo's prophecy to do what he did that led to Oedipus eventually killing him.
My argument at this point is that there isn't really a way for Dumbledore to distinguish between Trelawney's two genuine prophecies and all her vague predictions that can often be interpreted as coming true unless the genuine ones are of the third kind (because the pseudo-prophecies are of the first kind, and the genuine ones can't be completely explained by the second kind). Rowling doesn't seem to want to accept that, and Dumbledore is clearly with her, so there's a consistency issue here both for the character and the author. But my argument depends on the options I've listed being exhaustive. Is that true?
Suppose God is omnipotent. Then, it seems, he can bring it about that
(*) a new crater now appears on the far side of the moon if and only if Jones tomorrow freely mows the lawn.
But if God did that, then his knowledge of the present state of the moon, plus his knowledge of his omnipotence, would yield him knowledge of whether Jones tomorrow mows the lawn. Hence, if one restricts omniscience with respect to future free actions, one must similarly restrict omnipotence.
This may not be such a big deal. After all, although (*) is logically possible, the open theist may claim that it is logically impossible that God bring about (*). Still, it does show that there is a connection between omniscience and omnipotence.
One might think that an open theist who holds that propositions about future free actions cannot have truth value, or who holds that reports of future free actions are all automatically false, can escape the worry about the above restriction on omnipotence. After all, if such propositions are all false, then God can bring (*) about simply by doing nothing, since the right hand side of (*) is automatically false. And it seems too much to ask out of omnipotence to require that God bring about a proposition that cannot have a truth value. But one can still modify the task to get around this response. Let the task be to bring it about that:
(**) At t it be true that a day before t Jones mowed the lawn iff two days before t a new crater appeared on the far side of the moon,
where t is two days from now. In other words, the restriction on omniscience still implies a new restriction on what histories God can bring about. Again, it may not be such a big deal to the open theist.
Since there's still little going on here, I thought I'd direct readers to another post in my series based on my introductory philosophy course lecture notes. This time it's on foreknowledge and freedom. Again, I don't expect it to include anything newsworthy for many readers of this blog, since we've discussed all these issues here in much more depth in the past, but I've tried to summarize the main moves in the discussion at a level someone in an introductory course could understand, and some may want to take a look at that or offer feedback. Newer readers less familiar with our discussions on this topic or with the literature on the issue may find it informative as well. I did try to include the most current work on the subject.
Keith DeRose has three posts at Generous Orthodoxy Think Tank on universalism that might interest readers of this blog. "The Problem With Universalism"? deals with a worry some have raised about universalism, i.e. that it asks the wrong question. According to this objection, universalism relies on the assumption that salvation is about getting a lot of souls into heaven after they die. Keith responds that his universalism doesn't rely on that assumption at all. Hoping that Universalism Is/Will Be True examines various positions that might be described as "hoping that universalism is true". It gets into some interesting issues about holding to philosophical positions that you aren't comfortable saying you believe. He thinks we accept philosophical positions in a way that can involve the will, whereas belief is more involuntary. He follows this up with an extended discussion of how this might be affected on a view of future contingents according to which future contingents will be but are not now true. Underground Universalism? looks at the pressures on those whose livelihood depends on their theological convictions who might be pressured not to hold universalism and suggests that universalists recognize this and not push them too much, all the while seeking to alleviate those pressures by moving toward a removal of their causes.
I've been thinking lately about God's foreknowledge as it relates to His providence. More specifically, I've been thinking of an argument made by a number of philosophers (Hasker, Flint, Basinger--but most forcefully I think in Sanders' "Why Simple Foreknowledge Offers No More Providential Control than the Openness of God," Faith and Philosophy 1997) that God's having simple foreknowledge (as opposed to middle knowledge) would not aid God in His providential control of the world. The basic idea is that if God has foreknowledge, then what He knows is true, and it's thus 'too late' for Him to do anything to providentially control whether or not what He foreknows will happen. I think a helpful way to think of it is in terms of the following (more below the fold).
