Recently in Theological Fatalism Category

[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?

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.

I have previously expressed on Prosblogion my belief that Rowe's argument — made most recently and thoroughly in Can God be Free? — against the existence of God from the impossibility of creating the best world founders on the concept of sufficient goodness and satisficing action and I don't wish to revisit that issue. However, I do think there is an issue in the neighborhood which suggests a conclusion which will be unpopular with many: that God must create a world.  The argument starts with a kind of dominance principle and I'll call it the "swamping principle"--(SP) for short--because one category swamps the other.

(SP) For any two types of actions A and B if every token of A is better than any token of B, then God must bring about a token of A.

It looks, then, like on this assignment (SP) entails that God must create.

I don't think this is a very interesting proposition given the operative sense of "must" and that I'm not an unrestricted libertarian.

What I find interesting is the following dialectic: Leibniz and Clarke agree that there's a best possible world and dispute whether this is consistent with God being free and the nature of that freedom. Rowe denies that there is a best possible world and argues from that that there is no God, since a God would have to create the best. I agree with Rowe that there is no best possible world, but reject his argument on the grounds that God can satisfice. However, the satisficing response assumes that there is a class of action-types like A above which, together with (SP), entails that God must create which brings us back to the Leibniz/Clarke debate on God's freedom.

There are lots of interesting threads leading out of this, but I wonder if anyone thinks they have a counter-example to (SP).