Holy Cyclops

The background for this post appears here and here.

Chad McIntosh (of Doxazo Theos—see links) thinks that the problem with my second argument is that God’s foreknowledge isn’t necessary. He says that I’d be hard-pressed to find a theist who agreed that it was. But I was just reading Alvin Plantinga’s The Nature of Necessity, and he argues for just that point—he thinks that in order for a possibly existing entity to count as God, it can’t be omniscient in one possible world but not in another, or omnipotent in one possible world but not in another, or morally perfect in one possible world but not in another. He thinks that God must be maximally great—i.e., maximally excellent in all possible worlds—necessarily maximally excellent. If foreknowledge is part of omniscience, then at least one prominent theist thinks it’s necessary.

Still, I agree that if it’s not necessary, then the second argument, in its short form, fails, since N(Kx) is a premiss of the short form; and I assume that Chad would say that the third premiss of the second argument in its long form, N(Kx) v N(K(~x)), was false, so that it, too, would fail. Denying the necessity of God’s foreknowledge is indeed a way of rendering the arguments unsound.

But I suspect that Chad has in mind not that God isn’t necessarily foreknowing, but rather that his foreknowledge is contingent rather than necessary—that whether God foreknows x or foreknows not-x depends on the agent S’s choice, and is not “written in metaphysical stone” independent of S’s choosing. It is not God’s foreknowing that is contingent; it is what God foreknows that is contingent. And that’s how N(Kx) is false: it’s not N(K(something)) that’s false, but rather N(K(specifically x)) that’s false. Chad might then agree to the truth of N(Kx v ~Kx) but not to N(Kx) v N(K(~x)).

(Chad also notes that God needn’t be foreknowing because there are possible worlds in which, for example, God has not created time; but I am restricting myself to consideration of all possible worlds in which there are human beings making choices. The notion of necessity involved will then be one of relative necessity—necessity relative to a restricted class of possible worlds. Since the class of possible worlds in which there are human beings making choices is exactly the class in which freedom matters, necessity relative to this class seems strong enough to be opposed to freedom.)

I agree with Chad when he writes, “Were S to refrain from x and performed [sic] y instead, God’s foreknowledge would have been different.” I have, in fact, written a defense of that very view here.

What I don’t yet agree with is the necessity of deriving Nx (or Nx v N(~x)). Looking at the first argument I gave:

1. N(Kx—>x) (Premiss—to know that x will occur at t requires that x will occur at t)
2. Kx—>x (1, modal axiom M [or T], i.e., Np—>p)
3. Kx (Premiss—it is known that x occurs at t [since God has complete foreknowledge])
4. x (2, 3, modus ponens)

It seems clear to me that in every possible world in which God foreknows that agent S will choose to perform x at t, agent S will in fact choose to perform x at t, and in every possible world in which God foreknows that agent S will choose to perform not-x at t, agent S will in fact choose to perform not-x at t; agent S’s choice of whether or not to perform x at t is fixed once God’s foreknowledge of which he will perform is fixed. The argument works just as well the other way, of course: Once S’s choice is fixed, so is God’s foreknowledge; and since the relevance of the argument is usually with respect to human freedom of choice, we naturally want to say that as a causal or compulsory matter, that is the way it really works—that God’s foreknowledge is like his looking through a time-telescope and seeing what will happen, rather than like his reaching out and forcing events to occur as they do; and I agree with that; but I do observe that as a strictly logical matter, God’s foreknowledge seems clearly to fix S’s choice. In no possible world can we have both Kx and ~x, and in no possible world can we have both K(~x) and x; what we have, for any possible world in which freedom is a live issue, is N([Kx^x] v [K(~x)^(~x)]). The two—God’s foreknowledge and S’s choice—logically fix each other. This isn’t causation or compulsion, but once you have one, you also have the other. If freedom is supposed to mean that at any time before the choice, the choice is not yet fixed, then this seems to defeat human freedom.

But the real problem with the view that it is S’s temporally later choice of x at time t that causes God’s temporally earlier foreknowledge that S will choose x at t comes about if one tries to combine it with the view that God can interact with the universe in any way whatsoever. If one allows God, who foreknows that agent S will choose to do x at t, to tell agent S beforehand of his future choice, there seems to be a problem: Why can’t agent S, having been informed of his future choice, now decide to behave contrarily and to do not-x at t? Obviously, he can’t so choose, for to do so would violate God’s foreknowledge; but how is he free if he can’t so choose? This argument has force even though Nx would normally be thought of as false. If choice x is the choice to put on a green shirt, we would normally think of it as entirely within S’s power to put on a green shirt and also entirely within his power to put on a blue shirt instead. Even if God foreknows that S will put on a green shirt, it may still be that what God foreknows is really that S will freely choose to put on a green shirt. But if God foreknows S’s choice and also tells S about it, why can’t S choose instead to put on a blue shirt, if he is still free? It seems that the sort of interaction that might lead to S’s choosing differently than foreknown is denied to a foreknowing God, if S is thought to remain free; and it seems that S loses his freedom if a foreknowing God does take part in such an interaction.

Perhaps I need to look around for some characterizations of freedom.