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Determinism and Omniscience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2010

Tobias Chapman
Tobias Chapman
Affiliation:
University of Guelph
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Extract

Many philosophers and theologians have thought that God's omniscience entails the truth of strict determinism. Many others, including most of the Scholastics, held that arguments for this view confused necessitas consequential and necessitas consequentis. I think the Scholastics were right. What I am primarily concerned to argue in this paper is that nonetheless great difficulties remain concerning the relation between God's knowledge and the fact that there are contingent events.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , December 1970 , pp. 366 - 373
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1970

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References

1 Cahn, S.M., Fate, Logic and Tim. (New Haven : Yale U.P., 1967)Google Scholar. cf. Pike, Nelson, “Divine Omniscience and Voluntary Action”, The Philosophical Review, 74, (1965), 27–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 See Prior, A.N., Formal Logic, Oxford University Press, 1962, p. 247Google Scholar for a formal system allowing for the passage from q to Necessarily q.

8 In The Disputed Questions on Truth, Question II, Article XII and in the Summa Theologiae, la, Quest. 14, Article 13.

4 Prior, A.N., “The Formalities of Omniscience”, Papers on Time and Tense, Oxford University Press, 1968Google Scholar, Chapter III.

5 It is also the line which Łukasiewicz takes in his Aristotle's Syllogistic, Chapters VI and VII.

6 For a thorough discussion of this question see Kneale, M., “Eternity and Sempiternity”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1969, pp. 223–238CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 A modal operator such as “It is contingent that” can meaningfully occur in a two-valued logic. It need not indicate a third truth-value any more than “It is (im)probable that” must : it is certainly possible for a statement like “It is improbable that q” to be true and yet q to be true also. There is a very interesting discussion of how Aristotle's results in De Interpretatione IX can be interpreted in the light of this in G.E.M. Anscombe's paper, “Aristotle and the Sea Battle”, Mind, 65 (1956).

8 I am not sure, however, that St. Thomas does not allow this equivalence. Certainly Aristotle allows that it is one sense of “necessary”.

9 In Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1960–1961, pp. 87–108Google Scholar.

10 See for instance Boehner, Philotheus, “Ockham's Tractatus de praedestinatione et de praescientia Dei et defuturis contingentibus and Its Main Problems” in Collected Articles on Ockham, The Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1958, pp. 420–441Google Scholar.

11 Op. cit., pp. 35, 36.

12 Philotheus Boehner argues in this way (op. tit., p. 438). Certainly a change in what a person has does not necessarily constitute a change in him. A man does not wear out with his coat. But I am not sure that the analogy here will work—a man hardly seems to possess knowledge in the same respect that he possesses clothes.

13 See Anscombe, G.E.M., “Parmenides, Mystery and Contradiction”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1969, pp. 125–132CrossRefGoogle Scholar.