Abstract
Theological fatalists contend that if God knows everything, then no human action is free, and that since God does know everything, no human action is free. One reply to such arguments that has become popular recently— a way favored by William Hasker and Peter van Inwagen—agrees that if God knows everything, no human action is free. The distinctive response of these philosophers is simply to say that therefore God does not know everything. On this view, what the fatalist arguments in fact bring out is that it was logically impossible for God to have known the truths about what we would freely do in the future. And this is no defect in God’s knowledge, for infallible foreknowledge of such truths is a logical impossibility. It has commonly been assumed that this position constitutes an explanation of where the fatalist argument goes wrong. My first goal is to argue that any such assumption has in fact been a mistake; Hasker and van Inwagen have in effect said only that something does go wrong with the argument, but they have not explained what goes wrong with it. Once we see this result, we’ll see, I think, that they need such an account—and that no such account has in fact been provided. The second goal of this paper is therefore to develop— and to criticize— what seems to be the most promising such account they might offer. As I see it, this account will in fact highlight in an intuitively compelling new way what many regard to be the view’s chief liability, namely, that the truths about the future which God is said not to know will now appear even more clearly (and problematically)‘ungrounded’.
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Notes
I am not sure exactly when the term ‘open theism’ entered the philosophical discussion, but the core thesis of open theism, as I understand it, is that there are some things – free decisions, paradigmatically – which happen, but which God hasn’t always known would happen. For a defense of this characterization of open theism, see Todd 2011.
For an introduction to this literature, see especially the introduction to Fischer 1989.
Van Inwagen himself expresses this sentiment; see his 2008: 218 (fn. 1).
I thank John Fischer for this way of putting the point.
My point here is similar to one made in Hunt 1998. There Hunt distinguishes between the “metaphysical” problem of fatalism and the “theological” problem of fatalism. In Hunt’s terms, my point is this: at best, Hasker and van Inwagen have solved the “theological” problem of fatalism, but have not yet solved the deeper “metaphysical” problem. My point is also similar to John Martin Fischer’s claim that, contrary to what many seem to suppose, Molinism does not provide a distinctive “solution” to the foreknowledge problem, but rather presupposes one. See Fischer 2008.
Of course, one might wonder whether Limited Foreknowledge Open Theists ever really intended to be giving a ‘solution’ to the problem in the sense at stake here. Perhaps some such open theists would say, “You (rightly) point out that we haven’t given an explanation of the falsity of BP. But we never intended to do so; moreover, we don’t see why we should have to. After all, the fatalist is the one giving the argument here.” In other words, perhaps proponents of LFOT are purely “playing defense,” and thus aren’t trying to explain how the fatalist goes wrong. I have no decisive argument that proponents of LFOT do think they are doing more; all I can point to is my general impression that they have at least been taken to be doing more. For instance, Robert Kane certainly presents “Open Theism” as a potential solution to the problem, and considers it alongside the so-called “Boethian” and “Ockhamist” solutions. Kane writes, “The fourth and final solution to the foreknowledge problem is the “Open Theism” view. Defenders of this view do not think any of the previous solutions to the problem of foreknowledge are satisfactory. The only way out, they believe, is to deny that God has foreknowledge of future free actions.” (Kane 2005: 160) Kane goes on to cite Hasker’s work as a representative of “Open Theism”, which, again, he considers to be a (prospective) “solution to the foreknowledge problem.” But if proponents of LFOT are indeed simply “playing defense” in this way, is it appropriate to categorize LFOT alongside Ockhamism as a “solution” to the problem? After all, as we will see, Ockhamists are not simply “playing defense” – instead, they can provide (or at least try to provide) an independent explanation of how and where the fatalist goes wrong. In any case, if proponents of LFOT are simply “playing defense” in some sense, then this fact is in itself important to know. (I thank Neal Tognazzini and John Fischer for helpfully raising these issues.)
See, e.g., the essays by Adams, Freddoso, and Plantinga in Fischer 1989.
However, this is a project I pursue at length Todd 2013a.
For a defense of OFOT, see Rhoda et al. 2006.
Similarly, van Inwagen may be right that “has beliefs that cannot be mistaken about what the future acts of free agents will be” is an impossible property, and thus that God will not “be omniscient in any sense of omniscience that entails that property, for omniscience in that sense will be an impossible property.” (2008: 226) But the fatalist clearly also contends that this is an impossible property, and the fatalist will also contend that God will not be omniscient in any sense that implies this property, for the simple reason that, on her view, God’s foreknowledge implies that there are no free acts in the first place.
I am indebted to Alexander Pruss and David Hunt for suggesting and helping me formulate this account.
Here I am supposing the proponents of LFOT will not want to be eternalists, i.e. that they will not want to say that past, present, and (especially) future objects are on an ontological par. However, I admit that, in response to the worries of this section, the proponent of LFOT could adopt eternalism. Given this view, she could say that the relevant truthmakers just are the given future events themselves, but that God (being temporal) does not have access to such future objects. Fully evaluating this proposal must lie beyond the scope of this paper; I am content simply to note that if proponents of LFOT are ultimately committed to eternalism, then this is a previously unnoticed and substantive new commitment of the view, which many will find unwelcome. I thank Alexander Pruss for raising this issue.
In response to the argument of this paper, an anonymous referee for this journal has suggested that we might take a more “dialectical” approach to Limited Foreknowledge Open Theism. On this approach, LFOT would not be a “final” position on these issues, so to speak, but instead something like a “step” in the dialectic concerning the tension between freedom and foreknowledge. This is an approach with which I am quite sympathetic. On this approach, we are first confronted with the incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom. Naturally, we are (or might be) more confident that we are free than that God has the given foreknowledge; we thus deny that God has foreknowledge in the relevant way. Further, if we began by thinking that the given truths existed to be known, we would not (at least immediately) give up this assumption. Now, someone alleges that such a view denies God’s omniscience; we reply that, on the assumption that we are indeed free, such truths would be impossible for God to know, and thus that omniscience is preserved. In short, as we confront the incompatibility of foreknowledge and freedom, we initially move to a position like LFOT. But now we are pushed to go deeper: why couldn’t God believe the relevant truths? Answer: because nothing about the world could provide God adequate justification for believing them, nothing about the world makes them true, and nothing about the world would have to be different, were they to be false; even if they were true, the world could be just as it appears to God to be, and yet they be false. But then we ask: why think there are such truths in the first place? Is this an acceptable view concerning the relationship between truth and “the world”? On this approach, then, the considerations that naturally lead us to Limited Foreknowledge Open Theism ultimately should – and do, on further reflection – lead us to Open Future Open Theism.
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Acknowledgements
An early version of this paper was presented at the Agency Reading Group at the University of California, Riverside; thanks to participants in this group for helpful comments. Comments from Neal Tognazzini, Kenny Boyce, Andrew Bailey, Yishai Cohen, David Hunt, Alexander Pruss, and William Hasker improved the paper greatly. Thanks especially to Neal Tognazzini for instrumental conversations about my ideas for this paper before a draft ever appeared. Versions of this paper were presented at the Joseph Butler Society at Oriel College, Oxford (thanks especially to Brian Leftow for comments) and the “Minds: Human and Divine” conference organized by the Analytic Theology project at the University of Innsbruck and the Munich School of Philosophy. Thanks to audiences both events. Finally, I must thank John Martin Fischer for extensive helpful comments on multiple drafts of the paper, and for many conversations over the years about these issues.
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Todd, P. Against Limited Foreknowledge. Philosophia 42, 523–538 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-013-9505-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-013-9505-7