phi201 - lect 1 - week 6 - Foreknowledge and Freedom

wk 4 is being cut up - week 5 is pertinent to now - scotus and aquinas are not that important - boethius is very important.

Look at Boetihus' Consolation of Philosophy - Book II (adelaide ebooks)

after that if you like, look at Aquinas and Scotus readings under "Wk5" on syllabus.

1. IF God knows I'll do x

then it is [necessarily the case that I will do x]

2. If it is necessarily the case that I will do x

then it is impossible for me not to do x

then it is impossible for me to not do x

3. if [it is impossible for me not to do x] then

[my doing x will not be free]

St. Augustine sees this sort of argument as illegitimately assuming that God's present foreknowledge of your future acts causes these acts, forces them to occur be causal influence. If God's foreknowledge were causing you to choose nachos tomorrow, then that act would not be free. But, says St. Augustine, that isn't what's happening. Your future act causes God's present foreknowledge, so there is no problem. Not so fast, says Boethius. This argument says nothing about your act's being caused by God's foreknowledge. All it says if that God does foreknow than your act is fixed. God's foreknowledge could, for all the argument says, be a sign of your future acts being fixed. All the argument talks about is necessity not causation. Isn't there some sense in which premise 1 is true? In order to discuss this questions we need to look at a logical distinction that Boethius makes. It is now a standard distinction, but he was one of the first to make it.

Conditional and Simple NEcessity

One response to the intuitive truth of premise is to point out that it is ambiguous. There is one sense in which it is clearly true, but can't be used as the basis for the rest of the argument. So that is an irrelevant sense. IT is common to say that the other sense if clearly one with respect to which premise 1 is false. Boethius agrees with that, but thinks its falsity is not as obvious as some others would hav eit.

What is the distinction?

Consider example A. Two ways of taking it: A1 and A2.

They don't mean the same.

A1 - conditional necessity - necessity of the consequence

This says that in every world, the statement "if john is walking then he is walking" is true.

A2 - involves simple necessity (necessity of the consequent) - clearly false

This says that if John is walking in actual world, then in every world (actual or not) he is walking.

Example A is of the form "if P then necessarily P" This can be read as [] (p -> P) conditional necessity

p_.[]P Simple necessity

"[]" means "it is necessarily the case that...


Here we have the same statement twice, as antecedent and as consequent of the conditional. p>P

The distinction also applies when we have different statements in those roles.

e.g Example B. of the form if P then necessarily Q"

same distinction applies:

b1 [](p->q) correct

b2 p->[]Q false