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    A God lacking middle knowledge would be less cognitively ... — Carmelics
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    Challenges→God's not knowing in advance how we will exercise our freedom is not a mark against his omniscience.

    A God lacking middle knowledge would be less cognitively perfect than a Molinist God who knows all true conditionals, making ignorance of free choices a genuine omniscience deficit.

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    1 reason for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Knowledge of all true propositions is a necessary condition for cognitive perfection; middle knowledge expands the domain of knowable truths.
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    • 2.A being that knows counterfactuals about free agents has greater explanatory power regarding creation's actual state than one without such knowledge.
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    • 3.Ignorance of any truth-bearing proposition constitutes a genuine epistemic limitation, even if that ignorance stems from the proposition's nature.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Counterfactuals about free choices may not be truth-bearers at all; their truth-value might be indeterminate, making omniscience coherent without knowing them.
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    • 2.Perfect knowledge of what must be true and what cannot be false suffices for omniscience; knowing impossible truths contradicts rather than perfects cognition.
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    • 3.Defining omniscience negatively—as absence of ignorance—conflates it with maximal belief; true omniscience may require freedom from determinist knowledge.
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    Key Terms

    Cognitive Perfection(philosophy of God)
    The quality of having complete and flawless knowledge about everything; lacking nothing in understanding or awareness.
    Middle knowledge(Core component of Molinism, as described in Marsh's reply to Maitzen)
    God's knowledge of what free creatures would freely do in counterfactual situations
    Molinist(as the main framework being discussed)
    Related to the ideas of Luis de Molina, a 16th-century Spanish philosopher who developed a specific theory about how God can know the future while humans still have free choice.
    Omniscience Deficit(philosophy of God)
    A gap or lack in knowing everything; a failure to be truly all-knowing in some respect.
    True Conditionals(logic and metaphysics)
    Statements of the form 'if X happens, then Y will happen' that accurately describe what would actually occur in different situations.
    knowledge(Distinguished from mere true belief, which may be the product of indoctrination and need not exercise deliberative capacities.)
    Justified true belief — true belief that has been arrived at through the exercise of deliberative capacities, including comparison of and deliberation among alternatives.
    omniscience(The passage tests omniscience against mathematical undecidability)
    The property of knowing everything; used here to probe whether divine knowledge extends to undecided mathematical propositions.

    Connections

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    Divine Attributes1 linked

    Related

    A being that knows counterfactuals about free agents has greater explanatory pow...Counterfactuals about free choices may not be truth-bearers at all; their truth-...Defining omniscience negatively—as absence of ignorance—conflates it with maxima...God's not knowing in advance how we will exercise our freedom is not a mark agai...

    Details

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    claim
    Perspectives
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    Ignorance of any truth-bearing proposition constitutes a genuine epistemic limit...Knowledge of all true propositions is a necessary condition for cognitive perfec...Perfect knowledge of what must be true and what cannot be false suffices for omn...