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    An atemporal believer can timelessly know the same truths... — Carmelics
    Home/Divine Attributes
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    An atemporal believer can timelessly know the same truths that temporal believers know only at some times, so there is no bar to atemporal omniscience.

    Divine Attributes
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Propositions expressed by present-tensed sentences predicate properties of whatever time has a time-haecceity T, but they and all other propositions are eternally true.
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    • 2.Knowers in time have access to the time with T, and perhaps T itself, only at that time, so what changes over time is not what is true but what temporal believers have access to.
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    • 3.It is plausibly being in time that imposes access limits, so there is no reason to think that an atemporal believer would suffer similar access limits.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Knowing which time is NOW requires being causally embedded in time, not merely knowing that some time t has a haecceity T.
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    • 2.An atemporal being lacks the causal-indexical contact with the present moment that grounds genuine de se temporal knowledge.
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    • 3.Without that contact, the atemporal being knows only that t is the NOW-time, not what it is like for NOW to be t—a distinct cognitive achievement.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Perry and Lewis establish that essentially indexical beliefs like 'it is now t' resist reduction to eternal propositional contents.
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    • 2.If 'it is now t' expresses an irreducibly self-locating belief, then its truth-conditions cannot be fully captured by any tenseless proposition an atemporal knower could entertain.
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    • 3.Therefore Wierenga's assumption that temporal and atemporal believers can share the same truth-apt content is false for the critical class of present-tensed beliefs.
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    Related

    An atemporal being lacks the causal-indexical contact with the present moment th...If 'it is now t' expresses an irreducibly self-locating belief, then its truth-c...It is plausibly being in time that imposes access limits, so there is no reason ...Knowers in time have access to the time with T, and perhaps T itself, only at th...
    +5 moreShow less
    Knowing which time is NOW requires being causally embedded in time, not merely k...Perry and Lewis establish that essentially indexical beliefs like 'it is now t' ...Propositions expressed by present-tensed sentences predicate properties of whate...Therefore Wierenga's assumption that temporal and atemporal believers can share ...Without that contact, the atemporal being knows only that t is the NOW-time, not...

    Similar

    It is plausibly being in time that imposes access limits, so there is ...79%Being omniscient requires knowing different things at different times.76%Inability to know what logically cannot be known does not harm God's o...75%In every possible world in which God exists, the essential predication...75%

    Source

    AI-extracted2/3 agreementValid
    SEP: immutability
    Wierenga (1989, 175–90), first reply
    View source passageHide passage
    Edward Wierenga (1989, 175–90) offered two replies to the argument, based on differing accounts of what propositions are believed and the requirements of omniscience. On the first, an omniscient being would know all truths, propositions expressed by present-tensed sentences predicate properties of whatever time has a time-haecceity T, but they and all other propositions are eternally true. Knowers in time have access to the time with T, and perhaps T itself, only at that time: so what changes over time is not what is true, but what temporal believers have access to. But (Wierenga notes) the...
    Extraction notes

    Validity: The three premises faithfully capture Wierenga's first reply as presented in the passage, and they jointly support the conclusion that an atemporal believer faces no barrier to timelessly knowing all truths, including those temporal believers access only at certain times.

    Confidence: High confidence; the argument is explicitly laid out in the passage.

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit