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    Boethius and Aquinas demonstrate that eternal knowledge o... — Carmelics
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    Challenges→Omniscience is incompatible with immutability.

    Boethius and Aquinas demonstrate that eternal knowledge of temporal events requires no successive acts of knowing and thus no change in the knower.

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    1 reason for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.God's knowledge is non-discursive; God perceives all temporal moments in a single eternal act, like seeing an entire landscape at once.
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    • 2.Change in a knower requires temporal succession between different mental states, which eternal timelessness precludes by definition.
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    • 3.Knowing that X occurs at time T doesn't require the knower to exist at T or undergo change; tenseless propositions suffice.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.If God knows future contingents truly now, this knowledge must causally depend on those future events or constrain them, implying change.
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    • 2.Simultaneous knowledge of contradictory temporal events (what will and won't happen) requires either logical incoherence or knowledge-type change.
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    • 3.The landscape analogy fails: spatial omniscience doesn't explain how tensed knowledge of 'now it will rain' avoids temporal indexing problems.
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    Key Terms

    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.

    Connections

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    Divine Attributes1 linked

    Related

    Change in a knower requires temporal succession between different mental states,...God's knowledge is non-discursive; God perceives all temporal moments in a singl...If God knows future contingents truly now, this knowledge must causally depend o...Knowing that X occurs at time T doesn't require the knower to exist at T or unde...
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    Omniscience is incompatible with immutability.Simultaneous knowledge of contradictory temporal events (what will and won't hap...The landscape analogy fails: spatial omniscience doesn't explain how tensed know...

    Details

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