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    Causal dependence is the best model for understanding how... — Carmelics
    Home/Free Will & Foreknowledge
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    Causal dependence is the best model for understanding how God can foreknow what you will do because you will do it.

    Free Will & Foreknowledge
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • After reviewing modal, counterfactual, metaphysical, and logical analyses of explanatory dependence, and taking in lessons from time travel cases, causal dependence emerges as the best model.
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.God's knowledge is traditionally held to be simple and timeless, making causal temporal dependence between events and divine cognition incoherent.
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    • 2.On divine simplicity (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I.14), God does not receive information from creatures, so foreknowledge cannot be causally downstream of creaturely acts.
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    • 3.A causal model implies God's knowledge is contingent on what creatures do, which compromises divine aseity and necessity accepted across Thomist and Augustinian traditions.
      ?

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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Molinist middle knowledge grounds foreknowledge in counterfactuals of creaturely freedom, providing a non-causal explanatory model that the causal account cannot adequately capture.
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    • 2.Luis de Molina argued God knows what any free creature would do in any circumstance logically prior to creation, meaning the dependence relation is counterfactual, not causal.
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    • 3.If middle knowledge successfully explains foreknowledge without causal dependence, causal dependence cannot be established as the uniquely best model.
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    Free Will & Foreknowledge

    Related

    A causal model implies God's knowledge is contingent on what creatures do, which...After reviewing modal, counterfactual, metaphysical, and logical analyses of exp...God's knowledge is traditionally held to be simple and timeless, making causal t...If middle knowledge successfully explains foreknowledge without causal dependenc...
    +3 moreShow less
    Luis de Molina argued God knows what any free creature would do in any circumsta...Molinist middle knowledge grounds foreknowledge in counterfactuals of creaturely...On divine simplicity (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I.14), God does not receive info...

    Similar

    After reviewing modal, counterfactual, metaphysical, and logical analy...78%The dependence point alone does not show that the hard past isn't fixe...73%The dependency of God's belief on Jones' act need not be a causal depe...71%The claim that the agent can act otherwise is simply asserted rather t...69%

    Source

    AI-extracted
    SEP: free-will-foreknowledge
    View source passageHide passage
    Swenson (2016) argues that what’s fixed isn’t the past in toto, but so much of the past as isn’t dependent on the future. Rather than modifying the principle of the fixity of the past, Law (2020) advocates junking it altogether and replacing it with the principle of the fixity of the independent. Law (2021) continues the case for replacing the fixity of the past with the fixity of the independent by arguing that the former, insofar as the past is fixed, is derivative from the latter. In two recent papers, Ryan Wasserman stakes out positions that differ from most other defenders of the dependen...

    Details

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