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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that God can achieve infallible knowledge of future contingents through a 'bootstrapping' process.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Self-referential belief formation is epistemically circular: a belief cannot gain justification by appealing to the reliability of the very cognitive process producing that belief.
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      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 2.God's 'bootstrapping' from fallibilist belief to certainty via self-knowledge of infallibility presupposes the infallibility it purports to establish, committing the same circularity Alston identified in epistemic self-trust.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 3.A genuinely contingent future state of affairs cannot be made epistemically determinate by any knower's self-assessment of their own reliability, since reliability tracks facts, not constitutes them.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.William Hasker's 'no-freeze' objection establishes that for knowledge of free future actions, the knowing relation must be grounded in the action itself, not in any prior epistemic state of the knower.
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      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 2.If God's certainty derives from self-knowledge of infallibility rather than direct acquaintance with the future act, the act's freedom is undermined because its occurrence is explanatorily posterior to God's certain belief.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 3.Bootstrapping thus either fails to yield genuine foreknowledge of free acts or covertly reintroduces the incompatibilist threat it was designed to circumvent.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Human beings are sometimes in a knowledge-conferring situation (KCS) with respect to the contingent future.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 2.God would be aware of all the evidence and other knowledge-conferring factors that human beings are aware of in such situations, so God is also in a position to know some future contingents by being in the appropriate KCS.
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      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 3.God can combine his fallibilist beliefs about the contingent future with self-knowledge of his own infallibility to 'bootstrap' his way to certainty.
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      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

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    Strongest counterpoint
    Explore the most compelling reason on the other side.