Linda Zagzebski's Ockhamist tradition distinguishes 'hard' facts about the past from 'soft' facts that are only accidentally about the past, undermining the premise that foreknowledge is strictly fixed.

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Reasons For

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Reason for

1.Soft facts (e.g., 'God believed yesterday that I'd choose X') depend on present choices, so they're not causally fixed before the choice occurs.
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2.Divine foreknowledge of soft facts preserves human libertarian freedom because the facts themselves are not settled until the agent acts.
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3.The hard/soft distinction respects intuitive asymmetries: past events are fixed, but past beliefs about future contingents needn't be.
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Reasons Against

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Reason against

1.If God's belief yesterday was true, then what God believed was a fact—hard or soft. That fact existed and was real before my choice.
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2.Calling foreknowledge-facts 'soft' merely relabels the problem rather than solving it; the fixity problem recurs at the metaphysical level.
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3.The hard/soft distinction lacks clear criteria: indexing beliefs to times makes them time-dependent, but truth-values don't retroactively change.
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Key Terms

Foreknowledge(Boethius's distinction between knowing and foreknowing): Knowledge of future events prior to their occurrence, distinguished from mere knowledge in that it implies temporal priority and thus raises the question of whether the future is already fixed
Hard facts(contrasted with soft facts to explain what makes past events truly unchangeable): Facts about the past that are completely independent and fixed—like 'it rained yesterday'—that cannot be changed or affected by anything else.
Linda Zagzebski(named as the originator of the distinction being discussed): A contemporary American philosopher who specializes in epistemology (the study of knowledge) and philosophy of religion, known for her work on virtue epistemology and divine foreknowledge.
Ockhamist tradition(describes the philosophical framework Zagzebski works within): A philosophical approach based on ideas from William of Ockham (a medieval philosopher) that typically emphasizes logical simplicity and questions whether God's knowledge of the future actually makes the future fixed or predetermined.
Soft facts(metaphysics and philosophy of time): In philosophy of time, facts about the past that somehow depend on or are flexible about future events, rather than being completely fixed and determined.
Strictly fixed(describes whether foreknowledge locks in the future as inevitable): Completely determined and unchangeable; if something is 'strictly fixed,' there is no possibility it could be any other way.
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.

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Free Will & Foreknowledge1 linked

Calling foreknowledge-facts 'soft' merely relabels the problem rather than solvi...Divine foreknowledge of soft facts preserves human libertarian freedom because t...If God's belief yesterday was true, then what God believed was a fact—hard or so...Soft facts (e.g., 'God believed yesterday that I'd choose X') depend on present ...

Details

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