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    On an Ockhamist account, God's past belief about future c... — Carmelics
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    Challenges→We cannot do anything about the future.

    On an Ockhamist account, God's past belief about future contingents is a 'soft fact' whose content depends on what agents freely do.

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    1 reason for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.If God's beliefs about future contingents were 'hard facts,' they would causally determine agent choices, undermining libertarian free will.
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    • 2.Soft facts (facts about the past whose truth-value depends on present or future events) coherently preserve both God's omniscience and human freedom.
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    • 3.God's past belief that 'Jones will freely choose X' can be true without constraining Jones, since the belief's content is constitutively dependent on Jones's actual choice.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.If God's belief depends on Jones's future choice, God's belief is not genuinely about the future but retroactively determined—making divine omniscience temporal and revisable.
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    • 2.The soft fact distinction blurs the metaphysical line between facts and interpretations, making it unclear what grounds the truth of God's belief independent of the choice itself.
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    • 3.Calling God's past belief 'soft' merely relabels the problem of divine foreknowledge without solving whether past facts can logically fail to necessitate present truths.
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    Free Will & Foreknowledge1 linked

    Related

    Calling God's past belief 'soft' merely relabels the problem of divine foreknowl...God's past belief that 'Jones will freely choose X' can be true without constrai...If God's belief depends on Jones's future choice, God's belief is not genuinely ...If God's beliefs about future contingents were 'hard facts,' they would causally...
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    Soft facts (facts about the past whose truth-value depends on present or future ...The soft fact distinction blurs the metaphysical line between facts and interpre...We cannot do anything about the future.

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    claim
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    2 (1 for, 1 against)
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