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    42
    The idea of the necessity of the past may be confused. — Carmelics
    Home/Free Will & Foreknowledge
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    The idea of the necessity of the past may be confused.

    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
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    • 1.We have inherited from Ockham the idea that the past has a kind of necessity for which we can formulate an analogue of the formal principles of logical necessity.
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    • 2.But the intuitions supporting such a form of necessity are largely intuitions about causability.
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    • 3.The modalities of causability/non-causability do not parallel necessity, possibility, and impossibility.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.The fixity of the past is not grounded merely in causal intuitions but in the logical principle that what has occurred cannot be made not to have occurred.
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    • 2.This logical irreversibility is distinct from causal necessity and survives Ockhamist critiques of causal modality.
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    • 3.Aristotle's sea-battle argument and subsequent medieval treatments show that temporal asymmetry tracks logical, not merely causal, necessity.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Pike's 1965 formulation of the foreknowledge argument derives the necessity of the past from transfer-of-necessity principles, not from confused causal intuitions.
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    • 2.Plantinga's notion of 'broadly logical necessity' applied to past truths provides a rigorous modal framework that is not reducible to causability.
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    Free Will & Foreknowledge

    Related

    Aristotle's sea-battle argument and subsequent medieval treatments show that tem...But the intuitions supporting such a form of necessity are largely intuitions ab...Pike's 1965 formulation of the foreknowledge argument derives the necessity of t...Plantinga's notion of 'broadly logical necessity' applied to past truths provide...
    +4 moreShow less
    The fixity of the past is not grounded merely in causal intuitions but in the lo...The modalities of causability/non-causability do not parallel necessity, possibi...This logical irreversibility is distinct from causal necessity and survives Ockh...We have inherited from Ockham the idea that the past has a kind of necessity for...

    Similar

    The necessity of the past may simply be the principle that past events...86%We have inherited from Ockham the idea that the past has a kind of nec...83%Truths about the past are necessary — they cannot be other than they a...83%Gregory did not assert that the past is necessary beyond necessity ex ...81%

    Source

    AI-extracted
    SEP: free-will-foreknowledge
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    This argument for theological fatalism is better than the standard argument if a purely temporal necessity is problematic. The second premise of the above argument is only the principle that the past is unpreventable, not a questionable premise that the past has a special kind of necessity distinct from the causal structure of the universe simply in virtue of being past. But since the unpreventability of the past is not a form of necessity in the formal sense, then the transfer principle licensing the crucial inference to (4) is not a transfer of necessity. Unlike the transfer of temporal nece...

    Details

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