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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
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    42
    The past cannot be changed. — Carmelics
    Home/Modality & Possibility
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    Part of a larger discussion

    Supports→You cannot retro-kill anyone who survives into the present.

    The past cannot be changed.

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

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Past events are immutably present in the divine providential plan.
      ?

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    • 2.The divine providential plan is immutable.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.God's omnipotence, properly understood, entails power over all things without exception, including past states of affairs.
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    • 2.Peter Damian himself argues God could restore Virginia's virginity, implying past states are within divine power to alter.
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    • 3.If omnipotence has no logical exceptions, the fixity of the past is a contingent fact, not a necessary one.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.The necessity of the past (necessitas consequentis) is conflated by many medievals with the weaker necessity of consequence (necessitas consequentiae).
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    • 2.Ockham's distinction shows that 'it was the case that p' being now unalterable does not entail p was ever metaphysically necessary.
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    • 3.What is fixed about the past is our epistemic access and causal dependence on it, not its intrinsic ontological immutability.
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    Topics

    Modality & PossibilityFree Will & Foreknowledge

    Connections

    1 linked claim · 2 topics

    Causation3 linkedDivine Attributes2 linked
    You cannot change the past.

    Related

    God's omnipotence, properly understood, entails power over all things without ex...If omnipotence has no logical exceptions, the fixity of the past is a contingent...Ockham's distinction shows that 'it was the case that p' being now unalterable d...Past events are immutably present in the divine providential plan.
    +7 moreShow less
    Peter Damian himself argues God could restore Virginia's virginity, implying pas...Retro-killing a person who is alive today would require changing the past.The divine providential plan is immutable.

    Similar

    You cannot change the past.96%One is unable to change the past93%One cannot change the past, so one cannot perform actions that would a...92%Compatibilists accept that the past cannot be changed92%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: peter-damian
    View source passageHide passage
    The doctrine of divine providence puts the question about changing the past in a new perspective (see 607A–610D). This doctrine warrants Damian’s claim that the same considerations apply to things past, present and future, at least when we are discussing God’s power. The doctrine of divine providence also makes it immediately clear what the answer to the second question has to be: the past cannot be changed because the past events are immutably present in the divine providential plan which is im
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    The necessity of the past (necessitas consequentis) is conflated by many medieva...
    What is fixed about the past is our epistemic access and causal dependence on it...
    You cannot change the past.
    You cannot retro-kill anyone who survives into the present.
    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit