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    The timelessness solution to the dilemma of foreknowledge... — Carmelics
    Home/Free Will & Foreknowledge
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    The timelessness solution to the dilemma of foreknowledge and freedom is unsuccessful.

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

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.A timeless God cannot stand in real causal or temporal relations to created events, yet providence and answered prayer require such relations.
      ?

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    • 2.Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann's 'ET-simultaneity' relation, meant to bridge eternity and time, is not a genuine simultaneity relation and cannot ground the required cognitive contact with free acts.
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    • 3.Without genuine cognitive contact with temporal events as they occur, a timeless being's 'knowledge' of free acts lacks the modal sensitivity needed to count as knowledge rather than mere true belief.
      ?

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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.If God timelessly knows proposition P, then God's knowing P is not earlier, later, or simultaneous with any human act, making it conceptually impossible for God's knowledge to be counterfactually dependent on what agents freely do.
      ?

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    • 2.Nelson Pike's original incompatibilist argument requires only that God's belief be fixed prior to the act; timeless fixity is equally sufficient to generate the same kind of necessity that undermines freedom.
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    • 3.Paul Helm's defense of timeless foreknowledge concedes that timeless knowledge is 'accidentally necessary' relative to any temporal vantage point, preserving the very modal constraint the timelessness solution was designed to dissolve.
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • The idea of timelessness either does not make sense or is incompatible with other religiously compelling properties of God, such as personhood.
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    Topics

    Free Will & Foreknowledge

    Key Terms

    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.

    Related

    A timeless God cannot stand in real causal or temporal relations to created even...Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann's 'ET-simultaneity' relation, meant to bridg...If God timelessly knows proposition P, then God's knowing P is not earlier, late...Nelson Pike's original incompatibilist argument requires only that God's belief ...
    +3 moreShow less
    Paul Helm's defense of timeless foreknowledge concedes that timeless knowledge i...The idea of timelessness either does not make sense or is incompatible with othe...Without genuine cognitive contact with temporal events as they occur, a timeless...

    Similar

    The idea of timelessness either does not make sense or is incompatible...78%Molinism is distinct from other compatibilist solutions regarding fore...78%If there is nothing we can do about a timeless state, there is nothing...76%Other compatibilist solutions aim only at showing that infallible fore...75%

    Source

    AI-extracted
    SEP: free-will-foreknowledge
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    Most objections to the timelessness solution to the dilemma of foreknowledge and freedom focus on the idea of timelessness itself, arguing either that it does not make sense or that it is incompatible with other properties of God that are religiously more compelling, such as personhood (e.g., Pike 1970, 121–129; Wolterstorff 1975; Swinburne 1977, 221). Zagzebski has argued (1991, chap. 2 and 2011) that the timelessness move does not avoid the problem of theological fatalism since an argument structurally parallel to the basic argument can be formulated for timeless knowledge. If God is not in ...

    Details

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