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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
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    42
    We cannot do anything about the future. — Carmelics
    Home/Free Will & Foreknowledge
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    We cannot do anything about the future.

    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
    ?
    • 1.We cannot now do anything about the fact that God timelessly knows T.
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    • 2.If there is nothing we can do about a timeless state, there is nothing we can do about what such a state entails.
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    • 3.God's timeless knowing entails the future.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Agents can influence the future through deliberate action, which is why deliberation and planning are rational activities.
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    • 2.If we genuinely could not do anything about the future, practical reasoning and intentional action would be incoherent, yet they are not.
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    • 3.The asymmetry between past and future is not metaphysical necessity but reflects epistemic and causal openness in the direction of time.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.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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    • 2.If the content of God's foreknowledge is constitutively dependent on future free choices, then agents' actions are among the conditions that fix what God knows.
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    • 3.Transfer-of-necessity principles like P2 fail when the entailment runs from free action to the prior belief, not from prior belief to constrained action.
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    Free Will & Foreknowledge

    Related

    Agents can influence the future through deliberate action, which is why delibera...God's timeless knowing entails the future.If the content of God's foreknowledge is constitutively dependent on future free...If there is nothing we can do about a timeless state, there is nothing we can do...
    +5 moreShow less
    If we genuinely could not do anything about the future, practical reasoning and ...On an Ockhamist account, God's past belief about future contingents is a 'soft f...The asymmetry between past and future is not metaphysical necessity but reflects...Transfer-of-necessity principles like P2 fail when the entailment runs from free...We cannot now do anything about the fact that God timelessly knows T.

    Similar

    An agent cannot do other than what the future is determined to be82%If there is a being who infallibly knows everything that will happen i...76%God does not have knowledge of future contingent events because it is ...75%If the future is determined, an agent has no power to alter it75%

    Source

    AI-extracted
    SEP: free-will-foreknowledge
    View source passageHide passage
    Perhaps it is inappropriate to say that timeless events such as God’s timeless knowing are now-necessary, yet we have no more reason to think we can do anything about God’s timeless knowing than about God’s past knowing. The timeless realm is as much out of our reach as the past. So the point of (3t) is that we cannot now do anything about the fact that God timelessly knows T. The rest of the steps in the timeless dilemma argument are parallel to the basic argument. Step (5t) says that if there is nothing we can do about a timeless state, there is nothing we can do about what such a state enta...

    Details

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