The coherence of omniscience is sometimes challenged using self-referential sentences like, “No omniscient entity knows that which this very sentence expresses,” which suggest that there are truths which no omniscient entity knows. In this paper, I consider two strategies for addressing these challenges: The Common Strategy, which dismisses such self-referential sentences as meaningless, and The Conciliatory Strategy, which discounts them as quirky outliers with no impact on one’s status as being omniscient. I argue that neither strategy succeeds. The Common Strategy (...) fails because it is both unmotivated and impotent. The Conciliatory Strategy fails because it leads to embarrassing situations in which omniscient entities are epistemically inferior to non-omniscient entities: we can, for example, devise trivia-based drinking games that force omniscient entities into an intoxicated state; and, given plausible closure principles for belief, such entities are unable to have the sorts of beliefs that give them reason to refuse to play. (shrink)

‘Ifs’ come washed or unwashed. The washed ifs are embedded in precise theories: the constantly strict implication of deductive inference, the variably strict implication of ‘nearness’ conditionals, and statements of conditional probability. By a nearness conditional I mean the common part of Stalnaker's and D. Lewis's theory of counterfactual conditionals, which depends on a notion that possible worlds are more or less near to each other, as a measure of their over-all similarity to each other.

There is an ancient puzzle about divine foreknowledge and human freedom. If God has already known that you will do a certain thing tomorrow, then it must already be a settled fact that God has known this. Since knowledge entails truth, it must also be a settled fact that you will do it. In that case, you really cannot avoid doing it. If so, then when you do it tomorrow, you won't do it freely. ;This dissertation consists of a careful (...) statement of the puzzle and an examination of its principal solutions. These are fatalism, the view that nothing about the past, present, or future is open, eternalism, the view that God exists outside of time, semantic indeterminism, the view that some propositions are neither true nor false, and Ockhamism, the view that some things about the past are open. ;In Chapter I the puzzle is stated carefully and its solutions are sketched. Chapters II through V each discuss one of the principal solutions. It is argued that fatalism and semantic indeterminism are not adequate solutions to the puzzle. These positions cannot accommodate or adequately explain away our intuition that there is something someone can but will not do. Eternalism is seen to be a formally coherent view, but it also does not provide a satisfying solution to the puzzle. It is argued that Ockham's solution succeeds where the others fail. Finally, it is argued that although Ockham denies the necessity of the past, endorsing his solution does not force one to hold that we can literally change the past. It is concluded that Ockham's solution accommodates our intuitions about freedom and the future without charging a price. (shrink)

‘Ifs’ come washed or unwashed. The washed ifs are embedded in precise theories: the constantly strict implication of deductive inference, the variably strict implication of ‘nearness’ conditionals, and statements of conditional probability. By a nearness conditional I mean the common part of Stalnaker's and D. Lewis's theory of counterfactual conditionals, which depends on a notion that possible worlds are more or less near to each other, as a measure of their over-all similarity to each other.