This is a survey of recent work on God and human freedom. A version of the "basic" argument for the incompatibility of God's omniscience and human freedom is presented. Various possible responses are developed and discussed.

In this paper I will show that the omnitemporality of truth does indeed imply fatalism if the past is unchangeable. I then argue that it is very likely indeed that the past is unchangeable and thus, since it is very likely that fatalism is false, it is very likely that the doctrine of the omnitemporality of truth is false. I argue that the rejection of the omnitemporality of truth has no undesirable consequences for either logic or theology, that in fact (...) the logical and theological consequences of the rejection of the omnitemporality of truth are beneficial to both disciplines. (shrink)

Perfect being theism is the view that the perfect being exists and the property being-perfect is the property being-God. According to the strong analysis of perfection, a being is perfect just in case it exemplifies all perfections. On the other hand, the weak analysis of perfection claims that a being is perfect just in case it exemplifies the best possible combination of compatible perfections. Strong perfect being theism accepts the former analysis while weak perfect being theism accepts the latter. In (...) this paper, I argue that there are good reasons to reject both versions of perfect being theism. On the one hand, strong perfect being theism is false if there are incompatible perfections; I argue that there are. On the other hand, if either no comparison can be made between sets of perfections, or they are equally good, then there is no best possible set of perfections. I argue for the antecedent of this conditional statement, concluding that weak perfect being theism is false. In the absence of other analyses of perfection, I conclude that we have reason to reject perfect being theism. (shrink)

Patrick Grim argues that God cannot beomniscient because no one other than me canacquire knowledge de se of myself. Inparticular, according to Grim, God cannot knowwhat I know in knowing that I am making amess. I argue, however, that given twoplausible principles regarding divineattributes there is no reason to accept Grim'sconclusion that God cannot be omniscient. Inthis paper I focus on the relationship betweendivine omniscience and necessaryimpossibilities, in contrast to the generaltrend of research since Aquinas, which hasconcentrated on the relationship (...) between divineomnipotence and necessary impossibilities. (shrink)

It is said that faith in a divine agent is partly an attitude of trust; believers typically find assurance in the conception of a divine being's will, and cherish confidence in its capacity to implement its intentions and plans. Yet, there would be little point in trusting in the will of any being without assuming its ability to both act and know, and perhaps it is only by assuming divine omniscience that one can retain the confidence in the efficacy and (...) direction of divine agency that has long been the lure of certain religious traditions. (shrink)

The absolute immutability of God, as it was expounded by many ancient and medieval thinkers such as Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, contends that God has no real relation with the world, but only a relation of reason. This view lingered until contemporary scholars like the process thinkers such as Alfred North Whitehead and his disciple, Charles Hartshorne, argued that God has a dipolar meaning that God influences the world and that the world also influences him. While protecting God's intrinsic (...) Being, some contemporary thinkers like Clarke, Grant, and others also tried to formulate his real relationship with the world. But the problem remains on how to posit this real relation with the world without insinuating two natures in God. I wish to state in this paper that God has real relation with his creatures which is rooted in what I call “creational relation" that was made manifest at creation and continues after it. (shrink)

I draw upon Helen Steward's concept of agential settling to argue that freedom requires an ability to change the truth‐value of tenseless future contingents over time from false to true and that this ability requires a metaphysically open future.

After defining presentism, I consider four arguments that presentism and divine atemporality are incompatible. I identify an assumption common to the four, ask what reason there is to consider it true, and argue against it.

The goal of this article is a general inspection of indexicals as a specific phenomenon of natural language on the one side, and a consideration of "semantization" of indexicals on the other side. The term "semantization" represents a criterion on the basis of which various approaches to relevant solutions are valuated: if, according to Frege´s view, all language expressions should express their senses, what kind of senses could be expressed in the case of indexicals? First, indexicals are explicated as a (...) specific sort of language expressions. Second, how some contemporary philosophers deal with indexical puzzles is briefly propounded. It takes for granted that a comparison of various philosophers´ approaches makes their pro et contra clear. By that way the article can acquire a parameter of basic synopsis. In certain passages of the text, summaries of the issues dealt with are included. The article is divided into three parts, dividing idexicals into temporal, individual and spatial, and demonstratives. In the first part of this article temporal indexicals, , as well as grammatical tensed sentences are put to test. Different approaches of Tichý, Quine, Russell, Reichenbach, and Wittgenstein are interpreted and evaluated from the "semantization" point of view. In the case of temporal indexicals, knowledge of possible referents plays an important part, and ontology of time is approximated in connection with McTaggart´s argument. Pavel Materna´s analysis of "now" is a special subject of brief comment. (shrink)

Affirming that divine knowledge of occurrent changes among particulars is incompatible with the doctrine of divine immutability, this article seeks to resolve this tension by denying the latter. Reviewing this long-running debate, I first formalize the exchange between al-Ghazālı̄and Avicenna on this topic, and then set out the ways in which contemporary Sadrāean philosophers have tried to resolve the incompatibility. I argue that none of the cited Sadrāean attempts to resolve the incompatibility between divine omniscience and immutability is successful. Then, (...) by reference to certain principles drawn from Shia theology, I indicate how one might seek to reject the dogma of divine immutability. I conclude that by emancipating ourselves from that dogma, new horizons could be opened for Islamic philosophy, free from traditional Hellenistic constraints. (shrink)

Time is what clocks are used to measure. Information about time tells the durations of events and when they occur and which events happen before which others, so time plays a very significant role in the universe’s structure, including the structure of our personal lives. But carefully describing time’s properties has led to many unresolved issues, both philosophical and scientific.

Patrick Grim advances arguments meant to show that the doctrine of divine omniscience—the classical doctrine according to which God knows all truths—is false. In particular, we here have in mind to focus on two such arguments: the set theoretic argument and the semantic argument. These arguments due to Grim run parallel to, respectively, familiar paradoxes in set theory and naive truth theory. It is beyond the purview of this article to adjudicate whether or not these are successful arguments against the (...) classical doctrine of omniscience. What we are here interested in is a way in which these arguments can be generalized. In particular, we show how generalizations of those arguments can target, explicitly, alternatives to the classical doctrine of omniscience, including what we here call 'restricted omniscience' and 'open future open theism'. As a corollary, considerations of Grim-style arguments do not support these alternatives to the classical doctrine of omniscience over the classical doctrine. We conclude that what is paradoxical is not the classical doctrine of omniscience just as such; rather, what is paradoxical is a core commitment shared by the classical doctrine and its more modest alternatives, namely, the thesis that God is a perfectly logical reasoner. (shrink)

The theistic doctrine of creation highlights the significance of the world's dependence on God. For this doctrine, a variety of justifications have been offered based on the ontological and epistemological commitments of a philosopher or theologian. In this dissertation, I defend the thesis that the theistic doctrine of creation is strongly justified when on the one hand the integrity of nature is established by affirming causal necessity while on the other hand the sovereignty of God is maintained by affirming divine (...) simplicity, eternity, and immutability. To construct my argument, in the first chapter, I examine the Aristotelian roots of causal necessity and its development by Avicenna. I also consider objections to causal necessity raised by Hume and al-Ghazālī and some contemporary objections by David Lewis. In the second chapter, I identify three competing theses to explain the integrity of nature, namely, the regularism, the extrinsic necessitarianism, and the intrinsic necessitarianism. I conclude that the intrinsic necessitarianism is the strongest among them. In the third chapter, I make a case for the sovereignty of God by exploring the limits of the concept of the theistic God and claim that sovereignty is conditional on immutability, simplicity, and eternity, which qualify the divine attributes of knowledge, power, and goodness. In the last chapter, after analyzing strengths and weaknesses of theistic accounts of creation, I propose an account of ontological dependence by extending Avicenna's account of creation, which consists in God's conferral of existence, to His sustaining activity at all times during which an object endures. (shrink)

The topic of divine omniscience is well-trodden ground, with philosophers and theologians having asked virtually every question there is to ask about it. The questions regarding God's omniscience to be addressed here are as follows. First, is omniscience best understood as maximal propositional knowledge along with maximal experiential knowledge? I argue that it is. Second, is it possible for God to be essentially omniscient? I argue that it is not.

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)

Current evolutionary and cognitive theories of religion posit that supernatural agent concepts emerge from cognitive systems such as theory of mind and social cognition. Some argue that these concepts evolved to maintain social order by minimizing antisocial behavior. If these theories are correct, then people should process information about supernatural agents’ socially strategic knowledge more quickly than non-strategic knowledge. Furthermore, agents’ knowledge of immoral and uncooperative social behaviors should be especially accessible to people. To examine these hypotheses, we measured response-times (...) to questions about the knowledge attributed to four different agents—God, Santa Claus, a fictional surveillance government, and omniscient but non-interfering aliens—that vary in their omniscience, moral concern, ability to punish, and how supernatural they are. As anticipated, participants respond more quickly to questions about agents’ socially strategic knowledge than non-strategic knowledge, but only when agents are able to punish. (shrink)

Analytical philosophers of religion widely assume that God is a person, albeit immaterial and of unique status, and the divine attributes are thus understood as attributes of this supreme personal being. Our main aim is to consider how traditional divine attributes may be understood on a non-personal conception of God. We propose that foundational theist claims make an all-of-Reality reference, yet retain God’s status as transcendent Creator. We flesh out this proposal by outlining a specific non-personal, monist and ‘naturalist’ conception (...) of God, which we call the ‘euteleological’ conception of God, and then considering euteleological interpretations of omnipotence, omniscience and divine goodness. (shrink)

The A-theory of time has intuitive and metaphysical appeal, but suffers from tension, if not inconsistency, with the special and general theories of relativity (STR and GTR). The A-theory requires a notion of global simultaneity invariant under the symmetries of the world's laws, those ostensible transformations of the state of the world that in fact leave the world as it was before. Relativistic physics, if read in a realistic sense, denies that there exists any notion of global simultaneity that is (...) invariant under the symmetries of the world's laws. If physics is at least a decent guide to metaphysics--as sympathies for scientific realism would suggest--then relativistic physics supports the B-theory. If there were a physically natural way to modify the symmetries of the physical laws so as to remove those that are repugnant to the A-theory, while retaining empirical adequacy, then such an altered physics might be attractive to the A-theorist and would weaken the support given by relativity to the B-theory. I exhibit a way to do so here, displaying a Lagrangian density explicitly containing distant simultaneity, yet implying Einstein's field equations. The modification involves a change in the nature of the lapse function and makes use of the Dirac-Bergmann formalism of constrained dynamics, which recently has been discussed much by John Earman. Here this formalism is adapted slightly to permit both local and global generalized coordinates. A classification of senses in which time might be absolute or not is made along the way. Some suggestions for extending the work by finding a first principles motivation are made. An appendix outlines an argument why many local presents are insufficient and a global present is attractive, while two more appendices review the Dirac-Bergmann apparatus for GTR and then apply it to the theory at hand. (shrink)

استدلال کانتوری گریم از جمله براهینی است که در مباحث فلسفی اخیر ناسازگاری مفهوم علم مطلق را مورد هدف قرار داده است. گریم با استناد به اصل ریاضی کانتور و بر مبنای تعریف پذیرفته‌شدۀ علم مطلق، یعنی علم به تمامی گزاره­های صادق، وجود عالم مطلق را به دلیل عدم امکان وجود متعلق علم او، یعنی «مجموعه گزاره­های صادق»، انکار می­نماید. در این زمینه پاسخ­های متعددی در دفاع از علم مطلق الهی از سوی متفکران مسیحی معاصر ارائه شده که یکی از (...) مهم­ترین آنها خودمتناقض دانستن این استدلال است که پلانتینگا آن را مطرح کرده است. سنت فلسفه اسلامی از جهت تبیین ماهیت علم مطلق با سنت الهیات مسیحی تفاوت مبنایی دارد. اما با توجه به ظرفیت حکمت متعالیه صدرایی، با استناد به مباحثی چون تعریف و ماهیت مجموع و همچنین شرایط تسلسل محال، می‌توان علاوه بر ابطال فرض استدلال گریم مبنی بر وجود حقایق بیشتری از مجموعه تمام حقایق، امکان علم عالم مطلق به سلسله نامتناهی از مجموعه حقایق را اثبات نمود. (shrink)

Este artigo explora a relação que Descartes estabelece com as noções de forma e de matéria do aristotelismo escolástico ao tratar da interação entre as substâncias nas correspondências com Elisabeth, Gassendi e Arnauld. Partindo do exemplo do peso utilizado por Descartes em diversas cartas, traça-se uma relação de identidade entre a noção de forma em Tomás de Aquino e de pensamento em Descartes, assim como se traça a crítica à noção de forma, entendida como qualidade oculta, para os corpos inanimados. (...) Por fim, explora-se a interpretação ocasionalista do sistema cartesiano e a relevância dos movimentos celestes para a explicação dos movimentos naturais em Tomás de Aquino.This paper deals with the relation that Descartes points between his system and concepts of matter and form from Aristotelian scholasticism. The resemblance arises when Descartes treats interaction among substances in correspondences with Elisabeth, Gassendi and Arnauld. Beginning with the example of the scholastic concept of weight, used many times by Descartes, this article traces an identity between concepts of form in Thomas Aquinas and of thought in Descartes, as well as traces his criticism on the concept of form, understood as hidden qualities, to inanimate bodies. Finally, this paper investigates Cartesian occasionalism as well as the importance of celestial movements for a better comprehension of nature in Thomas Aquinas. (shrink)

Recent literature in the Philosophy of Language has focused on a variety of puzzles about de se belief--belief about oneself formed by the use of the indexical 'I' or the reflexive pronoun 'she herself'. These puzzle cases suggest that de se belief cannot be represented in the traditional way as a two-place relation between an individual and a proposition. Nevertheless, there are some versions of this traditional analysis that have not been fully discussed in the literature. ;In this dissertation I (...) examine a number of proposals for analyzing de se belief, and show how many of these entail privileged access for the agents of self-attributed belief. Privileged access for an agent takes the form of either a proposition or a belief that only the agent can entertain. Privileged access emerges as a consequence of two-place relations of belief between believers and propositions when the proposition is construed as a first-person proposition, a first-person propositional guise, an individual essence, or a Fregean 'I' thought. In all these cases I argue that privileged access for an agent leads to counter-intuitive consequences about sentence meaning and belief content. For this reason I investigate ways to avoid privileged access altogether. I conclude that the most viable alternatives are three-place relations of belief. (shrink)

The Anselmian claim that God is that than which a greater cannot be thought in virtue of being ‘whatever it is better to be than not to be’ may be accused of incoherence or even unintelligibility. By proposing a non-relative but apparently meaningful analysis thereof, I attempt to defend it against such criticism. In particular, I argue that ‘whatever it is better to be than not to be’ can be plausibly interpreted so as to imply very many attributes traditionally predicated (...) of that than which a greater cannot be thought. Central to this line of reasoning is the assumption that whatever is an actual moral being is greater, simpliciter, than whatever is not an actual moral being. (shrink)

I argue that if deliberation is incompatible with (fore)knowing what one is going to do at the time of the deliberation, then God cannot deliberate. However, this thesis cannot be used to show either that God cannot act intentionally or that human persons cannot deliberate. Further, I have suggested that though omniscience is incompatible with deliberation, it is not incompatible with either some speculation or knowing something on the grounds of inference.

John Watson's thought has not been well understood. A question suggested by previous scholarship, namely, how successful was he at his task of re-founding the Christian religion on a philosophical base? is answered first in terms of consistency with the theological tradition. His revision of Christian theology is found to be inadequate by traditional standards; it is then examined as a philosophy of religion which, to his mind, overcame the difficulties of classical theism. It is argued that, despite some advantages, (...) his philosophy of religion is deficient in two respects. First, its method is vitiated by a strained and sometimes mistaken interpretation of the philosophical tradition, indicative of arbitrariness. Second, "Speculative Idealism" as the result of that method reveals conceptual ambiguities corresponding to the ambiguities of classical theism. As the method is not self-evident and is used implicitly by Watson, and the results are philosophically ambiguous, the appropriation of this thought was theologically or philosophically shallow. Though Watson's thought, as far as it was understood, provided an underpinning for the "social gospel" movement in Canada, it is argued that this shallow appropriation explains, at least in part, the brevity of its appeal as philosophy of religion. (shrink)

We tend to think that a person who is both reasonable and moral can have a good life. What constitutes a life that is not only good but superlative, or even “marvellous” or “holy”? Those who have such lives are called sages, heroes or saints, and their lives can display great integrity as well as integration with a transformative “Spiritual Presence.” Does it follow that saints are perfect people? Is there a common vision that impels them to seek holiness? In (...) a controversial interpretation of mysticism Horne suggests that there is no single formula for the meaning of life and no one story that displays it to us. Mysticism, rather than being just a visionary perception, then becomes a problem-solving process that brings about a creative transformation of the personality at a critical stage in life. He suggests also that saints may be imperfect morally and describes true saints as double-minded: they are serious in a playful way. Mysticism and Vocation illuminates our understanding of saintly lives by explicating their mystical characteristics and extending discussions of mysticism to explain its role in active lives. In discussing important decisions that go beyond conventional morality, it adds to recent philosophical arguments by Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, Iris Murdoch, Bernard Williams and others to the effect that morality should be defined more broadly to deal with the human condition. This book will be of interest to students of philosophy and religious studies, in both graduate and undergraduate programs. (shrink)