Omniscience, Foreknowledge, & Free Will

[Cerpin Taxt]

This is frequently a hotly debated subject so I'm opening a thread on it.

Instead of opening with an explicit argument I think I'll state my position and ask a few questions hoping to stimulate some responses.

I think the existence of a putative being with foreknowledge necessarily excludes the possibility of meaningful free will.

But what does "foreknowledge" mean, exactly?

I know some religious persons believe that omniscience only means "knowing all that is knowable," allowing that the future remains indeterminate to even a being with this kind of omniscience. Is that a Biblical position?

What is "knowledge," anyway? The common meaning in philosophy is "justified, true belief." In what way could foreknowledge be considered justified and true?

Anyone wanna jump in here?

 

[Retro Rob]

This is frequently a hotly debated subject so I'm opening a thread on the subject.

Instead of opening with an explicit argument I think I'll state my position and ask a few questions hoping to stimulate some responses.

I think the existence of a putative being with foreknowledge necessarily excludes the possibility of meaningful free will.

But what does "foreknowledge" mean, exactly?

I know some religious persons believe that omniscience only means "knowing all that is knowable," allowing that the future remains indeterminate to even a being with this kind of omniscience. Is that a Biblical position?

What is "knowledge," anyway? The common meaning in philosophy is "justified, true belief." In what way could foreknowledge be considered justified and true?

Anyone wanna jump in here?

Good thread, Cerpin!

Your third statement, in my opinion, is purely based on a flawed premise and a misunderstanding of why we say we have "free-will" from a Biblical persepective. You seem to adopt the position, from a strict black-and-white angle, that if a being possese the ability to foreknow, then it must use it, and if it doesn't use it, it doesn't posses the ability to foreknow.

From where I sit as I will only speak for myself, I see the a being having foreknowledge, but also possesing the ability to use it and its/his discretion in essence, "shutting off" that foreknowledge to afford lesser beings dignity and freedom.

After all, we have the ability to use knowledge at our personal discretion, so why wouldn't we think a god has that ability infintely more so than we have?

I would have to give some thought to your three questions before attempting to answer.

 

[soulcougher73]

Good thread, Cerpin!

Your third statement, in my opinion, is purely based on a flawed premise and a misunderstanding of why we say we have "free-will" from a Biblical persepective. You seem to adopt the position, from a strict black-and-white angle, that if a being possese the ability to foreknow, then it must use it, and if it doesn't use it, it doesn't posses the ability to foreknow.

From where I sit as I will only speak for myself, I see the a being having foreknowledge, but also possesing the ability to use it and its/his discretion in essence, "shutting off" that foreknowledge to afford lesser beings dignity and freedom.

After all, we have the ability to use knowledge at our personal discretion, so why wouldn't we think a god has that ability infintely more so than we have?

I would have to give some thought to your three questions before attempting to answer.

Yes we can use knowledge, but we dont have foreknowledge as the god discribed would. Your bolded statement doesnt fit in with the words above it.

 

[SMOGZINN]

Good thread, Cerpin!

Your third statement, in my opinion, is purely based on a flawed premise and a misunderstanding of why we say we have "free-will" from a Biblical persepective. You seem to adopt the position, from a strict black-and-white angle, that if a being possese the ability to foreknow, then it must use it, and if it doesn't use it, it doesn't posses the ability to foreknow.

From where I sit as I will only speak for myself, I see the a being having foreknowledge, but also possesing the ability to use it and its/his discretion in essence, "shutting off" that foreknowledge to afford lesser beings dignity and freedom.

After all, we have the ability to use knowledge at our personal discretion, so why wouldn't we think a god has that ability infintely more so than we have?

I would have to give some thought to your three questions before attempting to answer.

I do not believe the paradox with omniscience and freewill has anything to do with acting on the knowledge, or with any property of the being itself, but with the nature of freewill.
I believe we can make the argument that if a being has the ability to completely predict the future then there can be no freewill because everything must be pre-destined.

I think that to have this argument we need to really nail down what the meaning of 'freewill' and 'omniscience'.

 

[Retro Rob]

Yes we can use knowledge, but we dont have foreknowledge as the god discribed would. Your bolded statement doesnt fit in with the words above it.

True, we don't...and since we don't know what its like to have foreknowledge anyway, we cannot know the manner in which it can be "shut off" at will.

I would posit that a being wise and powerful enough to creates the cosmos can control its own use of knowledge.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

Good thread, Cerpin!

Your third statement, in my opinion, is purely based on a flawed premise and a misunderstanding of why we say we have "free-will" from a Biblical persepective. You seem to adopt the position, from a strict black-and-white angle, that if a being possese the ability to foreknow, then it must use it, and if it doesn't use it, it doesn't posses the ability to foreknow.

From where I sit as I will only speak for myself, I see the a being having foreknowledge, but also possesing the ability to use it and its/his discretion in essence, "shutting off" that foreknowledge to afford lesser beings dignity and freedom.

After all, we have the ability to use knowledge at our personal discretion, so why wouldn't we think a god has that ability infintely more so than we have?

I would have to give some thought to your three questions before attempting to answer.

Well, let's discuss knowledge -- what is the relationship between the knower and the known? If something is to be known, or at the very least knowable, it must exist, right? Is it possible that the knowable things do not have meaningful existence until they are known by a knower?

If there is something that a being willfully refuses to know, does that something fail to exist? Can we still say that it is knowable, even if it's not known? What if it's only ever knowable to one knower?

Also, I don't understand the relevance of your point about "using knowledge." Refusing to act on known knowledge is not the same as refusing to know, yet you seem to treat them the same.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

Separately -- that is, before we put these both together -- let's discuss choice.

Can there be meaningful choice in a deterministic universe?

To me, a choice can only be truly free if there exist legitimately possible alternative universes in the future representing all the possible outcomes of an occasion of choice. Given a choice between A or B, the universe where I choose A and the universe where I choose B must both be legitimately possible, or I do not have a meaningful choice despite the appearance of it.

Now, one possible universe can be more probable than another, but I don't think it is relevant to establishing the simple fact of a true choice. I mention this because I think it pertains to a discussion in another thread about the perceived freedom of a person to choose from a set of alternatives among which all but one present highly undesirable consequences. Coercion does not necessarily make certain alternatives impossible, but certainly less probable.

 

[Retro Rob]

But what does "foreknowledge" mean, exactly?

I'd say it is knowledge of something before it happens or exists; prescience.

I detect that the definition you prefer is the possession of knowledge of all things knowable all the time.

I know some religious persons believe that omniscience only means "knowing all that is knowable," allowing that the future remains indeterminate to even a being with this kind of omniscience. Is that a Biblical position?

I would say so -- Is 40:19. But that still allows for freedom(s). If you consider the Flood account, God said he saw that the hearts of men were "bad all the time", yet, individuals (Noah and his family) didn't follow the course of humans hearts.

He [God] knew that men would be evil to the point of pre-determining action, but that didn't prevent some individuals from listening to God or what have you.

You could argue that he knew Noah would be faithful, and he was obviously at the time, but that doesn't mean that he would stay that way...evidently by the decree that hearts were "bad all the time".

 

[sandorski]

To me these three things by themselves is not really the issue. The issue is specific to a certain asserted Religious idea about Original Sin. More specifically, the Biblical Literalist view of it(whether the Bible as a whole or just the Fall part of it). Within that view, an Omniscient god with foreknowledge gave Humans Free Will, but added a condition(the tree with the Fruit of Knowledge of Good and Evil) that it knew Humanity would eat from even after putting a dire consequence to that choice. From the position of that god, it and only it is the guilty party in the "fall", not humanity itself as it couldn't even understand what their choice meant. The reason it couldn't understand that is because the understanding about the choice was only available through the eating of the fruit in the first place.

All that said, I don't think the "Fall" story argues against Free Will. What it really argues against is the Literalist view of the "Fall" story. It just is nonsensical to think that story was a literal chain of events. At least as far as the Literalist also holds that this god is All Loving, All Just, and/or other such noble qualities. Either the "Fall" happened literally and the god isn't Noble or the "Fall" is metaphorical and the god is Noble.


I probably just steered the thread off topic, sorry. It's just the only thing that really bothers me about the 3 qualities mentioned in the Title.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

I think the existence of a putative being with foreknowledge necessarily excludes the possibility of meaningful free will.

You set a condition and draw a conclusion but make no inviolable causal link between the two. If I were a being with the knowledge of how things will be what does "putative" have to do with it? What if I were dispassionate and utterly uninterested yet had all the physical and mental attributes necessary for absolute foreknowledge? What forces me or the universe to behave as you say we have to?

Also I have trouble with the concept that knowing a thing means you have to cause it. What if a being had the ability to observe a timeline from a higher dimension? We are after all engaging in a thought experiment and there is no argument against there being such things. The holographic principle depends on it in fact. Such a creature would be able to observe the beginning and end of things as a natural consequence, much like you can see the top and bottom of a glass without having to make it atom by atom as you progress from one end to the other.

 

[sao123]

Well, lending an scientific principal to an otherwise completely unrelated subject, could potentially disagree with your assortment that omniscience negates free will.

Let us consider the double slit experiment. Although electrons are not conscious, we could consider them to have "free will". They do not give up their free will and collapse into a specific pattern until they are under direct observation, even though all outcomes are known by seeing the final interference pattern.

Our free will could exist despite omniscience, unless we are under direct observation of that same omniscient being.

This proves nothing, but quite often principals in one science often show similar patterns in another, this is just one possibility.

 

[spittledip]

To me these three things by themselves is not really the issue. The issue is specific to a certain asserted Religious idea about Original Sin. More specifically, the Biblical Literalist view of it(whether the Bible as a whole or just the Fall part of it). Within that view, an Omniscient god with foreknowledge gave Humans Free Will, but added a condition(the tree with the Fruit of Knowledge of Good and Evil) that it knew Humanity would eat from even after putting a dire consequence to that choice. From the position of that god, it and only it is the guilty party in the "fall", not humanity itself as it couldn't even understand what their choice meant. The reason it couldn't understand that is because the understanding about the choice was only available through the eating of the fruit in the first place.

All that said, I don't think the "Fall" story argues against Free Will. What it really argues against is the Literalist view of the "Fall" story. It just is nonsensical to think that story was a literal chain of events. At least as far as the Literalist also holds that this god is All Loving, All Just, and/or other such noble qualities. Either the "Fall" happened literally and the god isn't Noble or the "Fall" is metaphorical and the god is Noble.


I probably just steered the thread off topic, sorry. It's just the only thing that really bothers me about the 3 qualities mentioned in the Title.

I was actually thinking about this very thing the other day. First, I do have a problem with your thinking on the matter of there being no choice b/c there was no clear understanding of the choice. I think that you are confusing not having a clear understanding of the consequences of the choice as opposed to the understanding that "I am doing what God told me not to do." Consequences are completely irrelevant at this point- the only thing that matters is the choice to obey or disobey which she seemed to understand.

Anyway, my thinking on this is that God could have started over or not created the very first world in place of an instance in which the wrong choice was not made, but then the concept of free will would have lost all meaning in that God would have asserted control upon knowing the outcome and skipped over all possible instances and creating the instance where the sin was not committed.

Does this mean that there could have been an initial instance of creation where man did not sin? Possibly, however in order for there to actually be freewill, God let the first instance go down the way it went down. God did not use "God Mode" in other words.

 

[sandorski]

I was actually thinking about this very thing the other day. First, I do have a problem with your thinking on the matter of there being no choice b/c there was no clear understanding of the choice. I think that you are confusing not having a clear understanding of the consequences of the choice as opposed to the understanding that "I am doing what God told me not to do." Consequences are completely irrelevant at this point- the only thing that matters is the choice to obey or disobey which she seemed to understand.

Anyway, my thinking on this is that God could have started over or not created the very first world in place of an instance in which the wrong choice was not made, but then the concept of free will would have lost all meaning in that God would have asserted control upon knowing the outcome and skipped over all possible instances and creating the instance where the sin was not committed.

Does this mean that there could have been an initial instance of creation where man did not sin? Possibly, however in order for there to actually be freewill, God let the first instance go down the way it went down. God did not use "God Mode" in other words.

One can only choose from what's made available to them. It would be perfectly valid and not violate Free Will to not offer the choice of Eternal Condemnation. If it is to be taken literally, this god desired humanity to "Fall".

This is why the story can only logically be taken as Metaphor. Ancient peoples saw the inherent flaws of humans and tried to understand and communicate it through stories like the Biblical Fall story.

 

[spittledip]

One can only choose from what's made available to them. It would be perfectly valid and not violate Free Will to not offer the choice of Eternal Condemnation. If it is to be taken literally, this god desired humanity to "Fall".

This is why the story can only logically be taken as Metaphor. Ancient peoples saw the inherent flaws of humans and tried to understand and communicate it through stories like the Biblical Fall story.

It doesn't matter what the options were. Any choice to disobey God is to choose death. There was no magic in the tree (I assume). The choice could to have been to throw a certain rock or any rock. The choice could have been to pet a cat against the grain or to avoid this behavior.

So, any choice God offered would have ultimately ended in spiritual death if Adam chose to disobey b/c any disobedience = sin and any sin = separation from God. Separation from God = spiritual death.

 

[sandorski]

It doesn't matter what the options were. Any choice to disobey God is to choose death. There was no magic in the tree (I assume). The choice could to have been to throw a certain rock or any rock. The choice could have been to pet a cat against the grain or to avoid this behavior.

So, any choice God offered would have ultimately ended in spiritual death if Adam chose to disobey b/c any disobedience = sin and any sin = separation from God. Separation from God = spiritual death.

Why would a god put its' creation into such a position in the first place? There was no need for such a thing.

 

[JEDIYoda]

Why would a god put its' creation into such a position in the first place? There was no need for such a thing.

typical human reaction.....we will never know because God is God. God`s thoughts are beyond human comprehension.

 

[JEDIYoda]

One can only choose from what's made available to them. It would be perfectly valid and not violate Free Will to not offer the choice of Eternal Condemnation. If it is to be taken literally, this god desired humanity to "Fall".

This is why the story can only logically be taken as Metaphor. Ancient peoples saw the inherent flaws of humans and tried to understand and communicate it through stories like the Biblical Fall story.

again you are trying to 2nd guess God....
In your mind you can explain away and deflect all you want by using such phrases as -- One can only choose from what's made available to them. I know this sounds blunt and crass but well...deal with it!!

Again there is no such thing as a choice that does not have a consequence-- good or bad!

 

[spittledip]

Why would a god put its' creation into such a position in the first place? There was no need for such a thing.

There would be no moral choice without it, and therefore no moral freewill. That one law seemed to exist just so that there could be the possibility of moral freewill. That was the only law they had apparently. We don't know if that was the first time they had thought to try the fruit or even how long they had been alive. There is a ton of information missing.

My thoughts are not necessarily representative of what I actually believe b/c I really do not have enough information to go on. I often question the existence of freewill myself, but there are verses that speak of man making a choice. My assumption is that both predetermination and freewill exist in some type of soup that is beyond my brain. Ultimately, it doesn't matter much to me although it is interesting.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

I'd say it is knowledge of something before it happens or exists; prescience.

Yes, that's a sufficient dictionary definition, but I want to know what it could mean in a practical sense. That's why I tried to delve deeper into the meaning of knowledge, and the relationship between the knower and the known.

I detect that the definition you prefer is the possession of knowledge of all things knowable all the time.

Not hardly, and even more, I'm not sure what it could mean to know something "some of the time." Generally, once a thing is known by a knower, it does not become "unknown" after that. In other words, "forgotten" things are not the same as "unknown" things

I would say so -- Is 40:19. But that still allows for freedom(s). If you consider the Flood account, God said he saw that the hearts of men were "bad all the time", yet, individuals (Noah and his family) didn't follow the course of humans hearts.

Frankly, I don't understand how any of the above pertains to my question. I just don't understand what you're saying here.

He [God] knew that men would be evil to the point of pre-determining action, but that didn't prevent some individuals from listening to God or what have you.

I think I'm going to need to remind you that I'm not going to assume, as you seem to have, that the Bible is an infallible source for factual information. That is to say, if I can argue soundly that X is true, and there are verses in the Bible that seem to suggest that X is false, those verses will not amount to a falsification of my argument, but rather the soundness of argument more strongly suggests an error in fact in the Bible.

EDIT to add: I should also acknowledge that where the question is something of the form "is X Biblical," then Bible verses are in fact the primary source for answering the question.

You could argue that he knew Noah would be faithful, and he was obviously at the time, but that doesn't mean that he would stay that way...evidently by the decree that hearts were "bad all the time".

I'm not particularly interested in the details any one story or another in the Bible, but rather I'm trying to discern if there can be established a sufficiently thorough or detailed understanding of god's foreknowledge in particular. In this case, I'm not interested in whether or not Noah would "stay that way," but whether or not we can tell that god foreknew that Noah would or would not "stay that way."

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

You set a condition and draw a conclusion but make no inviolable causal link between the two.

Well, that's sorta the end-game of the whole discussion. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

If I were a being with the knowledge of how things will be what does "putative" have to do with it? What if I were dispassionate and utterly uninterested yet had all the physical and mental attributes necessary for absolute foreknowledge? What forces me or the universe to behave as you say we have to?

I hope to eventually make that clear, but I'm approaching it from multiple angles in a very deliberate way in order to produce the conclusion after anticipating and addressing common objections.

Also I have trouble with the concept that knowing a thing means you have to cause it.

I'm certain I have not made or implied that claim, but I know it is an allegation that appears in discussions of this subject frequently. I do intend to submit my thoughts on the matter after things (hopefully) become more focused.

What if a being had the ability to observe a timeline from a higher dimension? We are after all engaging in a thought experiment and there is no argument against there being such things. The holographic principle depends on it in fact. Such a creature would be able to observe the beginning and end of things as a natural consequence, much like you can see the top and bottom of a glass without having to make it atom by atom as you progress from one end to the other.

Indeed, but wouldn't that mean that all of those things exist at once in a fixed state?

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

Well, lending an scientific principal to an otherwise completely unrelated subject, could potentially disagree with your assortment that omniscience negates free will.

Let us consider the double slit experiment. Although electrons are not conscious, we could consider them to have "free will". They do not give up their free will and collapse into a specific pattern until they are under direct observation, even though all outcomes are known by seeing the final interference pattern.

Our free will could exist despite omniscience, unless we are under direct observation of that same omniscient being.

This proves nothing, but quite often principals in one science often show similar patterns in another, this is just one possibility.

I'm familiar with this line of thought, and it is an interesting one, although it almost leaves us with more questions than answers.

It could be that our futures exist in a state of superposition like the ambiguous paths of the electron in the 2-slit experiment, and if I had to make my best guess I'd say it's likely to be the most accurate picture of reality given the experimental evidence. We then must decide how to interpret that scenario, which amounts to no less than deciding which interpretation of quantum mechanics (Copenhagen, Everett, Transactional, etc) is the "right" one.

I hope it is not lost on anyone what a monumental task that would be.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

Anyway, my thinking on this is that God could have started over or not created the very first world in place of an instance in which the wrong choice was not made, but then the concept of free will would have lost all meaning in that God would have asserted control upon knowing the outcome and skipped over all possible instances and creating the instance where the sin was not committed.

It's not very clear to me, but is it your implicit contention that God created a universe where he was not certain whether or not Eve would eat the forbidden fruit? It seems like you're suggesting he could have "re-set" the world a number of times until he produced one in which Eve did not eat the forbidden fruit, much like one could repeatedly roll a die until the number he wanted came up. This seems to imply that the world would unfold in ways that he could not know with certainty.

Does this mean that there could have been an initial instance of creation where man did not sin? Possibly, however in order for there to actually be freewill, God let the first instance go down the way it went down. God did not use "God Mode" in other words.

Does the existence of "free will" imply the ability for a being to accomplish any and all logically possible feats?

Asked another way, can a being still have "free will" if it will never be able to jump over the tallest tree, even if it wanted to? Does implementing a practical obstacle which limits a persons choices (that is, reduces them to some number greater than 1) negate "free will"?

I hope that we agree that if a person's "choices" were limited to 1, then it wouldn't really be a "choice" at all.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

typical human reaction.....we will never know because God is God. God`s thoughts are beyond human comprehension.

"God" is not a get-out-of-logical-jail-free card.

I'll also highlight the fact that "God's thoughts" don't seem so "beyond human comprehension" when Christians want to deny certain rights to other people, or codify their religious beliefs into the laws of our country. It is not lost on us that religious people seem quite certain about the nature of "God's thoughts" when those "thoughts" conveniently align with their own prejudices.

 

[JEDIYoda]

Asked another way, can a being still have "free will" if it will never be able to jump over the tallest tree, even if it wanted to? Does implementing a practical obstacle which limits a persons choices (that is, reduces them to some number greater than 1) negate "free will"?

Actually the above draws me to conclude that you actually do not understand free will at all....

 

[spittledip]

It's not very clear to me, but is it your implicit contention that God created a universe where he was not certain whether or not Eve would eat the forbidden fruit? It seems like you're suggesting he could have "re-set" the world a number of times until he produced one in which Eve did not eat the forbidden fruit, much like one could repeatedly roll a die until the number he wanted came up. This seems to imply that the world would unfold in ways that he could not know with certainty.


Does the existence of "free will" imply the ability for a being to accomplish any and all logically possible feats?

Asked another way, can a being still have "free will" if it will never be able to jump over the tallest tree, even if it wanted to? Does implementing a practical obstacle which limits a persons choices (that is, reduces them to some number greater than 1) negate "free will"?

I hope that we agree that if a person's "choices" were limited to 1, then it wouldn't really be a "choice" at all.

What I was saying is that God can see every instance beforehand and by seeing each instance decide which he wants to go with which ultimately robs humanity of any freewill regarding the act in question. The instances He foreknows, so he skips over them to get to the conclusion He wants.

So, rather than go with the method of the above paragraph, God just went with the "first instance" thus maintaining foreknowledge and free will of humanity. He could have skipped to an instance where everything was perfect, but decided to play it honest. I am not sure it would have been honest to reset or skip to the "best instance."

Also, I would not necessarily contend that this is what happened- it is really just a mental exercise or a way to answer a question.

Free will just implies that some choices can be made without the control of another external will. I think that ability to perform a task and desire to do so are completely separate concepts, the latter falling under free will, the former not associated with will at all. I also think that there might be degrees of "freedom" rather than just a straight total freedom or total lack of freedom.

I agree with your last statement.