Comments on: 86th Philosopher’s Carnival

By: Clark

Clark — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 02:30:13 +0000

Blake, I think it becomes more important to those who see God as a necessary being. If God is a necessary being then I think a case could be made his foreknowledge is necessary. (I’m not sure admittedly – I’ve not thought through that issue) Since few Mormons consider God a necessary being in the sense one finds in orthodox Christian theology, what you say definitely follows. While not relevant I do find some adopting theological arguments picked up from Evangelicals.

By: Blake

Blake — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 19:11:27 +0000

Clark and Mark: Clark is right, the argument given is entirely irrelevant to the foreknowledge issue since the issue isn’t whether what is known is necessary (it isn’t). If God knows that Clark is married, it doesn’t follow that he is necessarily married. However, it does follow that if at t1 God infallibly knows that Clark is married at t2, then Clark is married at t2 and no one could change that fact without changing the past facts about what God knew at t1 infallibly.

However, if there is a truth at t1 about what will happen at t2, then it may be that what makes it true at t1 that there is a truth about t2 would render the truth about t2 unchangeable. We have to know what the truth-maker is.

By: Mark D.

Mark D. — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 04:24:37 +0000

Clark, under an extremely broad set of assumptions, it is hard to see how any particular truth about a future event could be a metaphysically necessary truth.

So unless one takes the unusual position that all facts are metaphysically necessary (due to e.g. asserting the joint consequence of determinism and a denial of initial conditions), I don’t see why anyone should consider remarkable the relatively obvious proposition that historical facts past, present and future are contingent rather than necessary.