I just noticed that Christopher Branford's blog, Let Us Reason, is back up again. I'd taken it off my sidebar since it hadn't been updated for quite some time. One of his recent posts is about the topic of "useless foreknowledge." This is a topic relevant to that ongoing discussion of foreknowledge in Mormon theology that we've been having ongoing here the past few months. Specifically Blake has brought up the complaint that foreknowledge is useless. So I thought I'd discuss it a little bit.
The basic problem, as I see it, is that people are thinking in terms of causation. i.e. what does my knowledge cause that will change the future. As I've asserted before, I think this very way of thinking about the problem is unhelpful. Indeed I think a lot of the "problems" over the foreknowledge issue occur because we think of how we cause the future. However if causality isn't fundamental (and I don't see how it can be in any normal fashion) then this approach is flawed.
Rather than thinking of causality in what I'd term Newtonian terms, simply think about what states of affairs are compatible with foreknowledge and what are compatible without foreknowledge. It may well be that there are activities God can do with foreknowledge (behaviors) that he couldn't do without. To assert that God wouldn't do anything different with or without foreknowledge (since the future is fixed) ignores the fact that a knowing God is part of the future. i.e. the situations aren't the same if only in the minimum difference that there is a knowing God in one state of affairs and an unknowing one in the other.
The problem is that when you think about changing a fixed future you're simply thinking about it wrongly. The problem is that those criticizing the utility of foreknowledge confuse fatalism with a fixed future. But there are very important differences.
The fact is that what God knows of the future includes what is different from what he would do if he didn't now the future and thus it is "useful." (Perhaps one problem is the ambiguity over "usefulness")
I'm having trouble understanding why so many people are so adamantly opposed to the idea of a God that is bound by time. I wrote about it just today. If God could have incredibly accurate predictive powers without exact foreknowledge because of a fixed future, is He somehow less worthy of our worship?
Clark,
Three questions:
1. Do you think more than one state of affairs is compatible with the absolute foreknowledge of God -- including absolute foreknowledge of his own actions?
2. In my post, I stated that the actions of a being with absolute foreknowledge (including absolute foreknowledge ofhis own actions) would have to be compatible with that foreknowledge. Do you agree or disagree? (No discussion of causation or change here, merely couched in terms of compatibility.)
3. Can you elaborate on the problems with causation? It seems to me that if causation is not fundamental, then ascribing foreknowledge and omnipotence to God is more arbitrary and less meaningful. It is unclear to me (if causation is not fundamental) how these attributes make God more worship-worthy, as I was getting at in my post.
You wrote:
To assert that God wouldn't do anything different with or without foreknowledge (since the future is fixed) ignores the fact that a knowing God is part of the future. i.e. the situations aren't the same if only in the minimum difference that there is a knowing God in one state of affairs and an unknowing one in the other.
This gets at the question you rightly bring up about what "useful" means. Suppose I can inform you precisely what any given future state of affairs will be. So what? Is this anything more than a parlor trick? Who cares whether anybody knows what a future state of affairs will be? It is the implications of such knowledge that concern us; i.e., what can you do with that knowledge? If the only difference between a future state of affairs A and a future state of affairs B is that state of affairs B includes my knowledge, that doesn't seem to be a significant or useful difference, nor does it seem to add any worship-worthiness to me.
(Oh, by the way, it's Bradford, not Branford.) :-)
My personal opinion is that causality is wrong because it always underdetermines the "next event." That is for any set of requirements there may well be an infinite number of scenarios that fit it.
With regards to your second point, yes I agree that ones acts have to be compatible with your foreknowledge. My point is that what we know will thus be in part "determined" (note the scare quotes - not causally determined or necessitated) by my having foreknowledge. I'd strongly suspect that the possible states of future affairs compatible with my foreknowledge would be infinite. Further I think that the possible states of future affairs in which I have foreknowledge will be different than the possible states of future affairs in which I don't have foreknowledge. Finally I think the set of future states in which I have foreknowledge will involve the attainment of more potential desires of myself than the set of fture states in which I don't have foreknowledge, thus entailing a usefullness to foreknowledge.
My problem with causality are somewhat complex. I'll probably leave that for an other day. My big problems with traditional causality though is that causality in these discussions generally (although not always) means Newtonian causation or determinism.
I'll probably do a post in the future on causation. I'm rushed right now. My complaints are primarily due to the roll of causation in physics as well as the problem of clarifying what causation is. I'd add that to claim that without causation being fundamental that things are arbitrary is hard to accept without a serious argument. You'd probably have to clarify what you mean by arbitrary. If you make causality too fundamental you then have problems with Libertarian free will as well, since you have uncaused events in such a view. The position that really holds to causality is causal determinism but that is the view I think many oppose.
Geoff, regarding God being bound by time, I think few have problems with that. If by that you mean that God can't know the future, then that's a different matter. (I think one can be bound by time but still have foreknowledge)
The question really ends up that if God doesn't have direct foreknowledge then his knowledge is predictive. Yet it seems that the vast number of possible choices is such that he would have precious little predictive power. i.e. the implications of even a few wrong answers will ripple through events and make his knowledge very, very limited. If he does have predictive power of the sort you assert, then it seems to follow that we have precious little libertarian free will after all, since we are so predictable.
I personally find direct foreknowledge far less problematic than extensive predictability. Since to me predictability really does show that people aren't that free.
Clark,
I'd be very interested in further elaboration on multiple possible states of future affairs given infallible foreknowledge, including foreknowledge of one's own actions. Am I correct in suspecting some sort of extra-temporality or alternate timelines in play?
I look forward to your future post on causation. :-)
Good stuff Clark,
Regarding predictive power: What do you think of the idea of superimposing Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle on to the history of mankind and this world in general? With innumerable previous inhabited worlds to use as a database and such principles that allow predictions of the group, it seems reasonable to me that God’s unfathomable computing intelligence could create extremely accurate predictions of the whole story of this planet. At the same time, the indeterminacy principle allows each individual to remain completely free and able to be unpredictable.
Most or all of the prophesies from God to man could be explained in these circumstances -- think of the parable of the olive trees Jacob tells. (The Peter denial case doesn’t fit this model, but we have discussed that elsewhere).
On the other topic...
I'd strongly suspect that the possible states of future affairs compatible with my foreknowledge would be infinite.
I'm confused about this one. With Grasshopper I am interested in further elaboration on how this works. If one has true knowledge of a fixed future how are there infinite possible future states? Isn't there just one path possible? Do you mean something about infinite on a line?
Finally I think the set of future states in which I have foreknowledge will involve the attainment of more potential desires of myself than the set of fture states in which I don't have foreknowledge, thus entailing a usefullness to foreknowledge.
I'm confused again... Why do you think this?
Geoff: "What do you think of the idea of superimposing Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle on to the history of mankind and this world in general?"
That was more or less the basis of the answer I gave to Blake when I said consider all choices made when this world was created. i.e. consider the universe as a whole in a manner analogous to a giant wave function with the collapse being primordial freedom.
All the phenomena of choosing as well as the appearance of causality (to varying degrees) then is simply this universe considered four dimensionally due to the way phenomena and time are related.
Geoff: "With innumerable previous inhabited worlds to use as a database and such principles that allow predictions of the group, it seems reasonable to me that God’s unfathomable computing intelligence could create extremely accurate predictions of the whole story of this planet."
That's fine, if there is consistency in the entities so analyzed. If they are free in the fashion Libertarianism asserts, then all the king's database and all the king's principle's can't say what someone will do. That's the point. For people to be that predictable they are then bound by laws in a fashion that I don't think the Libertarian would accept.
Now Blake has hedged on this a bit. I've asked him a few times for the physical difference between a truly random choice, a determined choice, and a free choice. He's sometimes said, depending upon which two I pair, that there isn't one. i.e. that the only real difference is whether there is a fact of the matter about the future. However I'm not sure he really believes that. I certainly don't think such a view (which you seem to be moving towards) is compatible with Libertarianism.
Geoff: "If one has true knowledge of a fixed future how are there infinite possible future states?"
Possible in the sense from some point in the infinite past. The problem is that we use the terms necessary and possible in such a way that discussion gets messy fast. There is no one logically necessary future, but there is one future. Just as there is no one logically necessary past, but there is one past. (Assuming there isn't causal determinism)
So what I'm really asking is what, given the structural limits of the universe, are the logical possibilities. I think there are an infinite number of possible universes we can conceive of wherein God has foreknowledge.
Consider God at a road. He could go left or right. There is one possible world where he goes left and he knows beforehand that he would go left. There is one possible world where he goes right and he knows beforehand he would go right. So there are two possible worlds compatible with foreknowledge.
Now Grasshopper will say that this isn't useful use of foreknowledge. So let's say God likes icecream and there is an icecream store on the left road. So now we have the same scenario, but combined with God's desire for an icecream. In the choice to the left road God's choice about the left road is chosen because he likes icecream. So now foreknowledge becomes useful. (Since it enabled him to know about the icecream) In the universe where God didn't know about the future (or the icecream) he could still choose to go right or left but the reasons for picking one or the other are different.
Just to add, so we're all clear. Blake's argument against the above example would likely be that God can't choose except at the time of the choice. i.e. the reasons are only reasons for a choice at that time. But at that time he already knows what he will do, so its not a useful choice. My approach which is to make freedom more primordial avoids, I feel, this objection.
I suspect Blake won't agree.
The real issue ends up being whether choice has to be conscious and what counts as reasons for a choice.
What if foreknowledge is nothing more than a complete knowledge and understanding of the present course of things. If you could not comprehend the motions of the moon, you might think it foreknowledge for me to tell you there will be a full moon on Feb. 24, 2005 at 4:54AM Greenwich Mean Time.
I think the same applies to man with his ability to choose. I assert that the gap between man's and God's knowledge and understanding is analogous to the gap between parent and young child.
Watching from afar, an adult might see a child running on a sidewalk. By the uncoordinated motion of the child's legs and the uneven terrain of the sidewalk, the adult might predict the child's fall at any moment. In the eyes of the child, is this predictive power foreknowledge? Could the child have chosen not to fall down?
This is perhaps a version of the world where God’s understanding overcomes the Heisenberg uncertainty principle for objects and forces, but perhaps we, as humans, place too much variability in our free agency. From God’s perspective, seeing our whole character and whole set of past actions, He can be accurate about our future as it plays out. Perhaps foreknowledge is only an illusion to our frail human mind.
Such predictions are only possible because the entities in question aren't free in the Libertarian sense. So you can certainly say that this is how God knows, but then you've simply adopted causal determinism and are a Compatibilist. I think Ostler, among others, argues well for why that kind of Compatibilism is hard to reconcile to the gospel. However my own perspective is simply that I don't think that kind of causality (basically Newtonian determinism) is true for all phenomena, even in science.
I’ve toyed with the idea of using Heisenberg's uncertainty principle as a basis for rationalizing God perceptions, but I struggle with it (most likely because I approach it as a chemist). Is there already a body of work out there that takes a more philosophical approach? Can the state of a decision by ascertained without effecting the decision?
That's such a complicated question Jonathan that I don't even know where to start. The "collapse of the wavefunction" where the wavefunction basically has all the allowable states is odd. Some suggest that this very way of looking at the issue is misplaced. There is no one way of interpreting quantum mechanics. Further until we have a theory of quantum gravity, I'm not sure the philosophy of either GR or QM is that relevant. They are so opposed to each other in so many ways.
Put more simply, while I obviously invoke speculative physics at times, I think one ought to be very careful doing so. It is, to use my favorite phrase, "handwaving."
In the above I talked about the collapse of the wavefunction as a way to understand one way of thinking about freedom. However I did so by way of analogy. I do not intend it to be taken literally. Further in my original comments to Blake I don't think I brought up the analogy until in the comments. (I'd have to check to be sure)
I was hoping to evoke the uncertainty principle by analogy too. However, I am fully guilty of a "handwaving" on this subject in general. Check out my hasty swipe at explaining God’s non-foreknowledge from today and let me know what a hopeless rube I am when you get a chance. In it I am assuming that choices do require consciousness and timely reasons to count. (But I give you your “props” in the post, Clark)
The problem with that scheme Geoff is that in such a scheme God has precious little knowledge of the future. Some don't have problem with that. They limit God to either amazingly vague prophecies or only makes statements about events he plans on bringing about. (i.e. are within his power) That's Blake's basic position. And if you can reconcile that to your understanding of the gospel that's fine. I suspect many people can not.
Clark, you wrote:
Consider God at a road. He could go left or right. There is one possible world where he goes left and he knows beforehand that he would go left. There is one possible world where he goes right and he knows beforehand he would go right. So there are two possible worlds compatible with foreknowledge.
Now Grasshopper will say that this isn't useful use of foreknowledge. So let's say God likes icecream and there is an icecream store on the left road. So now we have the same scenario, but combined with God's desire for an icecream. In the choice to the left road God's choice about the left road is chosen because he likes icecream. So now foreknowledge becomes useful. (Since it enabled him to know about the icecream) In the universe where God didn't know about the future (or the icecream) he could still choose to go right or left but the reasons for picking one or the other are different.
Your example in the first paragraph gives an argument for the compatibility of multiple future states of affairs with foreknowledge generally, but does not address the question of specific foreknowledge. (In fact, it's not clear to me that it really addresses foreknowledge at all, except in a sort of "retroactive" sense -- he knew beforehand that he would go left (or right, as the case may be).) Let's see if I can illustrate the issue that I see. Let's assume God goes left at the fork in the road.
Let t2 be the time at which God goes left
Let t0 be any time prior to t2
Foreknowledge entails that God infallibly knows at t0 that he will go left at t2, correct?
If so, then the state of affairs at t2 in which God goes right and foreknew at time t0 that he would go right is not compossible with his foreknowledge at t0 (that he would go left at t2). There is only one state of affairs at t2 compossible with his foreknowledge at t0.
The only way I see around this is to deny that foreknowledge entails that God infallibly knows at t0 that he will go right at t2. Is this what you are saying above?
Disclaimer: I know absolutely nothing about the Mormon theological concept of foreknowledge, so I could be completely misunderstanding things here. Please forgive any inadvertent blasphemy along the way.
That being said:
It seems to me that all of the above arguments are depending upon an unstated (and faulty) premise: that an omniscient being could somehow "change his mind".
If we assume:
a) a God that can "do" something (turn right, turn left, etc.)
b) that this God has perfect knowledge of everything: past, present and future
c) that this God exists within time much the same we do
then we can safely conclude that this God must know (at one point in time, t1) what he will do at a later point in time (t2).
This foreknowledge is indeed "useless" in the sense that it cannot cause God to do something different at t2, because if he were to do so, he would have surely known at t1 that he would change his mind.
The tricky part, as I see it, is to remember that *this foreknowledge is never something new*-- it was always known. It's not that God suddenly at t1 (or t0) gains knowledge of what will occur at t2, but rather, he knew it all along-- so if it were going to have an influence on any decision God would make, it already would have done so.
In other words, if God knows everything, and God is in time, then God always knew everything, and at the beginning of time already knew everything that would ever happen (including everything that He would do) and in that instant had already decided every decision he would ever make, for eternity-- complete and total predestination, in fact, and God is helpless to do anything about it, and the universe is effectively on auto-pilot. Omniscient = impotent, not omnipotent. To be omnipotent-- in fact, to have any power of decision at all, no matter how trivial-- rules out perfect foreknowledge.
if you can reconcile that to your understanding of the gospel that's fine. I suspect many people can not.
Wow, that is good news. I knew that such a position isn't mainstream, but I was worried that it was not logically possible or completely incompatible with scripture. If the primary hole left in my proposed theory is that most people would have trouble believing such a thing, then I'm feeling pretty good!
A few really brief comments.
Michael, we're more looking at a point where God receives foreknowledge at the same time he makes all the choices. Whether this resolves all the problems you mention is an other issue entirely. Certainly it may place a limit on God's ability to act otherwise at some time in the future. However I think because Mormons place God as essentially embodied that they already are open to more limited omnipotence.
Christopher, the issue is when God's choices are determined and what that entails. (Using determined in a loose sense) Clearly what I outline isn't compatible with Libertarianism.
Regarding your other points, let us say that there is a time, t0, where God doesn't know much, if anything, about what transpires between t2 and t3. Further events between t1 and t2 are not yet determined. At t1 there is a "fall/creation" of a universe wherein the information constituting all people mix and create the universe they are part. (Basically akin to the analogy of the collapse of the wavefunction) Let us say that *which* of all possible interactions is determined as a whole as a free choice. At t2, all these choices are now determined. God knows at t2 all future choices, but he chose all those involving him.
Basically all this does is argue that free will, as considered in the debate, and choice, as considered in the debate, aren't primordial and that something more fundamental is going on.
The point is that at t1 all options are open and God can pick and we can pick and those open options include those in which God has foreknowledge.
Actually the better way to look at this is in terms of the neoPlatonic conception of soul. In that scheme there aren't proper individuals but rather all life is considered one. In a sense all life chooses as a whole. We can isolate out individuals and talk about their choices, but it is artificial. (And this, I think is one of the big problems with dicussions of choice and freedom - we reject the holism of existence)
There are, I feel, similar approaches to this in both Derrida and Heidegger in their discussions.
If we talk about all life choosing and choosing each step out of all possibilities, then the problem resolves itself. That is because life as a whole obviously knows what it wants to do.
Clark, do you see knowledge as a means by which actions are carried out as well as a means by which choices are made? If not, then doesn't knowledge become inconsequential once all choices are made (t2)?
In other words, it seems that God uses conditional (pre-t2) foreknowledge to decide on a game plan, but once that foreknowledge becomes absolute (t2), what purpose does it serve?
The knowledge's purpose is to open up possibilities that otherwise would not be there. i.e. the set of possible states of affairs in which God has foreknowledge is different from the set of possible states of affairs in which he doesn't. If those states of affairs include ones God desires that aren't in the other then it seems difficult to say that foreknowledge isn't useful.
The problem is that when the question of utility is raised it is raised with the presumption of a certain kind of causality.
That's what I question.
Just one more note about my use of omniscience. My use isn't that all things are necessarily before God. i.e. that he is aware of all things. Merely that the act of being aware of some future event is a possibility at all times from t2 - t3.
Clearly this isn't the same use as some definitions of omniscience.
Further I'm actually less concerned with omniscience than I am foreknowledge. I don't think they necesarily imply one an other. It may be that God has extensive foreknowledge but not total foreknowledge. That in turn enables one to answer the "utility" question quite well. For instance say you know everything that will happen in New York City for the next few days. So you use that knowledge to play the stock market and become a millionaire. Clearly that foreknowledge was useful. That's why you'll note when the "useless" argument is applied to foreknowledge it is always absolute foreknowledge.
But Clark, even in the limited foreknowledge example you give above, someone with the foreknowledge of everything that will happen in New York City for the next few days can only do things that are compatible with that foreknowledge (the eventual events in New York City, including any stock transactions he incurs, must be compatible with his foreknowledge). So the criticism about usefulness seems to apply even to limited foreknowledge. If I infallibly foreknow that my child will be hit by a car, then the only states of affairs compatible with my foreknowledge are those in which my child will be hit by a car. My foreknowledge of this is not useful in the sense that it enables me to bring about my desire to prevent the accident from happening.
That said, I think I am beginning to grasp a little more where you are coming from with your argument about "primordial" choice. It raises a lot of questions for me, and I wonder whether it doesn't run into at least as many scriptural problems as the idea of God having limited or fallible foreknowledge.
But Chris, you're missing that there is not a single set of worlds in which I foreknow my child will be hit by a car. Certainly there are a more limited number of choices in which I know my child will be hit by a car. But that seems to be arguing beside the point by considering my causes as made after the foreknowledge is had. But that's the very point I question.
Regarding primordial freedom, I'm not aware of any scriptural problems. I can certainly respect Blake's argument that it is counter-intuitive. But since I distrust intuition so much, that's not a very strong argument to me.
Clark:
Your responses regarding our "intuitions" seem to me to be very problematic and wide of the mark. The notion that we made all of the choices that we will ever make at a point in time before we were born, before were embodied, runs against the LDS scriptures which state clearly that we must know the difference between right and wrong to be held morally accountable. Yet the freedom to choose was a gift given to Adam in the garden and he did not possess the faculty of moral agency until after eating the fruit (whatever that represents). Moreover, when we have immediate experience of choosing in the moment after deliberation we are not merely relying on intuition but direct experience of our own actions. What could be more within our knowledge than that?
I realize that our macro-world expectations as to how the micro-world will behave based on our experience at the macro-level don't give us a good guide when we pass outside the realm of our experience to the micro or sub-atomic world. But we have no direct experience of the subatomic world since our conscious experience is limited to the macro-world. So your analogy and exteme skepticism are not warranted based upon physics. We have direct experience of our own deliberations and choices and if you cannot trust your own immediate experience of your own acts and choices as reliable experience I suggest that there is no experience at all that you can trust. Extreme radical Pyrronian skepticism follows from your position and that is a strange view for any LDS person to adopt.
The notion that in the moment of the big bang I made all of my decisions is not merely counterintuitive, it is unintelligible. What were we deciding and based upon what? I cannot begin to make sense of making a choice in a vacuum with no concrete situations presenting choices before me and no experiences on which to base them. Your view necessitates that our immediate experience of deliberation and choosing is not merely a mirage and illusion but also that we have already made the decision we think that we are deliberating about and in the very act of making. What we are doing is in fact not what we are doing when we are doing it on your view.
As for whether God's knowledge is useful -- what you suggest is that when I pray at t2 I am praying about something that I have already decided at the big bang and the result has already occured at t3 and then based on that result I made further decisions at t4 which God also knows at the time of the big bang. What follows from your position is that everything that occurs is fixed from and after the point of the big bang. In other words, it entails the most vicious (causal or non-causal) determinism possible. When I experience my act of deciding and choosing, my choice is already fixed.
Blake I'll try and write something up more substantial later. My position is that we distinguish between Choice1 and Choice2 where Choice1 is a primordial freedom and Choice2 is the phenomena of us chosing which appears the same as what you'd believe. The reason I think we're talking past one an other is that you want to simply analyze Choice1 as if it were Choice2, as if I'm simply moved back choosing of the sort we talk about in folk theories to some earlier time.
That confusion is mainly my fault because of the way I've talked about it. (Like in the above) So let me write up something a little more rigorous later today.
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