A New Disproof of the Compatibility of Foreknowledge and Free Choice

1974 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-318
Author(s):  
Douglas P. Lackey
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Focus Attention ◽  
Present Discussion ◽  
Divine Omniscience

Old philosophical problems never die, but they can be reinterpreted. In this paper, I offer a reinterpretation of the problem of reconciling divine omniscience and human free will. Classical discussions of this problem concentrate on the nature of God and the concept of free will. The present discussion will focus attention on the concept of knowledge, drawing on developments in epistemology that resulted from the posing of a certain problem by Edmund Gettier in 1963.

scholarly journals Evil and Free Will: Contemporary Free-Will Defense and Classical Theism

2020 ◽  
Vol IV (4) ◽  
pp. 15-34
Author(s):  
Igor Gasparov
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Classical Theism ◽  
Divine Omnipotence ◽  
Voluntary Consent ◽  
Virtuous Character ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Free Will Defense

The article considers contemporary free will defences, proposed by A. Plantinga, R. Swinburne, according to which the existence of a world in which there is free will is something more valuable than the existence of a world in which there is no free will. It is shown that contemporary forms of free will defences share with atheistic arguments from evil an anthropomorphic model of God, in which God is thought as an individual among other individuals, although endowed with attributes such as omniscience and omnipotence to an excellent degree. It has also been shown that another important point of similarity between contemporary free will defences and atheistic arguments from evil is that both attempt to assess what our world would be like if created by such an individual. In contrast to atheistic arguments from evil, contemporary free will defences argue that divine omnipotence and omniscience are subject to some greater restrictions, as usually assumed, especially due to God's desire to give some of his creations the ability of free choice, which logically implies the possibility and even necessity of the existence of evil. It is demonstrated that classical theism does not share the anthropomorphic model of deity typical for many contemporary philosophers of religion. Classical theism rejects both the anthropomorphic model of deity and the unaccountability of free will to God as the supreme good. On the contrary, it assumes that free decision was initially an opportunity for the voluntary consent of man which had an innate aspiration towards God as his supreme good. Nevertheless, due to the creation of man out of nothing, this consent could not be automatic but implied forming a virtuous character, and man's transition from a state in which he was able not to sin, to a state in which he would be not able to sin.

Divine Omniscience and Human Free Will

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ciro De Florio ◽  
Aldo Frigerio
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Divine Omniscience

The Hardening of Pharaoh’s Heart

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shira Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Literal Meaning ◽  
Divine Justice ◽  
Exodus Narrative

Albo focuses his exegetical interpretation on his conception of free choice in a unique reading of the Exodus narrative. In the biblical description of the plagues that God brought upon the Egyptians, it is written that God “hardened Pharaoh’s heart” so that he would not agree to allow the Israelites to leave his land. The literal meaning of the narrative implies that God restrained Pharaoh’s free will. Such an interpretation calls God’s justice into question, since Pharaoh is held morally responsible for his refusal to liberate the Israelites. In an effort to reconcile the seeming conflict, Albo creatively interprets this enigmatic narrative, concluding that God did not deprive Pharaoh of his free choice, but rather preserved his volitional will, thereby maintaining divine justice. By hardening Pharaoh’s heart, God gave Pharaoh the fortitude to withstand the pressures of the plagues and exercise free choice whether or not to liberate the Israelites.

scholarly journals Free Will with Afterthoughts: A Quasichemical Model

2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea C. Levi
Keyword(s):  
Probability Distribution ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Chemical Reactions ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Freedom Of Choice ◽  
Quasichemical Model ◽  
Conditioning Factors ◽  
Crossing Point

A model of free will is proposed, appealing to the similarity with simple, two-body chemical reactions where the energy curves for the reagents and for the products cross. The system at the crossing point has a freedom of choice to perform the reaction or not. The Landau-Zener formula, corresponding to the opportunity of meeting twice the crossing point, is interpreted as free will with an afterthought and generalized to the cases when a subject thinks about a choice n times. If the probability distribution pn of afterthoughts is known, the probability of a final yes decision is given. The results are generalized to situations where a preference for or against a change exists or where the freedom is only partial, has to fight with conditioning factors, and possibly decreases with increasing instances of free choice.

Effects of Free versus Directed Listening on Duration of Individual Music Listening by Prekindergarten Children

2005 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendy L. Sims
Keyword(s):  
Free Choice ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Music Listening ◽  
Specific Task ◽  
Focus Attention ◽  
Free Condition ◽  
Preschool Classroom

Preschool children's listening time responses to free versus directed listening activities were compared. For the free condition, children were instructed just to “listen as long as you would like.” The directed condition was a written task designed to focus attention on specific aspects of the music and give children something concrete to do while listening — again, for as long as the children chose to participate. Children listened individually with headphones, as one of the free-choice activities available in their preschool classroom. Each child listened to two classical music examples under both conditions. As a group, children did not listen significantly longer when presented with a specific task to complete while listening. Children's listening times varied widely from one another, including some children who listened longer than might generally be expected for this age. October 28, 2004 January 3, 2005.

scholarly journals La natura analogica del bene: radice metafísica della libertà della scelta in Tommaso d'Aquino

2004 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 83
Author(s):  
Federica BERGAMINO
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Conception Of The Good

The paper aims to show how the act of free will in Thomas Aquinas is not exercised merely in the choice between good an evil, but consists more essentially in the free choice ofthe better. What plays the key role in the analysis is Thomas's metaphysical conception of the good and its relationship to the free subject. The special causality of the good -and more concretely, of the particular good- is noted, and then choice is examined in light of the analogical nature of the «better».

scholarly journals Caspar Langenhert on Free Choice, Causation, and the Rejection of Calvinism

2020 ◽  
Vol 100 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 219-233
Author(s):  
Michael Jaworzyn
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
The Catholic Church

Abstract This article provides an account of how Caspar Langenhert (1661–c. 1730) attempted to reconcile teaching a controversial “egoist” metaphysics in Paris with his reasons for rejecting Calvinism, leaving the Netherlands, and joining the Catholic Church. Langenhert had renounced Calvinism especially because he took the Calvinist account of free will to be philosophically, morally, and scripturally dubious. He preferred the notion of indifference in explaining freedom. That did not seem to accord well with his later work, the Novus Philosophus (1701–1702), whose supposedly “egoist” metaphysics appears to deny such freedom to creatures. Langenhert’s own defence would have been that there was no conflict here, because of the unusually strong distinction he drew between the domains of metaphysics and theology, but his attempts to sidestep his apparent unorthodoxy seem to have been unconvincing to the Parisian authorities, and Langenhert was required to cease teaching.

Fischer’s Fate with Fatalism

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 25-38
Author(s):  
Christoph Jäger
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Divine Omniscience ◽  
Hard Kernel ◽  
The Times ◽  
Core Project

John Martin Fischer’s core project in Our Fate (2016) is to develop and defend Pike-style arguments for theological incompatibilism, i. e., for the view that divine omniscience is incompatible with human free will. Against Ockhamist attacks on such arguments, Fischer maintains that divine forebeliefs constitute so-called hard facts about the times at which they occur, or at least facts with hard ‘kernel elements’. I reconstruct Fischer’s argument and outline its structural analogies with an argument for logical fatalism. I then point out some of the costs of Fischer’s reasoning that come into focus once we notice that the set of hard facts is closed under entailment.

FREE WILL, ETHICS, AND HEALTH CARE

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-186
Author(s):  
R. J. H.
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Medical Care ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
The Right ◽  
Fine Adjustment ◽  
Ethical View ◽  
Libertarian View

In a recent volume1 Arrow takes the libertarian view that individuals can and should make a free choice of whether and when they want to get medical care, when given all the information. Pellegrino comments on the limitations of this libertarian view: (1) We are not isolated individuals but social beings whose actions effect others as well as ourselves. (2) Society has now said that it will care for people when sick. But if they are sick because of what they willfully did then should society not provide care? For children it is difficult to argue that they should be punished for their parents' failings. (3) The sick person's ability to deal with "all" the facts is limited, especially so for children. Pellegrino advocates an ethical view of the right to medical care as well as a legal one. " . . . law is the coarse adjustment that guards against the grosser violations of human rights; ethics is the fine adjustment that sets a higher ideal than law can guarantee." It would seem that children should have the right to medical care.

scholarly journals Did Epicurus Discover the Free-Will Problem?

2021 ◽  
pp. 152-193
Author(s):  
Susanne Bobzien
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Decision Processes ◽  
The Universe

This chapter shows, through painstaking analysis of the extant texts (Epicurus, Lucretius, Diogenes Laertius, et al.), that there is no evidence that Epicurus dealt with the kind of free-will problem with which he is traditionally associated, i.e. that he discussed free choice or moral responsibility grounded on free choice, or that the ‘swerve’ was involved in decision processes. Rather, for Epicurus, actions are fully determined by the agent’s mental disposition at the outset of the action. Moral responsibility presupposes not free choice but that the person is unforced and causally responsible for the action. This requires the agent’s ability to influence causally, more specifically on the basis of their beliefs, the development of their behavioural dispositions. The ‘swerve’ was intended to explain the non-necessity of agency without undermining Epicurus’ atomistic explanation of the order in the universe, viz. by making the mental dispositions of adults non-necessary.

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