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Omniprescient Agency

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

David P. Hunt
David P. Hunt
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Whittier College, Whittier, California90608
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Extract

The principle that

(P1) One cannot deliberate over what one already (prior to deliberating) knows is going to happen,

when suitably qualified, has seemed to many philosophers to be about as secure a truth as one is likely to find in this life.Fortunately, (P1) poses little restriction on human deliberation, since the conditions which would trigger its prohibition seldom arise for us: our knowledge of the future is intermittent at best, and those things of which we do have advance knowledge (e.g. that the sun will rise tomorrow) are not the sorts of things over which we would deliberate in any case. But matters appear to stand otherwise with an all-knowing agent such as God is traditionally conceived to be; for what an omniprescient deity ‘already knows is going to happen’ is everything that is going to happen; and if He cannot deliberate over such things, there is nothing over which He can deliberate.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , September 1992 , pp. 351 - 369
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

1 Among these qualifications would be the requirement that the knowledge is still possessed at the time of deliberation, and that it is possessed at that time in a fully conscious form. Philosophers who have endorsed this principle, with or without qualifications, include Stuart Hampshire and Hart, H. L. A., ‘Decision, Intention and Certainty’, Mind, LXVII (Jan. 1958), 1–12Google Scholar; Ginet, Carl, ‘Can the Will be Caused?’, Philosophical Review, LXXI (Jan. 1962), 49–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Taylor, Richard, ‘Deliberation and Foreknowledge’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 1 (Jan. 1964), 73–80Google Scholar; Kaufman, Arnold S., ‘Practical Decisions’, Mind, LXXV (01 1966), 25–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goldman, Alvin I., A Theory of Human Action (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), p. 194Google Scholar; Burton, Robert G., ‘Choice’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, XLII (06 1982), 581–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kapitan, Tomis, ‘Deliberation and the Presumption of Open Alternatives’, Philosophical Quarterly, XXXVI (04 1986), 230–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 The application of (P1) to divine deliberation has been made by Taylor, op. cit.; Richard La Croix, R., ‘Omniprescience and Divine Determinism’, Religious Studies, XII (09 1976), 365–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kapitan, Tomis, ‘Can God Make Up His Mind?’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, XV (1984), 37–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Meditations IV.

4 Quinn, E.g. Philip, ‘Divine Foreknowledge and Divine Freedom’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, IX (1978), 219–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Reichenbach, Bruce R., ‘Omniscience and Deliberation’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, XVI (1984), 225–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 I have addressed (P1) in my ‘Divine Providence and Simple Foreknowledge’, Faith and Philosophy (forthcoming).

6 Castaneda, Hector-Neri, Thinking and Doing, Philosophical Studies Series in Philosophy, vol. 7 (Dordrecht, Netherlands: D. Reidel, 1975), p. 275.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Kapitan, Tomis, ‘Agency and Omniscience’, Religious Studies, XXVII (04 1991), 105–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 The exact nature of this correspondence will be brought out in discussions of each premise later in the paper. While my version of the argument compresses certain stages of Kapitan's version, all but one of the premises of my version is entailed by premises of his version. The exception is premise (5). What is actually entailed by Kapitan's version (specifically, premises (5) and (8) on pages 113 and 115 of ‘Agency and Omniscience’) is (5′) X's A-ing at t′ is an open alternative for X at t only if X is ignorant at t whether or not he will intend to A at t′. But this difference is not materially significant, since neither (5) nor (5′) is more or less plausible than the other, and (6) follows equally from either one.

9 Kapitan's brief discussion of the nature of intentional agency on pp. 107–8 of ‘Agency and Omniscience’ suggests that he would endorse the argument that follows.

10 Unless the reference to causal antecedents in (2.2) is taken to rule out atemporal intendings. But it is best to save this question for (2.4), where times are first introduced explicitly.

11 For an entire book devoted to the case against (2.1), see Brand, Myles, Intending and Acting (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1984).Google Scholar

12 ‘Agency and Omniscience’, p. 107.

13 Ibid. p. 108.

14 Kapitan does note on p. 108, with respect to the all-intentions-are-acquired thesis, that ‘one might ask whether there are other grounds in its favour’. But the discussion which follows this remark never gets around to saying what these other grounds might be.

15 Ibid. p. 105.

16 Among those who have espoused some version of the belief–desire account are Robert Audi, Monroe Beardsley, Hector-Neri Castaneda, Donald Davidson, Alvin Goldman, and Wilfrid Sellars.

17 Alston, William P., ‘Divine and Human Action’, in Morris, Thomas V., ed., Divine and Human Action (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), pp. 257–80.Google Scholar

18 Ibid. p. 278.

19 Ibid. p. 265.

20 Ibid. p. 275.

21 This is proposition (1) on p. 110 of ‘Agency and Omniscience’.

22 Ibid. proposition (3).

23 Ibid. p. 112, proposition (4). I have omitted the final clause in Kapitan's formulation, ‘relative to what he himself then believes (knows)’, since I do not address this aspect of the contingency in question until the next section of this paper.

24 Ibid. p. 113, proposition (5).

25 This statement of the Presumption of Openness is very close to Kapitan's proposition (7) on p. 114 of ‘Agency and Omniscience’.

26 Ibid. p. 107.

27 Ibid.

28 For example, if I believe (i) that my intending to make a generous contribution to Amnesty International is sufficient for my making a generous contribution to Amnesty International, (ii) that Dr X's throwing a switch on a box through which he can control my brain is sufficient for my making a generous contribution to Amnesty International, and (iii) that Dr X is in fact going to throw that switch, I might nevertheless form the intention to make a generous contribution to Amnesty International just because I value my intentional participation in a worthy cause. Here the point of intention–acquisition is simply to possess the intention.

29 Kapitan alludes to some of these issues himself on pp. 109–10 of ‘Agency and Omniscience’, though I think they require more discussion than he gives them if the principle of least effort is to have the secure status his argument requires.

30 Ibid. p. 111.

31 Of course, it is not within my power to have decided to fail the student, since the making of that decision now lies in the past; but it does remain within my power whether to maintain that decision or to revise it.

32 ‘Agency and Omniscience’, p. 105.

33 Quoted in Dummett, Michael, ‘Bringing about the Past’, Philosophical Review, LXXIII (07 1964), pp. 338–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 Op. cit. p. 192.

35 ‘Agency and Omniscience’, p. 111.

36 Ibid.

37 Ibid.

38 Ibid. pp. 111–12.

39 Ibid. p. 112.

40 Ibid.

41 Ibid.

42 David Basinger discusses why a theist might hold out for full-blooded deliberation in ‘Omniscience and Deliberation: A Response to Reichenbach’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, XX (1986), 169–72.Google Scholar

43 For a discussion of this issue, see my ‘Divine Providence and Simple Foreknowledge’, op. cit.