Prepunishment and Explanatory Dependence

A New Argument for Incompatibilism About Foreknowledge and Freedom

Datos Bibliográficos

ID10693716
AutoresPatrick Todd (0009-0003-8001-4364, The University of Innsbruck and the Munich School of Philosophy, autor de correspondencia)
Año2013
Volumen122
Número4
Páginas619-639
Fecha de publicación2013-10-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Philosophical Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0031-8108 • E-ISSN: 1558-1470
EditorialDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00318108-2315315
OpenAlexW2065527596
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas8
Referencias citadas11

The most promising way of responding to arguments for the incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom (in one way or another) invokes a claim about the order of explanation: God knew (or believed) that you would perform a given action because you would, in fact, perform it, and not the other way around. Once we see this result, many suppose, we'll see that divine foreknowledge ultimately poses no threat to human freedom. This essay argues that matters are not so simple, for such reasoning threatens also to reconcile divine prepunishment with human freedom. The question here is this: if you have already been ( justly) punished by God for doing something, how then could you avoid doing that thing? As we'll see, there is a strong argument that seems to show that you couldn't. However, this essay argues that if divine prepunishment rules out human freedom, then so does divine foreknowledge. The arguments are exactly parallel in certain crucial respects. At any rate, investigating the issues surrounding prepunishment can help to throw into relief the various different strategies of response to the foreknowledge argument and can bring out what their costs and commitments really are. In particular, investigating prepunishment can help to bring out the inadequacy of the “Ockhamist” reply to the argument, as well as the sense in which God's past beliefs need to depend on what we do, if we are plausibly to have a choice about those beliefs

Action (physics) · Argument (complex analysis) · Compatibilism · Economics · Epistemology · Foreknowledge · Free will · Freedom of choice · Incompatibilism · Order (exchange) · Physics · Political science · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Free Will and Agency · Law · Philosophy · War, Ethics, and Justification