UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE DIVINE OMNISCIENCE AND THE FATALIST DILEMMA A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By DAVID KYLE JOHNSON Norman, Oklahoma 2006 UMI Number: 3206970 Copyright 2006 by Johnson, David Kyle All rights reserved. UMI Microform 3206970 Copyright 2006 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346 DIVINE OMNISCIENCE AND THE FATALIST DILEMMA A DISSERTATION APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY BY _______________________________ Prof. Linda Zagzebski, Ph.D. (Chair) _______________________________ Prof. Reinaldo Elugardo Ph.D. _______________________________ Prof. Chris Swoyer, Ph.D. _______________________________ Assoc. Prof. James Hawthorne, Ph.D. _______________________________ Asst. Prof. Shmuel Shepkaru, Ph.D. © Copyright by DAVID KYLE JOHNSON 2006 All Rights Reserved. This work is dedicated to my mother PRISCILLA JOHNSON. It was only through her tireless proofreading efforts that this dissertation was possible. It was only with her unconditional love and unwavering encouragement that my education was possible. My main hope is that she is proud. - iv - ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to express deep appreciation to the members of my committee, both for their efforts in the final stages of my Ph.D. work and for their dedication as educators throughout my graduate student career. Professors, your dedication to philosophy will continually be an inspiration to me throughout my career. Thank you for your comments regarding this work and for your willingness to always answer my questions inside and outside of class. Your classes always challenged me to be my best and your confidence in my philosophical abilities me gave me confidence in myself. Thank you for taking the time to be on my committee. I also wish to specifically thank Dr. Linda Zagzebski. Linda, thank you for chairing my committee and for all the work you put into helping me write my dissertation. Your feedback and efforts were invaluable. I know it was not easy and I thank you for your dedication to my education and to my career. I also wish to thank the philosophy department’s secretaries—Susan, Shelley, and Lindsey—who have always put up with my unending administrative questions with a good natured heart. Lastly, I wish to thank my mother, Priscilla Johnson. Her confidence in me is what I always what I fall back on, even in the roughest of times. Her dedication as a mother has made my education possible. - v - TABLE OF CONTENTS: Chapter 1: My Method and Thesis……………………………1 Chapter 2: Axiomatic Modalities and Changeability…………21 Chapter 3: Causability………………………………………...45 Chapter 4: Correspondence, Actualizability, and the Severe Theological Argument……………………………………….. 93 Chapter 5: The Reduction of Theological Fatalism to Logical Fatalism………………………………………………… …...142 Chapter 6: Bivalence, PAP, and Presentism………………...196 Appendix 1 ………………………………………………….259 Bibliography ………………………………………………...262 - vi - DISSERTATION ABSTRACT DIVINE OMNISCIENCE AND THE FATALIST DILEMMA Arguments against our free will pose a serious problem. Although there are not very many philosophers who call themselves fatalists, quite a few are convinced that fatalism follows from common assumptions. Assuming that most believe themselves to be free, identifying ways to avoid the conclusion of such fatalist arguments is quite an important task. I begin by dealing specifically with theological fatalism. I present many versions of theological fatalism, but come to the conclusion that only one version constitutes a genuine problem. That version, I argue, is reducible to a deeper fatalist dilemma that follows from assumptions so common that it must be faced by even the atheist: the mutually incompatibility of human freedom, the principle of alternate possibilities and bi-valance. After considering other objections to my argument, I conclude that the only way to avoid the fatalist conclusion is to either deny the principle of alternate possibilities or deny bi-valance. I argue that, although each option is somewhat problematic, denying bivalence is the more defensible of the two options. - vii - Chapter 1 My Method and Thesis 1:1 – Fatalism If nothing else, persons believe themselves to be free. In fact, it might be impossible for a person to believe otherwise. As Van Inwagen (1998) suggests in his article “The Mystery of Metaphysical Freedom”: “Whether we are free or not, we believe that we are—and I think we believe, too, that we know this. We believe that we know this even if … we also believe that we are not free, and, therefore, that we do not know that we are free.” (p.73) Each person also believes free will to be possessed by everyone else. Many, if not most, actions performed by persons are assumed to be the result of free decisions made by those persons. Fatalist arguments, however, suggest otherwise. The term “fate” is used in many different ways. Some might suggest that the Kennedy assassination was “fated.” Two lovers might suggest that they were fated to meet. Therefore, “event X was fated” could mean many things—everything from “X was caused to occur by God” to “some human person arranged things to make sure that X would occur.” But none of these are how philosophers use the term and none will be sufficient for our purposes. “Fatalism is the thesis that whatever happens must happen; every event or state of affairs that occurs must occur, while the nonoccurrence of every event and state of affairs is likewise necessitated.” (Bernstein (2002); p 65 in Kane (2002)). Specifically, I shall say, “event/state of affairs X is fated IFF X is an event/state of 1 affairs that occurs, and X’s non-occurrence is impossible.” Additionally, I shall label arguments with the fatalist thesis as a conclusion “fatalist arguments.” Since it is generally accepted, and quite intuitive, that decisions cannot be necessitated if they are to be free, fatalist arguments threaten free will. If our unavoidable belief that we are free is to be justified, these arguments must be defeated. Fatalist arguments come in many forms, but there are two basic types: logical/theological and physical ( i.e., physical deterministic arguments). The two types of arguments differ in the following way: Deterministic arguments suggest that, since the beginning of the universe, every event/state of affairs in the entire history of the universe 1 has been causally determined to occur. According to determinism, every momentary physical state of the universe is the immediate cause of the subsequent momentary physical state. In fact, according to the determinist, given the physical laws of the universe, any given physical state of the universe can and will cause only one physical state: the state that follows it. In this way, every event in the history of the universe is causally rooted in the first event of the universe and determinism offers a causal explanation for why every event is necessitated to occur as it does. Given the initial condition of the universe and the physical laws, it is physically impossible for things to turn out differently than they do. Conversely, logical/theological arguments do not offer a causal explanation for why the events that occur, occur necessarily. They simply maintain that uncontroversial logical/theological facts allow us to deduce this conclusion without offering up a causal explanation for this conclusion. 1 except maybe the very first one—if there was a first one 2 Both logical/theological and deterministic arguments most commonly take, what I shall call, a “futuristic form.” The futuristic forms of the arguments bypass the task of directly arguing for the necessity of all events (a task undertaken by comprehensive fatalist arguments), and simply conclude that all future events that will occur after the argument is tokened, will occur necessarily. Deterministic arguments suggest that present/past physical facts causally entail that there is only one possible future; logical/theological arguments suggest that present/past logical/theological facts entail that there is only one possible future. The “futuristic form” is the most common form of fatalist argument and I will be dealing primarily with this form; but futuristic arguments can be easily converted into comprehensive ones. To do so, one need simply to add to them the assumption “for every given event, there was a time at which it was future” and the conclusion “therefore, every event that occurs, occurs necessarily.” Clearly, if futuristic arguments do not work, one cannot prove that the future is fated and comprehensive fatalist arguments fail; additionally, if futuristic arguments do work, since every event was future at one time, a comprehensive argument and conclusion logically follows. This bi-conditional relationship between the success and failure of futuristic and comprehensive fatalist arguments allows us to not be limited by the fact that we will be dealing only with futuristic fatalist arguments; any conclusion about them can be cross-applied to comprehensive fatalist arguments as well. Other than arguing for the compatibilism of determinism and free will or arguing against a deterministic picture of the universe itself, there is not much one can do to counter the determinist fatalist arguments. If the world is deterministic, and 3 the classic (non-compatibilist) definition of free will is correct, then we are not free— end of story. But arguments against logical/theological type fatalist arguments are much more varied and complicated. For this reason they are more interesting and in this work I will deal mainly with logical/theological fatalist arguments. (However compatibilist definitions of free-will, will be discussed in the last chapter, section 6:2.2.1.) Since most philosophers believe that humans are free, and the fatalist conclusion would clearly seem to be false if we are free, there are not many fatalists in the philosophical community (or in any community for that matter).