Abstract
Recently, several philosophers have moved from a classical account of divine omniscience according to which God knows all truths to a restricted account of divine omniscience according to which God knows all knowable truths. But an important objection offered by Alexander Pruss threatens to show that if God knows all knowable truths, God must also know all truths. In this paper, I show that there is a way out of Pruss’s objection for the advocate of restricted omniscience if she will define her view in terms of ways of knowing rather than in terms of logical possibilities.
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Notes
For example, Pruss (2011, p. 258) makes it clear that this articulation of the view, which he takes to be representative of the view generally, is his target.
One way to modify RO1 is to add temporal qualifiers replacing ‘p is true’ and/or ‘God knows p’ with ‘p is true at t’ and/or ‘God knows p at t,’ respectively. This modification will not make a major difference in the discussion which follows; so, I leave it out to avoid unnecessary complication. But see notes 6 and 7.
Strictly speaking, this first conjunct is redundant, since arguably there is a way to know p only if p is true. I include the conjunct here because it facilitates discussion. But a more economical version of our proposal is simply this: ∀p ☐L [∃w (w is a way of knowing p) → God knows p].
Here, I propose the view that if there is any way of knowing a proposition p at all, then God knows p. Some advocates of the restricted omniscience view, such as van Inwagen (2008), will happily accept this, because they are happy to accept that all knowable propositions are knowable by God. However, there are others for whom a more nuanced proposal may be more attractive, because they think that certain knowable propositions are not knowable by God, such as propositions containing indexicals referring to creatures [e.g., (Nagasawa 2007, 2008)]. According to this more nuanced proposal, God knows every proposition for which there is a way for God to know it. Formally, the view would say ∀p ☐L[(p is true and ∃w(w is a way for God to know p)) → God knows p]. Someone attracted to this proposal could defend it in a way that straightforwardly mimics the way I defend RO2 in the text.
Again, as with RO1 (see note 3 above), one alternative modification to RO2 will employ temporal qualifiers. Such temporal qualifiers will be important if one is inclined toward eternalism, since there are arguably ways of knowing propositions about the future available at future times which are not available prior to those times.
First, this is exactly how Pruss sets up the example himself. And, second, if, following notes 3 and 6, we define restricted omniscience using temporal qualifiers, making it clear that time ‘t’ when Alex mows is a future time relative to the time at which God knows the proposition in question, then for Pruss to insist contrary to his original description of the case that God knows this proposition by knowing its second disjunct, his argument would then beg the question against the advocate of restricted omniscience in a way he wishes to avoid. For one class of propositions proponents of this view explicitly wish to claim are not knowable are claims about what free creatures will do in the future.
It is probably best to think of ways of knowing as ways of believing that have certain properties—properties required for satisfying the conditions for knowledge. In every world, every way of believing will exist. But the same way of believing may be a way of knowing in one world but not another if it satisfies the conditions for knowledge in one world but not another. For example, believing <it is not the case that either Obama is President or Alex mows the lawn at t> by deducing it from a belief that <Obama is not President> may constitute a way of knowing in one world but not another.
One proposal along these lines would be to argue that there is only one way whereby God knows what he knows—e.g., through some sort of intuitive vision or awareness of the whole of reality (cf. Alston 1986).
On the distinction between internalism and externalism, see (Pappas 2005).
For a helpful overview of the basing relation including a discussion of its relata, see (Korcz and Keith 2010).
I am thinking here of approaches stemming from (Goldman 1979).
To see why this is plausible, consider the approaches typically proposed by advocates of exhaustive foreknowledge whereby this foreknowledge is achieved—Theological Determinism and Molinism. On the former approach, claims about the future are deducible because they are entailed by claims about the past and laws of nature. But the advocate of RO2 will deny that claims about what free creatures do are entailed by the past and laws of nature. On the latter approach, claims about what creatures will do are deducible from subjunctive conditionals specifying what free creatures would do in certain circumstances together with claims that those circumstances obtain. But, notoriously, it is objected against this view [e.g., by Adams (1977)] that knowledge of the relevant conditionals presupposed knowledge of their consequents.
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Byerly, T.R. Restricted Omniscience and Ways of Knowing. SOPHIA 53, 427–434 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-014-0405-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-014-0405-5