Abstract
We can generate a family of problems of future contingents by working variations on a single simple theme. Suppose that some claims about the future are, in some sense, contingent. Suppose that some claims about the past are in that same sense necessary. We now propose various principles which purport to show that every claim of the first kind is entailed by a claim of the second kind. If entailment preserves necessity then every claim of the first kind is necessary after all.
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Notes
There is a vast secondary literature on the scanty primary literature on discussions of the necessity of the past in antiquity. For an introduction to and discussion of both, see R. Sorabji’s Necessity, Cause, and Blame, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y. 1980.
Newcomb’s Problem was first introduced into the philosophical literature by Robert Nozick in ‘Newcomb’s Problem and Two Principles of Choice,’ in Essays in Honor ofCarl G. Hempel, N. Rescher et al. (eds.), D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1970, and has given rise to an extensive literature.
The conventional wisdom about it was formed largely by A. Gibbard and W. Harper in ‘Counterfactuals and Two Kinds of Expected Utility,’ Foundations and Applications of Decision Theory, Vol. I, Hooker et al. (eds.), D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1978.
That Newcomb’s problem is closely connected to fundamental problems of decision theory was demonstrated by D. K. Lewis in ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma Is a Newcomb Problem,’ Philosophy and Public Affairs 8 (1979), 235–240. I have benefitted in thinking about this subject from an unpublished paper by Professor A. Falk, ‘New Wrinkles on Old Fatalisms’ (xerox 1982).
One might wonder whether the claim that the past is fixed or necessary is consistent with the claim that there are “backtracking” connections between it and the future. For example, one might reason thus: Even if I am predestined and so have an indelible mark on my soul it is still possible for me to choose a life of vice. But (1) if I were to choose a life of vice God would know it — so it is possible that God know it. But (2) if God were to know I would choose a life of vice he would have not marked my soul — so it is possible that God has not marked my soul. But my soul is already marked and hence necessarily already marked. Therefore, my soul is necessarily already marked and possibly not already marked. And that is absurd. This reasoning seems valid but one must be careful. Subjunctive reasoning is not in general transitive. As we shall see later perhaps the most plausible account of what would happen if I were to choose a life of vice (supposing my soul is already marked) is that God would have made a mistake.
The idea that all of God’s activity is a single act which is outside of time creates interesting disanalogies to human action. For example a human being who saved someone’s life and then years later broke both that person’s arms would ordinarily be thought to have performed two separate acts — one good, one bad. But if God did this it would be one act — that of saving-a-life-while-armbreaking. If this act is a good one, then, one may claim, God has done nothing bad.
One way of attempting to ground the intuition that the present and past are fixed or necessary in a way the future is not is to claim that the future is merely possible while the past and present are actual and that the actual, being “outside its causes”’ doesn’t, when actual, depend on anything for its existence and so can’t have its existence prevented (though of course it may depend on something for its continued existence). I think this approach has promise though I will not attempt to defend it here.
Damian’s view is not that God can change the past, e.g. make it that today Adam existed and tomorrow he did not, but that God can now make the past otherwise, e.g. make it that Adam never existed. The clearest discussion of this I know is in unpublished work by Paul Oppenheimer.
This example appears in Scotus, (Opus Oxon) I Sent. d. 39 in L. Wadding (ed.), Opera Omnia Vatican Scotistic Commission, vol. 5, part II, p. 1301. I discuss this question further in ‘Instants of Time and Instants of Nature,’ (unpublished manuscript).
It is not easy to see how God can be present to all of time as agent or as knower. Relativity theory would seem to provide a model because there are analogies which can be drawn between the way in which all of history is present to God and the way in which all of its history is present for a photon. The problem with such models is that if one thinks of the past and/or present as real or actual in a way the future is not, such models force one to think of actuality or reality as perspective-relative. For the bestarticulaed model of the sort mentioned see E. Stump and N. Kretzmann, ‘Eternity,’ The Journal of Philosophy 78 (1981), 429–58.
For criticisms of such views see John Duns Scotus, Lectura I Sent. d. 39, q. 1–5. (Lectura in Librum Primum Sententiarum in John Duns Scotus, Opera Omnia, vol. XVII, Civitas Vaticana ed. by C. Balić et al., 1966.)
This conclusion is the burden of much of Thomas Bradwardine’s Summa de causa dei contra Pelagium et de virtute causarum ad suos Mertonenses libri tres, Lyon 1618 (reprinted, Minerva 1964). For examples see Bk. I ch. 14 or Bk. III ch. 14. For Gregory of Rimini’s views see I Sent. ch. 35; for Peter of Aliaco’s discussion see Quaestiones super libros Sententiarum cum quibusdam in fine adiunctis, Strasburg 1490 (reprinted, Minerva 1968).
I discuss this further in ‘The Limits of God’s Power: Some Fourteenth Century Discussions,’ Paideia, forthcoming.
This claim may be too strong. For example, while it is hard to see how the ‘physical’ premotion advocated by sixteenth century Thomists is consistent with incompatibilism, it is not clear to me that the ‘moral’ premotion advocated by sixteenth century Scotists is not. An interesting discussion of Scotus’s view is contained in D. Langston, When Willing Becomes Knowing: The Voluntarist Analysis of God’s Omniscience (unpublished manuscript).
Buridan discusses this view of time in his Johannes Buridanus: Sophismata ch. 7, T. K. Scott (ed.), Stuttgard-Bad Connstatt, 1977, and his Quaestiones super octo libros Physicorum Aristotelis, Paris 1509, Bk. IV. De Molina takes it up in his De Scientia Dei, F. Stegmüller (ed.), in Geschichte der Molinismus, Bd. I, BGPM 32 (1935), 202ff.
This argument owes a lot to A. N. Prior’s discussion in Past, Present and Future, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1967, ch. VII. J. Etchemendy and P. Oppenheimer have pointed out to me that the ‘now’ operator makes some of the premisses of the argument stronger than they seem. Remember that ‘now’ doesn’t mean “at the actual world-state” but merely “at this time”.
Some of this history (and some more) is presented in my chapter ‘Future Contingents’ in the Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, N. Kretzmann et al. (eds.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1982, pp. 358–381.
The tense logical ideas employed here were presented by R. Thomason in ‘Indeterminist Time and Truth-Value Gaps,’ Theoria 36 (1970), 264–281. The underlying logical technique — that of supervaluations — is due to Bas C. van Fraassen.
The historical inspiration for the view that the only exceptions to bivalence are foundamong singular sentences is Aristotle’s discussion in De Interpretations ch. 9, but the philosophical motivation is less clear. Holding that some singular sentences are neither true nor false but that every particular or universal sentence is bivalent forces one to give up the usual entailment relations between singular sentences and others — relations which are summarized for 14th century logicians in the rules of descent which are part of the theory of personal supposition. Fourteenth century logicians are aware of this consequence of the view but, to my knowledge, never attempt to motivate it. It is perhaps the feature which most clearly separates Aureoli’s picture and the one Ockham ascribes to Aristotle from Thomason’s “supervaluational” approach.
Professor Anil Gupta has pointed out to me that Ockham’s position may not entail that “is true” can be eliminated from every context and so may not be a full disappearance theory. Ockham’s discussion of these issues can be found passim in his Tractatus de praedestinatione et de praescientia dei et de futuris contingentibus, P. Boehner (ed.), Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure, N.Y. 1945.
Cf. Ockham op. cit. Assumption 6.
A particularly striking statement of this view can be found in the Notabilia’ of Richard of Campsall. Cf. E. A. Synan, ‘Sixteen Sayings by Richard of Campsall on Contingency and Foreknowledge’ Medieval Studies 24 (1962), 250–262.
For more on this see R. M. Adams, ‘Middle Knowledge and the Problem of Evil,’ American Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1977), 109–117, and the article referred to in note 12.
The counterfactual connections suggested seem to give what medieval theorists called sine qua non causality, which seems very close to the concept D. K. Lewis analyzes. For sine qua non causality see W. J. Courtenay, ‘The King and the Leaden Coin: the Economic Background of ‘Sine qua non’ Causality’ Traditio 28 (1972), 185–210, and
M. M. Adams, ‘Was Ockham a Humean about Efficient Causality,’ read to the New Jersey Philosophical Association, April 1980.
For D. K. Lewis’ analysis cf. ‘Causation,’ Journal of Philosophy 70 (1973), 556–567.
Professor A. Edidin and I do this a bit more fully in ‘Ockham on Prophecy,’ International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion 13 (1982), 179–189. What follows is largely borrowed from that article.
This is the view of among others, Levi ben Gerson (Gersonides); see Professor T. Rudavsky’s paper in this volume.
But not with out a Parthian shot. Gilson and others have claimed that fourteenth century ‘nominalism’ paved a road to scepticism. I suggest that if there is any truth in this it is not so much because of the problems about intuitive cognition or causal principles on which the debate has focussed as because of the claim that God can deceive taken together with the view that one cannot be certain of what can be otherwise. Whether the view that one cannot be certain of what can be otherwise is true is a question still much debated by those interested in the foundations of Bayesian epistemology and its relations.
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Normore, C.G. (1985). Divine Omniscience, Omnipotence and Future Contingents: An Overview. In: Rudavsky, T. (eds) Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy. Synthese Historical Library, vol 25. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7719-9_1
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