The dilemma of freedom and foreknowledge

By Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski

Subjects: Willensfreiheit, Electronic books, Temps - Aspect religieux - Christianisme, Dieu - Omniscience, Time, Christianisme, Religious aspects, Nonfiction, General, Freedom of religion, Free will and determinism, Vorsehung, Voorkennis, Vrije wil, God (Christianity), Religious aspects of Time, Decision making, Dieu, God, Omniscience, RELIGION, Alwetendheid, Determinisme, Aspect religieux, Predestinatie, Christianity, Temps, Philosophy, Libre arbitre et déterminisme

Description: This original analysis examines the three leading traditional solutions to the dilemma of divine foreknowledge and human free will--those arising from Boethius, from Ockham, and from Molina. Though all three solutions are rejected in their best-known forms, three new solutions are proposed,and Zagzebski concludes that divine foreknowledge is compatible with human freedom. The discussion includes the relation between the foreknowledge dilemma and problems about the nature of time and the causal relation; the logic of counterfactual conditionals; and the differences between divine andhuman knowing states. An appendix introduces a new foreknowledge dilemma that purports to show that omniscient foreknowledge conflicts with deep intuitions about temporal asymmetry, quite apart from considerations of free will. Zagzebski shows that only a narrow range of solutions can handle thisnew dilemma...