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Foreknowledge and Fatalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Richard L. Purtill
Richard L. Purtill
Affiliation:
Professor of Philosophy, Western Washington State College
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Extract

In a recent book, J. R. Lucas presents an argument to show that if God has infallible knowledge of the future, our will is not free. Thus, Lucas concludes, like the medieval Jewish philosopher Gersonides, that God in creating beings with genuinely free will, abdicates some of his omniscience as well as some of his omnipotence. God could, but will not, determine our choices, since such an exercise of his power would rob us of free will. Similarly, Lucas holds, God could but does not foreknow our future choices since this also would rob us of free will. This argument, from so formidable a foe of determinism as Lucas, merits our most serious attention. However, I believe that there is a way to evade its conclusion, a way which Lucas considers but rejects (in my view too hastily).

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , September 1974 , pp. 319 - 324
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

page 319 note 1 The Freedom of the Will (Oxford, 1971), Chapter 14, especially pp. 74–5.Google Scholar

page 319 note 2 Epictetus, Discourses Book II, Chapter 11.

page 319 note 3 See my ‘The Master Argument,’ Apeiron, Vol. 7, No. 1, May 1973.Google Scholar

page 323 note 1 Cf. my ‘Disembodied Survival’, Sophia, Vol. XII, No. 2, July 1973.Google Scholar