Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83 based; site hou2a.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxj!houxm!hou2a!54375rr From: 54375rr@hou2a.UUCP (R.RENNINGER) Newsgroups: net.philosophy Subject: Re: Omniscience and Freedom Message-ID: <423@hou2a.UUCP> Date: Mon, 1-Oct-84 12:33:55 EDT Article-I.D.: hou2a.423 Posted: Mon Oct 1 12:33:55 1984 Date-Received: Wed, 3-Oct-84 05:59:52 EDT References: <379@wucs.UUCP> Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel NJ Lines: 40 {} > ... incompatibility between omnipotence and omniscience: > if you are omniscient, you already know > everything you are going to do. Therefore, you have no > freedom to do anything else. --Bob Renninger hou2a!54375rr > >... let's focus on "already knowing what you're going to do." Does >such knowledge rule out freedom? Not at all. If you know that you >are going to do such-and-such at time t, and you rationally judge that >that's the best thing to do, and you act on this judgement at t, then >your doing such-and-such is free... >"[D]eterminism" and "predestination" [are both] compatible with freedom. --Paul Torek, ihnp4!wucs!wucec1!pvt1047 To be sure, having the power to decide to act in a particular way and not another is a manifestation of freedom, not of unfreedom. However, it seems to me that our freedom is located in that moment of decision: to the extent that we have made an irrevocable decision, we are the servants of our past resolve. There can be no time at which an omniscient being makes a decision, because otherwise previously he would not know what his future action would be. For those who would answer that God operates "outside of time," I reply that the idea of a "consciousness" that doesn't operate in a causal sequence is simply unrelated to anything I associate with consciousness. If God's mind operates in some kind of "meta-time," then the paradox is unresolved; it just retreats to another realm. On the other hand, if His mind is unchangeing, I don't see how to justify calling It a "mind" at all. Consciousness to me is inextricably caught up in the idea of continual new reactions to the world or at least in reminiscences about past knowledge considered in a new light. The idea of a mind without any mental activity needs some justification, to say the least. Bob Renninger hou2a!54375rr