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The Compatibility of Omniscience and Intentional Action: a Reply to Tomis Kapitan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

David P. Hunt
David P. Hunt
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Whittier College, Whittier, California 90608
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Abstract

The paper that follows continues a discussion with Tomis Kapitan in the pages of this journal over the compatibility of divine agency with divine foreknowledge. I had earlier argued against two premises in Kapitan's case for omniscient impotence: (i) that intentionally A-ing presupposes prior acquisition of the intention to A, and (ii) that acquiring the intention to A presupposes prior ignorance whether one will A. In response to my criticisms, Kapitan has recently offered new defences for these two premises. I show in reply why neither defence succeeds in rehabilitating the case against omniscient agency.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , March 1996, pp. 49 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

1 ‘Can God Make Up His Mind?’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 15 (1984), pp. 37–47;Google Scholar‘Action, Uncertainty, and Divine Impotence’, Analysis 50 (03 1990), pp. 127–33;Google Scholar‘Agency and Omniscience’, Religious Studies 27 (03 1991), pp. 105–21.Google Scholar Others who take this position include Taylor, Richard, ‘Deliberation and Foreknowledge’, American Philosophical Quarterly 1 (01 1964), pp. 73–80,Google Scholar and La Croix, Richard R., ‘Omniprescience and Divine Determinism’, Religious Studies 12 (09 1976), pp. 365–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 See my ‘Omniprescient Agency’, Religious Studies 28 (09 1992), pp. 351–69,Google Scholar and Kapitan's, , ‘The Incompatibility of Omniscience and Intentional Action: A Reply to David P. Hunt’, Religious Studies 30 (01 1994), pp. 55–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 ‘The Incompatibility of Omniscience and Intentional Action’, p. 55.

4 These three correspond to the premises, also numbered (3)–(5), on pp. 352–3 of my earlier paper. I have changed the way the relevant notion of openness is presented in (4) and (5) in order to clarify a matter that evidently confused Prof. Kapitan – see §III of the present paper, where the matter is discussed.

5 ‘The Incompatibility of Omniscience and Intentional Action’, p. 58.

6 Ibid. pp. 57, 58.

7 Ibid. pp. 58–9.

8 Ibid. p. 59.

9 ‘Omniprescient Agency’, p. 352.

10 Ibid. p. 353.

11 ‘The Incompatibility of Omniscience and Intentional Action’, p. 60.

12 ‘Omniprescient Agency’, p. 359.

13 Ibid. p. 360.

14 ‘The Incompatibility of Omniscience and Intentional Action’, p. 64.

15 Ibid. p. 65.

16 For an account of how the tension between foreknowledge and agency can be mitigated by adopting a nonoccurrent conception of God's beliefs, see my ‘Dispositional Omniscience’, Philosophical Studies (forthcoming).

17 ‘The Incompatibility of Omniscience and Intentional Action’, p. 61.

18 This passage,d quoted on p. 364 of my ‘Omniprescient Agency’, comes originally from p. 105 of Kapitan's ‘Agency and Omniscience’.

19 I press this point in my ‘Prescience and Providence: A Reply to My Critics’, Faith and Philosophy 10 (07 1993), pp. 428–38.Google Scholar

20 The thought-experiment is taken from Goldman, Alvin I., A Theory of Human Action (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), p. 192.Google Scholar

21 This recapitulates material from ‘Omniprescient Agency’, pp. 365–6. See also my ‘Divine Providence and Simple Foreknowledge’, Faith and Philosophy 10 (07 1993), pp. 396–416.Google Scholar

22 ‘The Incompatibility of Omniscience and Intentional Action’, p. 64.

23 Ibid. pp. 64–5.

24 Ibid. p. 62.

25 Ibid.

26 For the classic contemporary statement of this dilemma, see Nelson, Pike's ‘Divine Foreknowledge and Voluntary Action’, Philosophical Review 74 (01 1965), pp. 27–46.Google Scholar

27 I develop an Augustinian alternative to Ockhamism in ‘Augustine on Theological Fatalism: the Argument of De Libero Arbitrio III. 1–4’, Medieval Philosophy and Theology (forthcoming). See also the three solutions to the problem of theological fatalism presented by Linda, Zagzebski in her The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).Google Scholar

28 ‘The Incompatibility of Omniscience and Intentional Action’, p. 63.