God’s foreknowledge
In it
Peace to Rabbi Michael
As part of my Advanced Logic course (at Harvard, Boston) I taught the strategy of REVERSE ENGINEERING logic. Some students also take the course in “Practical Philosophy”
Below is a discussion we had recently
T (sentence): “If God wants, He can know the results of the election in advance” (in their case — “Trump / “Biden”)
Let A be the set of terms (in your language – “concepts”), and let B be the set of axioms (“assumptions”) that act on A to prove T.
- What would be the minimum A and B to prove T?
- Are there any pairs (A,B) that are foreign (this must be defined precisely) that solve 1?
Do you think the above discussion is reasonable?
Hello.
In my opinion, the question is not well defined. You should say whether his ability to know is knowing without intervening and influencing what is happening or whether he is able to influence and then of course he can also know.
In my personal opinion, he can’t know unless he intervenes.
I’m not sure I understand the discussion. You’re asking whether there could be several independent proofs of this claim? (That is, after minimization we are not left with the same proof. Which shows that they are equivalent). But it is still possible for one proof to be longer than the others, which is a flaw since it can no longer be minimized.
For example, I can prove this based on the following assumptions: Anyone whose name begins with A knows everything in advance. God begins with A, so He knows everything in advance. You see, there are countless different proofs like this that cannot be mapped onto one another.
In short, I probably didn’t understand the discussion.
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