Q&A: An Error in the Rabbi’s Proof from Newcomb’s Paradox to the Question of Foreknowledge and Free Choice
An Error in the Rabbi’s Proof from Newcomb’s Paradox to the Question of Foreknowledge and Free Choice
Question
Hello and blessings,
Rabbi wrote in his book that Newcomb’s paradox proves that there is a contradiction between foreknowledge and free choice (that is, between the claim that God knows the future and the claim that a person has free choice).
The proof was that in the paradox we arrive at a contradiction, and from here it follows that any agent’s knowledge of the future contradicts the possibility of choice for those involved in that future.
But I think there is no proof here, and I will explain.
The paradox indeed stands — we arrive at two contradictory conclusions.
But in the story of the paradox there is an additional event beyond the prophet’s knowledge of the future, and one can say that it is this that brings about the contradiction. The event is that the prophet intervenes in reality on the basis of that knowledge of the future (he fills the box according to what he saw would happen in the future) and updates the choosing person about that policy in a way that can affect the choice.
Therefore, one can say, for example, that there is indeed a contradiction in the idea that some agent knows a future event affected by choice if the prophet will intervene (in the future) in the choice and influence it (especially in such a way that he tells the chooser that he, the prophet, determined reality according to the chooser’s choice).
But regarding other future events, there is no contradiction in the prophet knowing them.
In pictorial terms, as in the book — in the prophet’s library of future tapes, there are some tapes that do not work. These are the tapes that purport to document events in which the prophet intervenes as described in the paradox.
I would be happy to hear whether the Rabbi agrees with this refutation of the proof.
Thank you
Answer
In any case, that means he does not know the future. An event that depends on free choice cannot be known in advance. And that is precisely the issue under discussion. By the way, it is probably also true of tapes involving other people’s choices as well (which leaves a great many erased tapes). But that does not matter for our purposes.
Discussion on Answer
If He does not know all of the future, then the accepted assumption that by virtue of His omnipotence He knows all of the future has been refuted. As for what He knows and what He does not know, that is already another matter.
1. You did not prove that God does not know all of the future, because you did not prove that there necessarily are, in reality, events like the one in the paradox, in which God informs human beings about actions He took in the past based on His foresight of their future choice (and that those actions change reality in a way that affects the desirability of the different choices, as in the paradox).
2. Even if you had proved that there are such events, there is no reason to say that the accepted assumption is that God knows all of the future, even events that it is paradoxical to think He knows. Just as in the question of “the stone that God cannot create,” there is no difficulty for the accepted assumption that God is omnipotent.
In light of the refutation, would you consider omitting the “proof” in the next edition?
P.S.
You wrote in the first response —
“An event that depends on free choice cannot be known in advance.”
That is what you tried to prove with Newcomb’s paradox, but from what you wrote it seems that this is obvious to you even apart from Newcomb’s paradox, no?
If so, why is it obvious to you?
*with
I’ll repeat myself, because we’re going in circles. My claim is that if God knows the future, there is nothing preventing Him from telling the future to a prophet. And then a problem arises. This is an indication that He does not know the future, and therefore this is not dealing only with this particular loop case. It seems to me we’ve exhausted this.
You didn’t really address the refutation.
You answered, “In any case, that means he does not know the future.”
That’s not correct. What follows from the refutation is that “it means that he (the prophet in the paradox) does not know *all* of the future.” He does not know future events that involve choices that are in fact affected by his knowing the future (all in all, it makes sense that these tapes would be excluded, since a feedback loop is created here that generates a problematic circle. But that is specific to such events and not necessarily to future events in general).
That says nothing about God’s knowledge of the future, because you did not show any example in which God performs (or is claimed to perform) intervention in choices similar to what is described in the paradox.
Isn’t this a refutation of the proof?