Question

Michael

Can we please continue the conversation? It shows how interesting I’m finding your book. I’m about to start chapter 5.

I WROTE TO YOU

Divine knowledge and free choice:

I have a “solution” to this paradox, and I haven’t seen it anywhere else (I think).

When we say that God knows what I am going to do, this statement is talking about God’s present knowledge and my future action. When I say that I am acting freely, I mean that my present action is not determined or constrained by any past event.

Divine knowledge is talking about the relationship between the present and the future; free choice is talking about the relationship between the present and the past. Therefore there is no contradiction between the two—they are talking about different things.

YOU REPLIED

This book addresses the philosophical problem, not the theological one. But I also touch a bit on the theological aspects. As I write there, the Newcomb paradox rules out a priori the possibility of divine foreknowledge of our free choices as well, so there is no need to deal with such suggestions. I recommend that you read this discussion (at the end of chapter 4).

But as for your suggestion, if I understood it correctly, it is equivalent to the argument of the Raavad in the Laws of Repentance of Maimonides (5:5), and many others. For example, Yehudit Ronen in her logical article, in Hebrew. But in my opinion it answers a different question: how does God know it in advance? The real question is a second one: assuming that He really does know—can I still choose freely now? Newcomb shows that this cannot be the case. That question is not connected to the question of constraints. It is logic, not physics.

As to your definition, you wrote: When I say that I am acting freely, then I am saying that my present action is not determined or constrained by any past event.

That is not precise. The determinists say that there is no external constraint. You do exactly what you decide, but you yourself “want” exactly what your character leads you to want. And because of that God can know it in advance without assuming that He Himself, or any other external force, constrains you. That is what they call compatibilism.

Let us put it another way. In your analysis you ignore the essential assumption that free choice requires the existence of two real options. But if God knows in advance, then there is only one. You may say that I’ll feel free to choose, meaning I feel no constraints, but the actual fact is that I have only one possibility. I think we can agree that even a hypnotized person, who feels free though he is not, cannot be considered someone who “chooses freely.”

NOW ME AGAIN

Thanks again for engaging with me.

Am I correct in my understanding of your argument: you reject my analysis because God does not know the future? You give two reasons:

1. If God knew a few months ago that I was going to read your book, then that was also true 1,000 years ago—and that, forgetting about God, the statement “Korer will read Michael Abraham’s book in 2018” must therefore be a necessary statement. This is obviously absurd. Therefore God cannot have known it, because temporal facts cannot yet have a truth value.

God cannot know information that does not yet exist.

1. Newcomb’s Paradox: God is the predictor; the result of the thought experiment is a paradox. Therefore God cannot be the predictor.

The first thing I would say is: doesn’t it say in the Torah somewhere that God’s knowledge is not like our knowledge? I think this means two things: first, that His knowledge is “different” from ordinary knowledge; second, that it is similar enough to ordinary knowledge to be called “knowledge.”

When I studied philosophy 50 years ago, one definition of knowledge was: “justified true belief.”

I think that the respect in which our knowledge is the same as God’s is that it must be “true”; and the difference is the “justification”—that we can only be said to know something if our true belief is justified, I suppose by some causal connection from the fact to our brains. And God does not need any justification—He is above time, or He knows “Himself,” or whatever. (I’m a bit stuck on whether we can say that God has the third component—a “belief.”)

So, going back to your arguments above—I hope I have understood them correctly—

Your argument 1:

Maybe for us, temporal facts cannot have a truth value before the date of their occurrence because, as you say in your book, we end up with logic reversing the direction of causality. But for God they do have a truth value, because God is outside the whole frame of reference.

This, I think, solves the logical problem of our free choice. We do have more than one logical possibility for our future action. God’s knowledge of my future free choice has no logical bearing on “temporal facts” here on Earth. “Yakov Korer will decide to eat an apple on 23 March 2019” may or may not be true from God’s point of view (higher knowledge), but has no truth value for me (lower knowledge).

Your argument 2, Newcomb’s Paradox:

With any paradox, there must be a fault either in the logic of the argument or in the assumptions. You say that it proves that the predictor (God) cannot know the future. I think it proves that the predictor (God) cannot convey His knowledge to us. It seems logical to me that there must be constraints on God’s power. He cannot go against the laws of logic. So too, God cannot share His knowledge of my future free choice: He cannot tell me that tomorrow I will freely choose to do something. Newcomb’s paradox is subtler. The predictor is not conveying a fact about the future but making an “if… then…” statement. But I don’t think that affects my argument.

So in conclusion, I think that God does know the future, and, returning to my initial argument, His knowledge does not affect my free choice.

Wishing you all the best.