I don't understand the (modal) logic in the first part of this article. That, because God foresees a person doing X, then that means that person necessarily does X (or, as your article puts it, person does X out of "conditioned necessity;" that is the necessity that derives from the condition of them being observed to do X by a bystander (or beforehand by God in his foreknowledge).
This doesn't seem right to me. For if the person is free, then the person could have done Y (instead of X) and that would have changed what I saw or changed what God would have foreknown them to do in this situation.
So, the necessity is actually in the other direction. God, being omnipotent, necessarily knows that person is going to do X because the person is going to do X. Not the other way around: the person is not going to do X because God knows the person will do X.
So it seems modally backwards to speak about the person walking to be walking in a "conditionally necessary" way because I observe him walking. The person's walking is a contingently FREE action. What is conditionally necessary is my OBSERVING him walking because he is walking and I observe him doing so (sorry for all-caps - there is no italics in replies).
If you see your wife smiling, you wouldn't say she is smiling out of necessity of you observing her to do so. You would say your observation was out of necessity of seeing her smiling.
The article says Boethius doesn't need to "posit middle knowledge or speculate about counterfactuals."
Well, Boethius was writing in the 6th century. Louis de Molina came up with the idea of middle knowledge in the 16th century...so Boethius was about a millennium too early for the concept.
Secondly, middle knowledge and counterfactuals are an attempt to explain HOW God foreknows what he knows about creaturely free choices without creation.
After all, ALL of God's knowledge about creation WITHOUT creation is, by definition, COUNTERFACTUAL since it hasn't been actualized into reality. You don't have to be a Molinist to affirm the truth of counterfactuals. Counterfactual conditionals seem intuitively true: "If I wake up early enough, I will see the sunrise" is just an intuitively true counterfactual since if the conditional antecedent, "if I wake up early enough" is not fulfilled, then the consequent "I will see the sunrise" also will not be fulfilled.
Glad this found its way into my feed because this was an excellent summary. Thank you!
Thanks, Nathaniel!
Thank you for this summary. Makes the book so fresh in my memory.
Glad to hear it!
Eagerly look forward to listening through the podcast episodes!
Wonderful!
I don't understand the (modal) logic in the first part of this article. That, because God foresees a person doing X, then that means that person necessarily does X (or, as your article puts it, person does X out of "conditioned necessity;" that is the necessity that derives from the condition of them being observed to do X by a bystander (or beforehand by God in his foreknowledge).
This doesn't seem right to me. For if the person is free, then the person could have done Y (instead of X) and that would have changed what I saw or changed what God would have foreknown them to do in this situation.
So, the necessity is actually in the other direction. God, being omnipotent, necessarily knows that person is going to do X because the person is going to do X. Not the other way around: the person is not going to do X because God knows the person will do X.
So it seems modally backwards to speak about the person walking to be walking in a "conditionally necessary" way because I observe him walking. The person's walking is a contingently FREE action. What is conditionally necessary is my OBSERVING him walking because he is walking and I observe him doing so (sorry for all-caps - there is no italics in replies).
If you see your wife smiling, you wouldn't say she is smiling out of necessity of you observing her to do so. You would say your observation was out of necessity of seeing her smiling.
The article says Boethius doesn't need to "posit middle knowledge or speculate about counterfactuals."
Well, Boethius was writing in the 6th century. Louis de Molina came up with the idea of middle knowledge in the 16th century...so Boethius was about a millennium too early for the concept.
Secondly, middle knowledge and counterfactuals are an attempt to explain HOW God foreknows what he knows about creaturely free choices without creation.
After all, ALL of God's knowledge about creation WITHOUT creation is, by definition, COUNTERFACTUAL since it hasn't been actualized into reality. You don't have to be a Molinist to affirm the truth of counterfactuals. Counterfactual conditionals seem intuitively true: "If I wake up early enough, I will see the sunrise" is just an intuitively true counterfactual since if the conditional antecedent, "if I wake up early enough" is not fulfilled, then the consequent "I will see the sunrise" also will not be fulfilled.