I. FOREKNOWLEDGE

Although many events are never known to occur until they actually happen, a person might believe that, in some sense, these events could have been foreknown. A determinist, some have said, is one who believes that all events can be foreknown.

This definition is adequate, of course, only insofar as an adequate analysis of knowledge-statements is at hand. There is, however, a great deal of disagreement about such an analysis. Are knowledge-statements descriptive or performatory? Do they entail belief-statements? How much and what kind of evidence must a person possess before he may be said to know something?

One may naturally feel that if it is foreknown by A that B will perform a certain action or make a certain decision, then B does not really act or decide freely. Although the relationship between foreknowledge and free will was discussed traditionally in a theological context, e.g., by St. Augustine and Hobbes, we need not be concerned about the characteristics A possesses in addition to his having this particular foreknowledge unless the nature of A's foreknowledge is distinctive.

People have believed that divine foreknowledge is different in kind from the human variety. But if we allow two kinds of foreknowledge, human and divine, what implications does this have for a definition of determinism? Assuming that a definition in terms of foreknowledge is feasible, we might try: All events can be foreknown by humans and are foreknown by God. (Since all God's potentialities are fully actualized, we do not want to say merely that He can know everything that will happen.) We shall discard this implication, however, because the conception of determinism in which we are interested does not presuppose theism; moreover, we should have to clarify further the nature of divine foreknowledge. In this context, it is interesting to note that St. Augustine's arguments in defense of the compatibility of free will and God's foreknowledge (Bk. m, sees. 2, 3, and 4) do not presuppose a unique conception of foreknowledge for God.

In order to avoid a commitment to theism, we might change the "and" to "or" in the definition and be able to read the second clause as: If there were a God, He would foreknow everything that happens. Determinism might then be a necessary truth for it would be a disjunction, and one disjunct might be necessarily true. "If there were a God, He would foreknow everything that happens" is necessary if fore-omniscience is included in the divine essence. To discover whether or not it is a necessary truth, one would have to get deeply embroiled in theology.

The truth of the proposition in question may be grounded in God's atemporal character. That is, since God is outside time, one cannot specify the time at which He knows something. But then one should not speak of "divine foreknowledge," since God does not know that something will take place at t, prior to t: from His vantage point in eternity, the whole temporal process is "non-temporally before God's eyes." If this conception can be rendered intelligible, it would appear that no incompatibility exists between divine foreknowledge and freedom since God knows what Smith will do in a way very similar to that in which Jones, who is watching Smith do it, knows. The problem of foreknowledge requires that we suppose the knowledge to exist prior to the event known; for it is only when this condition is satisfied that we become concerned about our freedom. And we have adopted a desideratum for a definition of determinism according to which determinism and freedom must be prima facie incompatible. Divine omniscience disturbs us because we view God as having already observed us doing things that we have not yet done. If, however, we are precluded from applying temporal predicates to God's epistemological states, then we cannot produce the formulation that disturbs us and must look elsewhere if we wish to satisfy this desideratum.

One might try to ground the proposition in the fact that God makes everything happen and, thus, has foreknowledge in a way similar to the way I know how the chair I am constructing will turn out. But one cannot be concerned about freedom unless one supposes an actual God who makes us do things. That is, no one worries about the freedom of his future actions because he accepts the proposition "If there were a God, He would make us perform the actions we do perform" unless he also accepts the antecedent of this conditional. Again, our desideratum is not satisfied.

Thus, if a person does not want to assume theism, but wants to know why foreknowledge seems to threaten freedom, he obviously cannot cite properties of a hypothetical God that are linked to divine foreknowledge. We may, though, cite properties of the world that, it may be argued, are related to His foreknowledge. For example, one may say that if there were a God, He would foreknow all that happens because the world is deterministic and He would have all the relevant information. Ignoring the fact that we are supposed to be defining determinism in terms of foreknowledge, it is clear that our concern about freedom arises from the assumption that the world is deterministic, not from the fact that there might be a God who knows the true deterministic theory. Hence, I see no point in referring to divine foreknowledge in the definition of determinism. I further contend that our concern about freedom does not arise from the fact that there might be someone, human or divine, who knows the true deterministic theory.

Libertarians emphasize the distinction between free and voluntary actions, insisting that an action may be voluntary and yet not free. If a voluntary action is, roughly, one I perform but am not constrained to perform, they wish to insist that the absence of constraint is, at most, a necessary condition of freedom. It would appear that a person who believes that foreknowledge and freedom are incompatible would be forced to accept this libertarian point. For it would be odd to conclude that B is constrained to do something merely because someone else knows that he will do it. Examples bring this point home. If I know that you will give money to a certain charity because I know you are generous, are sympathetic with this particular charity, and are not at the moment pressed for funds, it is very odd to conclude that you will be constrained to give the money as if at the point of a gun. A person who believes that foreknowledge and freedom are incompatible, therefore, would presumably have to argue, like the libertarian, that voluntariness is not a sufficient condition of freedom.

But, in fact,...