Problems for Omniscience

In this paper, we discuss a family of arguments that show the inconsistency of the concept of omniscience, which is one of the central attributes of the theistic God. We introduce three member of this family: Grim's Divine Liar Paradox, Milne's Paradox and our own Divine Curry. They can be seen as theological counterparts of well-known semantic paradoxes. We argue that the very simple dialetheist response to these paradoxes doesn't work well and then introduce our own response based on a framework that we call Logic of Impossible Truth (LIT). LIT is a non-dialetheist paraconsistent logic designed to represent divine ominiscience and to preserve the transparency of the truth predicate and which semantics rests on the concept of situation. Since some rules of classical logic are not valid in LIT, we are in a position to block the derivation of the paradoxes. Thus, LIT offers a way out of the dilemma of accepting that there are true contradictions (dialetheism) or giving up the idea that there is an all-powerful, omniscient and perfectly good being (atheism).

2013

In a recent paper, Dennis Whitcomb argues that omniscience is impossible. But if there cannot be any omniscient beings, then God, at least as traditionally conceived, does not exist. The objection is, roughly, that the thesis that there is an omniscient being, in conjunction with some principles about grounding, such as its transitivity and irreflexivity, entails a contradiction. Since each of these principles is highly plausible, divine omniscience has to go. In this article, I argue that Whitcomb’s argument, if sound, has several unacceptable consequences. Among others, it implies that nobody knows that someone has knowledge, that, for most of us, all of our beliefs are false, and that there are no truths. This reductio all by itself provides sufficient reason to reject the argument. However, I also provide a diagnosis of where precisely the argument goes wrong. I argue that Whitcomb’s crucial notion of grounding actually covers two distinct relations and that the principle of transitivity is true only for cases in which one of these relations holds rather than both of them.

: Omniscience, the alleged epistemic ideal, is classically construed as knowledge of every truth. In this paper, I show that this classic construal is logically impossible to satisfy. Turning the investigation to non-classical characterizations of omniscience – viz. John Abbruzzese’s (i.e., knowing a truth that entails all others), Richard Swinburne’s (i.e., knowing all of the knowable truths), and van Inwagen’s (i.e., infallibly believing all of the believable truths) – I show that they too are logically impossible to satisfy; each of them succumbs to a variant of the argument initially raised against classical omniscience. Finally, after arguing that those non-classical characterizations are the weakest that can be given while still deserving the label ‘omniscience’, I conclude that omniscience is logically incoherent. This leaves us with a vexing question: what, if not omniscience, is the epistemic ideal?

Veritas

God's omniscience generates certain puzzles, not least regarding how such omniscience is compatible with human free will. One option in this regard is to impose limitations on the scope of God's knowledge, but that then poses the further question of how such limitations can be compatible with God's nature as a perfect being. I offer a novel way of approaching these questions, which appeals to what I claim is an independently motivated distinction between lacking knowledge and being ignorant. In particular, it is contended that God's omniscience is best understood not as a complete knowledge of all truths, but rather as a kind of deliberate non-knowing (such that the non-knowing does not indicate any cognitive lack on God's part) that excludes ignorance. God might not know all truths, but that's not because of any cognitive lack, and there is certainly no truth about which he is ignorant.

American Philosophical Quarterly, 1983

The problems of omniscience that I want to address here are generally neglected. One set of neglected problems consists of paradoxes of omniscience clearly recognizable as forms of the Liar, and these I have never seen raised at all. Other neglected problems are difficulties for omniscience posed by recent work on belief de se and essential indexicals. These have not yet been given the attention they deserve.

Faith and Philosophy, 1984

The traditional prima facie incompatibility between divine omniscience and human freedom is well known. To say that an individual is free with respect to a given action has usually meant in this context that the individual has it within his or her power at the time in question either to perform or to refrain from performing the action. Thus, if Ted Kennedy was free with respect to running for the Presidency in 1984, he had it within his power either to run or not to run at the moment he made his final decision not to become a candidate. To say that God is omniscient has generally meant that God has always known all true propositions, including propositions about future states of affairs. Thus, if God is omniscient, he knew 100 years ago that Ted Kennedy would choose not to run for the Presidency in 1984. But if this is so, then how can we say that Ted Kennedy actually had it within his power to run for the Presidency in 1984? For if Ted Kennedy actually had it within his power to bring it about that the proposition 'Ted Kennedy will run for the Presidency in 1984" is true, then he had it within his power to bring it about that the proposition which God believed 100 years ago-"Ted Kennedy will not run for the Presidency in 1984"-is false. But, of course, what God (or anyone else) knows cannot be false. Accordingly, we must assume that if God knew 100 years ago that Ted Kennedy would choose not to run for the Presidency in 1984, Ted Kennedy did not actually have it within his power to choose to run and thus that his decision was not, in fact, freely made.! The common response to this prima facie problem is also well known. It is correct to say that if God is omniscient, he knew 100 years ago, for example, that Ted Kennedy would choose not to run for the Presidency in 1984. And it is correct to say that if Ted Kennedy was free with respect to the Presidency, he had it within his power either to run or to refrain from running. But it in no sense follows from the fact that Ted Kennedy had it within his power either to run or to refrain from running that he had it within his power to bring it about that God held a false belief 100 years ago. An omniscient God cannot be tricked or surprised. He always holds (has always held) the appropriate belief. If Ted

Sophia, 1975

European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 2012

A knowledge argument is offered that presents unique difficulties for Christians who wish to assert that God is essentially omniscient. The difficulties arise from the doctrine of the incarnation. Assuming that God the Son did not necessarily have to become incarnate, then God cannot necessarily have knowledge de se of the content of a non-divine mind. If this is right, then God's epistemic powers are not fixed across possible worlds and God is not essentially omniscient. Some options for Christian theists are discussed, including rejecting traditional theism in favour of some version of pantheism or panentheism.

Religious Studies, 2004

This essay examines a conflict between God's omnipotence and His omniscience. I discuss our intuitions regarding omnipotence and omniscience and describe a method by which we can decide whether a being is omnipotent. I consider the most promising versions of omnipotence and argue that they produce a genuine conflict with omniscience. Finally, I suggest that we can take the example of omniscience and generalize it to several of God's essential properties and thereby reveal incompatibilities that result even from sophisticated conceptions of divine attributes.

There are two basic ways to justify disbelief in God. The first is by means of the argument from evil. One argues that evil is either inconsistent with the existence of a being who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all good, or else that evil makes the existence of such a being unlikely. The second is to show that the concept of God is incoherent or in some other respect is conceptually impossible. For example, one argues that one attribute of God is inconsistent with another and, thus, that God cannot exist. Or one might maintain that some attribute that is essential to God is not one that God could possess. Consequently, God could not exist. It is this second way that I will explore in this paper. Elsewhere I have argued that there are at least three conceptual difficulties with the concept of God: one connected with God's omniscience, another with His freedom, and still another with His omnipotence. Here I will only have time to consider some of those problems connected with omniscience.