1 A Level Teachers Conference Department of Philosophy, University of Sheffield Monday 24 June 2013 God and Omniscience Steve Makin s.makin@sheffield.ac.uk There s a lot that could be covered here. Time is limited, and I don t want this presentation to be just a set of diffuse and disconnected points. So I m going to try to bring some order to the discussion by focusing on a particular theme which is of interest in itself, and which has connections with broader issues about omniscience. That theme concerns the relation between our notion of time and the ideas of God s omniscience. I want to start with a contrast between two ways of thinking about time and then see how that contrast puts pressure, in one way or another, on the idea that God could be omniscient. Tensed and tenseless time Some of you may be familiar with this contrast. It grows out of a distinction between two types of temporal property [1] temporal properties which change as time passes (eg now, present, past) [2] temporal properties which do not change as time passes (eg being earlier than, being in 1977) An example of [1]. As I speak to you now my talk is present, but yesterday this talk was future and tomorrow this talk will be past Compare an example of [2]. As I speak to you now my talk is on 24th June, and it would also have been true yesterday that my talk is on 24th June and it will also be true tomorrow that my talk is on 24th June Many philosophers refer to properties of type [1] as tenses and properties of type [2] as dates. Tenses and dates are fundamentally different types of temporal property. There is an interesting debate in the metaphysics of time about whether tenses and dates are both genuine objective features of temporal reality. Some (known as detensers) think that the only real temporal properties that things have are their dates, and that tenses just report how things at one date look from another date. For example it s objectively the case Elvis Presley died after Jane Austen there s no point in time at which it would be true that Elvis Presley died before Jane Austen. But it s not likewise objectively the case that Elvis Presley died in the past there are lots of point in time at which Elvis death is in the future (namely any time prior to 16 August 1977), and there are lots of points at which Elvis death is in the past (17 August 1977 and any time after that) and on 16 August 1977 Elvis death is in the present.
2 A good way of summarizing a detenser s view is that they think of time in exactly the sort of way that common sense thinks of space. There is a contrast amongst the spatial properties of things which is analogous to that between tenses and dates [3] spatial properties of things which alter as you move around in space (Sydney is far away if you are in this room, but it is right here if you are on the Sydney Harbour Bridge) [4] spatial properties of things which don t alter as you move around in space (the Sydney Harbour Bridge is within the boundaries of Sydney wherever you are). We think that only [4] gives the objective real features of the various things in space they re the information we would want recorded on a map. Properties like [3] are subject relative, recording how one place relates to someone at another place. And since there is no privileged position in space we don t think of them as giving real spatial properties of things. Detensers about time have exactly that sort of view of time. God What does this have to do with the ostensible topic of this talk: God and Omniscience? The important thing to take from the above is the contrast between tenses and dates (the metaphysical issue turns on whether you think that there is no privileged position in time now just as you all presumably think that there is no privileged position in space, no objective here ). Now the notion of a supreme being has often been taken to involve God s being temporally transcendent, as a being outside rather than inside time. (And you can see why this is appealing. Many think of God as the creator of everything, including time in which case God cannot depend on time in the way that temporal beings do). The idea of God as temporally transcendent involves lots of interesting issues, especially when combined with the idea of God as entering into the temporal realm (incarnation). But let s focus on just one question concerning God s temporal transcendence and omniscience. Question: what could an atemporal God know about time? Could an atemporal God know everything about time? Omniscience The notion of omniscience may well seem more straightforward than another notion with which it is often paired: omnipotence. That s not to say that it s easy to make sense of the positive claim that there exists an omniscient God. For example, it is notoriously difficult to see how the existence of an omniscient God could be consistent with the existence of free human agents. And there is the cluster of issues known as the Problem of Evil, which turn on the difficulty of supposing that there could exist a God who is omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent. But the notion itself is more straight forward. There seems no barrier to supposing that what it is to be omniscient is to know everything that can be known although
3 by contrast it is not at all clear that the best way of explicating the notion of omnipotence is as the property of being able to do everything that can be done 1. So let s consider what would be involved in God s knowing everything that can be known ie God s being such that for every claim about reality which is true, God knows that that claim is true. How does the contrast between tenses and dates impact on God s being omniscient in that sense? There s a prima facie conflict. For both the following seem plausible [A] [B] God cannot know the tense of any event Particular human beings at particular times do know the tenses of lots of events Why is [A] plausible? The thought is that God has no position in time (God is temporally transcendent). But no event has a perspective-independent tense Elvis death is future from one set of times, present from another set and past from a third set. So any particular judgment that Elvis death is eg past must be a judgment made from a post-1977 perspective. But God doesn t have any temporal perspective, and so in particular doesn t have a post-1977 perspective. So we get [A]. But let s pause before we get to [B] and the conflict with [A]. Perhaps the move above was a bit quick. I assumed that God s being temporally transcendent could fairly be glossed as the idea that God has no temporal perspective (God is atemporal). But perhaps that was unfair. We might suppose instead that God is temporally transcendent in that God takes every temporal perspective at once (God is omnitemporal). This is the contrast between (i) viewing God as simply outside time; atemporal (God is present at no time) and (ii) viewing God as occupying the whole of time: omnitemporal (God is present at all times) How would this help? Well, if we suppose (ii) that God is present at all times, then [A] may no longer seem plausible. Indeed if God is present at all times then, far from being cut off from knowledge of tenses, God will have access to far more of the tenses than any human being. For me Elvis death is simply past; for Jane Austen Elvis death is simply future; but for God Elvis death is past and present and future. And that might seem to reduce the pressure on seeing God as omniscient. Indeed it might seem an appealing way of getting at the contrast between our limited knowledge and God s limitless knowledge. But this is going to take us into murky waters. For now we are replacing [A] by 1 There is more that could be said here. For example, it might seem better to define omniscience in relativised terms: something is omniscient if and only if it knows everything which a thing of that kind could know. That would give us clear water between the divine and the human cases. No human knows everything which a human could know (our knowledge is limited) indeed every human knows that there are things which she doesn t know but which humans could know (presumably). But this will lead us into further difficulties. An oak tree or a rock would be omniscient in that sense. A rock knows nothing at all. And a rock can t know anything ie there is nothing which a rock can know. And so a rock does indeed know everything that a rock could know. But rocks aren t omniscient. (A similar move could be made concerning God s omnipotence. We d better not say that God s omnipotence consists in God s being able to do everything which a being of God s nature can do (hoping thereby to ward off trivial difficulties such as God s apparent inability to scratch his ear or make a mistake). For of course cats can do everything which cats can do, and my cat can do everything which my cat can do. Ah yes, but it s not true that my cat can do everything which cats (things of a feline nature) can do so perhaps there is more in this move than there seems at first sight)
4 [~A] God can know the tense of an event: in fact God does know that every event has every tense. Are we any better off if we go for [~A] rather than [A]? One worry is that shifting from [A] to [~A] drains the notion of tense of a significant part of its content. For if God knows that any random event (eg Elvis death) is equally past, present and future then God must count those three tenses as consistent with one another. But a crucial feature of tenses is often taken to be that they are inconsistent one reason that some people want to claim that tenses are real features of things in time is that doing so captures the idea that time flows (passes); whereas, by contrast, space doesn t flow or pass at all. For the idea that time flows (passes) could be cashed out as the thought that any particular event (eg Elvis death) has different tenses successively. Elvis death is first of all future and then present and then past. But if Elvis death is future and present and past then it looks as if we ve lost the idea of temporal succession. But that s a difficult line of thought to pursue. So let s suspend judgment for a while between [A] and [~A]. For our worry isn t so much about whether it s [A] or [~A] which is true, but rather whether tense is an instance of something which we know about and God doesn t in which case we ve got a difficulty with the notion that God could be omniscient. So now let s turn to [B], and consider whether the distinction between [A] and [~A] helps at all as regards the broader issue. Let s think more carefully about [B]. It says that a particular human being at a particular time knows about the tenses of events. That seems uncontentious. I know now that Elvis death is past and that my death is future. What do I take myself to know in knowing now that Elvis death is past? I know that it is past and neither present nor future. Suppose we focus on that item of human knowledge. Then we can see why a decision between [A] and [~A] may not help us with the broader issue. If we opt for [A] then it seems that God can t even know that Elvis death is past. If God is outside time, then God s perspective on Elvis death will be like my perspective on Boromir s death. There s a middle-earth time line, and I m entirely outside that time line. Boromir is mortal, and somewhere on that time line lies the event of Boromir s death. But for me that event is neither past, present nor future. So if God is outside time then likewise for God Elvis death is neither past, present nor future. But I know now that Elvis death is past. So it seems there s something I know which God doesn t know. And in that case (it seems) God isn t omniscient ie it s not true that God knows everything that can be known 2. On the other hand if we opt for [~A] then it seems that there s something else I know which God doesn t. Perhaps both God and I know that Elvis death is past, but I thereby take myself to know that Elvis death is not future but the cost of adopting [~A] in order to give God access to the fact that Elvis death is past is that God then also knows that Elvis death is future. And then we re no better off. There s still something which I know and which God doesn t know (namely that Elvis death is not future). 2 This is consistent with supposing that God knows everything which God can know ie there is nothing such that God could know it but doesn t. (Recall detour via an alternative account of omniscience at fn.1 above)
5 What would be a good way forward at this point? The core of the problem is that it seems that there is something I know which God doesn t know eg that Elvis death is past, or that Elvis death is not future, depending on whether we go with [A] or [~A]. And there are two ways of rehabilitating the idea, that God knows everything which can be known, in the face of that problem. We could try claiming that God does know those things. Or we could try claiming that I do not know those things. The first option doesn t seem feasible. Replacing [A] with [~A] was an attempt to show that God does after all know things which we imagined he didn t (that Elvis death is past). But the upshot is that God s knowledge then encompasses too much. If God is to know that Elvis death is past then God also knows that Elvis death is future. But I know that Elvis death is not future and so we re no further forward. What about the second option then? Well, the second option may at first sight seem bonkers it sounds as if it involves claiming that I don t know that Elvis death is past. How could that be a feasible strategy to adopt? Let s think a bit more carefully about this. There s a distinction which it s important to notice. What s meant by saying that I don t know that Elvis death is past? We might read this in pretty straight terms, as if it came to: I believe Elvis death is past, but it turns out I don t know it, because I m just mistaken. Compare the claim that I don t know that there is life on the moon: What that comes to is that I think there s life on the moon, but I m plain wrong and so I don t know it. In this sort of case I don t know that comes to I think that but I am mistaken. But there s also a more nuanced way of taking the claim that I don t know that Elvis death is past. We might think more carefully about what I know when I claim to know now that Elvis death is past. Someone might say that the fact I report when I claim to know now that Elvis death is past is that Elvis death is past in 2013.But once we add the 2013 perspective into the content of what I claim to know, then the tense ( past ) is doing no work at all, and could presumably be replaced by a non-tensed term: knowing that Elvis death is past in 2013 is exactly the same as knowing that Elvis death is earlier than 2013. But that fact that Elvis death is earlier than 2013 is changeless and tenseless. It is always the case that Elvis death is earlier than 2013 (just as it is always the case that Elvis death is later than Jane Austen s death). It is the same sort of fact as the fact that Boromir s death is later than Boromir s birth. I can certainly know that Boromir s death is earlier than Boromir s birth in middle earth time even though I have no position on the middle earth time line. And so presumably nothing gets in the way of God s knowing that Elvis death is earlier than 2013 regardless of whether we go with [A] or [~A]. So the question now is whether my knowing now that Elvis death is in the past is just my knowing the fact that Elvis death is earlier than 2013. If it were then God could know that fact too, and then the notion of omniscience that we re thinking about (God s knowing everything that can be known) would be back on the table. But how would we go about trying to answer that question? Well, this debate could go on and on (and would perhaps gradually take us into further and apparently unconnected areas). But let me close with one final line of thought. It looks as if we re asking a pretty arcane question: is the fact that X the same as the fact that Y? And fact just looks like a term of art (what on earth is a fact?). But really the question we re interested in is whether knowing that X (knowing that Elvis death is now past) is the same as knowing that Y (knowing that Elvis death is earlier than 2013 ). Now here s a way we can test our intuitions about that sort of question. Imagine a case in which someone knows
that X. Could it make a difference (eg a rational, practical or emotional difference) to them if they find out that Y. It seems so. I know the person in front of me, Harven, is my next door neighbour. Then I find out that Harven is the person who sent me the poison pen letter. Obviously I m horrified. And that shows that, even though Harven is both my next door neighbor and the poison pen letter writer, there s a difference between knowing that Harven is my next door neighbor and knowing that Harven is the poison pen letter writer. And it seems easy enough to construct a parallel involving tenses and dates. While out hiking in a national park you tumble into a ravine, and temporarily lose consciousness. When you regain consciousness you think about the chances of rescue. You know that rangers patrol regularly and check this ravine at noon every day. So you know that help arrives at noon that s a changeless date of the rescue. But suppose you re badly injured, it s going to be touch and go. And then suppose you find out that help arrives in 30 minutes now you ve got a new reason to celebrate. And what you ve found out, that makes so much difference, is what time it is now which is a changing tense. Knowledge that rescue arrives at noon is converted into knowledge that rescue arrives in 30 minutes by means of finding out that it is now 11.30. But recall the discussion of [A] and [~A] above. It doesn t seem that God can access the knowledge which I access when I find out the time. And so again we re back to the original problem 6