Foreknowledge and Free Will

Suppose it were known, by someone else, what you are going to choose to do tomorrow. Wouldn’t that entail that tomorrow you must do what it was known in advance that you would do? In spite of your deliberating and planning, in the end, all is futile: you must choose exactly as it was earlier known that you would. The supposed exercise of your free will is ultimately an illusion.

Historically, the tension between foreknowledge and the exercise of free will was addressed in a religious context. According to orthodox views in the West, God was claimed to be omniscient (and hence in possession of perfect foreknowledge) and yet God was supposed to have given humankind free will. Attempts to solve the apparent contradiction often involved attributing to God special properties, for example, being “outside” of time.

However, the trouble with such solutions is that they are generally unsatisfactory on their own terms. Even more serious is the fact that they leave untouched the problem posed not by God’s foreknowledge but that of any human being. Do human beings have foreknowledge? Certainly, of at least some events and behaviors. Thus we have a secular counterpart of the original problem. A human being’s foreknowledge, exactly as would God’s, of another’s choices would seem to preclude the exercise of human free will.

  The Problem of Foreknowledge and Free Will

Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) has set out the problem in the traditional manner:

…”Does God know or does He not know that a certain individual will be good or bad? If thou sayest ‘He knows’, then it necessarily follows that [that] man is compelled to act as God knew beforehand he would act, otherwise God’s knowledge would be imperfect.…” (1966, pp. 99-100)

The argument can be extended. The thrust of the argument does not apply only to doing good or ill, but indeed to every human act, from the most mundane to the most significant. The argument could just as well read:

“Does God know or does He not know that a certain individual (let’s say the Prime Minister of Canada), on Feb. 3, 2081, will put on brown shoes when dressing in the morning? If thou sayest ‘He knows’, then it necessarily follows that the Prime Minister is compelled to act (that is, to put on brown shoes) as God knew beforehand he/she would, otherwise God’s knowledge would be imperfect. …”

The argument for the seeming impossibility of both God’s having foreknowledge and our having free will has troubled religious thinkers, philosophers, and jurists for centuries.

It is clear why theologians are troubled by the challenge of foreknowledge and free will. For most religions insist that God has given human beings free will and thus human beings can choose right from wrong, and that (in some religions at least) wrongful acts are sinful and worthy of divine punishment, while good acts are righteous and worthy of divine reward. But many of these same religions will also insist that God is omniscient, that is, God knows everything (and thus has perfect foreknowledge).[1] To deny either of these claims – that human beings have free will or that God is omniscient – amounts to heresy. Yet, on the face of it, each of these two claims appears to contradict the other.

But why should secular philosophers and jurists also be concerned with this conundrum? For two reasons.

First is that many, perhaps most, contemporary philosophers and jurists are keen to preserve the viability of the concept of free will. Our legal institutions, our very sense of what is praiseworthy and what is blameworthy, turn on the notion of free will. It is at the conceptual bedrock of our civilization that persons are creatures having the capacity of deliberation, that we have the ability to recognize right from wrong, that we have the ability to choose (to a large extent) what we do (and what we do not do), and – most especially – we are responsible for what we choose to do (and responsible for what we choose not to do).

Second is that the challenge to the existence of free will is posed not just by God’s foreknowledge but by any foreknowledge whatsoever. The religious version of the puzzle arises because God is said to have omniscience, that is, knowledge of everything. But the problem would arise if anyone at all (that is, anyone whatsoever) were to have knowledge of our future actions. This generalized version of the problem has come to be known as the problem of Epistemic Determinism (“epistemic” because it involves knowledge; see Epistemology). For example, if my wife were to know today that I would choose tea (rather than coffee) for my breakfast tomorrow, then one could argue (paralleling Maimonides’s argument) that it would be impossible for me not to choose tea tomorrow at breakfast.

The two concepts – (i) foreknowledge and (ii) human freedom – seem to be utterly incompatible. The challenge, then, (that is, the problem posed by epistemic determinism) is to find a way to show that

either  (1)       foreknowledge (of human beings’ future actions) does not exist;

or        (2)       free will does not exist;

or        (3)       the alleged logical relation between foreknowledge and the

exercise of free will is mistaken (that is, foreknowledge is not incompatible with the exercise of free will).

Historically, some theologians have tried to solve the puzzle by invoking unique properties of God. For example, some have argued that God is ‘outside of time’ (or that ‘His knowledge is timeless’) and thus His knowledge is not foreknowledge at all, that is, God’s knowledge does not occur before (or during, or after, for that matter) any events in the world. The trouble with such solutions is (a) they leave non-theistic versions of the puzzle untouched (for example, my wife’s knowing that I will drink tea tomorrow), and (b) we can construct a revised version of the puzzle explicitly invoking God’s timelessness, for example:

God is omniscient and His knowledge is timeless—that is, God knows timelessly all that has happened, is happening, and will happen. Therefore, if He knows timelessly that a person will perform such-and-such an action, then it is impossible for that person not to perform that action.

Some other theologians have argued that God has a ‘special way’ of knowing. Unlike human beings (and other sentient creatures) who must causally interact with the world (for example, read a report, see an event, examine evidence [such as ashes, skid marks, etc.]), God is said to “know directly“—that is, without the need of sensory data or of physical interaction with the world. Such a notion of ‘direct knowledge’ is problematic in itself; but more importantly, it is hard to see how it solves the problem at hand, indeed how it even addresses the problem. For, again, as was the case with arguing that God’s knowledge is outside of time, the same two objections can be raised to this putative solution: (a’) this latter attempted solution leaves the non-theistic version of the puzzle untouched; and (b’) we can construct a revised version of the puzzle explicitly invoking God’s “direct knowledge,” for example:

God knows directly (that is, without sensory data) all that has happened, is happening, and will happen. Therefore, if He knows directly that a person will perform such-and-such an action, then it is impossible for that person not to perform that action.

Contemporary philosophers, especially secular ones, seek a solution elsewhere. We are disinclined to pursue solutions that call upon special properties of God, especially since any such solution leaves the ‘secular’ version of the problem untouched.

The focus of attention has shifted dramatically. Secular philosophers argue that the supposed incompatibility arises out of a very subtle but seductive logical fallacy. So unobvious is this fallacy that it escaped detection by Maimonides and hundreds (perhaps even countless thousands) of other persons. The error has come to bear the name “The Modal Fallacy.”