The so-called omnimax attributes

[Contarini]

Knowledge is not either.

Right. But omniscience is.

If and when we shall get to the concept of “omnipotence” and “omnibenevolence” the same problem will arise.

Absolutely.

Concepts must stand on their own right, if they are supposed to be taken seriously.

Says who? The classical theistic position is that God is absolutely simple. So God has no “attributes” that “stand on their own right.” Talk about a concept in abstraction from the being of God and you aren’t talking about a divine attribute any longer.

It is **assumed **that God exists. It is **assumed **that God has certain attributes.

Do you mean that you are willing to assume this for the sake of the argument? That seems to contradict your basic premise that we should leave God out of it. I’m not sure what you mean here.

If those attributes actually are supposed to mean something, then it is irrational to assert that those attributes cannot be discussed without dragging God into the conversation.

No, it’s not irrational. It is simply an assertion of the basic, traditional theistic doctrine that God’s being is simple and that therefore God’s attributes are not qualities that can be considered in abstraction from God’s being.

“Classical” theism? As opposed to some “neo-classical theism”?

By “classical theism” I mean theism that posits traditional attributes such as God’s simplicity, immutability, timelessness, etc. Admittedly, I tend to use Aquinas as the standard for classical theism, and I recognize that the term embraces more philosophies than just Thomism!

I have not heard the term “neo-classical theism,” but apart from the fact that many theists don’t know much about philosophy of any kind, there are a number of modern theistic philosophies which reject the traditional attributes (process philosophy/theology for one thing, and also the kind of Christian analytic philosophy that tends to dominate the evangelical Protestant academic horizon right now). If you want to have a discussion with representatives of those philosophies, that’s fine by me. But you need to recognize that what you are saying is nonsensical in terms of Aquinas and other traditional Christian philosophers. You aren’t engaging the traditional Christian doctrine of God at all. You’re simply dismissing it.

Of course I disagree with it. And with these posts I am attempting to show the reasons.

And that’s why I’m being obnoxious and messing up your thread
You need to know that what you are criticizing isn’t traditional, classical theism at all. Have all the fun you like, but know that you haven’t even addressed the traditional position.

Nevertheless I accept valid criticisms, but a simple, outright dismissal just does not cut it.

Yes, it does, when you clearly haven’t begun to think about the implications of the classical doctrine of divine simplicity.

Edwin

 

[Betterave]

.

That’s so cool!

 

[Betterave]

Thanks. That was my suggestion.

Now you are talking! That is a **very good **scenario. But I have a few rearks to make. First, I would be extremely impressed with this. But then as we know, “one swallow does not a summer make”. Anybody can get lucky once. After expressing my sincere appreciation, I would ask if he could repeat it. And then, you can bet that I would read any post with extreme attention, and the second attempt to predict my free action would fail.

Second: a minor objection: I might get suspicious that the OG and the mods on the board edited the that “prediction” to fit to my later behavior. **We **cannot edit the old posts. **They **certainly can. As I said, I am very skeptical and suspicious.

You are very skeptical and suspicious, but that’s okay: the omniscient one is resourceful! BTW, it’s good that you at least recognize your suspicious tendencies - it’s a good thing, that is, as long as you recognize that suspicion and skepticism can be a bad thing (I’m not saying always). Just something to watch out for.

Now, round five (? - I’ve lost count):

Nice omniscient guy posts his prediction on this thread. You read it very very carefully this time - but it’s written in Polish. You print it off (no cheating by editing that way - not that that matters this time) and go buy a Polish-English dictionary. By the time you get the prediction translated you realize that you’ve already fulfilled it to the ‘T’. Very patient nice omniscient guy is starting to get your attention I think?

(And if you happen to know Polish, I didn’t know that, but omniscient guy certainly would!)

 

[Spock]

Right. But omniscience is.

Omniscience is supposed to be. But until we can find out just what omniscience might be, the proposition: “God is omniscient” is without meaning.

Says who? The classical theistic position is that God is absolutely simple. So God has no “attributes” that “stand on their own right.” Talk about a concept in abstraction from the being of God and you aren’t talking about a divine attribute any longer.

Which is another meaningless proposition. Now instead of having one undefined attribute, we have two or more… I don’t see how that sheds light on the question at hand?

That reminds me of another type of reasoning which is sometimes employed, the definition by analogy. Let’s say, the attribute is “loyalty”, and we speak of a human and dog. We can say that a human is loyal to something, and that a dog is loyal to his master. Clearly, the two terms of “loyalty” are not identical. The dog is “loyal” according to his nature, and the human is “loyal” according to his nature.

By the same methodology, when asked about some attribute of God, the theist uses the same line of reasoning. The attribute, when applied to a human is explained by the usage of a concept. Due to the limitation of the language, the same word is applied, when the attribute is applied to God. But, says the theist, we should not confuse the two applications. When speaking of human, we mean it according to human nature, and when we apply it to God, we mean it according to God’s divine nature.

I hope you see the problem. Now we have known factors: the human, the attribute and human nature. We also have unknown attributes, God, the attribute and God’s nature. The attribute when applied to God, according to God’s nature reamins meaningless, since both the attribute and God’s nature are unknown - just like above, when you said that God is “absolutely simple”.

Instead of a comparision, with 3 known and one unknown (for example “a is to x like b is to c”) you have two known and two unknown, as in “a is to x like b is to y”. Such a comparision cannot be solved.

 

[Spock]

You are very skeptical and suspicious, but that’s okay: the omniscient one is resourceful! BTW, it’s good that you at least recognize your suspicious tendencies - it’s a good thing, that is, as long as you recognize that suspicion and skepticism can be a bad thing (I’m not saying always). Just something to watch out for.

Now, round five (? - I’ve lost count):

Nice omniscient guy posts his prediction on this thread. You read it very very carefully this time - but it’s written in Polish. You print it off (no cheating by editing that way - not that that matters this time) and go buy a Polish-English dictionary. By the time you get the prediction translated you realize that you’ve already fulfilled it to the ‘T’. Very patient nice omniscient guy is starting to get your attention I think?

(And if you happen to know Polish, I didn’t know that, but omniscient guy certainly would!)

Good job. We can generalize what you said. It boils down to “the OG gives the prediction in a way which is not immediately apperent to me, and during the precess of discoving its meaning, I - unwittingly - fulfill the prediction”.

Unfortunately, this is not a difficult problem. The one and only thing I would do under such circumstances is to discover the contents of the prediction - without delay. That needs no omniscience, it is apperent from common sense. I would not try to do some double-cross type of action, I would find out the meaning of the prediction as soon as possible. Now, OG can know what I consider the best method to decipher the hidden meaning. And therefore the prediction could only be one thing: “Spock is going to find out the meaning of my prediction using such and such means”. Is that a big deal? Yes, the prediction is made. Yes, I will fulfill that prediction. But the prediction is trivial. If he would predict anything else, he would fail, since this is the method I would employ.

 

[Spock]

First of all, I have already responded to your larger point: I say that God cannot know something that is not.

Wonderful. There are some who disagree, but that is a different issue. Now, if only we could agree on what “is” and what “is not”.

The term “possibility” has no reference to Him, because everything is actual. There is no “possible world” in which I might have written a different sentence than this, in God’s perspective. There is a “possible world”, from the perspective of a human being. There is no contradiction in those two claims.

Yes, there is. An event cannot both exist and not exist, from two points of observation. Suppose you view two cars on a collision course, but the cars are still far away, so that the drivers can avoid the collision. There is no collision yet, maybe there will be, maybe there won’t be. To say that the event of collision has already been observed by God - if a collision will take place is sheer nonsense. The two observers may differ in perception about the details of the event, but the actuality of an event is an “absolute category”. It does not depend on the observers. And this is the fact that you will not accept, and any assertion of God being “outside time” (yet another unsupported claim) cannot change that.

You have complained that I (and others) have referenced omnipotence in order to explain God’s omniscience.

Complain might be a too strong word, but we shall not argue about that. I am listening: just what do you hope from introducing another hypothetical attribute? How could “omnipotence” (undefined) make omniscience clearer?

You suggested that love could be defined analytically, without reference to the properties of any being who could love. But “having a central nervous system” is one of the properties of a being who can love.

You are trying to tell me what love is by telling me about those individuals who love. But what I want is an analysis of love, on its own merit. If love is not coherent apart from reference to the lover, then how is one to make heads or tails of love?

Inquiring minds want to know.

The difference is that we all know what a “central nervous system is”. There is no need to elaborate on it. However, none of God’s alleged other attributes fall into the same category.

Knowledge is also part of the activities of the central nervous system. The details might not be known, but the general picture is quite clear. What is clear about God’s other alleged attributes? Nothing at all. To add some new unknown and undefined attributes merely compounds the problem.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

has spock proven that time exists yet? his whole predictions idea is based on a faulty metaphysical view of time. it may seem obvious but where oh where is the evidence?

 

[Spock]

has spock proven that time exists yet? his whole predictions idea is based on a faulty metaphysical view of time. it may seem obvious but where oh where is the evidence?

Metaphysical “view” of time is just as irrelevant as metaphysical “necessity” and metaphysical “anything”. Time is part of physics. Forget it.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Wonderful. There are some who disagree, but that is a different issue. Now, if only we could agree on what “is” and what “is not”.

Yes, there is. An event cannot both exist and not exist, from two points of observation. Suppose you view two cars on a collision course, but the cars are still far away, so that the drivers can avoid the collision. There is no collision yet, maybe there will be, maybe there won’t be. To say that the event of collision has already been observed by God - if a collision will take place is sheer nonsense. The two observers may differ in perception about the details of the event, but the actuality of an event is an “absolute category”. It does not depend on the observers. And this is the fact that you will not accept, and any assertion of God being “outside time” (yet another unsupported claim) cannot change that.

I still fail to see a contradiction in my statements. For handy reference, they are: ‘There is no “possible world” in which I might have written a different sentence than this, in God’s perspective. There is a “possible world”, from the perspective of a human being.’

When I say, “there is a possible world”, the “is” claim is actually irrelevant – I am not making a claim about ontology. Essentially, I am saying that “it is possible that ____ could happen” or “it is possible that _____ could not have happened.” So we are dealing with two variables: future and past.

The future, from God’s perspective, is fixed and unchangeable. There is nothing to know about it except what will be the case (which He knows). He knows this in essentially the same way that an author knows the plot of his own book.

Likewise, from God’s perspective, the past is fixed and unchangeable. Joe might have eaten Raisin Bran instead of Cheerios – this is a real fact to Joe. But to God? God is quite clear on the matter that Joe thinks he might have done otherwise, but there is no sense that – from God’s perspective – Joe might have done otherwise. This is because Joe lives in time, and God is beyond time.

Once again, God stands in relation to creation as an author stands in relation to his book. Is an author confined in the temporal structure of his book?

Complain might be a too strong word, but we shall not argue about that. I am listening: just what do you hope from introducing another hypothetical attribute? How could “omnipotence” (undefined) make omniscience clearer?

Looking back on our conversation, your objection was actually to my bringing in the property that God is “outside time”. But since I’ve discussed that above, I’ll put forward a preliminary sketch of omnipotence.

Omnipotence: The capacity to produce any state of events that is both logically consistent and logically possible.

The difference is that we all know what a “central nervous system is”. There is no need to elaborate on it. However, none of God’s alleged other attributes fall into the same category.

You are asking me, then, to connect omniscience to some attribute x as you connected love to the central nervous system? In other words, you are asking me to naturalize God. But this is absurd, because God does not exist in nature (narrowly defined). Do you want me to tell you what organ God knows with?

The properties we ascribe to God are not, technically speaking, God’s properties in any degree of fullness: rather, they are the necessary conditions that must be included within those properties (which we cannot fathom, in themselves). In a similar way, a rabbit cannot understand the love between humans, but it might be able to sense that there is some sort of relationship (a necessary condition for love) where a human would recognize love.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Metaphysical “view” of time is just as irrelevant as metaphysical “necessity” and metaphysical “anything”. Time is part of physics. Forget it.

so essentially you cant prove its existence but we should just accept it?

let me post a few things here.

quantumweird.wordpress.com/2007/06/23/does-time-exist/

Even the National Bureau of Standards admit they are “not measuring time, but only defining it“.

Think of this: photons live in “null” time. They live and die in the same instant because they travel at the speed of light and therefore if time exists for them, they do not experience it. They experience zero flight time over zero distance no matter how far apart the start and finish line are. They live in a go-splat world. A photon leaving a star a billion light years away destroys itself in our eye the instant it is emitted, having not aged even a fraction of a nanosecond in its long trip.

discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/in-no-time

Efforts to understand time below the Planck scale have led to an exceedingly strange juncture in physics. The problem, in brief, is that time may not exist at the most fundamental level of physical reality. If so, then what is time? And why is it so obviously and tyrannically omnipresent in our own experience? “The meaning of time has become terribly problematic in contemporary physics,” says Simon Saunders, a philosopher of physics at the University of Oxford. “The situation is so uncomfortable that by far the best thing to do is declare oneself an agnostic.”

Some four decades ago, the renowned physicist John Wheeler, then at Princeton, and the late Bryce DeWitt, then at the University of North Carolina, developed an extraordinary equation that provides a possible framework for unifying relativity and quantum mechanics. But the Wheeler-*DeWitt equation has always been controversial, in part because it adds yet another, even more baffling twist to our understanding of time.

“One finds that time just disappears from the Wheeler-DeWitt equation,” says Carlo Rovelli, a physicist at the University of the Mediterranean in Marseille, France. “It is an issue that many theorists have puzzled about. **It may be that the best way to think about quantum reality is to give up the notion of time—that the fundamental description of the universe must be timeless.” **

No one has yet succeeded in using the Wheeler-DeWitt equation to integrate quantum theory with general relativity. Nevertheless, a sizable minority of physicists, Rovelli included, believe **that any successful merger of the two great masterpieces of 20th-century physics will inevitably describe a universe in which, ultimately, there is no time. **

**the possibility that time may not exist is known among physicists as the “problem of time.” **

so, as you can see, its not as much a part of physics as you seem to believe. so yes, if you wish to make such arguments about omniscience as the predictive ones you have been making, you do need to prove the existence of time.

i can only hope that others realize this and call you on it. hint, hint

 

[Betterave]

Good job. We can generalize what you said. It boils down to “the OG gives the prediction in a way which is not immediately apperent to me, and during the precess of discoving its meaning, I - unwittingly - fulfill the prediction”.

No, you’ve given no reason to think that there is anything unfair about OG taking advantage of his knowledge of when your attention will lapse. He doesn’t need to think in a short time scale, so given enough time your attention will surely lapse, and such a time is when his prediction will be made for. Unless you want to claim that you are alert all the time. (You’re not a Borg are you? By definition a Vulcan is not a Borg, correct? And I imagine their offspring would be infertile, if they could even interbreed?..but I digress.)
(p.s.: I don’t actually know what a Borg is. Some Star Trek thing, I think. )

Unfortunately, this is not a difficult problem. The one and only thing I would do under such circumstances is to discover the contents of the prediction - without delay. That needs no omniscience, it is apperent from common sense. I would not try to do some double-cross type of action, I would find out the meaning of the prediction as soon as possible. Now, OG can know what I consider the best method to decipher the hidden meaning. And therefore the prediction could only be one thing: “Spock is going to find out the meaning of my prediction using such and such means”. Is that a big deal? Yes, the prediction is made. Yes, I will fulfill that prediction. But the prediction is trivial. If he would predict anything else, he would fail, since this is the method I would employ.

Those are some very unnecessary stipulations Spock. You need to put yourself in OG’s place and think about the fact that he is way, way smarter than you. Also, he knows before you do whatever artificial stipulations you are going to come up with.

Anyway, what makes you say the prediction is trivial?

You wrote:
“Now, OG can know what I consider the best method to decipher the hidden meaning. Wait for the non sequitur, here it comes…] And therefore the prediction could only be one thing: “Spock is going to find out the meaning of my prediction using such and such means”.” Your claim here is obviously untrue. There could be all sorts of predictions about who you will meet at the bookstore, what you will think as you are getting out of your car, how long it will take for you to translate the prediction, the sense of which word you will get wrong the first time, etc, etc. Please use your imagination to fill in some blanks here.

 

[Spock]

No, you’ve given no reason to think that there is anything unfair about OG taking advantage of his knowledge of when your attention will lapse. He doesn’t need to think in a short time scale, so given enough time your attention will surely lapse, and such a time is when his prediction will be made for. Unless you want to claim that you are alert all the time. (You’re not a Borg are you? By definition a Vulcan is not a Borg, correct? And I imagine their offspring would be infertile, if they could even interbreed?..but I digress.)
(p.s.: I don’t actually know what a Borg is. Some Star Trek thing, I think. )

I am not a Trekkie. No need to play with my screen name.

Those are some very unnecessary stipulations Spock. You need to put yourself in OG’s place and think about the fact that he is way, way smarter than you. Also, he knows before you do whatever artificial stipulations you are going to come up with.

That is just another assumption. From omniscience does not follow smartness. Omniscience **only **means to have an accurate picture of what ever exists, existed, and - according to your stipulation - whatever will exist. That is all. For all we care, OG cannot even think at all, he just obtains the information like a TV camera and stores it like a video-tape. On the other hand, you are smart and can create very good objections.

Anyway, what makes you say the prediction is trivial?

You wrote:
“Now, OG can know what I consider the best method to decipher the hidden meaning. Wait for the non sequitur, here it comes…] And therefore the prediction could only be one thing: “Spock is going to find out the meaning of my prediction using such and such means”.” Your claim here is obviously untrue. There could be all sorts of predictions about who you will meet at the bookstore, what you will think as you are getting out of your car, how long it will take for you to translate the prediction, the sense of which word you will get wrong the first time, etc, etc. Please use your imagination to fill in some blanks here.

There are no blanks, as I will tell you later. I am playing the game according to my rules. Don’t forget, that as soon as I receive the prediction, I am in control. Here is a detailed description of the possible events:

1. OG makes his prediction and presents it to me.
   2a) I immediately undertsand the prediction.
2. I will act so that the prediction fails - omniscience is disproven.

Or, according to your stipulation:

1. OG makes his prediction and presents it to me.
   2b) There is some time before I make sense of his prediction.
   3b) During this time there will be possible actions which are already predicted, and I have proof of the prediction, but - since I don’t know what the prediction is - I am unable to “spoil” the prediciton.
2. When I finally understand the prediction, I can act so that the prediction fails - omniscience is disproven.

Your suggestion is that the prediction for the for the time interval 3b) is significant, and it should be accepted as a proof of omniscience.

First objection: Omniscience is still “spoiled” in the time interval of 4).
Second objection: As I said, it is quite trivial, that during the time of 2b) I will refrain from any action, except working on the translation of the prediciton. It may be quite inconvenient to focus on the task with the exculsion of every other activity, but it can be done, if one is stubborn enough. And I am stubborn, just to spoil OG’s prediction. Moreover, I am stating this here and now. So OG can read it - and as such I am forcing his hand to make a true, but trivial prediction. Moreover, it will not even be a prediction, merely a reiteration of what I am saying here. I could also elaborate on my other free activities during this time interval. I could state up front, exactly what I am going to eat, what I am going to drink, when am I going to sleep, etc, etc… - for the sole reason to force the prediction. We can postpone this part, until the OG shows up for demonstration.

So, poor OG is SOL. Until he just says that he knows the future, and refuses to substantiate it, it is merely his word. As soon as he submits to the test, he will be proven wrong - sooner or later. At best, he can make a few predictions, which can be chalked up as lucky guesses. That is not conclusive.

Of course we both know that your OG will never submit to a test like this.

Now, to be honest, I cannot prove that omniscience cannot exist, as long as no prediction is revealed. But that does not matter, since an unrevealed prediction is no prediction at all. And a “revealed” but not understood prediction is the same.

 

[Spock]

I still fail to see a contradiction in my statements. For handy reference, they are: ‘There is no “possible world” in which I might have written a different sentence than this, in God’s perspective. There is a “possible world”, from the perspective of a human being.’

When I say, “there is a possible world”, the “is” claim is actually irrelevant – I am not making a claim about ontology. Essentially, I am saying that “it is possible that ____ could happen” or “it is possible that _____ could not have happened.” So we are dealing with two variables: future and past.

**The future, from God’s perspective, is fixed and unchangeable. ** There is nothing to know about it except what will be the case (which He knows). He knows this in essentially the same way that an author knows the plot of his own book.

Likewise, from God’s perspective, the past is fixed and unchangeable. Joe might have eaten Raisin Bran instead of Cheerios – this is a real fact to Joe. But to God? God is quite clear on the matter that Joe thinks he might have done otherwise, but there is no sense that – from God’s perspective – Joe might have done otherwise. This is because Joe lives in time, and God is beyond time.

Once again, God stands in relation to creation as an author stands in relation to his book. Is an author confined in the temporal structure of his book?

No, of course he is not. And the characters in the book have no free will, do they? So either your analogy is correct, and then we have no free will. Or, if we have free will, and then your analogy is incorrect. If the future is fixed and unchangable, then we may think that we have the power to influence it via our decisions, but that is just an illusion.

The proposition that God is outside time is ambiguous. Clearly God would be outside our time, but that does not give him any special access to the information about the affairs that have not happened yet.

Looking back on our conversation, your objection was actually to my bringing in the property that God is “outside time”. But since I’ve discussed that above, I’ll put forward a preliminary sketch of omnipotence.

Omnipotence: The capacity to produce any state of events that is both logically consistent and logically possible.

Logically consistent with what? It presupposes a set of premises, and we are quite unlikely to agree on that. For example, it is logically possible that God does not exist. Nevertheless, you will probably argue that God cannot commit deicide and cannot make himself disappear. So there are logically possible and logically consistent states of affairs that God cannot create. But I was asking something different. What do you think would be the benefit of dragging omnipotence (or some other attributed) into the conversation?

You are asking me, then, to connect omniscience to some attribute x as you connected love to the central nervous system? In other words, you are asking me to naturalize God.

Not “naturalize”, explain.

The properties we ascribe to God are not, technically speaking, God’s properties in any degree of fullness: rather, they are the necessary conditions that must be included within those properties (which we cannot fathom, in themselves). In a similar way, a rabbit cannot understand the love between humans, but it might be able to sense that there is some sort of relationship (a necessary condition for love) where a human would recognize love.

I already touched on this method, the definition by analogy. It is unhelpful, since it contains too many variables.

 

[Spirithound]

Correct.

It does not refute omniscience, it only refutes the **possibility **of proving it. Therefore it remains in the realm of faith. As I said, I have no quarrel with that. The point is, that any attempt to prove it would lead the refutation of omniscience. And if an object of faith would be invalidated by an attempt to prove it, I consider that faith irrational.

Let’s make a distinction here. An article of faith could be beyond proving it. Any attempt to prove would stay inconlusive. That kind of faith would not be irrational. Here the scenario is different. The actual attempt to prove it, would immediately disprove it. And that is very different.

This really goes back to one of my original solutions. Omniscience is not invalidated by your attempt to (dis)prove it, the OG simply refuses to play. Anyways, I’ll keep thinking about it.

 

[Spock]

This really goes back to one of my original solutions. Omniscience is not invalidated by your attempt to (dis)prove it, the OG simply refuses to play. Anyways, I’ll keep thinking about it.

Sure thing. Omniscience would be invalidated if the OG would play. Have fun, and when you reach a solution, share it with us.

 

[Spock]

Adding to the previous post. Suppose you would play poker, and you had a nice four-of-a-kind in your hand. The bet on the table is all your life’s savings. Your opponent says that you lose, because he has a straight flush. But he is not willing to show his hand either to you or anyone else, and says that you must accept it on faith. Would you accept his claim?

 

[Spirithound]

Adding to the previous post. Suppose you would play poker, and you had a nice four-of-a-kind in your hand. The bet on the table is all your life’s savings. Your opponent says that you lose, because he has a straight flush. But he is not willing to show his hand either to you or anyone else, and says that you must accept it on faith. Would you accept his claim?

No, no I wouldn’t.
But tell me, what do I stand to gain if the OG isn’t really O?

 

[Spock]

No, no I wouldn’t.

I am glad to hear that.

But tell me, what do I stand to gain if the OG isn’t really O?

I can’t answer that, only you can. But you can also ponder the opposite. Think about it, what do you hope to gain if you believe that OG is O, when he is not? Does it matter either way?

 

[Betterave]

That is just another assumption. From omniscience does not follow smartness. Omniscience **only **means to have an accurate picture of what ever exists, existed, and - according to your stipulation - whatever will exist. That is all. For all we care, OG cannot even think at all, he just obtains the information like a TV camera and stores it like a video-tape. On the other hand, you are smart and can create very good objections.

Well first of all, thank you for your kind acknowledgment of the strength of my objections, very gracious of you. But I must object to your stipulation that ‘omniscience’ implies stupidity - let’s call this pseudo-concept S-omniscience. I have no interest in defending the notion that S-omniscience is an intelligible concept. Now what makes you say that omniscience is S-omniscience (i.e., a stupid data-bank of information, from what I gather)? That I am the one making an illicit assumption here seems to me rather implausible.

 

[Spock]

Well first of all, thank you for your kind acknowledgment of the strength of my objections, very gracious of you. But I must object to your stipulation that ‘omniscience’ implies stupidity - let’s call this pseudo-concept S-omniscience. I have no interest in defending the notion that S-omniscience is an intelligible concept. Now what makes you say that omniscience is S-omniscience (i.e., a stupid data-bank of information, from what I gather)? That I am the one making an illicit assumption here seems to me rather implausible.

Ooops, we have a misunderstanding. I don’t say that omniscience implies anything. It does not imply brilliance, it does not imply stupidity. It merely says that OG somehow has information about the “totality of existence” - which includes the past and the present (in my opinion) and also the future (according to you). Of course it is plausible that OG is very smart, but this is not a logical necessity.

You presented this thought experiment about a neat and tricky way of giving a prediction, without giving it “really” (in a coded format). The prediction should contain two parts, one for my activities before I can decipher the prediction, and one for the time after I understand what the prediction is.

Obviously, as soon as I understand the prediction, I am free to act contrary to it - thereby disproving omniscience. The only point of contention is about the part of the prediction for the duration of the “discovery process”. This must be a finite period. If I can never figure out the coded prediction, then eseentially there was no prediction. So we have to assume that eventually I will be able to figure out what the prediction says. I would act very predictably during this period, thereby lessening the significance of the prediction.

At most your version of the thought experiment can show that OG can “foresee” my actions for the very predictable period of the discovery phase. And that is not convincing. As soon as the cards are on the table, and I know what the prediction is all about, I am free to act contrary to the prediction, thereby invalidating it. That is what my argument says.