Foreknowledge and Freedom

The bulk of my essay “Truth and Freedom” opposes fatalism, which is the claim that if there is a true proposition to the effect that an action A will occur, then A will not be free. But that essay also offers a new way to reconcile divine foreknowledge and human freedom. John Martin Fischer and Patrick Todd (2011) raise a number of objections to “Truth and Freedom,” most of which are objections to its treatment of foreknowledge. Their central complaint seems to be that that treatment is, despite my claims to the contrary, merely a form of Ockhamism—and a poorly developed form of Ockhamism at that. In this essay I shall reply to Fischer and Todd’s specific objections. But, more importantly, I shall further clarify the fundamental differences between my way of reconciling divine foreknowledge and human freedom and the Ockhamist’s way. In particular, I shall further demonstrate that when it comes to divine foreknowledge’s compatibility with human freedom, the fundamental question is not the Ockhamist’s question of whether God’s beliefs about what an agent will do in the future are “hard facts.” Rather, the fundamental question is whether God’s beliefs about what an agent will do in the future depend on what that agent will do in the future.