Alexander wrote:

Well, Geach would say so. He compares God's knowledge of the future to the knowledge of a chess Grand Master, who knows from the start how he will beat me through his skill at controlling the game, without taking away my freedom to choose my moves.

Okay. I'll have to take a look at the relevant chapter of Providence and Evil. 

One point of disanalogy between chess grandmasters and God is that grandmasters aren't omniscient, whereas God is. A good chess player tries to coerce your moves, but he doesn't actually know what moves you will make in advance. (You could choose to make a really bad move, you would just lose quicker.) In contrast, God knows exactly which moves you'll respond to His with right to the end of the game. With the chess master, he's putting pressure on you. With God, it's more like He's choosing your choices for you.

God is like a chess grandmaster if open theists are correct.

Alexander wrote:

Saying "the future doesn't exist yet" seems fine if it just means "the future doesn't exist", unless you start treating "yet" or "now" as equivalent to "here" (Rogers' strategy), which looks absurd. Saying "x exists now" seems the only meaningful sense in which I can say "x exists".

Well, I mean “The future doesn't exist yet” as “The future doesn't exist presently or in the past relative to my current time slice”. 

Eternalists draw an important distinction between existence at a time and existence simpliciter. The statement that “The future doesn't exist yet” talks about existence at a time, not existence simpliciter.

In contrast, presentists think all that exists, exists now. So on presentism, there's no difference between existence at a time and existence simpliciter. We shouldn't, however, read eternalists' statements in terms of presentists' lingo, as if eternalists think reality is just one big present.

Last edited by John West (1/24/2016 4:10 pm)

I don't have much of anything to add, or rather, I better step away from doing so since I'm having a hard time with potency as of now! So I just wanted to say that there is this book, Objective Becoming, by Bradford Skow, which discusses the moving spotlight hypothesis. Maybe it's worth looking into.

Last edited by Dennis (1/25/2016 7:11 am)

Alexander wrote:

I don't have an issue with the idea of non-temporal existence, but I do have an issue with the claim that the future exists. Of course the number 2 exists, but the issue I have doesn't arise. In any case, it is true to say the number 2 presently exists, just as it is true to say that God presently exists. Do I have to give up these claims when I say that neither numbers nor God have a temporal "life" as I do?

I think it's fine to speak imprecisely in our day to day lives. But for the purpose of our discussion here, surely the “now” presentists mean requires you to exist in the present. (Surely presentists don't mean to suggest that God exists in a non-temporal present.) But God doesn't exist in time at all[1]. Hence, God doesn't exist in the present.

Since God exists but doesn't exist in time, we're able to separate exists from any temporal context. Hence, we're able to separate “x exists” from “x exists now” and the “implicit present tense”. Existing presently isn't essential to the notion of existence.

As for your question, perhaps “I exist now, and God exists” or, with the tensed “is” and something like Prior's tense operators, “God exists and it is the case that I exist” is closer to what you mean. In these conjunctions, both conjuncts are true and (if we've given up the idea that “x exists” presupposes “x exists now”) neither requires that God exists in the present.


[1]God transcends time, and exists regardless of it.

Greg wrote:

Perhaps a Molinist could reject (2). A Molinist might hold that God knows about future free choices like Laplace's demon knows what happens at every time from any starting point. God can see what the future will be like even though it doesn't exist, and (the Molinist-presentist might hold) that's good enough for a sort of omniscience.

I am not a Molinist, but still, I think a Molinist cannot reject (2). If God has middle knowledge, God can know counterfactual situations like "If P is in situation S, he will choose C." But Middle knowledge doesn't equate to knowledge of the actual future until the antecedent is fulfilled, i.e. P is in situation S. For God to know this, He has to bring it about and that just leads back to the rest of the argument in which I claim that God's causation does not exist without its effects. 

Alexander wrote:

I do believe that future events do not exist, and I don't understand anyone who claims otherwise.

Statements like “I doubt we can seriously refer to future events”, “I do believe that future events do not exist”, and “I don't understand anyone who claims otherwise” are statements of subjective certitude, belief, and lack of understanding respectively. There is a large and important difference between them and their correlative objective statements: “We can't seriously refer to future events”, “Future events do not exist”, and “Anyone who claims the future exists is making an incomprehensible claim”. My question is: “How do you get from the subjective statements to the objective statements?”  Right now, you're largely just telling me about yourself.

You accept that the present exists, seem fine with the past existing (more on this in a moment), and are fine with non-temporal existence. Why don't you understand anyone who claims the future exists? 

Alexander wrote:

A note: an objection to a presentist understanding of time doesn't necessarily count as an objection to my own views, and I don't claim to understand time (as I explained earlier, I have no idea whether presentism or a form of eternalism is true). The only assumption I am making is "the future does not exist", which I see no reason to reject. Unless presentism is absolutely the only way to make that claim intelligible, I have no special desire to accept presentism.

Growing Salami Theorists (Salami-ists) draw a distinction between the presentb, the present at the moving edge of being, and the presenti, the indexical present. 

Suppose the pastb and presentb, but not the futureb, exist. Then some of the futurei exists for Julius Caesar.

Since there is far more pastb than presentb on Salami-ism, it's far more likely you exist in the pastb than in the presentb. If it's far more likely that you exist in the pastb than in the presentb, you should be a skeptic about whether you exist in the presentb. Hence, you should be a skeptic about whether you exist in the presentb.

If it's far more likely that you exist in the pastb than in the presentb, it's also far more likely that some of the futurei exists for you than not (which seems to bugger your intuition about the future). Hence, it's far more likely that some of the futurei exists for you than not. So, if the pastb and presentb, but not the futureb, exist, you should be a skeptic about whether you exist in the presentb and it's far more likely that some of the futurei exists for you than not.

The response is the Dead Past. The Dead Past says we know we exist in the presentb because we have consciousnesses and once something conscious becomes in the pastb, it becomes a consciousness-less philosophical zombie. 

The Dead Past entails that if God sent you to the pastb, every person you met would be a zombie. So, if the pastb and presentb exists but not the futureb, either you should be a skeptic about whether you exist in the presentb and it's far more likely that some of the futurei exists for you than not, or you have to admit legions of zombies into your ontology.

If the pastb doesn't exist and you're denying that the futureb exists, then you are, after all, committed to presentism.

Last edited by John West (1/29/2016 4:39 pm)