210. John Marenbon on Peter Abelard

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John Marenbon returns to the podcast to discuss Abelard's views on necessity and freedom.

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Further Reading

• J. Marenbon, Early medieval philosophy (480-1150): an Introduction (London, 1983).

• J. Marenbon, "Abelard’s Concept of Possibility" in B. Mojsisch and O. Puta (eds) Historia Philosophiae Medii Aevi. Studien zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters (Amsterdam: 1991), 595-609.

• J. Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard (Cambridge: 1997).

J. Marenbon, Aristotelian Logic, Platonism, and the Context of Early Medieval Philosophy in the West (Aldershot, 2000).

• J. Marenbon, Abelard in Four Dimensions (Notre Dame: 2013).

Comments

T. Franke on 8 February 2015

Abaelard, possibility and freedom: What for?

I thought about Plato and possibility, applied to the future. There is at least one example: Socrates in the Apology, talking about his own future after death. As something unknown to him it is a classical situation of *mythos*. Plato's solution is just arguing for all future possibilities ... and god and god's knowledge is not of major importance. For Plato, human beings are in an eternal cycle of rebirths, with no end of history and no final judgement. The future is not of the same importance, then. It seems to me that Abaelard's and other medieval thinkers' problem is created by the combination of philosophy with an unphilosophical religious belief in a special version of god which was treated as certain knowledge instead of being uncertain (and possibly doubtful) mythos. The question is, whether this has more value for philosophy itself than just being a student's exercise in thought. It surely is important for the history of ideas leading society into mental slavery or back to freedom. In this respect, Abaelard's uncomfortable thoughts may have had a positive influence.

In reply to by T. Franke

Kson on 8 February 2015

This is a pretty uncharitable

This is a pretty uncharitable view of Abelards solution to the sea battle argument. It's not really mentioned in the podcast but Abelard views the problem the exact same way a modern logician would, and then points out, as a modern logician would, that it's a case of the modal scope fallacy.
Wherby you cannot get from Necessarily, if A then B to if A, then necessarily B.
If some problem of future contingents actually remains once one has removed all errors in the modal reasoning is open to debate. Some belive problems do remain, some do not. Note for example http://www.iep.utm.edu/foreknow/#H5 by Norman Swartz. The jury might still be out, but I wouldn't find it suprising if Abelard actually got the whole thing right from the beginning, a thousand years ago.

In reply to by Kson

T. Franke on 9 February 2015

Aristotle and Abaelard

I do not see any philosophical tension in Aristotle's sea battle argument. It can easily be solved by an emphasis on precision in using language. Today is not tomorrow, and a possibility is not its realization. If admiral A will have won the battle, the possibility of admiral B to win the battle will have vanished. If A then necessarily not-B, in short words. The future is open. Whereas Abaelard's strong assumption of an omniscient god (where does he take this assumption from?) makes it really problematic, leading directly into the hell of determinism: Today *is* now tomorrow, it's a world without any possibilities.

In reply to by T. Franke

Kson on 9 February 2015

It's interesting that you say

It's interesting that you say this because it seems to be a natural reaction when presented with the argument, historical early "solutions" focused on tense, and Aristotle himself made it central in the very framing of necessity and contingency, while Abelard begins moving to a more atemporal treatment of necessity and contingency. Today when speaking of necessity and possibility and also truth it is generally a atemporal viewpoint that is taken and not the other way around.

In reply to by Kson

T. Franke on 10 February 2015

Further definition needed

The question is whether the problem is properly defined if the question of temporality is not part of the problem's definition, yet expected to be implicitly "clear". It has to be explained how such a thing like "possibility" has to be understood without time: A decided question naturally does not have any more the possibility to realize itself this way or that way. So, in addition to the definitional problem with time we have a definitional problem with "possibility". In this respect my example of Socrates talking about his future after death is not appropriate: He only does not know it (mythos), yet the question is decided already. We then have at least two kinds of "possibility": (a) Real possibility: A question is undecided. (b) Subjective possibility: The question is decided, yet you do not know the answer and have to *expect* various possibilities. Let us add a third definition: (c) Theoretical possibility: All "naturally" possible decisions for a question, regardless if it is decided or not, or whether you know about the decision or not. Still, the whole thing looks like playing with language. The modal scope fallacy seems to be less a fallacy due to an inappropriate use of logic than more a fallacy due to an under-determined problem presented in a language not spoken by most people. But where is the real philosophical problem? The only problem I can see is the problem of determinism in case of the omniscient god (and its consequences). But this is not a problem of logic, it is a result of logic applied to premises.

In reply to by T. Franke

T. Franke on 11 February 2015

Finally I have understood it

OK, finally even I managed to understand the Modal Scope Fallacy: It is simply, that from the necessity, that god's foreknowledge and future actions have to correspond, it does not follow, that the future actions are determined by god's foreknowledge. If any, it is rather the other way round: If I tomorrow decide (freely) to act otherwise, it is rather god who has to adjust his foreknowledge accordingly, so to say (or better said: an omniscient god orients his foreknowledge right from the beginning to the later freely altered decision).

What is missing is an explanation how it is possible that something is known in advance while the (free) decision for it is taken after this knowledge is there: This is then the real philosophical challenge. It is not clear whether it is possible. As the podcast tells, Abaelard failed here.

I had a real hard time yesterday evening browsing desperately for hours through dozens of Web pages providing various explanations for the Modal Scope Fallacy. I experienced, that each of these Web pages had its very own approach, partially presenting weird examples, and almost no Web page gave a really didactic explanation

One page tried to explain it with an omniscient mother who knows which studies I will choose after school ... hard to imagine a life with an omniscient mother, and even harder to imagine any freedom of choice under an omniscient mother ...

All these funny Web pages expected the reader to cheer up to the solution and to have no further questions (like: how it is possible that there is freedom if it is known in advance, see above). This Hurray atmosphere really made me suspicious: Why do they stop thinking exactly when it becomes interesting?

At midnight I gave up: I couldn't understand it, and so I made some angry notes about the diverse unsubstantiated and ridiculuous claims of the various Web pages ... and this was the moment when insight suddenly struck me: I just took playfully into consideration that the possibility in question is the "real possibility" (nobody explained that so far, nobody suggested that so far, and it is the least to expect) and there it was the solution! This unlcear definition of possibility is one of the key obstacles to understand what is meant with the Modal Scope Fallacy.

I listened to the podcast a second time, and this time I really enjoyed it :-)

In reply to by Kson

Peter Adamson on 9 February 2015

Solution?

But didn't John Marenbon say precisely that, I mean, that Abelard got the scope fallacy point? I think the question is just whether that is good enough, especially if you also have the accidental necessity of the past (because if you add that, then you wind up with necessarily A, and if A implies B then that gives you necessarily B).

In reply to by Peter Adamson

Kson on 9 February 2015

"But didn't John Marenbon say

"But didn't John Marenbon say precisely that, I mean, that Abelard got the scope fallacy point? I think the question is just whether that is good enough."

I'm in total agreement with you here, and as I pointed out some modern philosophers think that this is indeed good enough.

"(because if you add that, then you wind up with necessarily A, and if A implies B then that gives you necessarily B)."

You would also need that A necessarily implies B, otherwise you would just get that B is true but not necessarily soo or to put it more formally:
□(A→B) → (□A→□B), where □ denotes necessity.

Here's the egg argument: If God knows that I will eat eggs tomorrow morning, it is necessary that I eat eggs tomorrow. Or to put it more formally:
□(GKA→A), GK□A therefore □A, where GK denotes "God knows", the error plainly seen is that the correct renditioning of God necessarily knows A is □GKA not GK□A wich means God knows that A is necessary. But if you substitute GK□A for □GKA you won't get the conclusion □A but just A. It's another case of the modal scope error.

To quote Torkel Franzen, logician-philosopher on this very topic:
"Indeed, posters like to ask whether, if God stands before them and tells them that they will eat a pizza tomorrow, they can still freely choose to eat a hot dog instead. The answer, logically impeccable, that they certainly can, but by assumption won't, naturally fails to satisfy."

In reply to by Kson

Peter Adamson on 10 February 2015

Necessary implication

Yes, good point - I was assuming that the if-then relation is a necessary one. Which, I think, is quite plausible in this case: if there is any inference from past truth to future event, then it is probably a necessary implication. I mean:

if: it is true at t1 that S is P at t2,
then: S is P at t2

Can we imagine someone thinking that the if-then relation is merely contingently true? (As opposed to thinking that the antecedent is contingently true.)

And then as we've agreed, the necessity of the past will give you the antecedent being not merely true but necessarily true, so the deterministic argument goes through.

In reply to by Peter Adamson

Kson on 12 February 2015

"if: it is true at t1 that S

"if: it is true at t1 that S is P at t2,
then: S is P at t2"

One reasonable solution to this is just to ban tense statements like " true at t1". But Abelard himself gave another perfectly reasonable solution to the above statement, namely that the proposition it expresses is first to be read as a future tense statement, then as a past tense statement, to give an example:
"If its true now that it will rain tomorrow, it will rain tomorrow" is to be read as "If it will rain tomorrow it's true now that it will rain tomorrow".

This reading solves a number of conceptual problems. First of all It does not invert the truth making relation, It makes sense to say: 'Snow is white' is true because snow is white, but not to say: snow is white because 'Snow is white' is true.
Secondly, it stops you from making any statement be about the past by just adding "it was true yesterday" at the beginning of the sentence, it seems unreasonable on the face of it to say that "it was true yesterday that 1+1=2" is a statement concerning the past when it's really a mathematical assertion masquerading as historical fact.

Wojciech on 8 February 2015

Abelard in Four Dimensions

Thanks for another great podcast. As for the damnandus issue, it's worth adding Prof. Marenbon's "Abelard in Four Dimensions" (University of Notre Dame Press, 2013) to the bibliography, esp. chapters 2 and 4.

Tim on 10 February 2015

There *May* Be a Sea-Battle Tomorrow

I was on a long drive through New Mexico today while listening to this episode when I passed a traffic sign warning me in large text that "Dust Storms May Exist." Maybe next episode, John and Peter can move on from determinism and God's omniscience to the necessary contingents of NMDOT signs.

In reply to by Tim

Peter Adamson on 10 February 2015

Dust storms may exist

So great! There is probably a whole genre of philosophical street signs, now that I come to think of it... sounds like a Twitter feed waiting to happen.

Was that a yolk? on 10 February 2015

Was that a yolk?

Did you say "ovo" instead of "although" at approximately 14:58?

In reply to by Was that a yolk?

Peter Adamson on 10 February 2015

Egg-stremely funny

Sadly no - for once I didn't mean the pun! Wish I'd thought of it though.

Thomas Mirus on 30 May 2015

When is someone going to say

When is someone going to say that God exists outside of time, and thus there is no issue of "foreknowledge" impacting our freedom? Since that is what I was taught in Catholic high school, it's interesting to see that it's not an insight which can be taken for granted; rather, it was hard-won from centuries of theological and philosophical debates.

In reply to by Thomas Mirus

Peter Adamson on 31 May 2015

Atemporal eternity

Well, I suppose a lot of people would credit this idea to Boethius; but perhaps it emerges clearly for the first time in 13th century scholasticism. So, coming up soon on the podcast.

In reply to by Peter Adamson

Alexander Johnson on 26 April 2019

Foreknowledge

Without the Christian background, I had the same thought.  If God exists outside time, then for him he knows i will eat eggs at t2.  When you add in free will, the path goes i eat eggs at t2, God knows at all t that i ate eggs at t2, therefore God knows at t1 that I eat eggs at t2.  This seems consistent with choice and "foreknowledge" because then causality isn't locked to the timeline.  This then implies that I already caused my entire timeline , beyond my experiencing the causation. 

One thing I always notice in these discussions (in general, not here), is that people get confused on the whole knowing the future thing.  Let's say I have a vision, and know that I will eat eggs tomorrow.  Now let's consider two timelines, timeline A in which I recieved this foreknowledge, and timeline B in which I did not recieve foreknowledge.  It seems to me that it would be a fallacy to believe that the foreknowledge would be of timeline B, that I had a vision of eating eggs in a timeline in which i did not know I was eating eggs as it wouldn't be foreknowledge, but rather alternate timeline knowledge.  Therefore, the foreknowledge would exist in timeline A, which then means that the thing I have foreknowledge of must already be compatable with the fact that I recieved the foreknowledge.  Also the very fact that we are discussing foreknowledge, implies that the timeline is already set, which then implies that "Everything that will happen has already happened in spacetime" 

or as Red Dwarf put it in episode 2:

LISTER: Hey, it hasn’t happened, has it? It has “will have going to have happened” happened, but it hasn’t actually “happened” happened yet, actually.

RIMMER: Poppycock! It will be happened; it shall be going to be happening; it will be was an event that could will have been taken place in the future. Simple as that.

In reply to by Alexander Johnson

Peter Adamson on 28 April 2019

Foreknowledge

Firstly, well done getting Red Dwarf onto the podcast website! Long overdue.

Secondly, I'm not sure I buy your solution, at least not entirely. I agree that by acting one can make it have always been the case that one would so act: thus by eating eggs today by free choice, I can make it true now that I am eating eggs but also this action could be the explanation for why it was already true yesterday that I would today eat eggs. I think the 14th century scholastics nailed this quite well. The part I don't buy in what you say is where we introduce foreknowledge: how can I both know that I will eat eggs tomorrow, while still being in a positio not to eat eggs if I decide not to? It seems obvious that I could simply choose, at the fateful hour, to do something other than what I "knew" (we should really say "believed") I would do. The problem here comes from introducing not just truths about the future - which can remain hidden from us - but knowledge about it. This shows that the problem of foreknowledge is not identical to the more general problem of sea battle style determinism, as is often supposed.

In reply to by Peter Adamson

Alexander Johnson on 7 May 2019

Subject Foreknowledge

First, let us consider the compatibility of free will with an non-active divine foreknowledge.  Let’s say there is a room being recorded.  At time t, one of the people in the room chooses eggs over bacon.  Now let’s say someone took that recording and time traveled to some moment before time t, and played it for me in an isolated room.  It would seem silly to suggest that the people had free will before, but no longer do now that someone in a small isolated room has seen it.  Therefore, it seems like free will should be compatible with divine foreknowledge, even at 100% certainty.

Now let’s consider the case of subject foreknowledge and free will.  Let’s say I have 100% certainty about the contingent actions of an individual, I also know what decisions I will make.  If a person is in a maze, and there are 2 paths, path A and path B.  Without action, the person freely decides between the two paths.  If I tell them they will take path A, and they are willing, they will do so, so that is uninteresting.  So, let’s consider the unwilling actor.  If I tell them they will take path A, they will take path B.  If I tell them they will take path B, they will take path A.  I also know what I am going to tell them (since I know my own actions).  So I still know what path they will take, and they still freely choose which path (even after I announce a side, they can still choose to take that side, even though I know they won’t).  So here, divine foreknowledge and free will are compatible, but subject foreknowledge is not.

Changing the scenario, path A and path B converge on point x.  I tell the subject they will arrive at x.  They think x is on path A, take path B, and end up at x anyways.  Here, divine and subject foreknowledge seem compatible, but free will not.

However, consider a 3rd scenario.  I tell the subject they will arrive at x.  X appears to lie on path A, however it does not.  X does lie on path B.  So I know the subject will freely choose to take path B to attempt to defy foreknowledge, only to reach x anyways.  Here, divine foreknowledge, subject foreknowledge, and free will all work together.

So this seems to imply that divine foreknowledge is compatible with free will, but that not all forms of subject foreknowledge are possible (aka, those by which you knowing it would cause it not to happen), and subject foreknowledge being possible is contingent on it happening with the contingent condition of me having the foreknowledge already accounted for.

-Alex "Otterlex" Johnson

PS:  this is one of my first attempts at a formal arguement for a philosophical position, i hope it is readable.

PPS:  @Emily, lol! that video is great.

In reply to by Alexander Johnson

Emily on 9 May 2019

Otterly Enjoyable

What if the subject (let's call her Coriander The Contrary Hen for argument's sake) by some metaphysical accident has foreknowledge of your plans and is aware that she is being observed, thus calling into play the Hawthorne effect.

Is it Coriander's behavior that's being manipulated or the philosopher's conclusions? Who, if any, of the participants has free will? In the words of the late, great Aretha Franklin, who's zoomin' who?!

PS - @Otterlex, I'm glad you enjoyed the video. I enjoyed your proof. Limmy is a hoot!

In reply to by Alexander Johnson

Peter Adamson on 10 May 2019

Future contingents

Thanks, that was all very clever and I enjoyed it a lot. I especially like your idea of recording an event and then time traveling into the past, so the first argument. However I wonder whether that thought experiment founders on difficulties and paradoxes with time travel: as we know from Back to the Future, there are puzzles that arise. In particular, by transporting information from the present back into the past you are effectively turning a past moment into a "future" moment (because it is after the present moment in your own timeline) - in fact I believe this point was made in the recent Avengers movie! Not, admittedly, an irrefutable philosophical source but I think in this case it is right.

In general it is important to separate the issues of past _truth_ from issues of past _knowledge_. Inevitably paradoxes arise if you inform someone that they will do such and such an action freely, since as you say they can always thwart the predication, having heard it. Therefore I don't think it is coherent to imagine giving someone certain knowledge of what they will do in the future; I reckon we agree on this right? (And while we're making pop culture references all this is the reason why the plot of Minority Report makes no sense.)

Daniel Dover on 31 July 2017

Why God must see the future

So, there was a comment in the podcast as to why a medieval theologian wouldn't just suppose that God couldn't see the future (the future would be "unknowable" in the same sense that anything that doesn't exist is "unknowable"), and that wasn't really answered.  But clearly, the bible is full of prophets who offer prophecy given to them by God, in which they predict future events that the Bible also argues came true or will come true ("If the Jews don't shape up and follow God right, then destruction will be visited upon them!").  Thus, it seems natural to argue that God can see the future, unless one wants to argue that God isn't really seeing the future so much as stating his intent ("If the Jews don't shape up and follow God right, then God will visit destruction upon them!"), but this has some problems in how His prophecies are formulated (the bible often describes these as vivid visions of the future, where God shows someone specific things that will occur).  Thus, a certain amount of "the future exists and can be known" is implicit in the bible.

In reply to by Daniel Dover

Peter Adamson on 31 July 2017

God's foreknowledge

Yes, I think that's right - Biblical passages would surely have played a big part here. Probably also there was just reluctance to admit that God cannot do something we can imagine him doing. If God's omnipotence means he can do anything possible, then to deny his foreknowledge would require you to show why it is impossible for him to have foreknowledge. Which is a pretty tough ask!

Did you see by the way that all of episode 276 is also about this issue?

Erik Holkers on 4 January 2024

not necessary until we measure it

I ran into a similarity regarding the sea battle proposition.
Or more precisely, the issue that if it is already true or false now, the future would become necessary.

To me this looks similar to what I read about quantum systems (I am not an expert on this, far from it):

Superposition is the ability of a quantum system to be in multiple states at the same time until it is measured.
Meaning, it doesn't become true or false until we humans measure it. If we stay away, it stays in its superposition.

Same goes for the sea battle ? It has to become tomorrow first and us being present to measure ?
So the proposition is neither true nor false but could stay in its super position ?

Peter Adamson on 5 January 2024

Superimposed sea battle

That's a clever comparison: I would take that idea to boil down to one of the two main solutions found in the tradition, namely that one should simply deny that the proposition "There will be a sea battle tomorrow" is true or false. Only once the sea battle occurs is there any truth of the matter, just as there is no truth of the matter about where the particle is until one measures.

One thing I'd be slightly nervous of with your comparison is that we don't want to suggest that the sea battle problem has anything to do with our knowledge of whether there will be a sea battle problem; it is just about whether there is in fact (objectively, not for us) a truth about the future event before it happens. Your comparison doesn't violate that because in the physics case, there is no objective fact about the location. But talking about "measurement" could be misleading here: at with the sea battle, at no stage does it matter whether anyone knows anything about the event, even once it has happened. So you can run the whole thing with the proposition "Two asteroids in outer space will collide tomorrow, with no humans ever finding out about it" and both the problem and possible solutions will still work the same way. 

In reply to by Peter Adamson

Erik Holkers on 5 January 2024

superimposed sea battle

Hi Peter,
Thanks for explaining that. I get it that my idea doesn't fit completely and I did not intend to make you nervous. I used the term measuring deliberately in order to convey the idea that without what we are doing by measuring the event isn't there at all, it is neither true nor false (yet again I am no quantum expert) . Trying to know the outcome influences the whole issue, without measuring there is no outcome at all, neither a battle nor no battle. Not simply that we don't know left or right, but it isn't there. So basically, if we don't interfere by measuring, we effectively follow what you are saying, deny that the proposition "There will be a sea battle tomorrow" is true or false.   
 

In reply to by Erik Holkers

Peter Adamson on 5 January 2024

Measuring sea battles

I guess what I was trying to say is that "measuring" is not really the right way to think about it. The point is that the event happens, and if it is contingent then it is open (neither true nor false) whether it will happen until it does happen. Of course once it happens, then there is a truth about its happening, regardless whether anyone knows it happens. So your analogy works, but the analogy should be between "measuring position" and "an event occurring, whether or not anyone knows about it"; not between "measuring position" and "measuring/knowing about an event." See what I mean?

In reply to by Peter Adamson

Erik Holkers on 5 January 2024

Measuring sea battles

Yes, thanks again for the explanation.
And thanks for the marvellous podcast. 

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Note: this transcription was produced by automatic voice recognition software. It has been corrected by hand, but may still contain errors. We are very grateful to Tim Wittenborg for his production of the automated transcripts and for the efforts of a team of volunteer listeners who corrected the texts.

Peter Adamson: Maybe first you can just remind us who Peter Abelard was. 

John Marenbon: Right. Abelard is probably the most important and certainly the most controversial philosopher of the 12th century. He was born in 1079 and his work really spans the first four decades of the 12th century. Up until about 1120, he's working mainly on logic. After that, he interested himself increasingly in theology, and he writes a variety of theological works and also one work was very striking in its form because it consists of a dialogue involving a philosopher. So, something like a pagan philosopher who talks first to a Jew and then to a Christian. 

Peter Adamson: But we're not going to be talking about that. 

John Marenbon: That's true, yes. 

Peter Adamson: Actually, I've already mentioned that anyway. What we are going to be talking about is freedom and ideas like contingency and necessity in Peter Abelard. This is something I've already tackled several times on the podcast and pretty recently, in fact, in the context of Latin medieval philosophy, because I talked about Eriugena’s views on predestination and when I was introducing Anselm, I talked about his views on freedom and what freedom of the will would consist in. Now, Abelard's not responding directly to Eriugena and Anselm, that's right? 

John Marenbon: That's right, yes. Abelard's discussion comes out of looking at Aristotle's On Interpretation, chapter nine of that, Boethius's commentary on the Aristotle, and then also Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, book five, where Boethius himself is looking back at least in part to that Aristotelian logical tradition. 

Peter Adamson: And presumably he knows the Aristotle in Boethius's Latin translation as well. 

John Marenbon: Exactly, yes. 

Peter Adamson: And the reason why this comes up in this context is that in the famous ninth chapter of On Interpretation, Aristotle presents an argument for determinism, which he then refutes. And down to today, there's not a lot of agreement about what exactly the deterministic argument is, nor is there agreement about what the solution is. Can you sketch what the basic problem is, just to remind people, even though I have looked at this before? 

John Marenbon: Right, so the background problem, Aristotle's problem, is just that if we say there's going to be a sea battle, there'll be a sea battle tomorrow, and if we consider that every proposition is either false or true, so it seems that we've got to say, well, that's either false or true. We don't know which it is, but supposing it's true, then there's going to be a sea battle tomorrow, supposing it's false, there isn't. So it seems that just by thinking of logic, we've established that there's no contingency with regard to whether or not that sea battle takes place. 

Peter Adamson: Because if it's already true now, then it's too late to do anything about it as it were. 

John Marenbon: Exactly, yes. Of course, one way out of that, and some people think that that was the way Aristotle took, and some people deny it, is just to deny the principle of bivalence, that is to say deny that the proposition does have to be false or true, and say that with regard to future contingent propositions, they're neither. 

Peter Adamson: But I guess that solution is off the table if you have divine omniscience, right? 

John Marenbon: Exactly. So the problem which really concerns Abelard, and which concerned Boethius, especially in the Consolation of Philosophy, exactly is what happens when you bring in a God who knows all things. 

Peter Adamson: Why not just say that God doesn't know the future, though? I mean, why couldn't he know all the things that there are to know, which means all the past things and all the present things, and maybe the future things that are necessary, like one plus one will still equal two tomorrow? 

John Marenbon: It's difficult to answer that in that I don't think anybody took the view of saying that simply future contingents aren't among the things which are there to be known. It was always considered that it would detract from God's omniscience. And I think there's a certain sort of common sense in that. It does seem, if some being knows all that's going to happen in the future, this being seems obviously to know more than a being who doesn't. 

Peter Adamson: Right. So just the fact that there could be truths to know is already going to give them a big push in the direction of saying that God knows them. 

John Marenbon: Yeah. 

Peter Adamson: Okay. And how does Abelard then set up the problem? Is that basically his way into it? 

John Marenbon: Yeah. So that's basically his way into it. If we put his way of stating it so that we can then see how he gets out of it. I suppose it's quite important that in his way of stating it, he rather forgets the temporal elements. So we're in fact talking about God's knowledge of the future. But his way of stating the problem is to say that if God, or indeed if anybody knows a proposition, then that proposition is true because you can only know what is true in virtue of the meaning of know. This is surely something which is necessarily the case because we're not just talking about an accident. We're talking about what something must be in order to be known. So we can say that necessarily if God knows some proposition P, then P is true. And then the problem is put in terms of, well, doesn't that mean therefore that P is necessary? 

Peter Adamson: Right. So this wouldn't only apply to future facts. So it would also mean if God knows that there was a sea battle yesterday, then necessarily there was a sea battle yesterday as well. 

John Marenbon: That's right. But of course that doesn't seem to be such a problem because although there's a certain sense in which we want to say that yesterday's sea battle wasn't necessary, there's also a certain sense from now in which it is necessary and there's nothing we can do about it. And one could say the same about the present too. But when you consider this with regard to the future, it seems to be a problem because we want to say now it's open whether or not the sea battle is going to take place.

Peter Adamson: When you frame the argument this way, how much work is being done by the fact that we're talking about knowledge? Imagine that I say I now have a true belief, but not knowledge, that there will be a sea battle tomorrow. There's evidence concerning it, and I've checked with the generals and the admirals and they all have assured me that there will be a sea battle. So I believe now truly that there will be a sea battle tomorrow. Would that not raise the same problems? Because it's true now.

John Marenbon: Yeah. It would raise the same problems if we can take it that it's true. So a lot of accounts of knowledge are that it's true belief plus something or other. And the important thing I think is setting up this problem is the truth of it. However, the way, when you're saying, well, the admirals have assured me, it seems you're not talking about a true belief, but simply about a belief for which we have a very great deal of evidence. So it's highly probable that it will turn out to be true. And of course there's no problem about that. 

Peter Adamson: Well, what I was imagining was a case where it's a justified belief. And in addition, it happens to be true. And although I can't be sure that it's true, in fact, it is true. What I was wondering, in other words, is whether the necessity is supposed to flow from the thought that anything I know must be incapable of being otherwise because that's what knowledge is like. And that wouldn't be true of true belief. 

John Marenbon: Well, yeah, yes. Perhaps casting that in terms of true belief in that way is a first step on the way to the, in a way rather simple, but also as it turns out, an adequate solution that Abelard proposes. Because what Abelard has, which Boethius doesn't have, is a notion of operating on propositions. So if we take a complex proposition such as, if it's day, it's light, and then we think about negating it, Boethius, it seemed, could only think of negating each or both of its parts. So, if it's not day, it's light, or if it's day, it's not light, or if it's not day, it's not light. But what Abelard realizes is that you can do something which is different, which you can say that the whole of that isn't true. That's to say this doesn't follow from that. Once you start to think in that way, you can see that in this problem, there's a distinction between the true proposition that necessarily, the whole of what follows is necessary, if someone knows P, then P, and we accept that. And the distinction between that and putting the necessity operator before P. So it doesn't follow from that, that necessarily P. 

Peter Adamson: So it's like the difference between saying necessarily colon, if it's now true that there will be a sea battle tomorrow, then there will be a sea battle tomorrow, and on the other hand, saying if it's now true that there will be a sea battle tomorrow, then necessarily there will be a sea battle tomorrow. 

John Marenbon: Exactly, yes. 

Peter Adamson: It’s where you put the necessity, whether it's applying to the whole inference or the actual event of the sea battle. And then Abelard applies this to get out of the deterministic argument, so how exactly does that work? 

John Marenbon: Well, so, I mean, his point would be that just because God knows everything, including whether there'll be a sea battle tomorrow or not, and there is a connection of necessity between God's knowing things and their happening, this doesn't mean that they happen necessarily. 

Peter Adamson: It's just necessary that if he knows them, then they happen. 

John Marenbon: Yeah, just as it's necessary that if I know something, it will happen, or it happens. The thing is, though, I can't know future contingents. 

Peter Adamson: Whereas God can. 

John Marenbon: Whereas God can. But Abelard considers that he's solved the problem, but he's only really solved, or thinks he's solved the problem, because he's, as I said at the beginning, removed the temporal element from it. So I think one can see it commonsensically, that it's not nearly so worrying that somebody should know what's happening now. And we don't feel there's a problem about that moving contingency. Whereas there does seem really to be a problem about somebody knowing what's happening in the future, supposing that's contingent, that that might or might not happen. Because it seems, if we're insisting that God now knows what's going to happen in the future and that that's contingent in the future, then it seems that something in the future must have the power to make what God supposedly knows now into not knowledge, but false belief. Otherwise how could it be contingent?

Peter Adamson: So what you're saying is, if, let's change the example, because I can't really stage sea battles, I don't know about you, but I do have the power to have eggs for breakfast tomorrow morning. Taking that example, I guess what you're saying is something like this. Given that tomorrow morning it will be up to me whether or not I have eggs, it would be in my power tomorrow morning retroactively to make God have had a false belief today about whether I would have eggs or not. 

John Marenbon: Exactly. Yes. 

Peter Adamson: That's really bad. 

John Marenbon: Yes. And that's really bad. And if you want to see why Abelard’s analysis won't get round that, then what you need to consider is that, let's consider God's belief about your eggs. And it's not just a matter that God now has a belief about how many eggs you're going to have tomorrow morning. God had that belief yesterday, in fact, he had it for all eternity. There's a sense in which that belief is necessary, not necessary in a straightforward sense, but as people said, accidentally necessary because it's in the past. God has come to that belief. And so it's not just a belief, it's knowledge. So God has that knowledge, and that's because the past is necessary. So what we have is both that necessarily if God knows P, then P, but also we've got that necessarily God knows P with the necessity of the past. And most people would admit that you can, in this case, as it were, transfer necessity, so that you can then validly deduce necessarily P. 

Peter Adamson: Okay, so thinking about that in a slightly less technical way, we could say that if God already knew yesterday and indeed from eternity that I'll have eggs tomorrow for breakfast, then although it's not too late for me to do anything about having eggs tomorrow for breakfast, it is too late for me to stop God from knowing that I'll have eggs tomorrow for breakfast. And if I can't stop him from knowing that, then I can't do otherwise with respect to having the eggs. Is that basically the problem? 

John Marenbon: Yeah, exactly. So we need its knowledge and we need that it’s in the past so you can't change it.

Peter Adamson: Because he can't have been wrong and it's past. 

John Marenbon: So in fact, after all, and despite Abelard's helpful bit of logic, you've got to have those six eggs or whatever.

Peter Adamson: Oh no, I'm glad it's just you and not God telling me that. And of course, that's good in a sense because future medieval philosophers are going to keep discussing this, so this leaves room for them to say something interesting about it. 

John Marenbon: Exactly. Yes. And I mean, they do see that Abelard didn't succeed in dealing with the problem. And they come up with all sorts of clever ways of trying to deal with it, though whether any of them are successful or not, it's hard to say. But I'd quite like to say something about another aspect of the problem of freedom where Abelard might be more successful. And he's very successful in formulating an interesting problem. And I think that he proposes an interesting solution to it. This is a problem about freedom which comes from a somewhat different direction, not just from thinking about the logic of propositions that are true or false and then putting in God's knowledge, but thinking about the nature of God and his ways of acting. Because it's agreed among all medieval Christians that God is omnipotent and also that he's completely benevolent. So he always wants to do the best thing. But then Abelard says, and this is something which he becomes very interested in in the middle of his career, when he's moved away from just doing logic, and so if you like, moved on from the discussion which we were looking at before. So let's consider God and how he acts. Well, at every juncture, he has to do whatever's best. But if he has to do whatever's best, then he has no alternative choices. 

Peter Adamson: Because he knows what's best, too. 

John Marenbon: Exactly, he knows what's best. He can't get it wrong. And there's also no chance of him saying, well, I'd like to do this, but I can't because God's omnipotent. 

Peter Adamson: Oh, right. Okay. He's stuck. 

John Marenbon: And God cannot do other than he does. 

Peter Adamson: And so actually, we possess more freedom than he does. Actually, he doesn't possess any freedom at all. Because he has to do exactly the best thing at every moment throughout eternity.

John Marenbon: Yes, I mean, that's right. And what you just said, I think, is indeed what Abelard will come down to saying in the end. But you might think that that's not the case. And you might think that because God is just acting in necessity, and we're used to thinking when we have a Christian thinker that God in some way is arranging all things. So if God acts of necessity, and God is omnipotent, then surely there's going to be no room for us to act. 

Peter Adamson: Oh, so it's even worse. So we're not free either. 

John Marenbon: That could be the problem. And what's interesting is Abelard puts that to himself in the form of a particular objection to the view that he's trying to propound. And he recognizes that this view that God cannot do other than he does is a very strange view. And other thinkers haven't held it in the past. And he knows he's going to be criticized for it, as indeed he was. But nonetheless, he wants to put it forward. But he does put forward this objection to it. He's talking about somebody who, as a matter of fact, is going to be damned, because he's led an evil life and he deserves to be damned. So take this person who's going to be damned. He calls it this damnandus. Christian doctrine requires nonetheless that we say that it's possible for him to be saved by God. Because if he's going to be saved, it's going to be by God. And if we were to deny that it was possible for him to be saved, then we'd be saying that whatever he did, he couldn't be saved. And that would certainly be against Christian doctrine. We know as a matter of fact he's not going to do the right things, and so he's not going to be saved, but he might do them. And so if it's a case that it's possible he'll be saved by God, surely it's the case that it's possible that God will save him. Because for him to be saved by God means the same as for God to save him. And if it's possible for God to save him, but in fact God isn't going to save him, then we've shown that God can do what he doesn't do. So Abelard found a very good argument against his own position. However, Abelard denies that consequence, and he denies the consequence by denying that in fact it's possible for him to be saved by God means the same as it's possible for God to save him. He agrees that if we just take the simple statement, God saves him, he is saved by God, they have exactly the same meaning, they're just two forms of words saying the same thing. But when you talk about possibility, that's not the case. Because he says that when we're talking about that it's possible for him to be saved by God, we're referring possibility to him and to his capacities. And there Abelard would say, as Christian doctrine demands, that of course it's possible for him to be saved by God because it's possible for any human being to be saved by God. That possibility remains until the moment of their death and damnation. But when we're talking about whether it's possible for God to save him, then it's different because we're talking about what's possible for God. And given that in fact he has done evil and it would be unjust to save him, it's not possible for God to save him. 

Peter Adamson: Because he'd have to do something worse. 

John Marenbon: He'd have to do something which was wrong, something unjust, which first of all would be against God's nature and secondly wouldn't be the best action that he could take. The best action in this case is to do what's just and damn the man. 

Peter Adamson: Let me ask you a more basic question about Abelard's whole position here. Why not say that when God's making a decision like this, for example whether to damn the sinner or not, he evaluates the situation, he sees what's best to do, and then he decides freely to do the best thing. In other words, why not say that his knowledge of what's best doesn't force him to do what's best. It just gives him a reason to do what's best, and then he acts on that reason. Even though he'd have the possibility of not acting on that reason. 

John Marenbon: Because Abelard doesn't believe that he does have the ability of not acting on that reason, because not acting on that reason would mean that he wasn't doing the best thing. 

Peter Adamson: But that seems kind of circular. So what I'm saying is that, I mean you can't prove that God has no ability not to do the best thing just by insisting that he must do the best thing. 

John Marenbon: If God is omniscient, omnipotent and entirely good…

Peter Adamson: So it actually flows from his nature. 

John Marenbon: It flows from his nature. Of course, an obvious objection is you might say yes, but supposing there are two things which are good for him to do. 

Peter Adamson: Oh right, okay, that’s even better.

John Marenbon: So then there must be some cases where, but no, Abelard says there couldn't be a case like that. Because supposing there were, then there'd be no reason why God should do one rather than the other. And so God would be acting without reason. And the universe couldn't be like that. It could never be. 

Peter Adamson: So just as God can't do something unjust or wrong, he can't do anything arbitrary either. 

John Marenbon: Exactly. 

Peter Adamson: So there must always be a best thing for him to do and he must do it. 

John Marenbon: One best thing. 

Peter Adamson: Just by his very nature as an all-powerful, all-good, all-knowing deity. I'm guessing that this position was not received with universal acclaim among later philosophers. 

John Marenbon: I mean, it was received with universal disdain. So what happened was there's actually an interesting discussion by Hugh of St. Victor. So a thinker of a very different cast, but quite an intelligent man. Quite near the time where he goes through, he knows the argument, probably not from any source that actually survives now, but he knows in some detail and he discusses it quite well. But then it gets taken up by Peter the Lombard in his sentences, and this is a book which comes to be enormously influential and is used in all the theology faculties of the universities. Peter the Lombard takes up a bit of the argument in a somewhat garbled version and rejects it out of hand. Everybody else knows the argument through Peter the Lombard. Peter the Lombard doesn't mention Abelard's name. He clearly has Abelard in mind. So people know this argument as a position which the Lombard rejects, and they also reject it. Sometimes they devise more elaborate arguments than the Lombard himself had. The one person who seems perhaps to have some inkling that it's by Abelard is Aquinas, who in I think it's his questions on power, refers to this position as having been taken by a certain Peter Amalario, which, it seems, there's some sort of text this has come through to him. But anyway, it's something which is universally rejected, until the one thinker who in some ways follows it, but thinks he's rejecting it, is the first significant thinker who restores the parentage of the argument to Abelard, and that's Leibniz. Leibniz in the end didn't actually read Abelard's Theologia, Theologia Scholarium or Theologia Christiana in which this argument is put. He read an abbreviation of it. He discusses it quite fully, and he rejects it, and he suggests that Abelard's view is completely different from his own, but actually Leibniz finds himself in much the same sort of position because he has the same sort of view about God as always having to choose the best. So although Leibniz might say that when Abelard puts forward this argument he's just playing with words, actually it's something which is rather central to Leibniz's own thought and a difficulty for Leibniz himself.