The “Foreknowledge Isn’t Causal” Canard

A frequent reply to foreknowledge / future contingency incompatibility arguments is that something must be wrong with all such arguments simply because “foreknowledge isn’t causal” and so cannot constrain our freedom. Thus, William Lane Craig writes:

“No matter how ingenious the argument, fatalism [i.e., the incompatibilist’s argument] must be wrong. For it posits a constraint upon human freedom which is altogether unintelligible. … How can my action be constrained and my power limited merely by the truth of a future-tense statement about it … ?” (Craig, Systematic Philosophical Theology, vol. 2, p. 237)

But this is a straw man, for Craig’s insertion of the world “merely” is amiss. The incompatibilist’s contention is not that God’s foreknowledge, or the truth thereof, somehow causes us to do what we do by constraining our actions all by itself. No, the contention is that God’s having always foreknown that S will do A is logically incompatible with S’s not doing A and thus with S’s freedom to do otherwise than A. (Yes, I know there is an Ockhamist strategy for getting around this implication, but that’s tangential to Craig’s point and to the point I’m making here. The Ockhamist aka “preventable futurist” strategy fails, BTW.)

In the words of Jonathan Edwards, the incompatibilist’s contention is that infallible foreknowledge “proves” [i.e., entails] “the [causal] necessity of the event foreknown” even if it is not “the thing which causes the necessity” (Edwards, Freedom of the Will, II.12).

In short, the “foreknowledge isn’t causal” response presupposes, wrongly, that the incompatibilist’s position is that infallible foreknowledge has both (a) no causal implications and yet (b) is casually constraining. That combination, Craig correctly holds, is “unintelligible.” But in fact the incompatibilist is not committed to (a) and should, if thinking clearly, reject (a). Following Edwards, the incompatibilist should say that infallible foreknowledge does have causal implications and that it is these implications, not foreknowledge or foretruth per se, that are casually constraining.

For a parallel example, suppose a person were to argue that “God can make 2+2=17” because, after all, “logic isn’t causal” and so cannot constrain what God can do. This is a stupid position for two reasons. First, that logic isn’t per se causal—as is obvious—does not mean that logic can’t have causal implications. It does. No one, not even God, can make a square circle. Logical impossibilities are not coherent possibilities and so are not coherent causal possibilities. Second, if God could actualize logical impossibilities, then all bets are off. Theology, metaphysics, science, and all human theorizing lose any possible foundation because we’re in a realm now where, literally, anything goes. A God who can make a square circle can be both loving and not loving, existent and non-existent. If 2+2=4 today, well, it might not tomorrow. Or even right now 2+2=4 and 2+2=17 could both be true … and not true. The end result of supposing that logic can have no causal implications because “logic isn’t causal” is pure modal chaos. So, we should all accept that logic can have causal implications and be causally constraining. That being so, there is no basis for supposing, as the “foreknowledge isn’t causal” crowd does, that infallible foreknowledge can’t have causal implications and be causally constraining despite not being per se causal.

In sum, we can counter “foreknowledge isn’t causal” with “logic isn’t causal.” Neither is per se causal. Neither knowledge nor logic make things happen all by themselves. But logic is obviously casually constraining since no one, not even God, can actualize a contradiction. There is no reason, therefore, why foreknowledge can’t be causally constraining. Something can causally constrain with itself being causal or doing any causing.