David P. Hunt

This paper seeks to rehabilitate St. Augustine’s widely dismissed response to the alleged incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and free will. This requires taking a fresh look at his analysis in On Free Choice of the Will, and arguing its relevance to the current debate. Along the way, mistaken interpretations of Augustine are rebutted, his real solution is developed and defended, a reason for his not anticipating Boethius’s a temporalist solution is suggested, a favorable comparison with Ockham is made, rival solutions are rejected, and the aporetic nature of the problem is explained.

This essay by David Hunt considers the problem of theological fatalism, which appears to threaten either divine foreknowledge or human freedom, and should instead be treated as an “aporetic problem”—that is, as generating a puzzle. Zeno’s paradoxes of motion, for example, are rarely understood as posing a genuine threat to the possibility of motion; the real problem they pose is how best to rethink our assumptions or sharpen our conceptual tools so we don’t fall prey to the argument. There are good reasons for taking a similar approach to theological fatalism. The essay reviews some of these reasons and identifies Augustine as an early proponent of this approach. It then shows the implications of this approach for some important responses to the argument, including open theism, Boethianism, and Ockhamism, and concludes by arguing that an Augustinian/Frankfurtian denial of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP) provides the most satisfying resolution of the _aporia_.

The principle that one cannot deliberate over what one already knows is going to happen, when suitably qualified, has seemed to many philosophers to be about as secure a truth as one is likely to find in this life. Fortunately, it poses little restriction on human deliberation, since the conditions which would trigger its prohibition seldom arise for us: our knowledge of the future is intermittent at best, and those things of which we do have advance knowledge are not the sorts of things over which we would deliberate in any case. But matters appear to stand otherwise with an all-knowing agent such as God is traditionally conceived to be; for what an omniprescient deity ‘already knows is going to happen’ is everything that is going to happen; and if He cannot deliberate over such things, there is nothing over which He can deliberate.

I distinguish between a _metaphysical_ problem generated by the argument for theological fatalism, and a _theological_ problem posed by the argument. Some responses to the argument, including ones associated with Boethius, Aquinas and Ockham, address only the theological problem. Even if such responses succeed in showing that God's foreknowledge doesn't threaten human freedom, they fail to take the full measure of the argument for theological fatalism, since the metaphysical problem remains to be solved.

The paper that follows continues a discussion with Tomis Kapitan in the pages of this journal over the compatibility of divine agency with divine foreknowledge. I had earlier argued against two premises in Kapitan's case for omniscient impotence: (i) that intentionally A-ing presupposes prior acquisition of the intention to A, and (ii) that acquiring the intention to A presupposes prior ignorance whether one will A. In response to my criticisms, Kapitan has recently offered new defences for these two premises. I show in reply why neither defence succeeds in rehabilitating the case against omniscient agency. (Note that the very first sentence of the published version has a misprint: instead of "To claim that divine foreknowledge is inconsistent with divine agency has been pressed with increasing frequency of late . . .", it should read, "_The_ claim . . ."!)

This study consists of a series of steps toward the development of a general theory of differences in ontological kind. The first part defines the notion of a "logical individual" and argues for its role as the basic ontological unit. I also take issue with those who hold that 'exist' is equivocal, as well as with those who claim that category-mistakes lack a truth-value. This part concludes with the "existence criterion", according to which a thing exists just in case it is a logical individual; examples of things which satisfy and things which fail to satisfy this criterion are discussed. ;The second part covers a number of topics related to the classification of things into kinds. Problems involved in such classification are considered, including a discussion of whether, and on what grounds, certain attributes may be better qualified to define kinds than are others. The idea of ontological kinds is also adumbrated in an intuitive fashion, and a "formalist" strategy for ontological kinds, under which no attribute is treated as more ontologically puissant than any other, is considered and discarded. ;In the last part the ideal of substance is employed as a way of mediating between individuals, on the one hand, and privileged kinds, on the other. Following an examination of substance in Aristotle, six senses of substance are distinguished, of which two are found to hold particular promise for the development of a theory of ontological kinds. Discussion of these two notions of substance includes critiques of "stuff" metaphysics as well as "Aristotelian essentialism". The latter is found to depend on an unwarranted assumption that certain individuals are not only referentially, pragmatically, or psychologically prior to others, but also ontologically privileged. Refutation of this assumption leads to a rehabilitation of Aristotle's notion of "prime matter", but also to a picture of substance closer to Descartes' than to Aristotle's. The arguments against Aristotelian substance finally suggest an account of ontological kinds in terms of the possibility or impossibility of "fusion"--the coinstantiation by two individuals of a single individual concept