GENIUS FORUMS

It is widely recognised that the concept of omnipotence suffers from philosophical problems, as are exemplified in the following two questions:
"Can an omnipotent being create a rock which is too heavy for that being to lift?"
"Can an omnipotent being create a square circle?"

I have for a while now been considering the concept of omniscience to see whether it likewise suffers from any philosophical problems. I have identified what to me is an intriguing puzzle, and one that I have a provisional answer to. In this thread-opener I present my reasonings to this forum, in the hope that our combined efforts will provide a more definitive answer. I'll present my thoughts in the order in which they occurred to me, which, thankfully, is probably the most logical manner in which to present them anyway.

Omniscience as I am considering it is "the complete knowledge of absolutely everything". What I initially found most interesting about omniscience is its applicability to future events. Knowledge of future events is a subset of the knowledge of absolutely everything, so an omniscient being must necessarily know the future. What's interesting to note then is that omniscience implies determinism: if the future is known in advance, then it is predetermined. This, in turn, implies that free will is an illusion - a will whose choices are predetermined is fixed, and not free.

So far so good. Initial finding: if omniscience exists, then the universe is deterministic and free will is an illusion.

Then it occurred to me to consider the future actions of the omniscient being (OB) itself. The thought occurred to me: if the OB in its omniscience sees its future path, then isn't it capable of deliberately making different choices so as to invalidate its "omniscient" knowledge of its future actions? To take an example: the OB sees in its omniscience that in five minutes time it will stumble on an obstacle and drop the pot of food that it is carrying: given this foreknowledge, when that future actually arrives, the OB chooses to avoid the obstacle, hence invalidating its formerly prescient foreknowledge.

The essential problem, in other words, is that knowledge of the future has the potential to change that future.

So at this point I seemed to have reversed my initial finding: omniscience no longer seems to imply determinism because the will of the OB seems to still be able to operate freely by invalidating its "omniscient" knowledge through new decisions.

At this point, though, I felt that my model was incomplete and overly simplistic. I decided to consider what happens when the OB gains knowledge of the future event (tripping over an obstacle) and decides to use that information to change the future (to avoid the obstacle). What happens is that the future changes, and again, the OB in its omniscience sees that new future. Based on its new knowledge, the OB is again free to make new decisions, which potentially changes the future, which new future it again sees in its omniscience, which new future it is again free to make new decisions regarding, which again changes the future, etc.

At this point it seems that the OB is caught in a loop of see-future-change-future-see-future-change-future-etc. It seems that in some sense this loop might be infinite, except for the necessity that eventually, the future becomes the present, and hence that the loop ultimately terminates, and that there necessarily exists fixed data (the former future now occurring as the present) which the OB in its omniscience could (should) have known.

The situation seems, to me, to be difficult to resolve. On the one hand we have the (possibly infinite) feedback loop that prevents the ultimate future from ever being known to the OB; on the other hand we have the fact that only one future actually occurs, and hence that the future would seem to have been knowable to the OB in advance. Is this a contradiction; a logical problem with omniscience? How might it be resolved?

The idea that I had for exploring a possible resolution is to postulate the existence of an objective perspective beyond the OB. This, of course, nullifies the OB's omniscience, because it involves a body of (objective) knowledge to which the OB - at least for now - has no access, but I'd like to run with it for a while to see where it gets us. In other words, let's consider that above the OB is a super-omniscient being (SOB), that acts in no way at all - and that hence does not affect the future in any way - but that sees all of the future decisions and actions of the OB.

The SOB, then, sees the complete, objective future, from the very beginning, including all iterations of the feedback loop. It sees the initial future that the OB sees; it sees the changes to the future that this causes through the OB's new knowledge and through the OB's decisions based on that knowledge; it sees the next set of changes to the future that the OB's new knowledge causes; on and on; and finally, it sees the ultimate termination of the feedback loop. It sees, in other words, everything, and I can now but for one thing return to the conclusion that I originally came to: that omniscience implies determinism. That one thing that prevents such a return conclusion is the resolution of the problem that if the SOB exists with knowledge beyond that of the OB, then the OB is not, after all, omniscient. So, let me now present the really big question (RBQ): is it possible for the OB to simultaneously possess the relevant property of the SOB - objective foreknowledge of its own (the OB's) actions, including the feedback loop and the termination of the feedback loop?

If the answer to this question is "yes", then it seems to me that we return to where we started: that omniscience grants the OB complete knowledge of its future actions, and hence that omniscience implies determinism. If the answer is "no", then it seems that omniscience, as for omnipotence, suffers from a philosophical problem: it does not include total foreknowledge of the omniscient being's future actions.

My provisional answer to the RBQ is "no". My reasoning is that it is impossible for the subjective consciousness of the OB to possess unchanging objective knowledge, because any "objective" knowledge that it becomes aware of again has the potential to change the OB's future course: the feedback loop seems to be inescapable for a subjective, omniscient and acting being. Perhaps, though, other people can imagine transcendent possibilities. I'm very interested to know of any.

That, dear reader, is as far as I have thus reasoned on the matter. I seek your assistance in critiquing my analysis, methodology, and thoughts, and in providing your reasoned answer to the RBQ.

You paint an interesting set of arguments, but the whole issue is meaningless, owing to the fact that omniscience, in the sense you mean, is inherently impossible to begin with. To know, in an empirical sense, is to approximate, and so right away the possibility of omniscience goes out the window.

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Thank you, David, for responding - I had almost come to the conclusion that no one would care to engage in this thread.

I suppose that omniscience in the sense that I'm painting it is "magical" from the perspective of our current scientific understanding of the way that the universe works. It's entirely debatable whether or not omniscience is, in fact possible (or at least, meaningful), and that, partly, is one of the reasons that I am even thinking about it at all.