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Ancient philosophy a new history of western philosophy volume 1 (new history of western philosophy) ( PDFDrive ) 279

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SOUL AND MIND No doubt Augustine can respond by making distinctions between diVerent kinds of wanting: but in the present context it would not be proWtable to follow further his analysis of volition The part of the de Libero Arbitrio most relevant to the issue of determinism and freedom is his consideration of the foreknowledge of God Augustine believed that at any moment God foreknew all future events He can then construct the following argument against the possibility of voluntary sin (1) God foreknew that Adam was going to sin (2) If God foreknew that Adam was going to sin, necessarily Adam was going to sin (3) If Adam was necessarily going to sin, then Adam sinned necessarily (4) If Adam sinned necessarily, Adam did not sin of his own free will (5) Adam did not sin of his own free will The line of argument here is clearly the Christian heir to the discussion of the sea-battle in Aristotle and the Master Argument of Diodorus: in each case, in diVerent ways, the necessity of a past state or event is used as a starting point from which to derive the necessity of a future event In the Greeks the starting premiss is logical, here it is theological Augustine proposes to disarm the argument by the distinction between certainty, on the one hand, and natural causation or compulsion, on the other I can know something without causing it (as when I know it because I remember it) I can be certain that someone is about to something without in any way compelling him to it Accordingly, we can distinguish the senses of ‘necessity’ in the argument above In the second premiss, and the antecedent of the third premiss ‘necessarily’ must be taken as ‘certainly’ In the fourth premiss and the consequent of the third premiss ‘necessarily’ must be taken as ‘under compulsion’ Because of the resulting equivocation in the third premiss, the argument fails Augustine’s response does not wholly convince: there is surely no exact analogy between conjectural human knowledge of the future and omnitemporal divine omniscience The diYculties that his treatment leaves unsolved were taken up by many future generations of Christian theologians; but his discussion can Wttingly be taken as representative of the Wnal stage of reXection on determinism in antiquity 256

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