Omniprescient Agency

Abstract

The principle that(P1) One cannot deliberate over what one already (prior to deliberating) 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, (P1) 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 (e.g. that the sun will rise tomorrow) 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’ iseverythingthat is going to happen; and if He cannot deliberate over such things, there is nothing over which He can deliberate.