[Avodah] "God who knows the future"

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R' David Riceman wrote:

> I want to critique RAM's (and possibly also RMB's) position more
> generally.  Naively, when I say "I have free will", I mean that I
> could have written either "say" or "write" in that previous
> sentence, and that it is I who determine which of those happens.
> When we say that ten years ago someone could predict which of
> those would happen, we need to redefine "free will".
>
> I know of two options.  One is Spinoza's - - my will is free
> because I intended to write "say".  The other is from the Kuzari
> (5:20): no discernible causal chain induced me to write "say"
> (see Heshek Shlomoh al HaKuzari p. 520 s.v. "b'li hechreichi").
> The problem with the first solution (which I think is RAM's) is
> that God created my intention.  The problem with the second is
> that it redefines free will beyond recognition - - not that
> either thing can happen, but that I don't understand why what
> happened was inevitable.

It seems to me that these two paragraphs concern two unrelated questions. The first paragraph is about whether or not HaShem's knowledge of [what we perceive as] the future robs us of a truly free ability to choose for ourselves what we will do in that future. The second seems to be about determinism, and whether we can truly make any choices at all, or whether our choices are predetermined by the sum total of our past.

Interesting comparison -- both about causality, but one is whether our present is caused by the future, and the other about whether our present is caused by the past.

My understanding is that this thread is about the former, and I plan to submit another post about it soon. Regarding the latter, I'd suggest referring to the archives, in a thread titled "Free Will vs. Physics" from Volume 25, about thre years ago.

Akiva Miller

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