Ignorance: (On the Wider Implications of Deficient Knowledge)

Chapter 6 Obstacles to Predictive Foreknowledge

91 Issues of Temporalized Knowledge The philosophical theologians of the middle ages, who loved puzzles, were wont to exercise their ingenuity regarding this question: “If he is omniscient, does God know what is happening now?” And they inclined to answer this question with the response, “yes and no.” Clearly an unrestrictedly omniscient God will know everything that happens in the world. And this means that he knows whatever is happening concurrently with the calendar’s reading 13 January 2001 and the clock’s reading 3:15 p.m. But this is B-series knowledge in McTaggart ’s terminology—knowledge of events in the manner of before/ concurrent/after. However, as a being who does not occupy a place within the manifold of space and time—who, being extra-mundane, lacks the world-internal perspective required for indexicals like here and now—God cannot operate with the correlative concepts, and so in that sense, the sense natural to us as mundane world-emplaced 6 Obstacles to Predictive Foreknowledge rescher ign text.indd 91 12/19/08 9:45:47 AM 92 Obstacles to Predictive Foreknowledge creatures who occupy a spatiotemporally qualified position in the world’s scheme of things, God does not know what is going on now. He does not have temporal knowledge in the English philosopher J.M.E. McTaggart’s A-series mode of matters in the range of past/ present/future. In this regard (as in many others) God is quite unlike ourselves. We finite world-emplaced beings who exist within spacetime can ask and answer questions about temporal matters from a time-internal perspective. And this has significant implications for us because our knowledge—unlike God’s—is something that both has to arise within and be concerned about the temporal domain in the manner of the time-interval perspective of A-series temporality. It is, in fact, here that the root source of our cognitive imperfection lies. This temporal and developmental aspect of knowledge has portentous ramifications. For one thing, it means that we are evidentially incapacitated in comparison with other knowers. Thus consider the yes-or-no question: “When next you yourself (Jones) answer a question, will you do so in the negative?” Whichever way poor Jones replies, he is plunged into error. The best he can do is to plead incapacity and respond, “Can’t say.” But, of course, third parties are differently circumstanced. Another knower—one different from Jones himself—can answer the question by saying, “No, Jones won’t do so,” and manage to be entirely correct. But this is something that Jones cannot coherently say on his own account. One thing that follows here is that finite knowers are not only not unrestrictedly omniscient , they are not restrictedly omniscient either—in the sense of being able to answer correctly every question that another knower can answer. The temporal aspect of the knowledge of finite beings has other, even more portentous aspects. It means, for one thing, that our knowledge is developmental in nature: that it admits of learning and of discoveries, that there are things (facts) that we do not and cannot know at one temporal juncture that we can and do manage to get to rescher ign text.indd 92 12/19/08 9:45:47 AM Obstacles to Predictive Foreknowledge 93 know at another. Knowledge does not come to us from on high, perfected and completed like Athena springing from the head of Zeus. It is the product of a process of inquiry unfolding over time—a process from which the possibilities of error of omission and commission can never be excluded. And this means that problems are bound to arise as our thought contemplates the future. Our “picture” of the world—our worldview, as one usually calls it—is an epistemic construction built up from our personal and vicarious experience-based knowledge. And like any construction it is made over time from preexisting materials—in this case the information at our disposal. We can select these materials—but only to a limited extent. In the main they force themselves upon us through the channels of our experience. The puzzle question that inevitably arises in this context is that of the accuracy or correctness of our world picture. And it is here that the temporally emplaced aspect of things comes into play. Perhaps the best way to get a good grip on this issue is by...