Frankfurt Counterexamples

Abstract

One strategy in recent discussions of theological fatalism is to draw on Harry Frankfurt's famous counterexamples to the principle of alternate possibilities (PAP) to defend human freedom from divine foreknowledge.For those who endorse this line, "Frankfurt counterexamples" are supposed to show that PAP is false, and this conclusion is then extended to the foreknowledge case.This makes it critical to determine whether Frankfurt counterexamples perform as advertised, an issue recently debated in this journal via a pair of articles by David Widerker and John Martin Fischer.I suggest that this debate can be avoided: divine foreknowledge is itself a paradigmatic counterexample to PAP, requiring no support from suspect Frankfurt counterexamples.

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