Divine Knowledge and Qualitative Indiscernibility

Faith and Philosophy 33 (1):25-47 (2016)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

This paper is about the nature of God’s pre-creation knowledge of possible creatures. I distinguish three theories: non-qualitative singularism, qualitative singularism, and qualitative generalism, which differ in terms of whether the relevant knowledge is qualitative or non-qualitative, and whether God has singular or merely general knowledge of creatures. My main aim is to argue that qualitative singularism does not depend on a version of the Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles to the effect that, necessarily, qualitatively indiscernible individuals are identical. It follows that qualitative singularism does not depend on the view that possible creatures categorically have qualitative individual essences.

Similar books and articles

A logic with relative knowledge operators.Stéphane Demri - 1999 - Journal of Logic, Language and Information 8 (2):167-185.
Identity and indiscernibility.Jeffrey Ketland - 2011 - Review of Symbolic Logic 4 (2):171-185.
Leibniz on Knowledge and God.Christia Mercer - 2002 - American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 76 (4):531-550.
ON SORT OF KNOWING The Daoist Unhewn.Brook Ziporyn - 2013 - Common Knowledge 19 (1):111-130.
Algebraic analysis of fuzzy indiscernibility.Jian-Ming Gao & Akira Nakamura - 1991 - In B. Bouchon-Meunier, R. R. Yager & L. A. Zadeh (eds.), Uncertainty in Knowledge Bases. Springer. pp. 143--153.

Analytics

Added to PP
2015-12-26

Downloads
425 (#46,990)

6 months
91 (#52,053)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Daniel S. Murphy
Le Moyne College

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

The identity of indiscernibles.Max Black - 1952 - Mind 61 (242):153-164.
Primitive thisness and primitive identity.Robert Merrihew Adams - 1979 - Journal of Philosophy 76 (1):5-26.
Actualism and thisness.Robert Merrihew Adams - 1981 - Synthese 49 (1):3-41.
On existentialism.Alvin Plantinga - 1983 - Philosophical Studies 44 (1):1 - 20.
Identity and Indiscernibility.K. Hawley - 2009 - Mind 118 (469):101-119.

View all 17 references / Add more references