Kompatybilizm teologiczny a problem Newcomba

Abstract

The paper examines and defends theological compatibilism — according to which human freedom is compatible with the existence of essentially omniscient God — against the background of a thought experiment known as Newcomb’s problem. It is argued that if a predictor in Newcomb’s situation is just a supreme scientist, it is rational to choose two boxes, but if he is essentially omniscient God, then it is rational to take one box only. The rationality of the latter choice is grounded in the truth of the conditional, “If S were to choose otherwise than S will, God’s past belief about S’s choice would have been different”. The truth of that backtracker does not deprive S of her ability to choose otherwise. On the contrary, it implies that God’s past beliefs about future contingencies counterfactually depend on the future. But if some part of the past counterfactually depends on our future acts, then there is no reason to claim that we are necessarily unable to do anything in the future such that if we were to do it, then that part of the past would have been different than it was. This kind of ability to control the past does not contradict the principle of the fixity of the past properly interpreted.