Divine Foreknowledge and Human Moral Responsibility (In Defense of Muslim Philosophers’ Approach)

Abstract

According to most Muslim philosophers, the Divine foreknowledge, on the one hand, is so inclusive that encompasses each and every minor and timed action of moral agents, and because of the perfection of God in essence and attributes, any defects in His essence and attributes including any errors in His foreknowledge are impossible. On the other hand, these philosophers, like other defenders of free will, claim that significance of any kind of free will and responsibility of a moral agent depends on their access to alternate possibilities (PAP (and, consequently, their ability to do and not to do an action simultaneously. This paper aims to deal with this highly debated and rooted question that whether these two views are essentially in conflict with each other. To answer this pivotal question briefly based on a modified version of Frankfurt cases and Muslim philosophers’ definition of free will, we attempt to defend their initial approach to eliminating the conflict between Divine foreknowledge and free will or moral responsibility and show that, firstly, this infallible knowledge is contingent on the agent’s voluntary action and, secondly, despite the principle of alternate possibilities, moral responsibility of the agent does not depend on the person’s avoidance of the forthcoming action.

Keywords

• foreknowledge
• moral responsibility
• free will
• frankfurt
• principle of alternative possibilities (pap)