Omniscience: A thought experiment

[noctalla]

I think if you exempt those things which are not logically possible to know from the definition of omniscience, one could still have an omniscient being.

It would be interesting to analyze just how much of all reality through all time is actually logically possible to know, and know to what precision, and for even an omniscient Being how the amount he knows stack up to what he ca not know.

Like, is God's knowledge subject to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle? Though, I suppose there's nothing logically impossible about knowing both the position and momentum of a particle. 

[robvalue]

As a quick sideline, it's come up many times that omniscience and free will are not compatible; even god's free will. Unless you drop God knowing what will happen in the future as being logically impossible, I suppose.

What if time branches, with every possibility occurring in it's own separate reality. God may be aware of every nuance of every possible reality, but could we not still be free to choose our own path?

I don't think so. I'm about to go through one of two doors, a red and a blue one. It feels to me like I haven't decided until I'm right next to the doors, and I go through the red one. God knows I was going to go through the red one. Could I have gone through the blue one?

Make it even clearer: God appears in the room, which has only these two exits, and tells me I will walk through the red door in 5 seconds, I'll walk back through it again in another 5 seconds, then I'll walk through the blue door after 5 more seconds. He knows I will do this since he knows everything.

Can I choose to do anything differently to what God is telling me I will do?

To sum up: if a real "choice" is made, it must be one where it is impossible to predict which of multiple options will happen. (This could be because the process of choosing is random.) If God can predict it, it's not a free choice, nothing else can possibly happen. If he can't predict it, he's not omniscient.

I see no way out of that, but I may be mistaken so feel free to let me know if so After all, I don't make ridiculous claims about omniscience

---

God could give me as much detail as he wants about what I'll do in between those times as well, to stop me making any choices about how to fulfil the "prophecy" by running about weirdly.

---

So, it seems to me knowing the outcome of a choice, assuming there is one, is logically impossible. Therefor it should be excluded from the "weak" omniscience stance.

[noctalla]

@robvalue Could you have gone through the blue one?

In a branching time scenario, yes. If time branches, with every possibility occurring in its own reality, you would, in some realities, go through the blue door and, in others, go through the red. From the perspective on an objective observer, such as an omniscient God, none of these realities are the 'objective' or 'true' reality - they are all equally real. However, to the person within the reality, they would only experience a one of the myriad possible realities. So, an omniscient God would be aware of all the realities and all of the choices you make in those realities.

"God appears in the room, which has only these two exits, and tells me I will walk through the red door in 5 seconds, I'll walk back through it again in another 5 seconds, then I'll walk through the blue door after 5 more seconds. He knows I will do this since he knows everything."

This one is a bit trickier. I suppose God could suspend your free will to ensure this happens. Or God doesn't do this and leaves you free to choose, leaving open the possibility that you don't do it. In any case, if we are presupposing the branching time scenario, and God is trying to accurately convey what will happen in the future in an objective sense, God would have to say something like "there are numerous options open to you and in different realities you will choose different things."

[robvalue]

Hmm, very good efforts to try and get round the paradox You're defending God better than theists do!

My question would be: if all these possibilities exist, with "me" doing every possible action, what makes any particular branch more meaningful than any other? Surely that is arbitrary? I'm every single one of them.

If instead "I" am described by just one branch, and all the others are not really me, then does God know which branch will be the real "me" before it happens?

This whole thing lead me to an interesting thought. Theists often say God is "timeless" without giving any thought to what that actually means. So I'll do their work for them. God isn't timeless, but he is independent of our time. He has his own time. Let's say he looks at our universe.

What will he see? Since we have removed our time from the proceedings, what he sees cannot change. So if he sees all possible branches, then none of them will ever be "chosen". If he sees which one does get chosen, then all the possibilities have collapsed just by him looking at the universe. The others are now irrelevant, they cannot be chosen.

This seems to me like a startling analogy to quantum mechanics, where a whole host of possibilities collapse down into a single form when they are observed. When we view the quantum level, are we viewing a time-independent version of another universe, like God is with ours?

[noctalla]

@robvalue Ah! Very astute. You've identified the flaw in the argument. Let me paraphrase your objection: If every possibility occurs, then in what sense is a choice ever being made? To each individual 'you', it might SEEM like a choice was made, but unless each individual reality has the possibility of NOT coming into being, then, in an objective sense, no choice is being made. Thus free will is still an illusion.

Your other questions are interesting starting points to further the conversation. I will have to ponder them.

[robvalue]

Thank you Yes indeed. But overcoming this objection enlightened me! I've never had to address one yet that wasn't nonsense.

I've either just solved the mystery of quantum randomness, or I made a joke physicists can use at parties.

[Mudhammam]

I'd argue that no being CAN be omniscient, because it cannot know whether it is part of a bigger whole-- for example a collection of multiple beings, isolated from each other, who each think they are omniscient.

Why couldn't an omniscient being know that? Your example just assumes that the isolated beings aren't actually omniscient but it doesn't establish the impossibility of omniscience in principle. Presumably an actually omniscient being would know the whole as it knows itself and itself it knows as the whole, and of which it actually is both the knowable and known whole.

It seems to me that you're essentially asking, "Could it know that it knows what it knows?" You can drag that out ad infinitum. The simple answer is yes, if it knows anything, an omniscient being knows that it knows what it knows and what it knows is everything there is to know!

[bennyboy]

I'd argue that no being CAN be omniscient, because it cannot know whether it is part of a bigger whole-- for example a collection of multiple beings, isolated from each other, who each think they are omniscient.

Why couldn't an omniscient being know that? Your example just assumes that the isolated beings aren't actually omniscient but it doesn't establish the impossibility of omniscience in principle. Presumably an actually omniscient being would know the whole as it knows itself and itself it knows as the whole, and of which it actually is both the knowable and known whole.
It seems to me that you're essentially asking, "Could it know that it knows what it knows?" You can drag that out ad infinitum. The simple answer is yes, if it knows anything, an omniscient being knows that it knows what it knows and what it knows is everything there is to know!

lol
We didn't stipulate that it knows everything THERE IS to know.  We stipulated that it knows everything-- including whether what it knows is everything there is to know.
But I cannot conceive of an entity, no matter how great, that can know for sure that there is nothing that might not be known to it.

Let's say you're God-- how do you know there is no other God? Haven't experienced one? Never met one?

[Mudhammam]

Let's say you're God-- how do you know there is no other God? Haven't experienced one? Never met one?

I know because I am the primal being that all else is predicated on. If there exists knowledge that is predicated on something other than my all-knowing self, then THAT something is prior to me and is the primal being that all else is predicated on. And if that other being finds itself in the same shock and awe at my existence that I find at hers, then there must be a third being who is laughing at our expense and who is more primal and knowledgeable than us both!

---

But yeah, it's a little beyond the stretch of my imagination to consider how an all-knowing subject could perceive of itself as unperceived object and that would seem to be required of a being who knew everything both internally and externally of itself.

Or, does the Supreme being still remain Supreme when no inferior beings are around to worship him?

[bennyboy]

Let's say you're God-- how do you know there is no other God?  Haven't experienced one?  Never met one?

I know because I am the primal being that all else is predicated on. If there exists knowledge that is predicated on something other than my all-knowing self, then THAT something is prior to me and is the primal being that all else is predicated on. And if that other being finds itself in the same shock and awe at my existence that I find at hers, then there must be a third being who is laughing at our expense and who is more primal and knowledgeable than us both!

Let's say I hold the belief that I'm God and that there is nothing unknowable or unknown to me.  All things (I know of) are predicated on me.  In hierarchical terms, that means I'm at the top of the food chain.  But how am I to know I'm not a child to a greater parent?

Maybe I really am the be-all-end-all.  Or maybe I just think I am.  How is even God to know which is the case?