چکیده:
According to most Muslim philosophers, Divine foreknowledge, on 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 refrain from or do an action simultaneously. This paper aims to deal with this highly debated and fundamental question that whether these two views are essentially in conflict with each other. To answer this pivotal question, 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, the agent’s moral responsibility does not depend on the person’s avoidance of the forthcoming action.
خلاصه ماشینی:
To answer this pivotal question, 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, the agent’s moral responsibility does not depend on the person’s avoidance of the forthcoming action.
On the other hand, it seems that the theological fatalism, that comes from the providence and will of God or Divine foreknowledge, has been a serious challenge to free will and human’s moral responsibility from the standpoint of Muslim philosophers; because seemingly, certain and infrangible Divine foreknowledge is accompanied by unilateral act of moral agent and ruling out any possible alternatives.
To answer this question, regardless of some ambiguities that require another time to examine, we saw that according to Frankfurt examples and their main claims, agent's free will and moral responsibility are not dependent to the alternate possibility and the agent’s ability to avoid de facto action at all.
So, in the recent solution of Muslim philosophers, even if the truth of Divine foreknowledge is dependent to the determination of a special action and the lack of its alternates for the person and as a result practically he is not able to avoid his behavior, but as much as he thinks he has accessible and open alternates and despite the possibility to choose and do it, he chooses the action of de facto trend, this suffices to consider him to be free and responsible.
(
, 
, 
)
