Course syllabus

Chris Martin

Friday 10-12      

Some Ancient and Mediaeval Solutions to Arguments for Logical and Theological Determinism.

One of the oldest of philosophical problems was first raised by Aristotle and has been debated intensively ever since. If we maintain that the claims we make about the future are true or false, then it seems to follow that what will happen is already determined. Aristotle argued that the world is not logically determined in this way and that one solution to the argument is that our claims about the future are neither true nor false.  Mediaeval Christian philosophers could not accept this since they held that god is omniscient and that our history is the realisation of the divine providential plan. They were thus presented with the problem of explaining how divine foreknowledge and providence are compatible with the freedom of human action required to ground moral responsibility. In this course we will consider the classical problem of logical determinism as formulated by Aristotle and the various ingenious solutions to it and to the arguments for theological determinism proposed by a number of mediaeval philosophers and the interpretations of them by contemporary philosophers.

 Assessment:

100% One 6000 word essay or two 3000 word essays.