It strikes me that the solution proposed by Maimonides to the freewill problem has been wrongly equated with the solution put forward by Boethius. In what follows, I try to explain how the two proposals differ. I’d love to hear people’s feedback on this, as I’m no real Maimonides scholar. Have other people noted this difference? Do let me know.
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The freewill problem, in its medieval formulation, arises from the fact that our free will seems to be incompatible with God’s foreknowledge. The problem can be stated as follows:
- A being with a free will often has the choice between two mutually exclusive actions, action x and action y, at some time, t.
- God is omniscient, and therefore knows that I will chose to perform, say, action x at time t.
- Knowledge is factive, which is to say that it’s either a relation between a mind and a fact, or at least, a relation between a mind and a true proposition; a proposition made true by a fact. Knowledge is, therefore, always accompanied by the existence of a fact.
- Given 3, if God knows that I will perform action x at time t, then it is a fact that I will perform action x at time t.
- If it is a fact that I will perform action x at time t, then I cannot choose to perform action y at the same time.
- Therefore, I am not a free being with control over the course of my own life. Given any choice, I am always bound to act in the way that God already knows that I will act.
