Bas van Fraassen on Omniscience - Philosophy Lexicon of Arguments

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Philosophy Lexicon of Arguments


Omniscience: the ability to know all statements. - Logical problem even the understanding of a logically true statement could could cause the requirement, that all logical consequences are known. E.g. Knowing the calculation rules would logically require that all the results are known. _____________ Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments.

Fraassen, Bas van Books on Amazon	Omniscience	I 129 Why-question / Fraassen: context-dependent - (> relevance) - an omniscient being does not have an explanation, because there are no why questions for it - If it has no specific interests - because they are for it just as context-dependent as for us - Information: is not by itself an explanation - it has to be screened only by relevance considerations - i.e. an omniscient being cannot use its information if it does not restrict these - screening of information also solves the problem of asymmetry - I 134 Explanation: Response to Why-questions. _____________ Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution.	Fr I B. van Fraassen The Scientific Image Oxford 1980

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