A refutation of the Power Entailment Principle by Zagzebski: evaluation and criticism

Document Type : Original Article

Author
Sarah Baghdadi
Ph.D in philosophy of religion, Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies
10.30470/phm.2023.1988268.2358
Abstract
The power entailment principle, in the problem of divine foreknowledge, and freedom refutes the counterfactual of freedom. By which the principle in question is known as one of the disputed issues that call into question human freedom. Given the power entailment principle, we don’t have the true counterfactual of freedom. By presenting some examples that she considers as counterfactual of freedom, Zagzebski tries to express a new understanding of necessity, which is the necessary condition of the counterfactual of freedom and also shows that the universality of the principle can be violated so, it cannot be a sound principle. Through the expression of necessity in the context of modality, Zagzebski gives a new understanding of necessity in the sense of the strict implication. This paper aimed to evaluate and criticize Zagzebski’s examples regardless of whether the aforementioned principle is true or false. To achieve the paper’s aim, we examine the feature of being necessary of her examples in the contexts of modality and strict implication in the conventional sense and, would show i) the logic that governs the examples, in both fields, is not valid and, the examples in question cannot defeat the power entailment principle; ii) with respect to these examples, Zagzebski’s efforts in expressing a new understanding of necessity in the context of modality leads to failure
Keywords
the power entailment principle
the counterfactual of freedom
modality
the strict implication
Linda Zagzebski
Subjects
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Philosophical Meditations
Volume 14, Issue 33 - Serial Number 33
December 2024
Pages 385-417