Document Type : Original Article

Author

• Sarah Baghdadi

institute for humanities and cultural studies

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

Main Subjects

• Philosophy of Religion