Published 2013-11-28
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Abstract
The Schoolmen did much of their most interesting and original philosophizing in theology. An example is the dilemma in Renaissance Scholasticism on free will: how can we act freely if God causes and knows our actions? Basic issues are involved here: the antinomy between freedom and determination, modal semantics, tense logic, the logical status of counterfacts. Mexican Jesuits Matías Blanco (d. 1734) and Antonio Peralta (d. 1736) wrote books on the subject. We describe here the “disjunctive” solution that Blanco advanced in his Funiculus triplex (The Three-Stranded Cord), published posthumously in Mexico in 1746. When someone is faced with choosing between B and C, conjectures Blanco, God does not actualize either, but rather their disjunction B-or-C. Blanco calls for a truce in the “war” among the contending schools so that they may consider his solution–for he thinks it may indeed be acceptable to all.
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