Faith and Philosophy

Volume 33, Issue 1, January 2016

Divine Knowledge and Qualitative Indiscernibility

This paper is about the nature of God’s pre-creation knowledge of possible creatures. I distinguish three theories: non-qualitative singularism, qualitative singularism, and qualitative generalism, which differ in terms of whether the relevant knowledge is qualitative or non-qualitative, and whether God has singular or merely general knowledge of creatures. My main aim is to argue that qualitative singularism does not depend on a version of the Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles to the effect that, necessarily, qualitatively indiscernible individuals are identical. It follows that qualitative singularism does not depend on the view that possible creatures categorically have qualitative individual essences.