Handbook of the History of Logic: - Fordham University Faculty

46 John Marenbon
position, but to argue for it as logically coherent. He begins [Peter Damian, 1972,
412-4] by distinguishing between how the future can be open (ad utrumlibet) so
far as the ‘variable nature of things’ is concerned (I may or may not see my
friend today, for example), and yet according to the consequence of discourse
(consequentiam disserendi) they may be fixed. He means by the consequence of
discourse, for example, the fact that ‘if it will be that it rains, then it is entirely
necessary that it will rain, and for this reason it is completely impossible that it
will not rain.’ Since he insists that such necessity is not genuine, Damian is not
wrongly concluding from
to
15. Necessarily, if it will rain it will rain
16. If it will rain, necessarily it will rain.
On the contrary, he is recognizing, that (15) does not imply (16). But he does not
have the tools to distinguish the scope of modal operators, and so he concludes that
the sort of necessity in (15) is purely verbal and does not lead to the conclusion
that the rain is inevitable. Although this line of thought is in itself simply an
argument against a mistaken logical argument for determinism, it brings out the
idea that, though the future cannot be changed, in that the future is simply what
will happen, this does not mean that events in the future are not open. Damian
goes on explicitly to draw the parallel with the past: ‘according to the order
of discourse, it is impossible that whatever was, was not’ [Peter Damian, 1972,
414:34-6]. The implicit suggestion, then, is that, just as there is a sense ‘according
to the order of discourse’ in which the future is unchangeable, so too with the past.
And just as being determined ‘according to the order of discourse’ still leaves it
open to change what that future will be, so, although it is impossible that what
was, was not, the past too is open to change.
This implicit argument, however, ignores the fact that the future and the past
are not parallel in respect of determinism. Past events have more than a necessity
‘according to the order of discourse’. To say about something in the future ‘it may
happen or it may not’ involves no incoherence; but to say of an event in the past
‘it may have happened or it may not have happened’ makes sense only if taken
epistemically, as a profession of ignorance or uncertainty: there is a fact of the
matter, and if the event did take place, it cannot now, we feel, not have taken
place. Damian does not air such worries explicitly, but an awareness of them may
explain why he goes on to give a new turn to his discussion [Peter Damian, 1972,
414:34-6]. He explains, in terms that echo Book 5 of Boethius’s Consolation of
Philosophy, that God has a different relation to time than ours:
It is clear that omnipotent God holds all the centuries in the treasury of
his eternal wisdom so that nothing can come to him nor can anything
pass from him through the moments of time. Therefore, remaining
constant in that ineffable citadel of his majesty, he contemplates all