1. Fixing an analogy: Riverbeds vs. Perpetual Motion machines - Let me begin with an analogy. Another analogy came up with me and Alex that I want to use here (in contrast to my endorsement of the latter in our conversation). As you'll remember, I endorsed an analogy according to which the 'march of time' was akin to water filling a riverbed, to the right of which (to signify the 'present') is a dam, serving the analogical purpose of halting the water's flow. The dam itself was traveling from left-to-right at one inch per second (the rate is arbitrarily picked). This 'traveling' signifies temporal becoming. If you look to the left of this flow of water, you'll see more water, which is a shortcoming of the analogy (since we want to make this analogous to presentism instead of a growing block). But I think I can salvage the shortcoming by letting the water you see to the left represent what Craig says about the past being actual (though non-existent). The ever-moving dam could have attached to it some inch-long measuring device designed to pick out (or bracket) a conventional-metric of a sliver of the front edge of the water to represent an ontologically privileged present. When you look to the right of the dam, I told Alex that it is an as-yet, dry 'riverbed', with no water, though - due to the inexorable progress of the dam - it might be accurate to say that every part of the as-yet, dry riverbed is yet-to-be-wet. This aspect of the analogy I will now have to abandon, as any analogy that presupposes a statically existing corridor or hallway. I realize that Morriston denied he is talking about ontology (he emphasizes the reality of 'yet-to-be' as a tensed determination, and coupled with God's predetermination of the future, the yet-to-be aspects of the future - due to it being endless - are similarly predetermined: making an actually infinite future unavoidable. The picture-thinking in this analogy is inaccurate. Let me provide a competing analogy.
Suppose that we could construct what many physicists believe is nomologically impossible: a perpetual motion machine (PMM). I believe that nomological possibility isn't a good guide for metaphysical possibility anyway. Suppose God can directly bring about PMM. Bringing about PMM will involve bringing about all the motion that PMM will autonomously bring about after PMM itself is brought about. The motion brought about will be perpetual (potentially infinite). But God doesn't have to predetermine each and every motion that 'will be' in order to bring it about that each and every motion is indeed brought about. In fact, it's PMM that predetermines itself own motion. Once in motion, God knows the potentially infinite number of motions that 'will' be brought about. Hence, each and every motion brought about by PMM is brought about by God by virtue of PMM predetermining its own motions. In this case, there doesn't seem to be an analogical mapping of the future motions of PMM (on the basis of God bringing about its future motions by virtue of instantiating PMM autonomously) onto a tenselessly subsisting analogical corridor/hallway/riverbed. Ontology itself is dynamically unfolding and because the future is merely potential (in contradistinction to the past), ontology is constantly changing (and there wouldn't be an actually infinite collection of future tense propositions such that they could supervene on or correlate with the non-existent, non-actual, yet-to-be future because such a future isn't actually infinite, and therefore there can't be an infinite collection of future tense propositions that can be potentially mapped onto some non-zero, equal, metrical, arbitrary, temporary, metrical interval extending out into the tenseless the future statically). Without doing any further analysis of the concepts of these stipulations, I will proceed with Morriston's essay.
2. Morriston and Tense - First, Morriston protests that Craig answered the wrong question. Morriston wasn't asking how many praises 'have been said' (always finite); he claims to have been asking Craig about the number of praises 'yet-to-be-said'. For me, this completely ignores the semantic distinctions made in Craig's first response to Morriston: 'will be' vs. 'yet-to-be'. This is the crux of the issue. For it seems as though both Morriston and Alex are collapsing these two distinctions and accusing Craig of equivocation (or that the two locutions are synonymous). Morriston says: "Instead, I was asking for the number of praises yet-to-be-said – that is, for the number of praises, each of which will eventually be said." Yet-to-be and 'will-be' are equated without addressing Craig's reasons for distinguishing the two. Hence, I cannot see how Morriston's allegation that Craig 'fails to consider - much less answer - the right question.' Morriston isn't paying attention to the semantic distinctions in the answer! This is born out by Morriston's confusion over Craig's answer to the question: How many praises 'will be' said (which is supposed to be 'potentially infinitely many')? He skips right over to the question that interests him: 'what is the number of praises in the series of future praises?' He thinks this series is semantically equivalent to the question: 'what is the number of praises 'yet-to-be-said'?' And they are not! The reader who doesn't catch what Morriston is drawing our attention to isn't the 'careless reader' Morriston takes them to be. Such a semantic confusion is further seen by noting hypothetical determinations of finite numbers of praises. Morriston invites us to think about the number of yet-to-be praises if God pre-determines that the angels 'take turns doing one-minute praises' for an hour (60 future praises). Morriston infers from this that there are 60 yet-to-be praises. But this completely ignores Craig's semantic distinctions. There are still zero yet-to-be praises in the sense Craig has specified. The correct inference to make is this: there 'will be' 60 praises in an hour. It's really that simple. If the meanings of the locutions are kept in mind, none of our intuitions are perturbed.
Second, Morriston raises symmetrical concerns about the past regarding Craig's existent/actual distinction (non-existent events can be a part of the actual world, and non-existent events can be pure potentialities - not part of the actual world). Once again, Morriston fails to be sensitive to the will be/yet-to-be distinction. He asks: how many 'potentialities will . . . be actualized'? He thinks Craig would answer: none. Not at all! Will-be has to do with 'potentially infinitely many'. It is 'yet-to-be' that has to do with 'none'. Hence, potentially infinitely many potentialities 'will be'. It is Morriston who seems to me to be equivocating on 'will be' and 'yet-to-be'. On the one hand, Morriston understands 'yet-to-be' to signify a (subsisting?) never-growing, tenseless collection of events (something a presentist ontology would exclude); on the other hand, he will conflate it with 'will be'. On the basis of the conflation, he justifies his accusation of equivocation for Craig. The never-growing, tenseless collection interpretation seeps back in when (similar to how Alex assumes in an earlier post that because the series of events in time is 'isochronous' - akin to 'counting' the numbers - that that thereby gives us justification for thinking that the series of events is 'isomorphous' with the series of natural numbers themselves {this doesn't follow!}) when Morriston assumes that 'is' a one-to-one correspondence between the series of future praises and the natural numbers (that there is this isomorphous property between the two series). Not at all! If there is 'not' this never-growing, tenseless collection of yet-to-be praises, then the isomorphous property disappears. By contrast, there is an ever-growing, tensed collection of praises that will be, that will always be finite (and so will never be isomorphous). There seems to be a confusion between counting the numbers and the numbers themselves, and then shifting from the reality of the number series to illicitly (and analogically) extending such a series to being akin to the never-growing, tenseless collection of yet-to-be praises that the presentist-ontology makes no room for. Morriston retorts: " . . . even if “there are” no future events, there is still a one-to-one correspondence between the natural numbers and the tensed truths in various relevant series." This is the (already noted) switch from the ontology of events to ontology of abstracta regarding events. The aforementioned 'correspondence' will then subsist between 'tensed truths' and the series of natural numbers. But the same criticisms already outlined apply here as well. There's no reason to think that there is an isomorphism between the collection of future-tensed truths and the natural numbers. This is why Craig brings up the option of embracing an 'actual infinitude of propositions or facts', which you'd need to accomplish the isomorphism (such an option is denied). Morriston brings up God's pre-determination again: that 'for ever natural number n, God has determined that n minutes from now Gabriel (or Uriel) will say a one-minute praise.' But this (once again) links God's pre-determination with a yet-to-be praise by using the language of 'will be'. In line with the PMM analogy (above), God pre-determines the angels as PMM, and thereby weakly actualizes a potentially infinite number of praises, without singularly determining (without strongly actualizing) each and every praise in a tenseless series of yet-to-be praises with an isomorphism with the natural numbers.
Third, I'm not sure why Morriston thinks that Craig wouldn't endorse the idea that 'there are past events of which it is now true that they have happened.' Craig would just deflate the existential quantifier and salvage the truth of the proposition without ontological commitment to the past. And it would be even easier (or more intuitive to do this) with the future (since the future is not only non-existent, but unactual).
Fourth, on God's non-propositional knowledge, much of what Morriston doesn't address Craig's distinction between non-propositional knowledge being the mode of God's knowledge (not an aspect of His omniscience, but a function of 'ability'), and analysis of God's omniscience that deal with the extent of God's propositional knowledge (as it's conceptually carved at the joints by human intellection). The latter analysis can be consistently applied to Middle Knowledge without compromising an appeal to God's non-propositional knowledge in terms of 'mode' and 'ability' (e.g. there is movement itself {I can get up and walk out of the room} and then there's, perhaps, Zeno's conceptual analysis of movement). Morriston offers two objections to non-propositional knowledge.
First, Craig's presentism isn't friendly to it (God can't have non-propositional knowledge of the future because presentism implies there's nothing 'there' to intuit). Morriston acknowledges the perceptual/conceptual distinction in models of omniscience. But that once again doesn't take account of the distinctions above: non-propositional knowledge isn't an aspect of God's omniscience. Further, Craig's admission that God 'knows all truths concerning future events' isn't sensitive to the distinctions either (such a proposition is a product of a conceptual analysis of 'omniscience', which involve propositional-talk, keeping in mind that propositions are the product of human intellection). The analysis doesn't prevent the non-propositional mode, just as motion isn't prevented in Zeno's analyses. Of course, the relationship in the latter case is different. The analysis of omniscience isn't inconsistent with the non-propositional mode. It's just that a consequence of the analysis is that God has conceptual knowledge, not of an actually infinite number of propositions, but of all true propositions.
Second, Morriston alleges that God's non-propositional mode 'leaves nothing out'. Indeed. All that is included is the ever-growing collection of events that will be and the potentially infinite number of future-tense propositions that correlate with the events that will be. In terms of propositional extent, God's omniscience encompasses a potentially infinite number of future-tense propositions that correlate with the events that will be. If we're in the 'human way of stating some part of what God knows non-propositionally', it doesn't follow that such a human way implies the required isomorphism between instances of tensed-truth and the tenseless series of yet-to-be events on which such instances would have to be mapped in order to elicit an actual infinite. Such an isomorphism presupposes the propositional mode. And in the propositional mode there can't be an isomorphism because there aren't an actually infinite number of propositions to do the work. Additionally, Morriston needs to account for blind-truth-ascriptions as an aspect of the propositional mode (which would deflect or defang the worry that God needs to be singularly acquainted with, or have a specific cognition for, each and every praise in an ever-growing, potentially infinite collection of future praises that will be).
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