Does God know what it’s like to be Napoleon?
July 14th, 2010 | 
Author: 
Here is yet another post inspired by a spirited conversation with the scrappy Lutheran known as John Fraiser. We recently engaged in a philosophical kerfluffle over whether God knows what it’s like to be Napoleon (or a bat, or a pimp, or the present king of France, or Schrödinger’s cat, or anyone God does not happen to be). The debate arose after jointly considering Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument against materialism in the philosophy of mind, but the topic soon led to whether any such arguments could be applied to God’s knowledge.
I affirmed that God did indeed know what it is like to be Napoleon. John gave a negative answer, and the contest commenced. Although this important question is clearly pressing on the hearts of many Americans during these troubled times, the goal of this post is not to give an answer but to clarify what the arguments are and where the disagreement lies. After explaining the arguments, I will address some tentative reasons for why I take the (clearly) correct position.
Here is John’s argument, reconstructed as I understand it:
(1) It is a necessary condition of having a full knowledge of what it is like to be Napoleon that one believe he is Napoleon.
(2) God believes no falsehoods, so God does not believe He is Napoleon.
(3) Therefore God does not have a full knowledge of what it is like to be Napoleon.
The first premise is the hinge on which John’s argument turns. According to this premise, one can reasonably imagine what it is like to have some of Napoleon’s experiences. For example, one can imagine what it is like to stand on a hill in Waterloo and order your cannons to fire on Wellington’s cavalry, or what it is like to be short, or what it is like to keep your hand in your coat while posing for a portrait. Although we are limited in what we can imagine of Napoleon’s experiences and properties, God can imagine what it is like to have all of Napoleon’s experiences and properties. However, this act of imagining (on our part or God’s) does not deliver a complete knowledge of what it is like to be Napoleon, for to have that one must also believe that he is Napoleon. In other words, having a first person perspective on what it is like to be Napoleon is a requirement if one wants to truly know what it is fully like to be Napoleon. So in addition to imagining having the various experiences and properties of Napoleon, one must imagine that he believes that he is Napoleon. This is something of a contradiction, since in the very attempt to imagine one is acknowledging that he is not Napoleon at all. Hence only Napoleon knows what it is like to be him, since only he possesses a first person perspective.
This has strange consequences when we apply it to God. God certaintly doesn’t believe He is Napoleon, for He believes no falsehoods. But if premise (1) is true, then God is forever separated from what it is fully like to be any human other than Jesus Christ. This means that, in a very significant sense, God doesn’t know what it’s like to be me. He simply cannot imagine in the most important sense what it is like when I kiss my wife, or wrestle with my children on the living room floor, or even what it is like when I pray to Him or worship Him.
This seemed problematic to me, so I offered two counterarguments. Here is the first:
(4) God’s omniscience entails that He knows all truths that are possibly known.
(5) “What it is like to be Napoleon” is a truth that is possibly known.
(6) Therefore God knows what it is like to be Napoleon.
This seemed a bit ambiguous, so I issued a second argument, adjusted for clarity:
(7) Since God is both omniscient and omnipotent, He can perform any mental task that does not involve a logical contradiction.
(8) “Knowing what it is like to be Napoleon” is a mental task that does not involve a logical contradiction.
(9) Therefore God can know what it is like to be Napoleon.
Implicit in (8) is a rejection of John’s premise (1). I rejected (1) because it seems arbitrarily limited by human experience. Of course you and I can’t imagine what it is like to be Napoleon or what it is like to believe that we are Napoleon, but it doesn’t seem right to say that it would be logically impossible for God. God’s powers of imagination aren’t limited. He possesses unlimited cognitive capacity. Further, He created the cognitive environment in which human beings think, believe, and experience, and thus has privileged access to that cognitive environment and the types of things therein. If I create characters for a novel I am writing, I am in complete control over the mental world in which they live, and I have access to that mental world in ways my characters do not. This way of rejecting premise (1) needs to be worked out in more detail, but I think it is the defender of (1) that bears the burden of proof. It just doesn’t seem intuitively plausible that no mind could ever completely grasp what it is like to be Napoleon without accepting the Napoleon identity.
Further, I argued that the vagaries of human experience means that even Napoleon doesn’t know what it is like to be Napoleon, at least in the fullest sense. The human psyche is a deep and mysterious well. We all have questions about who we are and we are often aware that mysterious forces drive our choices and contribute to our own sense of personal identity. God, however, knows everything about Napoleon. He understands the deep reasons for his internal drive to conquer Europe, and so on. There are no deep psychological mysteries to the Ancient of Days.
These are only starting points for a response, but I think I’m on the right track. The key issue is how God’s imagination can overcome the third person perspective that seems to limit one’s ability to fully imagine what it is like to be another person. This challenge is significant, but to say that God can fully imagine what it is like to be Napoleon without believing He is Napoleoon does not seem to be on the same level as saying that God can make 2 and 2 equal 5. He can’t make 2 and 2 equal 5, but this is no limitation on His sovereignty or His power, for it is no true limitation to say that God can’t perform nonsense. It just isn’t clear that having a full knowledge of what it is like to be Napoleon is logically contradictory or nonsensical in the same way.
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Interesting thought process. Is it logical to say that the argument can be boiled down to the question of whether or not God can truly understand what we are going through and therefore truly empathize/sympathize with us?
Brian,
What a great post! I’m impressed with several things in particular: your talent for finding a picture of Napoleon riding a crotch-rocket; your fair and accurate representation of my argument; your modesty and caution in developing your own view.
I had thought about writing a post for CAON on this subject, but you’ve outlined the issue so well that doing so seems largely redundant. There is, of course, still plenty more to say. In what follows I’ll try to break off a good size chunk of what remains.
Premise (7) is false. I agree that God cannot perform a mental task that involves a logical contradiction, but that does not entail that “He can perform any mental task that does not involve a logical contradiction.” You’ve conflated a necessary condition for God’s thought with the total set of conditions, AKA sufficient conditions. God also can’t perform immoral mental tasks. He can’t think evil thoughts (whatever they may be). It isn’t clear that every evil thought entails a logical contradiction. If evil thoughts don’t entail logical contradiction, then (7) is false, and he cannot perform every mental task that doesn’t involve a logical contradiction (assuming that you aren’t considering evil thoughts to be some sort of non-mental task for God).
Accepting that (7) is false since God also can’t perform immoral mental tasks, we have what I think is another reason that God can’t know what it’s like to have every experience. Every fallen human being knows what it’s like to be a person who has thought evil thoughts without having to just imagine what it’s like. God cannot know what its like to be this person. To know what it’s like to be a person who thinks evil thoughts without just imagining what it’s like, God would have to actually think the evil thought. This isn’t a logical contradiction but it is a immoral action, and God is incapable of immoral action.
I’ll give you a few more things God can’t do that don’t involve a logical contradiction.
Napoleon knows what it’s like to be a person who doesn’t have to imagine what it’s like to be Napoleon. Since you take imagination to be the method through which God knows what it’s like to be Napoleon, God cannot, then, know what it’s like to be a person who doesn’t have to imagine what it’s like to be Napoleon. Napoleon knows what it’s like to be a person who isn’t a divine being imagining what it’s like to be him. God cannot know what it’s like to have this Napoleonic experience. Napoleon knows what it’s like to be a person who doesn’t imagine what it’s like to have every experience. Once again, God can’t do this.
As you say the crucial premise for my argument is my premise (1): whether having total knowledge of what it’s like to be Napoleon requires that one believe that he is Napoleon. If so, then it follows that God would have to believe a lie. I think the premise is correct, and I’ll further defend it if it comes to that, but the problems I raise above get along without premise (1), so I’ll let a defense of premise (1) pass for now.
I’ll add a quick response to your example about knowing what it’s like to be your book characters. Two things: you can’t know what it’s like to be your book characters because there is no “what it’s like to be your book characters” since they don’t have genuine experiences. Furthermore, you can’t have access to their experiences because their thoughts aren’t separate from your thoughts. They don’t think anything that you don’t think for them. You’re doing all the thinking. For this to parallel with God’s knowing-what-it’s-like, my thought would have actually be God’s thoughts. He’d have to be doing all the thinking. “I have access to that mental world in ways my characters do not.” Of course you do. They don’t “access” their mental world at all. This doesn’t parallel with us since we do have access (even if not total) to our mental world.
And I can’t resist responding to your claim that God knows what it’s like to be Napoleon better than Napoleon. You’ve conflated knowing what it’s like and knowing about Napoleon. All you mean when you say that God knows better than Napoleon what it’s like to be Napoleon is that God knows more facts about Napoleon. But knowing more facts about Napoleon than what Napoleon knows isn’t part of what it’s like to be Napoleon. What it’s like to be Napoleon is to not know all the facts about oneself. Therefore, Napoleon’s experience sets the bar for knowing what it’s like to be Napoleon, and, as I say, Napoleon’s experience is one that lacks knowledge of all Napoleonic facts.
I’ll pause for rebuttal.
John F., I wrote a very long rebuttal, then accidentally deleted it in Wordpress before saving it. I’m content to let you have the last word on this matter, as the thought of rewriting everything makes me nauseous. Perhaps in the near future.
That’s part of what’s at stake, John A. Skeptics might want to use this sort of argument to maintain that God can not empathize with the creatures he has created and thus that he is not in a position to make decisions regarding our personal and moral lives. Somewhere (I don’t recall where) C. S. Lewis addressed this question, or a related one. If I recall correctly, he addressed the argument that God could not really suffer as humans suffer and thus did not really know what it meant for humans to suffer. I don’t remember how he handled the argument, however. It’s probably in The Problem of Pain.