LessonsObligation Beyond Capacity: Possibility, Ability, and Moral JudgmentQuiz

The issue of incapacity has three importantly different forms.

1. Intrinsic impossibility: a proposal whose meaning is contradictory, such as combining contraries in the same respect.
2. Beyond ordinary human power: something conceivable in itself but not producible by an ordinary human, such as independently creating a body.
3. Intrinsically possible yet contrary to what is foreknown: an act whose occurrence would conflict with God’s infallible knowledge or report of its nonoccurrence, although the act considered in itself is not contradictory.

Thus logical impossibility, human incapacity, and certain nonoccurrence are not interchangeable.

Opening interactive controls...

Three distinct senses of incapacity

Obligation Beyond Capacity: Possibility, Ability, and Moral Judgment

The issue of incapacity has three importantly different forms.

1. Intrinsic impossibility: a proposal whose meaning is contradictory, such as combining contraries in the same respect.
2. Beyond ordinary human power: something conceivable in itself but not producible by an ordinary human, such as independently creating a body.
3. Intrinsically possible yet contrary to what is foreknown: an act whose occurrence would conflict with God’s infallible knowledge or report of its nonoccurrence, although the act considered in itself is not contradictory.

Thus logical impossibility, human incapacity, and certain nonoccurrence are not interchangeable.